The myth of one Arab world

Both West and East have perpetuated the myth of a single, united Arab world. It is time to face a more complex truth.

By Nicholas Jubber

A few months ago, I met a man who seemed to symbolize the exception to the rule. He was lurking in the courtyard of Aleppo’s Grand Mosque, clutching a paperback. The mosque was undergoing restoration, so I asked him when the work would be completed. Leading me towards the souk, he whispered, “I don’t know. I’m not a Muslim.” In that case he must be a Christian? No. Jewish? Again, no. Did he have a religion? “I follow the faith,” he told me, “of Zartusht.”

This sounded like the Zoroastrian religion that was widespread in pre-Islamic Persia and other parts of India and the Middle East. Now, it isn’t even mentioned in the CIA Factbook’s Syrian section.

“A Syrian Zoroastrian,” I asked. “No,” he countered. “Ah, you’d prefer I call you an Arab?” “I’m not an Arab. I’m a Kurd.” I hadn’t expected this. “I’m sorry,” I said, “the Middle East is very confusing.” He frowned.

“You know,” he said, “I cannot understand why you call this the Middle East. We are only a hundred kilometres from Cyprus, but Cyprus is in Europe. So, if we are the Middle East, where is the Near East? In the sea?” I apologized. “You Westerners” he said, “you think this part of the world is so simple. But it’s not.”

After apologizing again, I felt rather cheated when I noticed the title of his book: J.M. Roberts’ A Concise History of the World.

Two worlds. Both George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden have attempted to split the world in two: civilization against anarchy, urges one; Muslim against infidel, insists the other. Commentators have picked on the similarities in their speeches, chastising Bush for simplification and bin Laden for incitement. Whether the division is defined by faith or vaguely expressed values, in both cases it involves the simplification of a much more complicated dynamic. “Arab” and “Muslim” are presented as contiguous entities operating on a single, shared thought-pattern. For the West, the “Arab world” is seen as having one united view, which can be gleaned by a telephone call to one of its “moderate” leaders.

Even more astonishing than Western political ignorance is the complicity with which Arab leaders support the impression of a mentally coordinated landmass. The perception, reinforced by images of Arab summits and Arab League meetings, is of a politically united region, which criticizes Israel, urges restraint in the “war on terrorism” and appeals for a resolution to Palestinian dispossession – all with one voice. True, the Arab world enjoys a stronger sense of solidarity than most comparable areas in the world. The concept of an “Arab nation” can’t be dismissed. Nasser’s attempt to unite the Arab states in the 1950s may have failed, but this doesn’t rule out the possibility of a United Arab Republic in the future.

During a recent visit to Ramallah, an English-speaking Arab friend introduced me to another man who, I presumed, also spoke English. “Pleased to meet you,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. “We are in Palestine,” he said, “Palestine is in the Arab world. In the Arab world, we speak Arabic.”

The concept of an “Arab world” seems sometimes to be as strong within it as outside of it. But to bracket all Arab countries and all their inhabitants together, however helpful it might be in broad terms, is to ignore their ethnic, cultural and demographic diversity. A Zoroastrian in Aleppo may be an exception, but there are a great many exceptions.

There are 22 states in the Arab League, spread across more than 5 million square miles of desert, marsh and mountain in lands that meet the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the Gulf and the Bab al-Mandab, incorporating parts of North, East and West Africa as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant. The diversity among these 22 states is huge. Although most of them share certain ethnic, linguistic and cultural traits – and every Arab state has a Muslim majority – they are heterogeneous. In Lebanon, drivers ignore traffic lights; there are casinos, miniskirts and nightclubs serving alcohol. In most of the Gulf states, only a couple hundred kilometers away, these are all taboo.  

Only a quarter of the population of the United Arab Emirates are Arabs. The rest – South Asian, Iranian, European and American – can’t be considered Arab by any standard, whether ethnic, linguistic or cultural. There are minority Berbers in the North African states, Kurds in Syria and Iraq, Armenians, Assyrians and Circassians sprinkled across the Levant.

One of the most ethnically complicated of all the so-called “Arab” countries is Sudan. The majority of its population belong to various tribes – including the Dinka, Nuer, Nuba and Beja – each culturally, linguistically and ethnically disparate. Yusuf Fadl Hasan, author of Sudan and the Arabs, explained the complexity of Sudan’s Arab identification when I met him in Khartoum. “Many of the oldest Arabic customs are practiced here in Sudan,” he said, “bracelets down a woman’s arm, tattoos on their lips – but you won’t find these in Arabia. The cultural interaction is complicated. Scars on the face are a Nubian tradition, a sign of kingship, but now they are a sign of Arab origin, because the Arabs married into the royalty. But very few people in Sudan are ethnically Arab. It is a sign of cultural identification.”

To illustrate this point, Hasan pointed out a young man who served us tea. “He looks African,” said Hasan, “his hair, his nose, his big backside. But his only language is Arabic, and if you go back many generations in his family, they have only spoken Arabic.” 

Words matter. The most common definition of an “Arab” seems to be linguistic, rather than ethnic. But in Sudan, where 114 languages are spoken, Arabic is not the first language for the majority. In Somalia, it isn’t even the official language. Ninety-six percent of the population are ethnic Somalis. They speak Somali, they are of Hamitic or Bantu stock, they have not emigrated from the Arabian peninsula. Yet Somalia is a member of the Arab League, a part of the so-called “Arab world.” 

