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The Arab Dilemma: Who Am I?

China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations

January 1, 2021

阿拉伯人的困惑：我是谁?

中国现代国际关系研究院

The Arab Dilemma: Who Am I?阿拉伯人的困惑：我是谁?

Note: this document was translated using machine learning technology. Learn more.

Originally Written By
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations中国现代国际关系研究院
Publisher
Current Affairs Press时事出版社

Chapter Five

The Arab Predicament: Who Am I?

阿拉伯人的困惑：我是谁?

Arabs are distributed across 37 countries worldwide. Of these, 22 are states where Arabs constitute the majority population and are known as Arab states: in North Africa, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Djibouti, Sudan, Mauritania, the Comoros, and Somalia; in West Asia, Iraq, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The Arab states are concentrated in the West Asia–North Africa region, situated at the junction of three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—with a population of 370 million and an area of 13 million square kilometers. Like every other country in the world, each Arab state has its own national culture. What sets the Arab states apart is that they also share a particularly pronounced set of cultural commonalities, known collectively as Arab culture. Speaking Arabic and professing Islam are the most distinctive cultural hallmarks of the Arab people.

Who I Am Depends on Who My Adversary Is

The Arab region is exceptionally prone to turbulence, and Arab states are famously difficult to govern. In the early hours of July 23, 1952, Egypt’s “Free Officers” launched a coup, seized the capital Cairo, and overthrew the Farouk monarchy. Anwar Sadat led troops into the state broadcasting station and announced, in the name of Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Muhammad Naguib, that Egypt’s military coup had succeeded. The newly formed Military Council decided that King Farouk would be permitted to go into exile abroad. On July 26, to a 21-gun salute, Commander-in-Chief Naguib bid farewell to King Farouk as he boarded the royal yacht Mahroussa at the port of Alexandria. “I saluted him, and he returned the salute,” Naguib recalled. Farouk’s parting words were calm: “Your task will be very difficult. You know, governing Egypt is not an easy thing.”

A similar episode followed. On February 1, 1958, Syria merged with Egypt to form the “United Arab Republic,” with Syria ceding sovereign power over its state to Egypt. After the signing ceremony, Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli said to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser: “I suddenly feel relieved. You will find that Syria is a country that is very difficult to govern. Fifty percent of Syrians consider themselves leaders, twenty-five percent consider themselves prophets, and at least ten percent consider themselves Allah.” According to the story,

Nasser replied: Why didn’t you tell me sooner?

And so it proved. Naguib was appointed Egypt’s first president on June 18, 1953, only to be removed from office on November 15, 1954, after which he was held under house arrest for nearly twenty years. Nasser assumed the presidency of the United Arab Republic on February 21, 1958, yet by September 28, 1961, the Syrian military had already launched a coup, dissolving the United Arab Republic. Nasser was both the first and the last president of the United Arab Republic.

The reasons why Arab societies are so difficult to govern are complex. Among the most fundamental is the absence of a national culture with strong cohesive force, the lack of a robust sense of national identity, and the fragmentation of individual identity. The Arab region is one of the birthplaces of ancient human civilization, having nurtured the brilliant civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and produced the glorious Islamic civilization. In the modern era, as elsewhere in the world, it was swept along—hurriedly and haphazardly—into the age of sovereign states under the tide of Western civilization. Yet apart from a small minority of urban residents, most Arabs made the leap directly from tribal society into the modern world. This abrupt social transformation produced a rupture in culture and a fracturing of identity.

In Arab states, tribal culture and Islam stand in sharp contrast to modern national culture. The three have long coexisted, clashed, and blended, each constantly influencing and reshaping the others. The most conspicuous feature of Arab culture—and the most prominent cultural factor affecting national security—is this mixture of plural cultures existing side by side, without any single, dominant national culture having taken shape.

The Arab world occupies an arid, scorching region, most of it vast desert and semi-desert, dotted here and there with river valleys and humid highland areas. In the river valleys and oases, people live primarily by farming; the population is dense, villages are scattered across the landscape, and major cities are typically located here as well. In the highlands and semi-desert zones, the population is sparse, and for thousands of years successive generations of nomadic tribes have roamed these lands. They lived in tents made of black goat-hair felt, used camels as their means of transport, and followed water and pasture wherever they led. As a sideline, nomadic tribes frequently raided agricultural villages, towns, and caravans. Nomadic tribes wandered far and wide, were fierce and martial, had no fixed abode, and owned no permanent property, making them very difficult to administer centrally. The tribe is the basic unit of traditional Arab society, and tribal culture is the bedrock of Arab culture.

In Arab tribal culture, all people are born equal; every individual is independent and free, and honor, status, and power must be earned through one’s own efforts. Seen from this angle, tribal culture prizes equality and freedom, placing it very close to Western culture. Yet on the question of the relationship between the individual and the collective, tribal culture stands in sharp contrast to Western culture. Tribal culture emphasizes the importance of the collective, holding that the collective matters more than the individual, that tradition matters more than the present, and that stability matters more than innovation. Western culture holds that the progress, success, and creativity of individuals collectively add up to the progress of the group and society, and that the collective realizes its value through individuals. Tribal culture, by contrast, holds that individuals participate in the collective, which directly possesses progress, success, and creativity, and that individuals realize their own value through the collective.

Here tribal culture diverges from Western culture. It holds that people are born equal, yet also that people are born with distinctions of insider and outsider, near and far, close and distant. An Arab proverb says: I am against my brother; my brother and I together are against our cousin; my brother, my cousin, and I together are against the whole world. “Join with your own people against outsiders” is the fundamental principle of tribal life. There is a vast gulf between universal freedom and equality on the one hand, and the priority of the collective and of one’s own people on the other. The values of loyalty, duty, and honor that tribal culture emphasizes serve as the bridge across that gulf. Another Arab proverb says, “To be ruled by another is to be castrated,” revealing how deeply Arabs prize personal independence. At the same time, voluntarily and actively submitting to the collective and to authority brings honor—showing that Arabs are also willing to defer to the collective.

Under the centralized autocracies of East Asia and the feudal systems of Europe, social life was ordered but also strictly hierarchical, with clear distinctions of rank and status between people. In terms of social structure, the agricultural zones of the Middle East resembled East Asian societies, sharing the characteristics of centralized power, hierarchical order, and relative peace and stability. The tribal societies of the Middle East were different, characterized by self-governance, equality, and turbulence.

Within a tribe, members were relatively equal; important resources such as pastureland and water sources were held in common and available to all; governance was comparatively democratic; and members shared in each other’s honor and shame and supported one another. Between tribes, relations were independent and equal, but society lacked stability and order. Tribes formed shifting alliances and coalitions, perpetually competing over water and grazing land, and were frequently in rivalry, confrontation, and even open conflict. The relationship between tribes and the central government was loose—one of control and resistance to control. Some tribes allied with the central government and relied on it for protection; others were entirely independent of it; most fell somewhere in between. In ancient Arab society, the tribe was the primary identity of the Arab people.

