A Phony Narrative: Arab Nationalism

I think it's about time that this subject be discussed at ATS.

What makes a nation a nation? What differentiates, say, Portugal from Spain? Well, for one, the Portuguese speak a different language: Portuguese, while the Spaniards speak Spanish. This difference warrants a national differentiation. Throughout Europe we see this difference from state to state, from the swiss near the Alps to the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedes, Norwegians, Lithuanians and Latvians, Poles and Ukranians: there are actual linguistic and historical differences here warranting national distinction.

But what of the Arab middle east? Nowhere in the world do we come by such false and fraudulent notions of nationality, a veneer which obfuscates real political issues, such as Sunni vs. Shi'ite, Arab vs. Kurd, Arab vs. Jew, Arab vs. berb, etc . Who here can provide some tangible evidence for what differentiates an Iraqi Arab from a Jordanian Arab or a Lebanese Arab or an Egyptian Arab? The fact is, the nations of the middle east are colonialist creations of Britain and France. They drew up completely arbitrary lines based on nothing but colonialist interests: Iraq - you go here, and hey Faisal, Hashemite prince from the Hedjaz, you can be king here. Jordan - you can go here, and hey Faisal's brother, Abdullah, you can be king here. It was literally this arbitrary, this illegitimate. Today, what do Arabs think of these national distinctions? Nothing. They are based on nothing. They aren't real differences. Yet many of our modern day issues are based on these considerations: i.e the Palestinian issue.

Rather, the real differences in the complicated Muslim lands are not linguistic, nor cultural, but religious. Since the Arab conquests, little remains of actual ethnic differences between the Arabs of North Africa and the Arabs of Iraq. Islam succeeded in homogenizing the region; what remains, however, has been squelched from public awareness due to phony Arab pleas for nationalist recognition i.e. the Palestinians.

A former high ranking member of the PLO executive committee, Zuheir Mohsen, was famous for saying:

Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.

A separate Palestinian entity needs to fight for the national interest in the then remaining occupied territories. The Jordanian government cannot speak for Palestinians in Israel, Lebanon or Syria. Jordan is a state with specific borders. It cannot lay claim on - for instance - Haifa or Jaffa, while I AM entitled to Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem en Beersheba. Jordan can only speak for Jordanians and the Palestinians in Jordan. The Palestinian state would be entitled to represent all Palestinians in the Arab world en elsewhere. Once we have accomplished all of our rights in all of Palestine, we shouldn't postpone the unification of Jordan and Palestine for one second.

Link

It's hard to dispute this logic. What ties are there uniting Palestinians? I realize that todays Palestinians are united by a common experience, i.e. their refugee status. But before 1948, what united them? They were simply Arabs who lived in a certain province of the former Ottoman empire. Nothing distinguished them culturally from their neighbors. They spoke the same Arabic, followed the same Sunni Islam. As Mohsen accurately asserted: they were ONE people. United in every imaginable way.

So, to divorce today's current Israel - Palestine conflict is a tad invidious. People mention the disproportionate area assigned to the Jews in the 1947 partition. What's not mentioned - which only bespeaks the efficacy of the propaganda - is that the 1937 Peel commission (which the 1947 partition was based upon) established the Jewish-Arab borders in light of the 1922 creation of the transjordan. As known, the transjordan was a part of the initial British mandate of Palestine. What does this mean? It means the Arabs - One people - were understandably offended with the suggestion in the Belfour Declration that the Jews would receive the entire British Mandate of palestine.



This was an exorbitantly sized area, and indeed, it was. So, the British splintered 80% of the mandate with the creation of the transjordan: a state designed to be home for the Arabs resident to Palestine.

Now, lets take a look at the larger context of this division. The Arabs rightfully received states in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan:



This is the Arab world. And look at Israel: a mere speck on the map. A mere speck for the Jews, 2 million of which were indigenous residents of the Arab world.

Recall that what warrants national differentiation is tangible distinctions, such as language, religion, culture.

