Self-definition in Changing Worlds 

Mosab Alnomire

Syrian journalist and poet based in Toronto, Canada. He published a book and wrote many articles in Arab newspapers and websites. He is currently studying political science and NMC at the University of Toronto.

This article is part of the “The Arab Renaissance in Contemporary Eyes” project, which is the fruit of cooperation between Henna Platform and The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. In this project, Henna team provides editorial assistance to the graduate and undergraduate students to publish their final papers on Henna’s website. You read in this series of articles: Intellectuals of the Modern Arab World by Jens Hanssen,Taha Hussein and the Dialectic of Arab Enlightenment by Quinn Teague-Colfer, The Arab Nahda from Feminist Perspective by Sara Molaie, Cultural Healing After Tragedy by Timothy Boudoumit, and The Importance of Being Wrong by Shauna McLean.

Read the Arabic article here

 Looking at the Arab world these days, one cannot help but feel melancholic. The recent decade witnessed one of the most profound movements for change in modern Arab history. Unfortunately, this attempt crashed in many countries for countless reasons and because of numerous powers. Most of the attempts to make progress in the Arab world before the Arab Spring, indeed during the last two centuries, were concerned with the questions of authenticity and modernity and witnessed various roles played by intellectuals trying to theorize, influence, and pave the road for a better tomorrow. In colonial and postcolonial states of affairs, how were topics of identity and authenticity comprehended? How did Arab intellectuals understand and interact with their realities? With the changing circumstances and situations, what kind of modification has occurred in understanding and approaching notions like modernity, heritage, and language? And how did the Arab Spring differ from other attempts to “rise up”? 

Examining the Arab Nahda (renaissance, rising up) through these lenses can give us some useful insights to reflect on and contextualize the issue of authenticity and intellectual interactions with it. Putting these questions in mind, I rely on David Scott’s understanding of the “problem-space,” in which, as Scott puts it, “a question that has emerged as a question demanding an answer may have altered, thereby altering the critical (if not necessarily the logical) status of that question…”. (ٍScott 1999, 8) 

I focus on three Nahda figures: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Butrus al-Bustani, and Taha Hussein. These influential figures were carefully trying, with an urgent sense of agency and entitlement to lead, to find a balance between authenticity and modernity as a way out of “the crisis”. I suggest the carefulness in assessing and criticizing heritage gradually changed among the later Arab intellectuals. This transformation took place due to the “problem-space” that has changed from being mainly interactive with colonization to being more critical of authoritarianism. I argue that authenticity (cultural heritage, political ideology,  national identity) was used as a tool for oppression by the authoritarian regimes (e.g Ba’ath party in Syria and Iraq) following both Nakba and June’s defeat (Naksa), and I conclude that the Arab Spring brought about a change in the concept of authenticity and in the role of intellectuals and their relationship with society. These observations might help comprehend the changing “problem-space” in contemporary Arab history, defined, following David Scott, as “an ensemble of questions and answers around which a horizon of identifiable stakes (conceptual as well as ideological-political stakes) hangs.”

Walking on the edge 

Many intellectuals of the Nahda were motivated to act and think to close the cultural gap between their countries and other (Western) countries. In his book Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad focuses on the tensions between Western views of the Arab world and Arab self-alienation under conditions of Western domination. “Most Arab writers since the middle of the nineteenth century,” Massad says, “were overcome with a sense of crisis concerning the Arab present, its ‘culture,’ its ‘language,’ its political and economic order, its ‘traditions,’ its views of its own ‘heritage,’ even ‘Islam’ itself, in short, a malady that afflicted the whole of Arab Islamic civilization” (Massad 2006, 8). During that time, two realities shaped Nahdawi thought. The first was witnessing the world (the colonizing one, in particular) “moving forward” and acquiring the means. The second was being a part of the colonized world, which was characterized by feeling “left behind” and suffering from regression and backwardness. 

The perplexed position of early Nahdawis between authenticity and modernity is best described by Abdul R. JanMohamed, who wrote a lengthy on postcolonialism and the black struggle: “On the one hand, there is a desire to define one’s ethnic and cultural uniqueness against the pressures of the majority culture and on the other hand an equally strong, if not stronger, urge to abandon that uniqueness in order to conform to the hegemonic pressures of the [white] liberal humanistic culture” (JanMohamed 1984, 289). 

