The “Al-Asala Al-Ilmiyyah” House in Istanbul published a new book by Dr. Rafiq Abdel Salam under the title “The Arab Failure: In Revolution, Religion, and the State.” It is a book that covers various axes ranging from intellectual, political, and strategic.
The book is divided into five main axes or sections, which are: the Arab revolutions, the religious issue, the democratic issue or democratic transformation, the Arab state and its historical formation and current crises, and finally the issue of modernity and modernization in the Arab world.
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As for the unit organizing this work, which brings together the various axes and chapters, it relates to the issues of current political society in the Arab world and in the Tunisian situation in particular, including issues of revolutions, change, the state, democratic transformation, modernity, modernization, and others.
The Arab revolutions and lessons learned
The first chapter provided an in-depth reading of the path of the “betrayed” Arab revolutions, as the author and former Tunisian Foreign Minister called them, while examining the lessons and lessons learned from them, which would provide the Arab reader in general and the new generations of Arab youth with an intellectual and strategic tool that qualifies them to prepare for the future.
The book concludes by saying: The political actors who assumed leadership after the Arab Spring revolutions may have committed errors in judgment and practice here or there, but in the end they were moving within an internal and external balance of power greater than themselves.
Perhaps the biggest mistake that the new actors made was their hesitation and indecisiveness in determining the political options in dealing with the old regime, whether from a position of being able to impose radical concessions on it, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa, or going with the option of revolution to its end and involving the people in the battle, as happened in most of the radical revolutions of our modern era, according to the author.
The biggest flaw is also due to the inability to forge strong alliances at the internal and external levels, which made the Arab revolutions move without international and regional support to support them. At a time when the counter-revolutions were moving as quickly as possible, building their alliances and strengthening their positions.
After Arab powers threw their full weight at their side, the new rulers in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and others were drowning in the problems of governance, burdened by its burdens, without a common vision and no real support at the regional or international level, especially since the Arab situations are highly interconnected and intertwined, making their destinies, whether they rise or fall, unified. Therefore, either the solution will be collective and cross the borders of the national state, or it will not be at all, according to the book.
Also, falling into the hateful sectarian traps – which were fueled by forces and countries originally hostile to the Arab Spring revolutions – contributed to mixing the cards, weakening the front for change, and preoccupying it with side battles.
However, what was mentioned above, as the author says, must not weaken the strength or strength of the determination to move forward with the great transformation project by accumulating efforts and sacrifices, whether from the position of government or the afflictions of the opposition in the face of the power of the force and the ferocity of the counter-revolution. The Arab region is in the process of a major transformation, and the Arab Spring revolutions shook the reality of stagnation and stirred the stagnant Arab waters.
It is likely that the process of change will take many years of back and forth, and ebb and flow, as evidenced by the record of modern revolutions, until the region regains its balance and stability on new foundations based on freedom and dignity after the state of deceptive and fragile stability. It has proven that the process of change in this part of the world is extremely difficult and complex, unparalleled in any other locations, and it requires a great deal of effort, trouble, and the accumulation of struggles and sacrifices, according to the author’s estimation.
Religious and political
The writer argues that the essence of the problem is not due to the alleged control of religion over the state, but rather the state’s control over religion and its institutions and its seizure of the material and symbolic capabilities of society. Most Arab and Islamic countries, including those with “modernist” tendencies, are generally characterized by an intrusive and obsessive nature over society and religion, and tend to use the sacred and the “profane” in order to justify their hegemony and domination only.
It is a strange irony that the most “secular” Arab countries do not accept that the religious field, its institutions, and its public functions be independent from the control of the state and its bureaucracy, in violation of the ABCs of political secularization, which require the independence of the religious field from the state.
Dr. Rafiq Abdel Salam concludes by saying that the basic principle of things is that the affairs of religion, its institutions, and its public functions are an integral part of the fabric of society, connected to its active forces, rather than being part of the state’s apparatuses and bureaucracy.