So with the separation of Jordan from Palestine, the Jews were to receive 20% of the Palestinian mandate. Ok. But no. That still didn't satisfy the Arabs, who historically speaking, have been accustomed to ruling, not being ruled, not even a minute number of them. With incitement against the Jews and Jewish immigration, the Mufti of Jerusalem and collaborator with the Nazis, Haj Amin Al husseini - an Aristocrat (or effendi) would not allow Jewish state of any size in the Dar ul Islam. It was religion which complicated the Jewish Zionist enterprise in Palestine, not the existence of something called a "Palestinian people". So, with problems adding up, the peel commission reworked the picture. Knowing that the Jews had already been "robbed" 80% of the mandate which the British had intended to give them, they gave them 12%, with 8% going to the remaining Arabs in what was left of the British mandate of Palestine. Now...fast forward today, and defenders of a Palestinian state claim that "the Palestinians were offered an unfair partition". But no. That ignores two extremely important facts: first and foremost, there's no such thing as a Palestinian ethnic identity. Just as there is no such thing as a Jordan, or Syrian, or Lebanese identity. They are as a real as the clothing which I wear on my body are "part of me". They don't reify any real cultural, linguistic or religious differences, because again, these states were colonialist inventions. And secondly, the Arabs who lived in territorial Palestine had been already given 80% of the land. The additional 8% gave them 88%.

Now, to mention other victims of the phony Arab nationalist narrative: The Kurds. No people has been robbed worse than them. Again, there is NO MEANING to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or Palestine. They are mere inventions, tantamount to the differences between Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan etc. In short, they are necessary administrative divisions, but have nothing to do with any substantial ethnic differentiation. But the Kurds? They speak Kurdish. Have a uniquely different culture from the surrounding cultures. Correspondingly Iran is the land of the Persians, and Turkey the land of the Turks. But the Kurds, a people as different as Persians or Turks are, have been subject to Arab, Turkish and Persian authority. To remedy this injustice - a TRUE injustice which receives a pittance of the attention the Palestinians get, parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, lands indigenous to the Kurdish people, would have to be taken to create a kurdish state.

Alas, this will probably not happen, as the world is hypnotized by a phony narrative called Arab nationalisms.

I understand your point, but the Arabs are very diverse and different groups, they also had different EMPIRES and they hardly spoke the same language up until Islam arrived, in fact they are only called Arabs because they share/speak the same language, Arabic. Had the Turks(Turkey) or Persians(Iran) or Afghans(Afghanistan) also inherited Arabic they would be refereed to as Arabs, even though they are NOT Arabs.

Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese are very light skinned compared to the true Arabs which came from Arabia,.

True Arabs are Yemenites from Yemen and Hejaz (Arabia)

UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Southern Saudi and Oman have a mixture of Arabs, Persians, and Indians way before Islam came to be, yet they all became known as Arabs!

Jordanians and Palestinians are a mixture of Arabs, Syrians and Berber

Egyptians and Libyans are a mixture of Arabs and Berber, while Algerians and Moroccans are Berbers

Sudan and Somalia are African, very dark skin, they had their own history, to claim Sudan and Lebanon as the same thing is like saying France and Finland are the same entity regardless of their separate histories

If you compare a Yemenite to a Qatari person, you would notice a huge difference even though they are considered Arabs. And if you compare a Yemenite to a Syrian, you will notice an even bigger difference.

Of course Islam removed these boundaries, there was no black and white, there was no Egyptian and Syrian, there was only muslims. But then the corrupt came out to be and created Arab nationalism, the worst thing to happen to islam since the creation of Israel.

Bravo man, a very very very well done thread.........

You are spot on in your report........

Thing is most of your detractors will either not read what you have written, or try to circumvent the facts......

Many will forego the OP all together and launch directly into attacks which are clearly addressed in the OP.......

Effectively plugging their ears, closing their eyes and yelling "IM NOT LISTENING!"

But I digress....


Good narrative my friend

Ya know if the Isrealis were muslim those arab/Palenstine defenders would not have anything to cry about.

But they are Jewish which makes them evil so yeah there is a phony narrative being slung around on these boards.

Arabs can do no wrong whoops muslims make no mistake it is about jew versus muslim it always has been.