In the seventh century CE, Islam was born on the Arabian Peninsula—one of the most momentous events in Arab history to this day. Islam inherited and transformed Arab tribal culture, uniting the fragmented tribes under the banner of Islam, organizing formidable Islamic armies, and infusing religious righteousness into the traditional martial spirit of the tribes, ultimately building a vast Islamic empire. Islam was built upon the foundation of tribal culture; in a certain sense, Islam became the largest Arab tribe—the outermost and largest circle in the tribal cultural framework. Under Islam’s guidance, Arab society entered the most glorious period in its history: its civilization led the world, and its territory expanded across three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa. Arabs call this period the “Golden Age,” and ever since, Arabs have either sought to “return” to the Golden Age or aspired to “revive” it. Islam theologically reinforced the tribal qualities of “loyalty” and “honor” and injected the value of submission into tribal culture. The very word “Islam” means “submission”—submission to Allah, submission to authority, submission to the king. From that point on, Islam became the most brilliant dominant hue of Arab culture, and being Muslim became the most important identity of the Arab people.

Chapter Five

The Arab Predicament: Who Am I?

The Arab “Golden Age” never returned, and what the Arabs encountered instead was the forceful intrusion of Western civilization. For a considerable stretch of history, Arab identity was relatively stable and clear. As a culture, the Arab world’s greatest commonalities were a shared language and a shared religion, which also served as the bonds connecting the Arab world. Linguistically, only a small number of groups—such as the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria and the Kurds of Iraq—spoke their own ethnic languages; all other Arabs spoke Arabic, making linguistic homogeneity very high. “Anyone whose mother tongue is Arabic is an Arab”—speaking Arabic became the primary marker of Arab identity. Religiously, only Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine had populations of around ten percent who professed Christianity; all other Arabs professed Islam, making religious homogeneity equally high.

Since the nineteenth century, faced with Western political, economic, military, and cultural pressure, Arab culture has confronted an unprecedented existential crisis and identity crisis, urgently needing to keep pace with the times and be reborn from the ashes. At that time, the Arab people lived under Ottoman rule. For centuries, because of similarities in language, religion, culture, and history, and because of geographic proximity, Arabs had generally felt a sense of cultural and psychological closeness to one another, yet lacked any consciousness of cultural independence. It was the Ottoman Turks who first awakened culturally; the Turks’ consciousness of cultural independence in turn stirred the Arabs. In the early twentieth century, the “Young Turks” movement arose within the Ottoman Empire, pursuing Turkic cultural independence, and this gave the Arabs a sense of identity crisis. Arab identity belonged neither to Turkic culture nor to Western culture, and the question “Who am I?” became acute. Arabs began searching for their own identity and yearning to pursue a common future, which gave them a collective sense of mission—a demand to become a nation-state. The British exploited this sense of mission. During the First World War, Britain used Arab nationalism to launch the “Arab Revolt” against Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Yet after the war, Britain did not grant the Arabs statehood; instead, it reached the Sykes–Picot Agreement with France, dividing the Arab world into a number of small states. During the Second World War, Britain again exploited Arab nationalism against Germany, supporting the Arab states in founding the Arab League in 1945.

Arab identity was gradually forged through the struggle against the Ottoman Empire, against British and French colonizers, and against Israel. Freeing themselves from the influence of Western colonialism, establishing a state encompassing all Arabs, and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Arab world became the shared aspiration of Arab peoples across all countries. This cultural current was Arabism. To this day, although the call to establish a unified Arab state has faded into the tunnel of history, opposition to Western imperialism, the liberation of Palestine, and the achievement of Arab solidarity remain the principal content of Arabism, adding a new layer of color to the palette of Arab culture.

In the early 1970s, nearly all Arab states had achieved independence and entered the modern sovereign state system. Every Arab was a citizen of a state, with a national and state identity. Every state needed to actively construct its own national culture in order to strengthen national cohesion and consolidate state sovereignty. National culture is the mainstream culture recognized by all citizens of a sovereign state; it is the most powerful identity and the most stable emotional anchor for modern citizens. In modern society, a person’s primary identity should be that of a citizen—one should first identify with the state, and only then with a tribe, with Islam, or with the Arab world. Built upon the foundations of tribal culture, Islam, and Arabism, national culture gained the support of the currents of modernization and the sovereign state system,

The Arab Predicament: Who Am I?

becoming the most powerful new cultural current and the most dazzling new layer of color in Arab culture.

And so, on the question of identity, Arabs fell into a period of confusion, contradiction, and struggle. The new national culture failed to effectively dissolve and integrate the traditional tribal, religious, and Arab identities; instead, it produced a situation of parallel existence, opposition, and conflict between old and new cultural identities.

Today, if you ask a Saudi “Who are you?”, the answer might be “I am a Muslim,” “I am a Saudi,” “I am from the Shammar tribe,” or “I am an Arab.” In peaceful and tranquil times, there is no problem with a person holding multiple identities. But when a state faces a moment of grave crisis, identity becomes especially important. If, at the very moment when Saudi Arabia as a state most needs the loyalty of its citizens, a person’s primary identity is Muslim, Shammar tribesman, or Arab rather than Saudi, this will seriously undermine national security. Arabs often say: who I am depends on who my adversary is. Their loyalty to the nation and the state is not unshakeable.

In his 1999 book The Dream Palace of the Arabs, Fouad Ajami wrote that beneath the shell of modernity, the core of Arab culture remains tribal, sectarian, and ethnic. This judgment may be an overstatement, but it should be beyond dispute that tribalism, Islamism, Arabism, and nationalism together form the foundation of Arab political culture. Arab identity is like a plank of wood painted layer upon layer: new colors and base colors interpenetrate, and the blending of multiple colors produces new hues.

I Am a Muslim

American lawyer Joseph Brand once described a true story about a lawsuit in a Saudi court—a story that vividly illustrates the central importance of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

In a sweltering, crowded courtroom in the Saudi oil town of Abqaiq, a plaintiff and defendant stood before a qadi (a judge of the Islamic religious court) as a trial for an assault case proceeded. The defendant was an American employee of Aramco, accused by a Saudi colleague of defamation and assault. The American was extremely nervous, unsure what would happen in this foreign religious court. If found guilty, he might be imprisoned or deported—either outcome would cost him a position he had held for many years.

