PSC 321 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Rashid Rida, Arab Nationalism, Pan-Islamism
18 May 2018
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“Nationalism in the Middle East”
Introduction
● Arab nationalism is very much a 20th century phenomenon associated with a variety of
factors including anti-colonialism, romanticism, state-building, self-determination,
socialism, and religion
● The debate about nationalism in the region and more specifically Arab nationalism is
strongly linked to issues and analysis of political Islam and ethnicity
The Development of Nationalism
● Theories of nationalism, therefore, have emerged with a particularly European hue,
associated as they are with other traditions in western political thought, including the
debate about liberty, democracy, individual sovereignty, and secularization
● In the context of the Middle East in the 20th century the concept of nationalism is
explained in two ways
○ The first bears a strong relationship to the western notion of nation identified
through the nation-state, which by the second decade of the 20th century had
been established in many parts of the region
○ The second concept is more indigenous in origin, drawing on Arab and Muslim
notions of community and belonging through tribe, clan, religious or ethnic
affiliation
● Nationalism and nationalist movements have grown from elite-based secret societies in
the 1920s and 29130s through popular mass movements in the 1950s and 1960s to the
realm of state-based nationalism by the 1990s
● Arabs have both embraced and repulsed the notion of nationalism
○ Arab nationalism will be explained, with its bourgeois and elite roots, its
importance during the First World War and the articulation of nationalism through
independence from the colonial powers in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s
The Birth of Arab Nationalism
● The emergence of nationalist sentiment in the Middle East preceded colonial
government in the region, but did, in part, reflect growing foreign influence from the
1880s onwards in the areas of trade, education, religion, travel and culture
● The Arab intellectuals, debated and attempted to spread their ideas of Arab nation and
nationalism by taking advantage of the modern processes of print and publication
○ Here the revival of the Arabic language played an important part in shaping the
‘imagined community’ that these urban intellectuals hoped to share with the rest
of the Arab world
● The vision and aspirations that these turn-of-the century intellectuals promoted can be
divided into two themes: Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism
○ The strand of Arab nationalism encouraged the emergence of state-centered
patriotic nationalism, that would feature so strongly in the national homogenizing
agenda of the new states established in the Middle East after the end of WWI
○ The pan-Islamist movement dealt with the idea that Islam could rise to the
challenge of unity presented in nationalism and at the same time provide a sense
of identity that transcended national boundaries and protect its adherents was
promoted by these modernists
Jamal ad-din al-Afghani
● The founder of the pan-Islamic trend was an Iranian-born Muslim thinker Jamal ad-din
al-Afghani who called upon fellow Muslims throughout the region, and beyond, to
reassess the role of Islam in their lives, examine the causes of its increasing
marginalization and question the benefits to all Muslims offered by the western secularist
approach
● Al-Aghani and his successor Mohammed Abduh wanted to formulate response within
Islam to the challenges and changes triggered by increasing western hegemony in the
Middle East
○ As the fabric of society strained under secularizing influences, these men
formulated a response that embraced modernization - of Islam - and advocated
the primacy of Muslim belief, asserting that an irrelevant and outdated
interpretation of Islam, promoted by backward and old-fashioned clergy was
actually playing a large part, alongside colonialism, in undermining the unity of
the Muslim community itself
Rashid Rida
● Rida’s contribution to the renaissance of political Islam and linkage or engagement with
the debate about nationalism was to develop a fundamentalist approach to the
modernization of Islam and its political regeneration
○ Rida was a conservative rather than a liberal reformer, rejecting the argument for
liberalization of Islam through westernization of the religion
● For Rida, the answer to modernization lay in strengthening and further forging the ties
within Islam that marry the spiritual and the political together
● He became the first advocate in the Arab world of a modernized Islamic state and its
need to respond through inner renewal to these secularist pressures before it was too
late
● Al-Afghani, Abduh and Rida managed to inspire a new generation of educated Muslims,
many of whom were not from the ulama class, to rethink the role which Islam could play
in their lives and the unifying nationalist role it could maintain
New Identity
● According to the modernists, the future of the entire Muslim nation (umma) lay in the
ability of each member to profess a new Muslim identity based on notions of communal
unity, solidarity and strength
● The pan-Islamist emphasis on unity and reform encouraged many supporters throughout
the region
○ Revolution or jihad (just war) against illegitimate rule, no matter what form it was
manifested in, the modernists argued, must be undertaken
● Throughout the first decades of the 20th century the young Arab nationalists and
pan-Islamists formed groups, societies and literary circles to promote their message
● Throughout the region the intellectual swing to Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism of a
particularly Arab nature away from Ottomanism was perceptible
The Arab Revolt
● A turning point in the movement for Arab nationalism, and, in particular, in the linkage to
a form of territoriality or the nation-state was the first World War.