The Jews history in that area of the world goes back far longer than Islam itself. Therefore they deserve a place of their in own that part of the world. It's as simple as that.

To echo what the OP is saying on the matter, I will quote a Saudi textbook:

"Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it," states Saudi textbook Studies from the Muslim World.

The book says that the conflict will not end unless one side vanquishes the other, because "throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims.

www.answering-islam.org...

Although the textbook seems a little one-sided considering all the Islamic conquests over the years...

reply to post by boncho

The book says that the conflict will not end unless one side vanquishes the other, because "throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims.

Yeah that is one sided considering one side has all but whiped out the other:

14 million jews in the world

1+ billion muslims in the world.

Nationalism is a poison that corrodes the mind itself.

The British and European Colonists couldnt attack Islam directly like Europe has done in the past, after all they are the civilised world or at least thats what they call themselves, so they invented Arab nationalism, now its no longer a religious war but a political war, or at least it would seem that way.

Today its dubbed war on terror, yet since 9/11 terrorism has quadrupled, terrorists are supported and funded in Syria while Israel has never suffered from Al qaeda, the quys who somehow hijacked and flew planes into the twin towers all the way on the other side of the world, cant seem to penetrate through Israel which is right next door to them.

reply to post by RizeorDie


Really now?

The war on terror has been arabs killing arabs to get rid of the infidels.

Like Assad, Mubark,Saddam etc.

Guess what side has the most blood on their hands?

Guess the arabs themselves is the correct one.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by RizeorDie

 

Really now?

The war on terror has been arabs killing arabs to get rid of the infidels.

Like Assad, Mubark,Saddam etc.

Guess what side has the most blood on their hands?

Guess the arabs themselves is the correct one.

[SNIP]

The War on Terror (also known as the Global War on Terror and War on Terrorism) is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign begun in 2001 by the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from other countries. The campaign's official purpose was to eliminate al-Qaeda and other militant organizations

War on Terror for map and operations

if the USA wanted to invade Morocco next week, then tomorrow we will hear about Al qaeda entering Morocco and killing innocent people.

Where ever the US wants to attack, they send Al qaeda first

Al qaeda never hits saudi Arabia or Turkey or Israel, they only destabilise zionist enemies. what a coincidence!

I just wanted to share something I found on the Arabs colonizing and replacing the Berbers, especially in the 11th century.
I'm not sure if this is correct or not.

This is why I ask the question, and how I came upon the information:

One of my favorite series of books when I was a child was the "Surviving Peoples" series of books, and in that discontinued series I've collected three so far on the Plains Indians, the Aborigines and the Bedouin (I'm still missing the books on the Zulus, the Eskimos and the Amazon Indians).

Anyway, I was reading the book on the Bedouin (1980) and how the lifestyle actually goes back to the Old Testament, and that "Badawi" simply meant "wanderer".

On page 6 they explain Islam (which the book says means "peace", rather than the "submission" of today).
This was clearly written before the culture clash of today, and Islam was still something interesting and exotic.

The book then explains that after the death of Mohammed in AD 632, his followers carried the language and faith from China to Spain and southern France.

However, then it adds rather vaguely:

At this time they occupied only the coastal areas of North Africa, leaving the deserts to the Berbers. In the 11th century another invasion of Bedouin drove the Berbers west to modern Libya, occupying the land themselves.

(Source: Bedouin by Stella Peters. Macdonald Educational, 1980: p.6.)

I've tried to read up on the Berbers since then, but hardly get any clear results, or any acknowledgement that they were the aboriginal populations whose land was taken by the Arabs in North Africa.

Once texts argued that the Berbers were closely related to southern Europe, and groups like the Guanches (the natives of the Canary Islands), and famous people like St. Augustine were Berbers.

Now it seems the term sometimes includes various racial groups, such as the Tuareg and other minorities.

Anyway, I'm just wondering what the historical and present relevance of the Berbers is in the current Mid-East debate?

According to Wikipedia:

In historical times, the Berbers expanded south into the Sahara (displacing earlier populations such as the Azer and Bafour), and have in turn been mainly culturally assimilated in much of North Africa by Arabs, particularly following the incursion of the Banu Hilal in the 11th century.

en.wikipedia.org...