The qadi told the plaintiff: “To prove your accusation, you must provide two witnesses. You already have one witness—do you have another?” The plaintiff said he did not. The qadi said: “Then you have only one right remaining, which is to demand that the defendant take an oath.” The American, puzzled, asked his lawyer what taking an oath meant. The lawyer explained in the simplest terms: for a Muslim, lying before Allah is the gravest of sins, so the plaintiff is demanding that you swear an oath. If you refuse to swear, you will be immediately found guilty; if you swear, the oath must be truthful. The American immediately agreed to swear, and following the qadi, said: “I swear in the name of God Jehovah that I did not kick the plaintiff’s left leg, nor did I call the plaintiff a son of a whore.” The moment the oath was read, the American was immediately acquitted.

Religious belief is a global phenomenon; 84 percent of the world’s population professes a religion.

Most countries practice the separation of church and state, and religion has long since withdrawn from the political stage, making religious belief a purely social phenomenon. The Arab world is an exception. In every Arab state, Islam participates in politics to a greater or lesser degree. For 1,300 years, the Quran has guided every aspect of Arab life. To this day, the Quran and the Hadith remain the sources of legislation and adjudication in many Arab states, and religious courts hold judicial authority in social and family matters. In the process of achieving independence and building their states, most Arab states relied on Islam to consolidate their political foundations, converting citizens’ identification with their Muslim identity into identification with the state, and actively bringing religion into politics. Saudi Arabia is the Arab state where religion has most deeply penetrated politics—it is in effect a theocratic state.

Modern state sovereignty is singular, complete, and indivisible; Saudi sovereignty, however, is fragmented. In a modern state, sovereignty belongs to the people and derives from a rational, secular source; Saudi sovereignty belongs to God and derives from an irrational, religious source. In Saudi Arabia, sovereignty belongs to Allah; the king exercises Allah’s sovereignty on the basis of the Quran; and religious scholars are responsible for interpreting the Quran. In practice, this creates a situation in which royal power and clerical power share, divide, and compete over sovereignty.

The legitimacy of Saudi state sovereignty derives from Islam. In 1744, tribal leader Muhammad ibn Saud met for the first time with religious scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, reaching an agreement on a political-religious alliance. Wahhab used the armed forces of the Saud family to spread his teachings, while the Saud family’s territorial expansion received religious authorization, making it a legitimate and righteous jihad. To this day, the basic structure of the Saudi political-religious alliance has not changed. Under the Basic Law promulgated in 1992, the Quran and the Hadith serve as Saudi Arabia’s constitution, and all state institutions are built upon them. Government power derives from the Quran and the Hadith, and the purpose and meaning of the government and the king’s existence is to defend Islamic principles and implement Islamic law.

In Saudi Arabia, leadership and guidance over the state’s mainstream ideology belong to the Wahhabi sect. The core of Wahhabi doctrine is the fusion of religion with politics and society, with Islam guiding every aspect of Saudi citizens’ lives. On major questions of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and non-sin, legality and illegality—and on core issues such as the value of human life, the ultimate goals of humanity, and the function of the state—Wahhabism holds a monopoly on the right to speak. This is an enormous, invisible form of power. Over the past century, the royal family has used its power and wealth to steadily encroach upon clerical authority; institutionally and administratively, clerical power has been subordinated to royal power. Yet the royal family has been unable to free itself, at the spiritual, jurisprudential, and foundational level, from its dependence on religion. For example, when the Ministry of Education explains the necessity of modern education, it says: “Islam tells us that the acquisition of knowledge is a religious duty incumbent upon every Muslim.”

The Wahhabi sect exercises almost complete control over Saudi religious affairs, while also dominating most judicial and educational affairs. From the founding of the state, the core positions in Saudi religious, judicial, and educational institutions have been held by religious figures. These institutions have in effect become independent fiefdoms of Wahhabism and are the primary channels through which the Wahhabi sect exercises its ideological leadership. Although the king holds the power of appointment over religious, judicial, and educational officials, the jurisprudential foundations, guiding principles, personnel training, and day-to-day operations of these departments are all controlled by religion. One might say that in these three realms, the king holds personnel authority while religion holds operational authority. The king has no independent decision-making power in these matters; the ulama[1] wield enormous influence, and administrative decrees from the executive branch are often dead letters. For example, in 1980 the Council of Ministers decided that all sharia universities should teach secular law and regulations—yet forty years later, not a single sharia university has complied.

In Saudi Arabia, Muslim identity seriously undermines state sovereignty and governmental authority, posing a major hidden threat to national security. More seriously still, when a state’s own Muslim citizens identify with Islamic sects in foreign or even hostile states, the impact on national security can be fatal. Iraq has long been plagued by precisely this problem.

Iraq is the birthplace of Shia Islam and is home to the two great Shia holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. Shia Muslims constitute approximately sixty percent of the national population, yet the Sunni minority has long held political power, making the Shia a persecuted majority. Iran, by contrast, is the world’s largest Shia state, with Shia Muslims comprising over ninety percent of its total population. Iraqi Shia have close cultural ties with Iran and little common ground with their country’s Sunni population. Since Iraq’s founding, the state has repeatedly come into conflict with Iran, and the Shia population within Iraq’s borders has been a constant source of anxiety for the government.

The Iraq–Iran border stretches 1,450 kilometers, and large numbers of Shia have crossed it in both directions since ancient times. In the 1960s, Iranian religious leader Khomeini went into exile in Iraq, where he engaged in religious and political activities for many years. On the eve of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Khomeini returned to Iran, overthrew the monarchy, and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Saddam regime in Iraq felt the political threat emanating from Iran and feared that Iraqi Shia would emulate the Iranian Revolution and establish an Islamic government in Iraq. Saddam’s fears were not unfounded: some Shia leaders in Iraq did harbor such intentions. At the time, one of the Shia religious leaders in Iraq, al-Sadr, was eager to push for an Islamic revolution in Iraq. In April 1980, Saddam struck first, arresting al-Sadr. According to the account, a Saddam government official told al-Sadr that if he promised to remain silent outside prison, his life would be spared. Al-Sadr replied: “I have already closed every door. You have no choice but to kill me, and the people will rise up in revolt because of it.”

Al-Sadr had hoped that his death would ignite a great Shia uprising, but in fact the mass revolt he anticipated did not materialize. Nevertheless, mutual suspicion between the Saddam government and the Shia population persisted. During the Iran–Iraq War, large numbers of Iraqi Shia fled to Iran: some were expelled, while others left voluntarily. In 1982, Shia exiles established the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq in Iran; its armed wing, the Badr Brigade, received training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and fought on Iran’s behalf.

During the 1991 Gulf War, while American forces were fighting Iraqi troops in Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush called through the media on Iraqi Shia to rise up against Saddam. This time, the Iraqi Shia were mobilized—but the Shia uprising was brutally suppressed by the Saddam government, and American support never came. Tens of thousands died in the uprising; one mass grave alone was later found to contain 3,000 bodies. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran supported Iraqi Shia militia resistance organizations, which eventually coalesced into the “Popular Mobilization Forces” in Iraq—a “state within a state” that persists to this day.

