Delivered to The Regional Security Meeting
- UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations (BCIR)

December 2003

In the absence of public opinion polls in most Arab countries, there is no reliable or valid way of knowing the popular sentiments vis-à-vis current public issues. Many have expressed their views in the written media or on the fast growing pan-Arab T.V. networks – like Al-Jazira, Arabiya, MBC, Orbit, LBC, Abudabai, and Al-Mustakilla. The War in Iraq, the continuing Palestinian Intifada, and the deepening American involvement in the region have provided endless issues of contentions among Arab intellectuals. A content analysis of a sample of the written debates during the six months following the Iraq War (March 19 – April 9) reveals that not only the deep cleavages but also prevalent senses of loss, powerlessness, and despair. This essay is based on a content analysis of a targeted sample of 104 op-ed articles published in Al-Hayat, Asharq al-Awsat, Al-Ahram, Al-Bayan (UAE) Al-Arabi (Cairo), Al Safir (Beirut), all are Arabic dailies, which print and circulate simultaneously in several Arab capitals (e.g. Cairo, Riyadh, Bahrain, and Casablanca).

For several decades, the Arab World has been known for its socio-political instability, protracted armed conflicts, economic stagnation, and despotic regimes. While in agreement on these common features of the region, area specialists differed significantly on the causes and effects among them. Until the publication of the late Edward Said’s Orientalism (1976), some area specialist used to readily resort to “cultural” explanations – e.g. Islam or deep rooted traditions. But Middle Eastern “exceptionalism” is no longer as frequently couched in these thick cultural explanations. The closest remnant of it is “political culture”, which was in vogue till the end of the 1980s. But even the latter was often introduced by social scientists in relativistic terms, and as a factor among many to account for the stunted development of the region. This is a far cry from the conventional reductionalism of classical orientalists.

More recently (2002/2003), the United Nations Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) provided both abundant data and a more integrated account of the stagnation of the region. The fact that the AHDR are authored by some 30 notable Arab scholars under U.N. auspices, has added significantly to its credibility. Koffe Enan, the U.N. Secretary General as well as several Western public figures, including three U.S. Presidents (Bush, Clinton, and Carter) and Secretary of State Collin Powell have all cited the AHDR on more than one occasion since their publication. While many of the features and factors previously noted by other area specialists were reiterated, the first AHDR did not mince any words as far as the causes and effects.

The Report noted three major structural “deficits” which underline all current Arab ailments and overall stagnation. These are the absence of democracy, gender equality, sustainable provision of modern knowledge. Because of its frequent citation in the last two years, the AHDR has become a standard item in the current Arab debate – i.e. along with Iraq, Palestine, U.S. hegemonic designs, democratization, and religious reform.

However, the multifaceted Arab debate focused on the issue of “change”, “reform”, and “democratization” in the post Iraq era. More specifically, the locus, agents, direction, substance, and timing of change. To be sure some earlier rumblings about the need for change had taken place among some Arab intellectuals immediately after 9/11 and the U.S.-led war on terrorism. However, that debate was muted by the sounds of battles in Afghanistan; and was dominated by either apologetics for Islam or by denials of any “Muslim” responsibility for what happened on 9/11. It was after the war at full speed and strength. At this writing (late Nov. 2003), the debate is still raging.

Raghida Dhirgham, a columnist in Al-Hayat daily triggered the debate in an opinion piece, titled “changes come from the outside unless it springs from Internal Dynamics” (Al-Hayat, August 1, 2003). She was reviewing and summing up the heated deliberations of a conference hosted in Amman by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan a month earlier. Dhirgham correctly noted that Arab intellectuals had lamented the fall of Baghdad, April 2003, to foreign invaders (the U.S. led coalition) for several months; considering a calamity (nakba) akin to the loss of Palestine to the Zionists in May 1948 and the fall of Grenada to the Spaniards in 1492. But very few of the lamenters cared to ask “why”; and even fewer of them dared to criticize, let along condemn, the Saddam Hussein Baathist despotic regime. She asked, are we Arabs, as regimes, peoples, and nations going to initiate the necessary change by our own free will or drag our feet till such change is imposed on us by outsiders to suit their own interest? Several intellectuals initially responded to Dhirgham’s provocative question. But soon more got into the arena not so much to respond to her but to debate one another. Many of the late comers to the debate did not know or acknowledge that Ms. Dhirgham was the initiator, which offended her. Since they - such later comers – were all men, she considered their lack of acknowledgements as yet one more example of Arab men’s chauvinism (Al-Hayat, August 29, 2003). Aside from this gender side battle, several of the op-ed pieces were duels among ideological rivals, and some were settling scores between life-long political adversaries. Others expressed deep misgivings on the entire debate and the way it was framed, and yet were drawn into it more than once – e.g. Dalal al-Bizry (Al-Hayat, September 7, and October 5, 2003).