The Banu Hilal were apparently a confederation of Arab tribes who were sent to punish the Berbers for abandoning Shiism.
They moved from upper Egypt into the lands of the Berbers in the 11th century.
They destroyed the agriculture that existed and replaced it with nomadism, and the lands invaded by the Banu Hilal were described as completely ravaged and reduced to arid desert.
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by dontreally


Dude,

You are on fire. But that seems an awfully long way to go just to really say, "They're a bunch of Bedouins!".

The fact is, the nations of the middle east are colonialist creations of Britain and France. They drew up completely arbitrary lines based on nothing but colonialist interests: Iraq - you go here, and hey Faisal, Hashemite prince from the Hedjaz, you can be king here. Jordan - you can go here, and hey Faisal's brother, Abdullah, you can be king here. It was literally this arbitrary, this illegitimate.

So great, you've illustrated where the British and French touched the Arabs in a bad place. And now what, dontreally? Should they just shut up and get in line? Are you sick of them resisting or sick of them using Nationalism as a battle tactic?

Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.

en.wikipedia.org...

Yes, that's right, they know exactly what they are doing, what would you do under the same circumstances.

Manufacturing consent and engineering context are standard methods of what people are realizing is a 5th gradient of warfare that goes beyond the 4th gradient described by Lind.

Just because the methods and tactics of these people are mysterious to you does not mean that we are all besotten by the fog of war.

Nice diatribe though.

Originally posted by RizeorDie

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by RizeorDie

 

Really now?

The war on terror has been arabs killing arabs to get rid of the infidels.

Like Assad, Mubark,Saddam etc.

Guess what side has the most blood on their hands?

Guess the arabs themselves is the correct one.

[SNIP]

The War on Terror (also known as the Global War on Terror and War on Terrorism) is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign begun in 2001 by the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from other countries. The campaign's official purpose was to eliminate al-Qaeda and other militant organizations

War on Terror for map and operations

if the USA wanted to invade Morocco next week, then tomorrow we will hear about Al qaeda entering Morocco and killing innocent people.

Where ever the US wants to attack, they send Al qaeda first

Al qaeda never hits saudi Arabia or Turkey or Israel, they only destabilise zionist enemies. what a coincidence!

edit on 7/12/2012 by RizeorDie because: (no reason given)

edit on 12/7/2012 by tothetenthpower because: Civility Required

Yeah uh you do know Al Qaeda has hit Saudi Arabia several times, the have also hit Turkey, Indonesia, the US, the UK, Pakistan, twice in Jordan (1 got caught first), Kenya, Yemen and Tanzania. So nothing you have said makes any sense.

reply to post by dontreally

What makes a nation a nation? What differentiates, say, Portugal from Spain? Well, for one, the Portuguese speak a different language: Portuguese, while the Spaniards speak Spanish. This difference warrants a national differentiation. Throughout Europe we see this difference from state to state, from the swiss near the Alps to the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedes, Norwegians, Lithuanians and Latvians, Poles and Ukranians: there are actual linguistic and historical differences here warranting national distinction.

Different languages, different tribes, different customs, different way of life, different laws etc. All these factor into making a nation. Nations are not lines on a map, they are groups of people, usually of the same tribe with the same beliefs, same customs, same language and same way of life.

It's hard to dispute this logic. What ties are there uniting Palestinians? I realize that todays Palestinians are united by a common experience, i.e. their refugee status. But before 1948, what united them? They were simply Arabs who lived in a certain province of the former Ottoman empire. Nothing distinguished them culturally from their neighbors. They spoke the same Arabic, followed the same Sunni Islam. As Mohsen accurately asserted: they were ONE people. United in every imaginable way.

I don't have any arguements against this at all. For all intents and purposes an arab is an arab. Now pre-islamic arabs had different tribes, customs, beliefs etc. because they each served a different god. Before Muhammad there was nothing united about the arabs at all, and they warred amoung eachother for territory and resources. That all changed with the invention of Islam, different arab populations were united under the same banner...under the banner of Allah with Muhmmad carrying the flag and an empire was forged.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by RizeorDie

 

Really now?