I Am a Member of the Jubur Tribe

In 2003, Anthony Shadid, a reporter for the Washington Post, was covering a small town in Iraq when he recorded a story of tribal vengeance—a story that vividly reflects the profound influence of tribal culture on Iraq and indeed the entire Arab world.

On March 20, 2003, the United States launched its invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and supported terrorism. On April 9, American forces occupied Baghdad and the Saddam government collapsed. The Iraqi people then gradually rose up in armed resistance against the American occupation, and American forces became mired in guerrilla warfare. On a Monday morning in June 2003, 4,000 American troops mounted a helicopter and armored vehicle assault on Thuluya. In the raid, dozens of houses were destroyed, more than 400 villagers were arrested, and three people were killed: Hashim, aged 15; Jassim, aged 55; and Mahdi, aged 53.

Thuluya is a small town a nine-hour drive from Baghdad, situated in an oasis between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Most of its residents are Sunni Muslims, placing it in the so-called Sunni Triangle—one of the first areas to rise up against the American occupation. Under Saddam’s rule, the people here had been beneficiaries of the regime; they supported Saddam and Saddam looked after them. At the time, ninety percent of Thuluya’s adults were members of the Baath Party, and twenty-five percent worked for the government, military, or intelligence services. Although Thuluya had successfully integrated into the modern state system and become a defender of the regime, tribal culture remained the most fundamental cultural force. The Jubur was the largest tribe in the town; other tribes included the Khazraj, the Ubaidi, the Bujuwayri, and the Bufaraji. After the Saddam government collapsed, society fell into chaos almost immediately, and the town quickly became a world governed by tribal rules.

Sabah had been arrested by American forces. With a sack over his head, he slowly walked past a group of detained villagers, identifying several anti-American fighters for the Americans. Immediately, someone shouted: “That’s Sabah, that’s Sabah.” The villagers recognized him by his yellow sandals and his missing right thumb—severed in an accident. No one knew Sabah’s motive; some said it was for money. Sabah’s father argued that no one had seen the informer’s face and no one could be certain who it was—it was all speculation. People hated the Americans, but they hated the informer even more. They believed that person was Sabah, and that he should be held responsible for the three villagers who had died in the American raid. In Thuluya, Sabah was not merely himself—he represented his family and his tribe. This matter had to be resolved according to tribal custom: Sabah would have to repay with his own blood the three villagers who had died.

The villagers were unwilling to speak Sabah’s name; when they referred to him, they called him “the masked man.” Children playing games would chant: “The masked man, the devil’s face, the devil’s face.” Sabah belonged to the Jubur tribe; Hashim belonged to the Ani tribe. Sabah’s actions had shamed the Jubur tribe. If the Jubur could not handle the matter internally, other tribes would attack them—potentially triggering prolonged, large-scale tribal vengeance with serious casualties. The families of the three dead men demanded that either Sabah’s family execute him themselves, or the villagers would kill his entire family.

But Sabah had disappeared. Three weeks later, he swam across the Tigris River and took refuge at his uncle’s home. In July, Sabah’s uncle and brother brought him back to Thuluya under escort. Before dawn the next day, his father and brother entered his room, each holding an AK-47, and led him to the back courtyard. Not a word was spoken; Sabah said nothing either—he understood his fate. The father fired at Sabah first; the brother then fired several more shots into Sabah’s fallen body. Sabah’s father later told reporters: I am a father, I have a father’s heart. Even the Prophet Abraham was not asked to kill his own son. But I had no other choice.

Iraq is a representative example of cultural fragmentation and identity conflict in Arab society. The Arabic meaning of the name “Iraq” is deep-rooted and venerable—yet ironically, Iraq has always been associated with coups, turbulence, and internal strife, and remains to this day one of the most difficult countries to govern in the Arab world. Since achieving independence in 1932, Iraq has been in a state of constant instability, with only a brief decade of relative peace in the 1970s. The causes of this turbulence are complex and varied, but political culture has always been an important factor.

In Iraq, the people’s sense of identification with the state is weak. Instead, they identify both with identities that transcend the state—Arabism and Islamism—and with identities that fall below the state—tribe and sect—sowing the seeds of threats to national security and regime stability. In other words, Iraqis consider themselves first and foremost Muslims, Arabs, and tribal members, and their responsibilities, obligations, and loyalties to these identities rank higher than those to the state. During the Baath Party era, official Baath Party documents did not use the state name “Republic of Iraq”; instead, they used “the Iraqi region of the Arab homeland” or “the region of the two rivers.” This reveals just how casual and indifferent the people’s identification with the state truly was.

Iraq’s borders were man-made, lacking historical and cultural roots. During the Ottoman period, the territory comprised three separate provinces: Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul. During the First World War, Britain occupied Iraq, and the extent of British military control—along with Anglo-French bargaining—became the primary basis for determining Iraq’s borders. The Iraqi government was also man-made—and made by foreigners at that. Before the British military occupation, Iraq was a tribal, religious, and ethnic society in which more than half the population belonged to nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes. Britain transplanted a constitutional monarchy onto Iraq and parachuted in a king—Faisal ibn Hussein of the Hashemite dynasty from Mecca.

When Iraq achieved independence in 1932, Britain was the mandatory power over the newly born Iraq and effectively held the position of supreme overlord. Religiously, Iraq was divided between Sunnis and Shia; at the time, the two sects were roughly equal in population, with Sunnis mostly nomadic and holding political power, and Shia mostly settled and poorer than the Sunnis. Ethnically, Iraq was divided between Arabs and Kurds, with Kurds as a minority. Geographically, Kurds were concentrated in the north, Sunnis mainly in the center, and Shia predominantly in the south. The north was home to Sunni tribal confederations, including the Anaza, the Shammar, and the Dulaim; the south was dominated by Shia tribal confederations, comprising approximately 36 tribes, the largest being the Muntafiq confederation.

Vengeance is an important element of tribal culture and also the mechanism by which stability and balance are maintained between tribes. The dispersed modes of production and life in Arab society meant that no effective system of centralized power developed over the long term. The central government was, most of the time, essentially an army, primarily responsible for collecting taxes and defending territory and people. Political, economic, social, and cultural affairs were left to local self-governance. In the absence of effective reach by the central government, people at the local level developed through practice a tribal culture of mutual checks and balances.

These mutually balancing groups radiated outward from small to large, from inner to outer, layer by layer. Groups of all sizes practiced tiered internal self-governance, while relations between groups were maintained through mutual checks and deterrence. This was the foundation of traditional Arab social order.