Even religion is an unsatisfactory yardstick. Osama bin Laden might envisage the Arab world at the center of his “Islamic nation” (in which he might like to include the 34 states that are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but not the Arab League), but one of his examples of Muslim “humiliation” over the last 80 years was Beit Jala, the heavily shelled Palestinian town. The population of Beit Jala is almost exclusively Christian.

There are 14 million indigenous Christians in the 22 Arab states. They practice 11 different denominations – variations of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. In some Arab states, they are small in number. In others, they represent significant minorities. The constitution of Lebanon, according to the 1989 Taif Accords, insists that the president be a Maronite Christian, in recognition of the country’s nearly 2 million Christians, who make up approximately 30 percent of the population. In Egypt, 4 million Copts practice a form of Christianity that would be more familiar to a Muslim than to a northern European Protestant. But, as a Greek Catholic priest in Aleppo told me of the variety of denominations, “it is like a garden. You have white flowers, red flowers, pink flowers. The many different flowers make the garden more beautiful.”

Many Maronites and Copts do not consider themselves Arabs. The Copts have their own liturgical language, and many of the more affluent Maronites prefer to speak French. There are, though, many Christians in the Arab world who consider themselves Arabs. The Chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem told me that Palestinian Christians shared “the same language, the same culture, the same history” with their “Muslim brothers.” He insisted that “we are the same people.” This may be assimilation prompted by politics. But Syrian and Jordanian Christians also boast of their Arab origins. “My family are bedouin,” said a Greek Orthodox Christian I met in Amman.

Whether Muslims and Christians are united or not, Arab Muslims are stricken with sectarianism. There are also the minority faiths: small Jewish communities, Hindus and Parsees in the Gulf, the odd Baha’i believer or Zoroastrian. The Druze debate continues: Are they a branch of Islam, or a separate faith? This religious diversity doesn’t detract from the predominant Muslim character of the region, but it does illustrate that the religious composition is more complicated than analysts appreciate.    

The Islamic conquests spread Arabic blood, culture and language so far and wide that it confused forever a strict geographical definition of an “Arab world.” The historical homeland of the Arabs is the Arabian peninsula, but nearly half the Arab states are in Africa. Comoros, a member of the Arab League, is closer to Tanzania than to its nearest “Arab” neighbor, Somalia. So why is Tanzania not a member of the Arab League?

Emigration causes further complications. There are three times as many Lebanese in diaspora as there are in Lebanon. In many cases – Amin Maalouf and Hanan al-Shaykh, for example – they are major influences of so-called “Arab opinion.” They can eat, drink, speak and worship as they would in their home country. They watch Al-Jazeera. But they live in the United States, Britain, France or Argentina.

As the author Raphael Patai confessed, “Since the Arab world is a living entity, no rule can hold in it 100 percent.” Yet in spite of the differences within and between these 11 republics, three kingdoms, three emirates, a federal emirate, a sultanate, a military junta, a stateless nation under military occupation and a state of the masses operating the Third International Theory, the stereotype is sustained.

On October 15th, the American national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, expressed to Al-Jazeera the widespread perception of one “Arab and Muslim world.” She made no distinction between “the Middle East” and “the Arab populations.” Hers was the view of the one-dimensional landmass.  

Perhaps Paul Wolfowitz, the American under-secretary of defense, should be congratulated for managing to conceive of two strands within the Arab world. But his division of the region into “moderate states” and “states which harbor terrorism” is equally dangerous. If the term “moderate” is to be defined, it seems that it roughly translates as “supporting the United States.”

Moderation. Consider Syria, which allows tourists, churches and even has satirical magazines on its newsstands. Yet it forfeits its right to be “moderate” since it provides funds to Hezbollah. Syria is certainly no paragon of human rights, but its record is superior to many others, and illustrates the political equivocation behind the term “moderate.” Even a country like Sudan – a “state which harbors terrorism” – isn’t all terrorist training camps and teetotalism. 

The tendency to simplify has dangerous consequences. Tony Blair’s efforts to “reinvigorate” the peace process and President Bush’s newfound “vision” of a Palestinian state have the dual effect of raising hopes among Palestinians that they will finally receive the independence that is their legal right, and of raising widespread expectations of peace and security. This attitude is bolstered by those Arab leaders who encourage the myth that the economic, diplomatic and humanitarian issues which they have failed to resolve should be blamed on Israel. It is out of this culture that tales emerged of Mossad involvement in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won’t wipe out Morocco’s external debt of $18.4 billion. It won’t cancel Djibouti’s unemployment rate of 50 percent. Two-thirds of Yemen’s population will still be under 25 years old. In Egypt, a baby will still be born every 24 seconds. The problems in the “Arab world” are wider than the West appreciates, greater than most Arab leaders are prepared to admit. 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can’t be blamed for the internecine disputes that have soured relations between Arab states. And if Palestinian independence is a pan-Arab goal, there hasn’t always been agreement on how to achieve it. Pan-Arab solidarity does have its chinks.

Western and Arab leaders may be divided on many issues, but they seem to be united in mutual simplification. To many Arabs, their world is united by fraternal solidarity. Territorial, economic and political competition is overlooked. Meanwhile, Western leaders have plunged into self-appointed positions as experts on Islam and the Arab world. But there is no crash course in understanding Islam or the Arabs. It is only through genuine, long-term engagement with the region and its people that Western leaders will be able to help solve the problems affecting them and the wider world. Pride on the part of many Arabs – and the ignorance of many in the West – has succeeded in promoting a simplified image that fails to account for the many problems that won’t be solved by dropping bombs, by imposing sanctions or by another handshake on the White House lawn.