The war on terror has been arabs killing arabs to get rid of the infidels.

Like Assad, Mubark,Saddam etc.

Guess what side has the most blood on their hands?

Guess the arabs themselves is the correct one.

Bingo, they wanted Mubarak, Ghadaffi and Assad out of power, not because they were dictators but because they were refusing to Jihad and under Sharia (Islamic Law) a leader who refuses to Jihad must be removed from power. The goal of islam is to retake Jerusalem from the jews and exterminate them to bring the day of resurrection. Ghadaffi had stabilized the region he was in control of, as did Mubarak and Assad. The Arab Spring (funded by Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton with U.S. taxpayer dollars) was about putting the Muslim Brotherhood into power to recreate the fallen Caliphate they were created for in 1925. The 8th head of the Beast spoken of in Revelation 17:9-11 (for those who believe the biblical prophecies). As you can see every nation flipped in the Arab Spring landed in MB hands.

Now the lines for the soon to be revived Caliphate are beginning to be redrawn, from the Indian border of Pakistan to the west coast of Africa in Morocco and Israel sits right smack in the middle. Take a guess where that Caliphate's eyes will turn: Jerusalem.

Great Thread!

The leading feature in the renewed nationalist propaganda is the repeated emphasis on the term 'Arab' as opposed to that of ' Islamic'. The indubitable aim of this calculated shift is to substitute the former for the latter term as an inclusive and prime category for analysing and describing political and social facts. The limited 'Arab horizon' is designed to replace, and take precedence over, the Islamic horizon in the thinking and feelings of those toward whom the nationalist propaganda is directed.

A Criticism of the Idea of Arab Nationalism

reply to post by dontreally


The Swiss have four "official" languages that are spoken within their borders. I won't even go into Latin America and the billion other examples of cultural, linguistic and religious divisions on the planet that go against your stance here.

If you feel that the financial and military backing this country has given and continues to give to Israel is not enough, then maybe you should head over and stand side to side with them? Remember, Americans are easily swayed, looks like he's right.

Israel almost has them surrounded.



S & F
Very interesting perspective and great read.

Nothing new here, really. Wikipedia has lots on this topic. Good to bring it to people's attention though. They like to form (usually pro-Palestinian) positions without educating themselves on the topic.

A couple of extracts from the Palestinian Wiki page.

Genetic analysis suggests that a majority of the Muslims of Palestine, inclusive of Arab citizens of Israel, are descendants of Christians, Jews and other earlier inhabitants of the southern Levant whose core reaches back to prehistoric times. A study of high-resolution haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool. Since the time of the Muslim conquests in the 7th century, religious conversions have resulted in Palestinians being predominantly Sunni Muslim by religious affiliation

The people of Palestine are not victims of Israel - they are the victims of Jihad. Their collective ancestors had their religious and cultural identity violently stripped from them by the might of the Caliphates. They have lost their original identity, they have forgotten how their ancestors were culturally cleansed under the threat of scimitars at their necks while their women were raped, their priests slaughtered and their temples razed to the ground. Generations later, they have internalized a new identity, the one the invaders programmed them with, they themselves have become Jihadi zombies. Is it so bad that the citizens of Israel don't want to end up the same way?

The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Palestinian is a modern term. Palestinian Muslims make up around 97% of the population of the Palestinian territories. In religious and cultural terms, they are Arab Muslims. Palestinian identity for these people is a tactic in the fight against a Jewish state. They have long abandoned their true roots which, many generations ago, were Christian or Jewish. Minority communities in Palestine are deserving of protection. The other 97%, the Muslims, should be seen as an extension of the bordering Arab countries. No different than the Israeli frontier settlements. There is no need for another Arab state, nor are they ultimately interested in such a deal. Palestinians are a political tool intended to conquer Israel and make Jersualem the seat of the new Caliphate.

The Middle-East has no 'nations'. It's just a collection tribes brainwashed with superstition who are all fighting to be the first to get buried under the desert crap-hole they think they're fighting for.

If the ME were erased from the world map today, it would scarcely be missed.