Viewed vertically, the tribal loyalty system is a pyramidal hierarchy: the individual is responsible to the family, the family to the clan, the clan to the tribe, and the tribe to the king and the state. Every person has a place and a responsibility within the family. By the same logic, whatever a family member does, the entire family bears joint responsibility; whatever a tribal member does, all tribal members share responsibility. An injury to one family member is an injury to the entire family and to every individual within it. If one family member commits a wrong, another family member may be punished. Within the tribe, “one for all, all for one.”

Viewed horizontally, in their dealings with the outside world, every Arab person holds multiple identities, radiating outward from the individual as center—family, clan, lineage, tribe, tribal confederation, sect, and Islam. Whether in external cooperation or external vengeance, the principle is family against family, clan against clan, lineage against lineage, tribe against tribe, confederation against confederation, sect against sect, Islam against unbelievers—the order must not be confused. The ideal character of a tribal person is: respected by one’s own people, feared by all others.

Human societies have universally developed from tribal societies to class societies, and from loose, competitive political forms to centralized sovereign states. But the Middle East remained in a tribal social stage for an exceptionally long time, producing a highly developed tribal culture. The proportion of tribal society in the Middle East was exceptionally large, and urban civilization and industrial culture did not, for a very long time, establish a dominant advantage over tribal culture. After the establishment of modern sovereign states, Arab society began its transition toward a modern civil society, producing a complex situation in which tribal culture and civic culture both clashed with and reshaped each other. The cornerstone of tribal culture is loyalty to the group; it emphasizes distinctions between insider and outsider rather than equality before the law, and the interests of one’s own family, lineage, and tribe matter more than fairness, justice, or truth. This fragmentation of identity and loyalty has obstructed the formation of a unified civic society. In tribal culture, people in times of danger rely primarily on self-help and mutual assistance among kinsmen; modern civil society, by contrast, emphasizes state sovereignty, the rule of law, fairness, and administrative centralization—when problems arise, one turns to the law, the police, or government relief agencies. In Arab states, when the government is strong, modern civic culture gains the upper hand; when the government is weak or collapses, tribal culture resurfaces.

To this day, some Iraqis still believe that only a dictator can govern Iraq—a country so culturally fragmented—and that “only someone who is feared can bring peace.” During Saddam’s authoritarian rule, sectarian, tribal, and ethnic consciousness was forced underground. Once the central government collapsed, sectarian conflict, tribal vengeance, and ethnic confrontation rapidly resurfaced, becoming the dominant forces shaping social relations.

Within a state, when religion, tribe, and family supersede national identity, the result is often conflict and fragmentation between different factions, erosion of state sovereignty, and threats to state stability and prosperity. More importantly, for historical reasons, the religions and tribes within a state often have intricate ties with religions and tribes in other states, forming cultural identities that transcend national borders. In times of national crisis, such internally and externally entangled cultural identities are extremely dangerous.

In some Arab states, tribes frequently straddle national borders. Saudi Arabia is the homeland of the Shammar tribe, but the Shammar is also a highly influential tribe in Iraq and extends into Syrian territory as well. The Shammar in Iraq and Syria identify with the culture of the Shammar in Saudi Arabia, which gives Saudi Arabia an invisible additional card to play in managing its relations with Iraq and Syria. Since the rise of social media, tribal social media groups have formed a connected web in the virtual world. The Shammar tribe’s social media group has more than 30,000 members, of whom 1,300 are active users spanning the three sovereign states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria. The Mutayr tribe’s social media group has 70,000 registered users, including people from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and other countries.

Tribal culture is both a cause and a consequence of weak central power. In 1968, American anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman was conducting fieldwork among tribes in Balochistan when the first question the locals asked him was: “How many people are in your family?” He answered: “I have no family clan.” The people asked in bewilderment: “Then who will help you when you face danger or difficulty?” He said: “I go to the police.” The people burst out laughing and said: “Impossible—only your family can help you.” In the course of his subsequent fieldwork, Salzman found that local police often relied on tribal chiefs and tribal customs to handle problems. One might say that because tribal culture is so strong, police institutions cannot function effectively; or equally, that because police institutions have failed to function effectively, tribal culture has flourished.

I Am an Arab

The Syrian Revolution of 1949, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and the Iraqi Revolution of 1958 overthrew kings and established republics in three important Arab states, laying the groundwork for the realization of a unified Arab state. Vigorously championed by Egypt, Syria, and other states, “Arab” identity became for a time the most important identity for many people. On one hand, Arabism met the psychological need of Arabs to unite in resistance against imperialism. On the other hand, the promotion of Arabism by regional powers was also an act of regional hegemonism—a means of expanding their own regional influence. Although this form of cultural expansion was less destructive than imperialist military expansion, it nonetheless posed serious challenges to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of some Arab states.

In the 1950s, inexpensive radios became widely popular across Arab society. At the time, the most beloved radio station among Arabs was “Voice of the Arabs,” headquartered in Cairo. Nasser founded “Voice of the Arabs” in 1953 specifically to propagandize the ideas of the Egyptian Revolution and advance the Arab nationalist movement. Broadcasting in the mother tongue shared by all Arab peoples, and through program formats that the masses loved, “Voice of the Arabs” became a banner for spreading Arab nationalism. A witness from that era recalled: “People’s ears were glued to the radio, especially when the songs of Arab nationalism rang out over the airwaves, calling on Arabs to hold their heads high and defend their dignity and land from violation.” Through the radio, Nasser conquered the Arab world in the realm of thought and culture—and conquered Syria in particular.

In 1946, Syria threw off the French mandate and achieved genuine national independence. Yet the Syrian people and political parties did not feel a strong sense of identification with the state; they broadly supported Arab nationalism and yearned to build a greater Arab state. The new constitution passed in May 1950 explicitly stated that Syria was part of the Arab nation and should strive to build a unified Arab state. At the time, the Syrian government was on the verge of chaos and collapse; between 1949 and 1955 it experienced five changes of leadership, with both the United States and the Soviet Union cultivating their own proxies in Syria. The United States and Britain had formed the pro-Western Baghdad Pact, with Iran, Iraq, and Turkey as members, and the various powers had effectively encircled Syria.

The Arab Baath Party and the Communist Party competed with each other to court Nasser, hoping to leverage his prestige in the Arab world to boost their own influence and resist Western interference. The Baath Party’s slogan had always been “One Arab nation, one mission,” advocating that all Arab peoples build a single unified Arab state—an idea ideologically closer to Nasser’s thinking. By 1957, both the Baath Party and the Communist Party had proposed to Nasser that Syria and Egypt merge, each competing to offer more favorable terms. At the time, neither party held power, and the merger proposal was nothing more than a “rubber check”—no one took it seriously.

Shortly thereafter, the military began to involve itself in the merger question, with even greater enthusiasm for it than either of the two parties, and the prospect of merger began to seem real. The military had launched three coups in Syria and overthrown governments—they were the ones who truly held power in Syria.

