ARAB NATIONALISM

The Rise and Decline of Arab Nationalism

The Rise and Decline of Arab Nationalism

Introduction

Arab nationalism, namely the idea that the `Arab world' is a `single homogeneous whole [stretching] from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf' and that Arabs constitute 'a single nation bound by the common ties of language, religion and history', has dominated the Middle Eastern political discourse for the most part of this century. The notion of the territorial nation-state, of one's loyalty to a sovereign state, has been given but short shrift as a temporary aberration destined to be redressed before long. As Walid Khalidi summed it up some two decades ago:

The Arab states' system is first and foremost a 'Pan' system. It postulates the existence of a single ArabNation behind the facade of a multiplicity of sovereign states. In pan-Arab ideology, this Nation is actual, not potential. The manifest failure even to approximate unity does not negate the empirical reality of the ArabNation. It merely adds normative and prescriptive dimensions to the ideology of pan-Arabism. The Arab Nation both is, and should be, one. From this perspective, the individual Arab states are deviant and transient entities; their frontiers illusory; their rulers' interim caretakers or obstacles to be removed. Champions of pan-Arabism speak in the name of vox populi. Their mandate is from the entire Arab Nation. Before such super-legitimacy, the legitimacy of the individual state shrinks into irrelevance...explicit or transparent raison d'etat is heresy(Sofaer, 2003, pp.10).

Discussion

The rise of Arab nationalism coincided with the profound crisis of the Caliphate, which at that time was the Ottoman sultanate personified, and the omnipresence of nationalism in the West and around the world. Initially in the first decades of 19th century the position of Arab nationalists in the Arab world have been negligible as far as weak, just as he died. Their demands were purely reformist. The best that they claim it's limited autonomy within the borders of the Arab Ottoman Sultanate. They also require greater use of Arabic in education and passing a peace-time military service conscripts in Arabic at the place of recruitment. Some of the radicalization of the Arab nationalists came after the Turkish revolution of 1908. Then the Young Turk movement was deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was launched in the Sultanate Türkicized policies of the new government of Young Turks (Sofaer, 2003, pp.10).

In 1913, Arab nationalists gathered in Paris for the first Arab Congress and formalized their demands to the Ottoman State. However, even then, Arab nationalism did not yet have the mass distribution and support of the people, as throughout the Islamic world were still strong idea of ??compulsory preservation of statehood in the face of the Sultanate. This option is almost all Muslims are the only option of the political organization of the Islamic world and to confront the growing offensive in Western countries. Nationalism is not widespread even in Syria, where in comparison with the rest of the Arab world's position were the ...