The state, regardless of its form and the type of legitimacy upon which it is founded, is inherently keen to expand and maximize its hegemony, and even to seize the foundations of symbolic and moral legitimacy, its keenness to acquire wealth and material interests. If the king is naturally inclined to isolate himself and seek glory, as Ibn Khaldun says, then how can he be a faithful guardian of religion or any other values?
The importance of realistic political thought, starting with Ibn Khaldun, recognizes that the political field is not a field for embodying moral and spiritual virtues as much as it is a companion of conflict, deviations, and the scramble for benefits for the sake of monopolization and possession, and this is what calls for apprehension of authority, but rather of the state, not blind trust in it.
If politics is inherently “evil,” then this requires seeking to mitigate its evils and deviations, and from here was born the idea of separation of powers, the independence of civil society from political authority, and the idea of balancing institutions and making some of them a watchdog over the other. Here lies the importance of what we called democratic procedural treatment.
There is an urgent need today to emphasize what the writer called the positive neutrality of the state regarding the affairs of religion and society, but it must be noted that this neutrality does not mean the separation of the state from society and its value and spiritual system. It is not the state’s job or right to impose certain cultural, intellectual, or behavioral patterns, whether in the name of secularism or Islam. Rather, it is obligated to respect people’s beliefs, rituals, and religious and spiritual orientations, while protecting civil peace and serving the public good.
Hence, the radical secularists, as well as the radical Islamists, must reduce their exaggeration and reconcile themselves to the absence of the “missionary” and ideological role of the state. However, this does not negate the right of the state in a Muslim society to encourage people to become religious and provide care for Islamic institutions without interfering in their work.
In the same chapter, he discussed what is known as the religious reform project that many parties are demanding, stressing that it is an illusion to imagine a process of reform and renewal that takes place in isolation from politics and its calculations or away from the balances of power operating on the ground.
The Western countries that have become overly enthusiastic since the events of September 11 to reform Islam are not neutral charitable organizations, nor are they much concerned with the state of Islam and Muslims, as much as they are concerned with what could be called dismantling what they see as the explosive effect of Islam, while maximizing their interests and areas of influence in the region under different titles and demands.
In democracy
Many Arab intellectuals and political activists imagine that democracy is capable of treating all the ailments and diseases that the Arab body suffers from, as it is sufficient to adopt some forms of democracy and establish “good” governments. If we take these facts into consideration, it is not expected that the Arab situation will turn upside down once some democratic mechanisms are introduced and good governments are established, which will neither be good nor democratic even if they wanted to be in light of the extremely complex conditions in which they are moving.
Democracy, despite the possibilities it provides for treating the scourge of individual tyranny, cannot perform miracles and miracles, or turn upside down the data of geography and international and regional policies within which they operate, that is, transforming the weak and helpless into the strong and healthy simply by adopting the democratic model.
It is clear here, as Dr. Abdel Salam says, that the democratic narrative imposed itself in the Arab world, and became one of the most dominant narratives among the elites, especially after the collapse of the socialist wave and the fading of its appeal. If we exclude the violent Islamic groups that put rebuilding an imagined caliphate by force of arms at the top of their priorities, the majority of political movements tended to adopt the democratic idea in one way or another.
Accordingly, the problem of the Islamists is not related to the extent of their acceptance of the democratic option, as this has become a known fact, and questioning it is close to political nonsense, but it is due to the predominance of the controversial and theoretical nature of the concept of democracy in their discourse, which diverts their attention from the objective data on the ground, with all its variations and complexities. The Islamists fell from power, or rather were overthrown, not because they were undemocratic, but because they were too democratic in an undemocratic climate, characterized by many conflicts, conspiracies, and foreign interference.
In the Arab country
Perhaps the most dangerous phenomena inherent in the modern history of the Arabs is the phenomenon of massive political division and the emergence of the national state, or the fragmentation state, as the nationalist discourse has termed it, or what Moroccan writers call the modern national state.
This state of fragmentation has transformed the Islamic region, and the Arab region in particular, into fragile, divided entities, not only at the level of geographic barriers and so-called “national borders,” but also at the level of cultural trends, educational policies, the identity of political systems, and the quality of external connections, which has made the weakest Arab countries vulnerable to an endless series of failures and crises, as the book says.