On January 12, 1958, Syrian Chief of Staff Afif al-Bizri led thirteen senior officers on a flight to Cairo, heading straight to Nasser’s residence to discuss the merger. Back in Damascus, the Syrian government only learned of the delegation’s departure after the plane had already left. Finance Minister Khalid al-Azm wrote in his diary: “If Nasser accepts this proposal, Syria will disappear; if he rejects it, the Syrian military will occupy state institutions and overthrow the government and parliament.”

The Syrian government hastily dispatched Foreign Minister Salah al-Din al-Bitar to Cairo as an observer to gather intelligence. Unexpectedly, the moment al-Bitar arrived in Cairo, he transformed himself into a government representative and joined the negotiations. Syrian party, government, and military representatives all converged on Cairo, handing their country over to Nasser on a silver platter. Faced with this windfall, Nasser was bewildered. Although Nasser had always championed Arabism, his focus had been on Arab solidarity—he had never dared to contemplate something as radical as a merger of states. Moreover, Syria and Egypt did not share a border; Israel and Palestine lay between them, making a unified state very difficult to administer. In the end, faced with the prospect of gain and glory, Nasser went with the flow—and took the opportunity to put forward extremely harsh conditions. Syria and Egypt would merge completely; the Syrian government and political parties would be dissolved; and the Syrian military would come under Egyptian command.

Nasser’s merger plan stripped the Syrian Baath Party and military of their power—yet the Baath Party and military representatives agreed to it. Ten days later, they returned to the Syrian capital Damascus in high spirits, carrying Nasser’s plan with them. That Syria’s government would voluntarily request annexation by Egypt was unheard of in the history of sovereign states.

阿拉伯人的困惑：我是谁？

The Syrian cabinet spent twenty-four hours debating Nasser’s plan and put forward a compromise proposal for a federal arrangement. Under federalism, Egypt and Syria would enjoy equal status, and Syria would retain its own sovereignty. Nasser firmly rejected Syria’s alternative proposal: either complete merger, or no merger at all. At this point, the military again played a decisive role. With planes to Cairo already prepared, the Chief of Staff told the cabinet: “You have only two choices: go to Cairo, or go to Mezzeh” (Syria’s prison). Naturally, no one wanted to go to prison.

On February 1, 1958, Syria and Egypt formally signed the merger agreement. On February 21, the United Arab Republic was proclaimed, with Nasser as its first president—who would prove to be its only president. On March 6, the Republic’s first cabinet was formed: four vice presidents, two Syrian and two Egyptian; thirty-four cabinet ministers, twenty Egyptian and fourteen Syrian. Egypt controlled the core ministries, including defense, foreign affairs, interior, and industry. The United Arab Republic’s government was based in Cairo, with executive committees composed of local ministers established separately in Egypt and Syria to serve as the implementing bodies of the central government. In October 1959, to tighten control over Syria, Nasser appointed Egyptian Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer as presidential representative, permanently stationed in Syria with full authority over Syrian affairs. The Baath Party and the Syrian military were completely sidelined.

The Syrian officers who had been the primary driving force behind the Syria–Egypt merger were also the first to grow dissatisfied with the United Arab Republic. The Syrian government and political parties had been dissolved; Syria had been demoted from a sovereign state to a regional government under Egyptian rule—and even that regional government was led by Egyptians. Egypt’s Amer was the leader of the Syrian regional government, and Baath Party leaders could only serve as Amer’s deputies. Egyptians appeared in Syria as masters, bossing Syrian officers around, and the once-passionate Syrian military men came to feel deeply the sorrow of having lost their sovereignty.

Then, in July 1961, Nasser transplanted Egypt’s reform program to Syria, remaking Syria in Egypt’s image. Egyptians carried out land reform in Syria and nationalized industry and commerce: large landowners had their surplus land confiscated, and industrialists and merchants had their assets taken into state ownership. Landlords and businessmen now stood in opposition to the United Arab Republic as well. At the end of 1959, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and a number of other Syrian Baath Party leaders resigned in fury. In 1961, Nasser simply bypassed the Syrian regional government altogether and established a government directly in Cairo to manage Syrian affairs by remote control.

In the early hours of September 28, 1961, the Syrian military launched another coup, arresting Field Marshal Amer, seizing the state broadcasting station, announcing the dissolution of the United Arab Republic, and establishing a Syrian provisional government. The provisional government decided to expel all Egyptians, including Field Marshal Amer—6,000 soldiers, 5,000 civilian personnel, and 12,000 workers. The Syrian military’s fickleness—first fawning, then turning hostile—left Nasser bewildered. He initially considered sending troops to suppress the rebellion, but then decided he did not want to see Arabs fighting Arabs, and ultimately let the matter drop.

After this, the ambitious project of Arabism suffered a major setback. Egypt became embroiled in the Yemeni civil war, fighting a proxy war against another Arab state, Saudi Arabia. After the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, the cause of liberating Palestine seemed increasingly remote. By the time Nasser died in 1970, Arabism was already in a precarious state.

Yet the Arab states’ oil embargo against the West in 1973 allowed Arabism to shine brilliantly. This demonstrated that, on the premise of safeguarding sovereignty, a trans-state Arabism could serve as a form of cultural soft power and produce a bloc effect in international competition.

In the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, Israel won a sweeping victory, separately occupying the West Bank from Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The Arab states faced an unprecedented threat. Internal divisions among the Arab states and a lack of coordination were among the reasons for their defeat. Defeat educated the Arabs; the people called for Arab unity. In August 1967, the Arab League convened a summit in Khartoum, Sudan, and issued the famous “Three Nos Declaration”: no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. Egypt and Saudi Arabia temporarily reconciled, forming a united front against Israel. Subsequently, in the 1973 war, Syria and Egypt fought on the front lines while Saudi Arabia and other states launched an oil embargo against the United States from the rear, creating the high-water mark of Arab cooperation.

In January 1973, Syria and Egypt reached a top-secret agreement unifying the command of their two armies. In August, Egyptian President Sadat secretly visited Saudi Arabia, briefing King Faisal on the plan to launch a surprise attack on Israel on October 6 and requesting that Saudi Arabia impose an oil embargo on the United States at that time. As a committed Arabist, Faisal agreed to deploy the oil weapon when the time came, asking only that Egypt be able to sustain the war long enough for the embargo to take effect.

On October 6, 1973—a Saturday, the Jewish Day of Atonement, when all of Israel was at rest—at 2:00 p.m., Syrian and Egyptian forces simultaneously launched a surprise attack on Israel from the north and south respectively, in what became known as the Yom Kippur War. The attack threw Israel into panic; within minutes, Egypt had fired more than 10,000 artillery shells at Israel. In the first twenty-four hours of the war, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal, breached the Bar-Lev Line, and advanced four kilometers into the Sinai Peninsula; Syrian forces broke through Israel’s Golan Heights defenses and pushed toward the Sea of Galilee. Thereafter, the war entered a stalemate. On October 16, Israel began its counteroffensive and seized the initiative.