The Ideological Rivals

Among the combatants, it is possible to identify four major and distinct ideological discourses – Islamists (19), Maxists (18), Nasserites (16) and liberals (27). Many of these writers are well-known proponents of these ideological leanings, or simply identified themselves as such. Some (13), however, were hard to identify ideologically; and for the lack of a more accurate or better label we may call them “independents”. We shall sample each category through one of its prominent representatives in the debate.

The Islamic Path. Fahmy Houwaidy is probably the most prominent Islamic colonist at present. He has a weekly page in Egypt’s main daily Al-Ahram, as well as another weekly syndicated column in several major dailies in the Arab World. He is the author of several books, and a frequent guest of satellite television networks, mainly Al-Jazira. Houwaidy’s self identification is a “moderate Islamic thinker”.

In a full-page article, titled “Wrong Questions in a Moment of Danger” (Al-Safir, August 26, 2003), Houwaidy starts with an expression of alarm for even posing the question of change at this juncture. He smells and senses the further conversion of troubles that would in turn lead to “confusion and sedition”. The mere dialogue on whether or not change could be initiated by external forces amounts to conditioning us to tolerating as a step toward accepting the idea, which hitherto has been a national taboo. He goes on to contend that :Iraq should never be considered a precedent to legitimate intervention for an inevitable regime change because of its tyranny or any of its other hateful characteristics. The stated official American reason for invading Iraq was to search for and destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Now that the
Whole world has learned the truth about the real hegemonic designs of the U.s., advocates of foreign interventions to bring about change in our societies should be ashamed. The falsity of their argument is so repugnant, that it must be stopped at once before further damage is done. The intentions of those carrying on such dialogue are casting doubts to undermine our societal pillars through the appearance of diversity of opinions. But at the end of the day it weakens our resolve”.

Then, Houwaidy moves on for the kill. He accuses those who initiated the dialogue by posing the question about change as Westernized intellectuals, some of whom are well-known members of the American party in the Arab World. However, what gives him comfort is that the issue is settled for the Arab public opinion to whom things are far clearer than it is for those Westernized intellectuals who are inflicted by cloudy visions, multiple loyalties, biases and vested interests. And as if these accusations were not enough, he throws into the debate Israel, Zionism, and Prime-Minister Sharon the terrorist as close linkages to the U.S. and hence an integral part of the external sources with which Arab advocates of change at this juncture are implicated.

Despite his earlier assertion that the Arab public opinion is more solid and clearer in vision, Houwaidy concludes his article by a deep concern for “the fragile Arab Order at present on one hand and the timing of the debate that can only make the situation much worse. Then, he asks “whether this confluence is a merely accidental”.

Thus, Houwaidy’s contribution to the debate about change in the Arab World is basically casting doubt on the patriotism of those calling for change as willing or unwitting agents of the U.S. and by proxy allies of Israel therefore, the advocacy for change should be dismissed, and they should be carefully watched for the possible “havoc and sedition” they could create.

The Frustrated Nasserite. Gala Amin is a well-known Egyptian Economist and a Professor at the American University in Cairo. Like Houwaidy, he published a full page (3000 words) contribution to two newspapers – the Cairo-based Al-Arabi (August 31) and Al-Hayat (Sept. 21). And like Houwaidy, he opted to ignore Ms. Dhirgham who triggered the debate, and instead take aim at one of the other fellow debaters (S.E. Ibrahim).

Amin starts out by agreeing with all others that “the Arab World today” is particularly in the worst shape it has ever been in living memory. “But then he disagrees with everything else most other debaters said in the way of diagnosis or prognosis”. He contends that “at the roots of contemporary Arab ills is Western domination – first at the hands of European colonialism, namely Britain and France in an earlier century; and at present the U.S. and its regional outpost Israel”.

Amin lashes at other debaters who blamed Arab rulers or Arab intellectuals for the Arab World’s current state of affairs. As for the intellectuals, “everyone knows they are too frightened and impotent to be expected to do much. So, why assign any blame to them in the first place?” As for the Arab regimes in power at present, Amin gets more complicated, though still circular.