● The Arab Revolt was organized by Sharif Hussein; and although not a mass movement,
the revolt was the clearest sign that the Arabs and, more specifically, their leaders
wanted both political and territorial independence after the war no matter who won
● The ruthlessness of Ottoman governors helped fire Arab nationalist fervour and turn
them against their Turkish overlords
● Following British assurances that they would recognize and uphold the independence of
the Arabs, Hussein and his sons led a revolt against the Ottoman rulers and raised the
first Arab force for independence
● The secret Sykes-Picot agreement contained an arrangement for the territorial carve-up
of the region after the war between the French, British and imperial Russia
○ The agreement would have remained secret had the Bolsheviks not released the
papers to the Turks following the Russian Revolution in November 1917
● Throughout 1917, Hussein and his sons continued with their plan to unite the Arabs of
Arabia, Transjordan, and Syria under the banner of Arab independence and nationalism
● On October 1, 1917 Damascus fell to the Arabs
● The Balfour Declaration sealed Britain’s role in Palestine and sowed the seeds of double
promise and betrayal for a long time to come
● Arab independence over territory was short-lived
○ New nation-states under the mandated authority of either the British or the
French - puppet kingdoms - were created for the Hashemites in Iraq, Syria and
Transjordan
● Arab autonomy under the mandate system instituted after the war, however, was not
enough to satisfy the growing and increasingly mass-based identity of Arabism which
emerged throughout the region
○ From this point onwards Arab nationalist demands increased and political change
placing more power in Arab hands was inevitable
Arab Nationalism and Revolution
● Nationalism was not ousting religion, but was more or less rapidly taking a place beside
it, frequently fortifying it, beginning to transform and impair it
● As Western interests in the region expanded, the Arabs gained a new sense of unity and
direction, this time against the West rather than the Ottomans
● By the late 1920s and early 1930s public order in Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon had been severely undermined by localized revolts, demonstrations, strikes
and disturbances
● It can be argued that the movement for Arab nationalism was characterized by the
emergence of two strands:
○ Pan-Arabism or unification nationalism
■ Based on grand visions for Arab unity across the region, transcending the
new boundaries of nation-states, which were viewed as a temporary
Document Summary
Arab nationalism is very much a 20th century phenomenon associated with a variety of factors including anti-colonialism, romanticism, state-building, self-determination, socialism, and religion. The debate about nationalism in the region and more specifically arab nationalism is strongly linked to issues and analysis of political islam and ethnicity. Theories of nationalism, therefore, have emerged with a particularly european hue, associated as they are with other traditions in western political thought, including the debate about liberty, democracy, individual sovereignty, and secularization. In the context of the middle east in the 20th century the concept of nationalism is explained in two ways. The first bears a strong relationship to the western notion of nation identified through the nation-state, which by the second decade of the 20th century had been established in many parts of the region. The second concept is more indigenous in origin, drawing on arab and muslim notions of community and belonging through tribe, clan, religious or ethnic affiliation.