Chapter Five

At this critical juncture, the Arab states activated the oil weapon. On October 16, 1973, Arab oil ministers convened an emergency meeting in Kuwait and announced a seventeen percent increase in oil prices—without even notifying the Western oil companies operating in Arab states. After US oil production peaked in 1970, domestic output declined year by year and dependence on Arab oil increased. By 1973, Arab oil imports accounted for twenty-eight percent of total US imports, forty-four percent of Japan’s, and seventy to seventy-five percent of Europe’s.

On the day the price increase was announced, panic swept international oil markets and prices surged seventy percent. Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani said: “This day I have waited for a very long time has finally arrived. We are now masters of our own commodity.” The following day, the Arab oil ministers issued a joint communiqué: “All Arab oil-producing states shall immediately cut production by no less than five percent from September levels, with the same percentage reduction each subsequent month, until Israel withdraws from the Arab territories occupied in the 1967 war and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are guaranteed.” At the same time, the Arab states announced that oil imports by friendly states would not be affected by the production cuts.

On the diplomatic front, that same day the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, and Morocco met at the White House with President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger, demanding that the United States pressure Israel. Nevertheless, on October 18, 1973, the Nixon administration still approved legislation providing Israel with $2.2 billion in military equipment.

Furious, the Arab states cut production by twenty-five percent and imposed a complete embargo on the United States. Within six months, international oil prices quadrupled, dealing a severe blow to Western economies. On the battlefield, Israel’s advantage continued to grow. In the third week of October 1973, Israeli forces advanced to within sixty miles of Cairo and twenty miles of Damascus. To prevent the Arab–Israeli war from triggering a world war, both the United States and the Soviet Union intensified their mediation efforts, and Kissinger conducted shuttle diplomacy for five months.

On January 18, 1974, Egypt and Syria each reached ceasefire agreements with Israel. Egypt recovered the east bank of the Suez Canal, with a buffer zone established in Sinai; Syria recovered part of the Golan Heights, with a buffer zone established there as well. On March 18, the Arab states announced that their objectives had been achieved and ended the oil embargo.

The 1973 oil embargo was the crowning achievement of Arabism. Diplomatically, the Arab states’ demands received serious attention from the international community—especially from the United States and the Soviet Union—and Egypt broke the deadlock with Israel, laying the groundwork for the Egypt–Israel peace of 1979. Politically, it demonstrated to the world the great power of Arab unity, and for the first time the Arab states emerged as a significant force on the international political stage. Economically, the Arab states freed themselves from the control of Western oil companies and took back management of their oil resources. Before the war, oil was priced at three dollars per barrel; after the war, it rose to eleven to thirteen dollars, and the oil-producing states became wealthy overnight.

Among the Arab states, only Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan share borders with Israel and have territorial disputes with it. Yet under the banner of Arabism, all Arab states contributed what they could—those with money provided money, those with strength provided strength—and participated to varying degrees in the war against Israel, composing a magnificent epic of Arab solidarity.

Arabism is a double-edged sword. In the modern international system, the state is the most fundamental and central unit. The loyalty and identification of the people with the state is the foundation of national security, and identities that transcend national borders must be subordinated to—and even serve—national identity. Arabism is a classic form of supra-state identity. When it serves national identity, it benefits national security; conversely, when it supersedes national identity, it damages national interests. When Syria merged with Egypt in 1958, Syria, under the banner of Arabism, handed its own sovereignty over to Egypt—a classic case of Arabism damaging national security. The Arab states’

The Arabs’ Dilemma: Who Are We?

united imposition of an “oil embargo” on Western states in 1973 was a shining example of Arabism serving national interests.

I Am a Saudi

On September 23, 2017, Saudi Arabia celebrated its 87th National Day. The Saudi General Entertainment Authority organized 27 large-scale celebratory events across 17 cities nationwide, including sporting events, cultural performances, folk performances, concerts, and fireworks displays. Saudi flags flew throughout the streets and alleys, and some car owners painted their vehicles “patriotic green.”

The Saudi government organized large-scale high-tech performances, using laser shows and dynamic fireworks to “light up” the Saudi skyline, and staged aerobatic and animated smoke performances with aircraft. Notably, Saudi women were permitted for the first time to participate in these National Day activities. Hundreds of women entered King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh for the first time to watch National Day musical performances and historical dramas about Saudi Arabia. Inside the stadium, women were still required to sit separately from single men. “I hope that in the future we will be able to enter the stadium without restrictions,” said Um Abdulrahman, a young woman from the northwestern Saudi city of Tabuk. “For many years, I have hoped that women could enjoy the same rights as men.”

In other countries around the world, celebrating National Day is a matter of course; in Saudi Arabia, it is anything but ordinary. Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932, yet it was not until 2007 that National Day was first designated an official state holiday. Saudis are born with four layers of identity: tribal member, Muslim, Arab, and national citizen—of which the national identity is the weakest and the Muslim identity the strongest. Most people regard the state as a vague, distant, and alien concept. Conservative religious figures hold that all Muslims belong to the “Ummah” (the Muslim community), which transcends national borders and national identity, and therefore oppose national anthems, national emblems, national holidays, and the like. As a result, Saudi Arabia has long been ambivalent about the question of national identity, believing that a strong national identity would weaken Muslim identity—and that Muslim identity is supreme.

In the past, the Saudi royal family relied on Islam to consolidate its political foundations, placing particular emphasis on citizens’ Muslim identity and the Islamic character of the state. When Saudi teachers, ulama, officials, and parents told patriotic stories, they typically began with the founding of Islam in the seventh century CE, thereby reinforcing young people’s identification with their Muslim identity. In recent years, however, the Saudi government has felt the urgency of building national identity and has begun deliberately pushing Saudi history further back in time—excavating the pre-Islamic history of Saudi Arabia—in order to strengthen identification with a Saudi identity. Designating National Day as an official state holiday, celebrating it on a large scale, and allowing women to participate in public activities despite the objections of religious conservatives are all measures aimed at strengthening the national identity of “I am a Saudi” and weakening religious identity.

Saudi Arabia’s approach is not unique; most Arab states are working to strengthen national identity. Today we live in an international system composed of nation-states, in which the sovereign state is the most fundamental unit of politics, and the nation ought to be the most important identity of modern citizens. A strong, cohesive national culture is the cornerstone of national security. Culture tells people what is good and what is bad, what should be done and what should not be done; it establishes behavioral norms for people and constructs a predictable order for society. If a state’s national culture is confused and contradictory, it will lead to social fragmentation, internal conflict, and damage to the foundations of national security. In some Arab states, traditional culture and modern culture, regional culture and ethnic culture, national culture and trans-national culture cannot coexist in an orderly and organically integrated way. Instead, they have produced ideological confusion, leaving people not knowing who they are, where they come from, or where they are going—unclear about whom they are loyal to and whom they serve.