Yes, Amin agrees that current Arab rulers are “corrupt, weak, and impotent”, and hence, unable to ward off external aggression”. But these rulers are the way they are “because Western hegemonic powers have put them in their seats of authority in the first place”. If any of these rulers bad and corrupt as he might be dared “to institute real social, economic, or political reform in his country to make stronger powers, as we saw more recently with Saddam Hussein”. Thus, Amin exonerates Arab rulers and Arab intellectuals from any responsibility to bring about change – either because they are clients of the West, too weak, or too frightened.

Amin does not provide answers, directions, or policy recommendations to get out of what he agrees with – i.e. the Arab World is in the worst shape than at any time in recent memory. True, he repeatedly bashed the West, the U.S. and Israel as the sources of all evils befallen the Arabs. He also bashed other debaters who failed to bash these evils as strongly as he did.

Galal Amin did ask one specific debater, “why he does not feel as depressed and frustrated as other Arab intellectuals because of the present miserable state of Arab affairs. “In a rebuttal, S.E. Ibrahim suggested five ways to reduce Amin’s sense frustration:
1. to join or start an armed or peaceful resistance to Israel and American occupation of Arab lands;
2. to boycott American goods, services, and institutions (he and all other five members of his family are working in such institutions);
3. join or start a political party to his ideological taste;
4. join or start a non-governmental organization (NGO) that could propagate and implement his ideas; and
5. engage in peaceful protest, or civil disobedience against many of the Arab regimes which he holds in extreme contempt: (Al-Hayat, Sept. 21, 2003).

Galal Amin, one of the most combative Arab intellectuals is yet to answer or report on whether such prescription is any good.

A Marxist Dilemma. Elsewhere, Marxists may have disappeared or changed the names of their political parties, but not in the Arab World. In several articles and television debates, representative of old Marxist parties argued against “change” and for defending the Arab status quo. When pressed, that this conservative is antithetical to fundamentalism, Mounir Shafique, a ranking figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), gave the following explanation (Al-Jazira, Oct. 10, 2003): “the principal contradiction at present is with the U.S. and Israel, which are one and the same, representing advanced and aggressive monopoly capitalism on global scale. This battle takes precedent over internal secondary contradictions in each Arab country”. Pressed again in the same debate, would he accordingly defend Arab secular, religious, or monarchical regimes against external threat, just because they are “Arab”. His answer was “yes”. Pressed for a third time, “would you still defend Arab regimes, if you know as you must, that are against workers’ rights to organize strike for fair wages and better working conditions?” At this point, he pleaded for “his right not to answer such picky and unfair hypothetical questions! The moderator, sympathized with Mr. Shafique and stopped this line of questioning. The guest was obviously in a dilemma – having to appear as giving up basic “socialist” and class commitments for the sake of a “nationalist” commitment.

The same dilemma of Arab Marxists was clearly displayed again in a recent public debate organized by the Cairo Center for Human Rights (Oct. 11, 2003) between one of the leaders of Egypt’s most leftist Tajamu Party, Abdel Ghaffar Shukr, and two human rights defenders. Traditionally, Egyptian leftists had argued that civil and political rights as enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) are “bourgeois rights” and they would relegate them to a secondary or terriatary place – i.e. after social and economic rights. Like his Palestinian comrade (Shafique), Mr. Shukr was pressed on issues of freedom, democracy, and autocratic regimes that have blatantly violated human rights for the sake of “socialism”. Saddam Hussein and his Baathist socialist Party ruled Iraq under such pretext. Shukr went to a great length to distance himself from Arab dictators who have espoused populist socialist platforms- e.g. in Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Pressed to comment on whether failed socialist experiments worldwide was due to absence of democracy, Shukr maneuvered for ten minutes, claiming that it was primarily due to “capitalist pressures”, but finally conceded the point.

On many of the issues being now debated in the Arab public space, Marxists seem to have very little to say. This was not always the case. From the 1940s to the 1990s they were the primary setter of the Arab debating agenda, if little else.

Liberal Perspectives. As usual, Arab liberals are quite diverse on the issues of change in general and that of the role of outside powers n particular. Two Egyptians and two Lebanese self-styled liberals reflect some of this diversity. Ibrahim Issa, a well-known journalist and a former chief-editor of Al-Destour newspaper, answers the question swiftly and wittingly, contends that major changes, and especially for democracy, will have to come from the outside. It is not because of lack of popular desire for it but because of “extreme reluctance of the autocratic corrupt rulers, and the extreme fragility and hopelessness of the opposition” (Al-Midan, August 21, 2003).