Stuck between these two desires, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (one of the earliest Nahda thinkers and Islamic modernists) had a critical view of Islamic heritage and its hostility to science but believed that Islam should have a chance and evolve like western civilization. In his famous debate with Ernest Renan, who accused Islam in his 1883 lecture of being inimical to philosophy and science( Renan 2000, 201), al-Afghani (1839 –1897) agreed with Renan that “Muslim religion has tried to stifle science and stop its progress”, adding that Islam “has thus succeeded in halting the philosophical or intellectual movement and in turning minds from the search for scientific truth.” However, al-Afghani’s criticism of heritage was balanced by noticing that not only Islam was an obstacle to free thinking. “A similar attempt,” he argued, “was made by the Christian religion,” adding that “Muslim society will succeed someday in breaking its bonds and marching resolutely in the path of civilization after the manner of Western society, for which the Christian faith, despite its rigors and intolerance, was not at all an invincible obstacle” (al-Afghani, 183). Al-Afghani’s reformative approach didn’t consider the dispute between modernity and heritage to be an essential one, suggesting that time is needed for their reconciliation.  

Like a father blaming his children, al-Bustant felt the urgency to educate the people about the danger of sectarianism following the civil war of 1860 in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. In The Clarion of Syria, he stressed the importance of national unity and patriotism and referred to the “material and moral losses” resulting from violence and unrest. Al-Bustani took a thorny path containing many contradictions, such as calling for secularism and “true religiosity” at the same time while adopting a patriotic approach. This was sometimes mixed with a kind of nationalist pride, all the while conceding legitimacy to “foreigners’ opinion” about what was happening. On the one hand, al-Bustani glorified Syrians: “No wise man can deny that the people of Syria possess the highest quality of mind, natural alertness, and the preparedness for moral and industrial progress toward the highest degrees of civilization. Let those with nefarious intentions and those who are prejudiced against the Syrians say what they may”. On the other hand, he admitted to a sense of shame when criticized by foreigners: “One of the moral losses that the homeland has suffered is a loss of what we call integrity or self-respect. Many a time, we saw some patriot lowering his gaze—especially these days when foreigners mention this topic—not out of cowardice or fear, but out of embarrassment and shame” (al-Bustani 2019).  Al-Bustani’s contradictory positions between authenticity and modernity are noted by Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine in the English translation of the book. Some passages, they note, “grapple with the task of refuting Orientalist stereotypes about Arabs while at the same time embracing some of its underlying assumptions. Still, others extol the value of Western civilization and its racialized hierarchy of nations but warn against superficial emulation”.

Taha Hussein hypothesized in his book The Future of Culture in Egypt that Egypt is, and has been historically closer to Europe than it is to the East: “we Egyptians must not assume the existence of intellectual differences, weak or strong, between the Europeans and ourselves…our country has always been a part of Europe as far as intellectual and cultural life, in all its forms and branches”. Despite the tendency to westernize the Egyptian identity, Hussein claimed that his approach tries to reach anticolonial ends: “I do not want us to feel inferior to the Europeans because of our cultural shortcomings. This would cause us to despise ourselves and admit that they are not treating us unjustly when they are being arrogant” (Hussein 1954).   

Responding to a new trigger

Despite their desire to implement different “modern” projects —pan-Islamic by al-Afghani, anti-sectarian by al-Bustani, and democratic institution-building by Hussein— these three intellectuals were trying to maintain an authentic voice as a reactive strategy to a colonial trigger. However, after the Nakba and the 1967 defeat, authoritarian military regimes used authenticity and heritage as a weapon to crush the cultural and political movements. Increasingly, ideas critical of heritage gained momentum in the Arab intellectual scene, reflecting a new “problem-space.” Sadek Jalal al-Azm’s Self-Criticism After the Defeat (1968) represented a milestone in Arab thoughts through the harsh criticism of Arabic rhetoric and conspiratorial thoughts. The book was followed by many writings engaging with, assessing, or criticizing turath discourse in the wake of 1967: Abdallah Laroui’s The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism?, Husayn Muruwwah’s Materialist Tendencies in Arab-Islamic Philosophy, Tayyib Tizini, From Heritage to Revolution, Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri’s We and Heritage: Contemporary Readings in Our Philosophical Heritage,  Mahdi Amil’s The Crisis of Arab Civilization; or, The Crisis of the Arab Bourgeoisies, and Jurj Tarabishi’s Arab Intellectuals and Heritage: A Psychoanalysis of Collective Neurosis.