For the individual, having a very clear and firm answer to the questions “Who am I, where do I come from, and where am I going?” allows a person to live with confidence and tranquility—this is the cultural foundation upon which a person establishes their place in the world. For the state, when all the people of a nation—regardless of ethnicity, religion, region, wealth, age, or gender—feel a natural sense of identification, belonging, and pride in the national culture, and know their original aspirations, their mission, and their sense of belonging, this is the foundation of national security, stability, and prosperity. A person always holds multiple identities simultaneously—religious, ideological, partisan, linguistic, and others—but identification with the national culture should be primary and predominant, with all other identities serving and subordinating themselves to it.

A nation’s culture is also all-encompassing, encompassing food culture and clothing culture, political culture and consumer culture, techno-scientific culture and social culture. But every nation has its own most core and essential mainstream culture—the cultural DNA that distinguishes it from other nations. Just as a person’s genes have uniquely individual characteristics, so too does national culture possess a distinctive particularity. In the ideal state, one nation, one culture—a culture that neither exceeds nor falls short of the geographic area and population of that nation.

Chinese cultural scholar Zhang Liwen holds that safeguarding the independence of a nation is consistent with safeguarding the independence of its national culture. If a nation’s cultural independence is lost—whether by becoming an appendage of another nation’s culture or by being assimilated into it—then that nation will inevitably lose its own independence as well. For a state to be independent, its national culture must possess a corresponding independence. This may be called cultural sovereignty, and it is an important component of state sovereignty.

The state has existed in Arab society for more than 4,000 years, yet since the emergence of the modern sovereign state, Arab society has failed to develop a relatively mature national culture, and there is a disconnect between political culture and political entity. Arab tribal culture, Islamism, and Arabism all stand in considerable contrast to national culture. In terms of scope, tribal culture is narrower than the state; Islamism and Arabism are broader than the state. In terms of the object of identification, tribe, religion, and Arabism are all competitors of the state and tend to weaken national identity. Therefore, if these three forms of identification are stronger than or take precedence over national identity, they will encroach upon national security. In other regions of the world, local cultures narrower than national culture and international cultures broader than national culture also exist, but in the process of nation-building these cultures gradually yielded to and came to serve national culture. In the Middle East, most nations in the process of construction have been disrupted by internal separatist forces and external imperialist forces; government power has been insufficiently concentrated, administrative efficiency has been inadequate, and the state has been in a weak position—often forced to compromise with, yield to, and draw upon local cultures and trans-national cultures. The result is that these cultures retain, even today, the capacity to compete with national culture.

In a severely fragmented political culture, building a national culture is extremely difficult. On one hand, to keep pace with the times, Arab national cultures need to modernize and join the ranks of the world’s advanced cultures, ensuring the contemporaneity of culture. On the other hand, Arab national cultures must also preserve their own cultural DNA, continuing the characteristics of traditional culture and ensuring the national particularity of culture. Contemporaneity and national particularity are thus the two defining characteristics of a modern state’s mainstream culture: national particularity ensures cultural continuity, while contemporaneity drives cultural development. The two are mutually reinforcing and indispensable—neither can be neglected. Internationally, scholars generally hold that Arab culture places strong emphasis on national particularity and continuity, while contemporaneity and innovation are insufficient. Arab society is fundamentally traditionalist: people tend to define good and bad according to traditional customs, with behavior that conforms to tradition being good and behavior that does not being bad.

To pursue a harmonious alignment of cultural national particularity and contemporaneity, and to develop a national culture with strong cohesive force, it is essential to uphold cultural autonomy. Cultural autonomy means that the subject of traditional culture possesses a relatively independent right of self-determination—that when facing challenges from nature, society, and even foreign traditional cultures, it retains freedom of choice in the actions it takes, the ways it behaves, and the standards by which it makes decisions. This absolutely does not mean that national culture should exclude other cultures; rather, it means consciously, actively, and proactively transforming and transcending the old, and creating the new. When Zhang Liwen spoke of innovation in Chinese culture, he said: “Today, China must create a culture that is neither China’s original cultural tradition nor a convergence with Western cultural tradition, but rather a continuation of Chinese traditional culture that has also absorbed Western culture—a brand new culture.” This proposition applies equally to innovation in Arab culture. For the past thousand years, Arab states have been under the pressure of powerful external cultures, and upholding cultural autonomy has been extremely difficult. Since the end of the Cold War in particular, Western culture has continuously promoted its own “universality” and exported its culture to Third World countries, and the cultural pressure facing Arab states has only increased. The more difficult the times, the more important it is to uphold cultural autonomy and national particularity—only in this way can a culture’s international character be demonstrated. American political scientist Samuel Huntington, when discussing Western culture, also emphasized that the value of Western culture lies in its distinctiveness, not its universality.

It must be emphasized that culture “influences” human behavior but does not “determine” it—or rather, culture is one of many factors that influence human behavior, and one must not fall into “cultural determinism.” Beyond culture, a person’s internal physiological and psychological factors, external economic and social laws, and the interactions between states at the international level can all influence human behavior.

References

  1. Zhang Liwen, Traditional Culture and Modernization, Renmin University of China Press, 1987 edition.
  2. Eugene Rogan, The Arabs: A History, translated by Lian Chaoqun and Li Haipeng, Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 2019 edition.
  3. Philip Carl Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, Humanity Books, 2008.
  4. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
  5. Abdullah Lutfiyya, Baytin: A Jordanian Village, The Hague: Mouton and CO., 1966.
  6. Jacques Berque, The Arabs, New York: Praeger, 1965. Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.
  7. Mohammed Naguib, Egypt’s Destiny, London: Gollancz, 1955.
  8. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, 1979.
  9. William L. Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
  10. Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs, New York: Vintage, 1999.
  11. Joseph Brand, “Aspect of Saudi Arabia Law and Practice,” Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, Volume 9, Issue 1, 1986.

The image is too faded and low-contrast for me to reliably transcribe the Chinese text on this page. The text appears very light gray against a cream background, making accurate character recognition impossible without risking errors or misrepresentation.

1 The ulama are Muslim religious scholars or authorities recognized by the Muslim community—such as mosque imams, religious court judges, and teachers at religious schools. They are the interpreters and overseers of Islamic law and doctrine, and wield considerable influence in Saudi political and social life.

1 乌拉玛是穆斯林公认的宗教学者或权威，如清真寺教长、宗教法庭法官、宗教学校教师等，是伊斯兰教法、教义的阐述者和监督者，在沙特的政治、社会生活中有着较大的影响力。

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