The Arab state appears extremely weak, not only compared to industrial countries with military might and scientific and industrial capabilities, but even compared to neighboring Islamic countries such as Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan, that is, those countries in which it is, to some extent, correct to describe a national or national entity.
The destructive game of political alignment and the attempt to change the facts of history and geography practiced by Arab ruling elites has further complicated the Arab situation. “In the face of the Arab Spring revolutions, some Arab countries built a political axis that went to build a political doctrine according to which Israel was considered a natural ally and an authentic partner,” according to the author’s words.
The writer concludes by saying: “I claim that the Arab modernist failure, that is, the inability of the Arabs to possess the cornerstone of scientific and industrial power, is due, in one of its basic dimensions, to the weakness of their political entities and their inability to secure the minimum elements of advancement and competition in a world full of powers and alliances, because advancement simply needs a strong historical bearer just as it needs a future vision and project.”
The author calls for Islamists to stop opposing the idea of Arabism or Arab unity under the pretext of the universality of Islam or under the pretext of rejecting national loyalty and its ignorance. Arab nationalists must also stop transforming nationalism into a doctrinal theory and ideology. Rather, it is better to return the idea of Arabism to its proper and correct context. Arabism is not a doctrine, ideology, or thought, as Arab nationalists claim. Rather, it is an open political and linguistic bond that Arabs and Muslims need to advance their situation, remedy their weakness and weakness, and respond to the requirements of their era.
The writer also emphasizes the need for an Arab project that interacts with its broad Islamic surroundings, especially with the immediate Islamic neighbourhood, at the forefront of which are the Turks, Iranians and Pakistanis, taking into account the reality of religious, ethnic and cultural diversity in the region. It is recognized that the East region is a reservoir of ethnic, sectarian and religious diversity, and whoever jumps on these facts will only bring ruin and civil wars.
Modernity and modernization
The modern West represented, and continues to represent to this day, a type of blatant challenge and temptation. On the one hand, it is a West that is inspired by its technical and economic efficiency and its political, intellectual and social “liberalism,” but on the other hand, it is a West that is extremely selfish, aggressive, and “hypocritical” in its dealings with the issues of the world and its peoples.
Perhaps the matter seems more bitter and more difficult for the Arab elites and their immediate Islamic neighborhood due to geographical proximity and religious clash, compared to the rest of the other elites that this West raided, beginning with the overwhelming strength of its armies, then with the attractiveness of its socio-cultural model.
On the intellectual level, the radical critical movement played a decisive role in dismantling the global claims of the modern West, by questioning its theoretical supports, and even working to undermine them. The hammer of Nietzschean criticism (relative to Nietzsche) came upon the lever of rationalism, and emptied historical teleology (the ideology of progress) and the philosophy of human subjectivity of its interiors and depths.
We are not exaggerating if we say here that the discourse of the modern West has remained largely haunted by the Nietzschean trend, and the subsequent expansion of the philosophy of anxiety and suspicion and the accompanying massive cracks and violent shakes in its intellectual and moral pillars.
The birth of the modern West and its acquisition of a global character was the day the Western liberal dream of progress and liberation became widespread, and its end or death will be the death of these dreams and illusions that it created and promoted about itself and issued to others in various aspects of the global globe.
When we talk about the end or death of the West here, we do not mean a physical, localized, geographical end whose people and the world have humbled themselves to call it the West. Rather, we mean precisely the end of its universal claims after returning it to its historical relativity and cultural limitation, like the major historical phenomena that are born, live, and then die, while appreciating the value of what possesses universal, cross-cultural validity and carries the possibility of continuity.
The bottom line here, as the author says, is that “we, the people of this era, have been destined, voluntarily or unwillingly, to carry within us many of the aspects and values of this modern West and its personalities. We wear its clothes, use many of its artifacts, and even often speak its languages, read with its tongue, and may taste a little or a lot of its arts and literature. But we are also destined, and the destined of the peoples of the world around us, to liberate their individual and collective awareness and their stores of feeling from The power of illusions.”