Writing in the wake of 9/11, Elias Khoury argues in his article For a Third Nahda that the first Nahda (between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s) was against imperialism – both Ottoman and European – and later revolved around “unity and independence.” But it “was born incomplete … possibly because it embodied a new consciousness, and was unable to marshal social forces adequate to it”. The second Nahda began with “consciousness of the Nakba” and the loss of Palestine, but it “failed” because of the “absence of democracy, … inability to build Arab unity… and military inadequacy”. Khoury argues that a third Nahda would need three principal foundations: the first is the democracy, the second is abandoning the “ancient language,” which “was a tool used by dictatorial governments in order to repress the people,” and the third is the “fall of militocracy” (Khouri 2001). His suggestions for the necessity of a third Nahda represented a shift in shaping Arab thought to be more concerned about the local socio-political circumstances, compared with the earlier thoughts that were circulating in a colonial context.

Khouri’s “three foundations” would find their way to the Arab Spring slogans when millions flooded the streets across Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, demonstrating against their regimes. By changing the dynamics of power and introducing the street as a key actor in decision-making, the Arab Spring led to a change on two levels: the first was in the critique of state appropriations of authenticity. The voice of authenticity during the Arab Spring transformed from being mobilized in an anti-colonial struggle to defending national identity against a foreign “other” into a concept emphasizing patriotism against illegitimate regimes. Flagrant state corruption and oppression belied their language of authenticity and exposed their enmity to the very people they claimed to speak for. “A Traitor who kills his own people” was one of the main slogans of the Syrian revolution. More so than other Arab revolutions, the Syrian one, with its complicated set of questions, generated heated debate about the nature of Arab authenticity. This very public, global debate pitted the traditional anticolonial “axis” against the new antiauthoritarian forces that arose in the streets and squares of the Arab Spring.    

 The second change was in the role of intellectuals and their relationship with the people. Contrary to the earlier intellectuals, who used to have some agency to lead and direct, after 2011, Arab intellectuals found themselves trying to catch up with ever-accelerating events instead of being vanguard forces shaping them. The Syrian novelist Rosa Yassin Hassan captures well how intellectuals were “as blindsided as everyone else by the [Syrian] revolution. It has been surprising and sudden, especially after decades in which the people seemed submissive and resigned”, adding that “the revolution that the cultural and political elite played no role in setting off – even if we cannot ignore the fact that they had some gradual, invisible effect – seems like one that has no connection to them whatsoever” (Yassin Hassan in Hanssen & Weiss 2018). 

Going back to contemporary Arab history, after intense years in which city squares served as laboratories for experimenting with the ideas and the struggle of political wills and social forces, may help us have a broader understanding of the attempts at change, self-definition, and actualization in changing historical contexts. A historical reading of the work of these intellectuals allows us to view, with today’s eyes, their attempts and the limits of their abilities to understand their past and employ it in building their future, and thus explore the limits of our capabilities of doing in a given historical moment. We return to them because they sincerely tried yesterday to create better days for our generations and because today we are trying to find better days for generations other than us, and because we (us and them) strived and are still striving despite the ghosts of defeat that lurk at every crossroads.

Bibliography 

 “Answer of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to Renan,” in Goichon, Réfutation des matérialistes, 177– 78; Keddie, Islamic Response to Imperialism, 183.

 Elias Khoury, “For a Third Nahda,” al-Tariq (2001), tr. in Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age, ch. 15.

Abdul R. JanMohamed, “Humanism and Minority Literature: Toward a Definition of Counter- Hegemonic Discourse,” Boundary 2 12–13 (1984): 289.

Butrus al-Bustani, The Clarion of Syria: a Patriot’s Call against the Civil War of 1860, introduced & tr. by J. Hanssen & H. Safieddine (Berkeley, 2019), 106. 

Ernest Renan, “Islamism and Science,” reproduced in Orientalism: Early Sources, vol. 1, Readings in Orientalism, ed. Bryan S. Turner (London: Routledge, 2000), 210.

Massad, Joseph Andoni. Desiring Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Rosa Yassin Hassan, and Max Weiss. “Where Are the Intellectuals in the Syrian Revolution?” Chapter. In Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present, edited by Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, 370–73. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Scott, David. “Criticism after Postcoloniality.” Refashioning Futures (Princeton, 1999). 

Taha Hussein. The Future of Culture in Egypt. Translated by Sidney Glozer (American Council of Learned Societies, 1954), 9. [Original source: https://studycrumb.com/alphabetizer]