Best bet of the West in the Middle East?
Even the best of the minds are not sure about the outcome of the ongoing conundrum in the Arab world. A review of the press indicates that the West is most jittery owing to its dependence on the Arab oil. Alarm bells have been already raised about the possible Islamist take-over; therefore, the opinion-makers in the West are fervently working to convince their governments to manipulate the crisis to bring the secularists in power because they are considered as the best bet of the West.
Can the Arab secularists deliver? The answer can be searched in understanding the origin, evolution and philosophy of secularism in Arabia, in general, and its relationship with the West, in particular. The secularists are different from the Islamist traditionalists and reformists in the sense that they are not religiously oriented. In fact, they have been the advocates of modernisation as their outlook has been profoundly shaped by Western rationalism. Qasim Amin (1863-1908), the pioneer of the secular Arab thought believed that scientific progress leads to moral progress and nothing in society was above criticism. He held that in a truly free country no one should be afraid to renounce his fatherland, to repudiate belief or to impugn the laws and customs of his people.
All secularists did not adopt such attitude. On the contrary, there was a lot of variation in their standpoints fluctuating between extreme Westernism and extreme conservatism. Some of them, no matter how thorough their Westernisation was in upholding Western values and modern ideas, remained rooted to their Muslim identity and alienated to the West. It is quite paradoxical that in spite of their affirmation of the Western traditions, the secularists were the first ones that raised the banner of political resistance against the West in the Arab world.
The proceedings of the First Arab Conference in Cairo in 1913 admitted that it is an obvious truth, which we are not the first to declare, is that our awakening is due to the impact of modern European civilisation, yet quite like the Islamists; they also looked upon the West as the major political threat to the Arab people. Why this dichotomy? It was primarily because of a sense of inferiority which developed due to Arabs inability to understand the mystery surrounding the European life and character and not due to military defeat at the hands of Europe.
There was a common belief among the secularists that the eclipse of the Muslims as an imperial power was temporary and their military resurgence was at hand. The mystery surrounding the Europeans was best explained by Muhammad Husayn Haykal(1888-1956), the Egyptian novelist: Egyptians used to believe in the genius of foreigners; they regarded them as either angels or devils.They were convinced that these foreigners possessed a knowledge beyond our power to comprehend.
Some secularists tried to salvage this inferiority complex by developing a historical theory whereby they argued that as the Arabs and Islam had greatly contributed to Europes cultural resurgence during the Middle Ages therefore borrowing from Europe was just an act of retrieving what the Muslims had previously given to the Europeans. In this way, borrowing from the West was justified but the next tricky question was what to borrow and what not. The answer suggested by the secularists was ambiguous: Borrow that which is useful, discard that which is not, never agreeing on what was useful and what wasnt. Such an approach divided the secularists into two camps: one accepted Wests superiority without question while the other regarded everything Western as bad.
Overall, the secularists adopted the European middle class liberalism hinged on the idea of liberty as their creed to end traditional absolutism, establish constitutional government, uphold individual freedom and then looked towards the West for support, however, when a new era dawned in the Middle East in the wake of decolonisation in the middle of the twentieth century, the West betrayed them by preferring those Arab leaders that were tribal and traditional in their essence but could guarantee the protection of the vital economic and strategic interests of the West. This betrayal caused anger among the secularists that was poignantly expressed by a leading young Arab poet Ahmad Ali Said: We no longer believe in Europe. We no longer have faith in its political system or in its philosophies. Worms have eaten into its social structure as they have into its very soul. Europe for uswe backward, ignorant, impoverished peopleis a corpse.
The disenchantment with the Western ideals further grew among the secularists due to the colonisation of the Arab lands. History is repeating itself in 2011 because exactly a hundred years ago Libya was invaded by Italy in 1911 which incidentally was also the first European occupation of an Arab country in the twentieth century. Could this Western imperialism be defended in any way? The situation put the secularists in a quandary because the very West that preached the gospel of liberty at home had deprived them of their freedom.
Nonetheless, instead of any apologetic defence of the European imperialism, the secularists outrightly condemned the West. The Iraqi poet, Maruf al-Rasafi wailed, They lied to you who told you (that the) leaders of the West have got anything to tell us but lies, anything to offer us but deceit. Another secularist, Abdul Rahman-al-Kawakibi was blunter in his condemnation of the Western aggressiveness: Western man is a hard-headed materialist is by nature inclined to exploit others regards the weak with disdain, as unworthy of existing. He considers force mans highest virtue. Power for him derives from wealth. Reason to him means overstepping limits; his life has little modesty in it
Finally, this disenchantment grew into estrangement with the West. Not only that the secularists failed to develop a fruitful power equation with the West, they also failed in the modernisation of their societies which till today remain rooted to the primordial power structures of tradition and tribal authority. Their task was daunting yet not impossible. What they could not achieve was achieved by their counterparts in Meiji Japan, who transformed the Japanese society steeped in tradition into a modern polity just because they were able to build a consensus as to what was the national good. Despite all sorts of differences, the Japanese as a whole were able to agree to a set of basic values to be adhered to, to attain modernisation through economic and technological transformation in order to put their country on a par with the rich and powerful nations of the world. Unfortunately, neither the Arab secularists could build such a national consensus then nor are they in a position to lead their societies at this critical juncture in the Middle Eastern history.
The writer is an academic and journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]