Abdel Moune’m Said, Director of Al-Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, offers a more nuance answer. He rejects “The To Be Or Not To Be” kind of response, as too simplistic to advance the debate. Instead, he goes into lengthy discussion of when the outside forces were truly successful in bringing about democracy to previously autocratic ones (e.g. Germany and Japan), half successful (The Balkan) and unsuccessful (The Caribbean). He dwelt on the conditions of each outcome, to conclude that the Arab World, with so many countries varying in levels of development and historical experiences are likely to respond to external pressures for change similarly – i.e. some will be successful, some half-successful, and some unsuccessful. Said uses the findings of an August (2003) public opining poll in Iraq conducted by Zogby International, to substantiate his argument.

With Lebanese liberal there was more Cynicism. Hazim Saghiya a lead columnist of Al-Hayat criticized the way the Arab debate on change and democratization was framed in polar opposites. Under the suggestive title “It is an Impasse” (Al-Hayat, Sept. 10, 2003), he noted that “the same external force that helped liberate Iraq from dictatorship with the promise of democratization, may be the same one that is causing its societal disintegration”. This observation seems to be meant for cooling off those in the debate who are hopeful for outside help to bring about the desired change. Saghiya further notes the absence in the ongoing debate, first any concern from democracy advocates about social issues (e.g. poverty and gender inequality) or the plight of Palestinians which has been compounded under Arial Sharon. He finally reminds participants on both sides of the debate that the interlocutors in the U.S. are a fanatic group of Neo-conservatives whose obsession with their imperial hegemonic designs make them care less, if at all, neither about Arab democrats’ aspirations nor about Arab out rats’ fears.

Saghiya equally pokes fun at those in the debate who argue for “change fro within”. The current ruling regimes will never volitionally change or reform, no matter what the size of brightness of the writing on the walls is. They had many such opportunities in the recent past – e.g. following the Islamic Revolution n Iran, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first and second Gulf wars; and two years since 9/11. The fact that they outlived or withered all there regional and international upheavals seems to have inoculated them against new dangers.

Dalal al-Bizry another Lebanese liberal shares Saghiya’s misgiving on the contrived framing of the current Arab debate – i.e. change from within vs. from without. She adds other misgiving of her own. One is the misleading proposition making democracy a pincer that it is the solution for all problems (Al –Hayat, Sept. 5, 2003). She reminds us of another simplistic sloganeering, “Islam is the Solution” which cost the Sudan more than one million lives and Algeria 200,00 in the last ten years alone. In her article “Two vague and simplistic options”, Ms. Al-Bizry lashes at most of the participants in the debate as simply “reductionists” and intellectually lazy. She challenged them to go beyond the “either for” to the substance, mechanisms, and actors that benefit or suffer from the proposed change or the maintenance of the “status quo”. She argues that only by addressing such challenges we may not lose yet another opportunity of a creative synthesis in which both the “interior” and the “exterior” are raising the question of change.

What is New in the Arab Discourse?

U.S. President George W. Bush made a speech on November 6, 2003, in which he was emphatic in arguing the case for democracy in the Arab-Muslim-Middle East. He rebutted all the counterarguments. Thus, he asserted that Islam is not contradictory to democracy; that Arab culture is not to be equated with despotism; that like peoples all over the world, Middle Easterns have genuine yearning for liberty. That the global battle for freedom must be won. He pledged that the U.S. will do all what it can, not only to make Iraq a democracy, but also an inspiring model for others in the region to emulate.

On December 1, 2003 Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak gave what seems as his response to the American President. Taking the opportunity of a joint press conference with visiting Maltese Prime-Minister George bi-Marko, Mubarak declared that “Egypt is neither being pressured or would accept pressures from the outside to democratize”. Then he added what seemed two contradictory statements. The first is that “democracy is a very complication business, and could not be accomplished in one year or even fifteen years”. The second is that “Egypt is already a democracy, that started a long time ago, even before the July 1952 Revolution. No country or person can pressure us, and foreign economic aid is not being used as a weapon against us”.

The two speeches were automatically and swiftly logged into the foregoing Arab debate about change, with Bush’s receiving so far ore reported attention in the regional media. Most Arab commentators have dismissed as “hypocritical”, replete with “double-standard”, and lacking in “credibility” (see an account in Ibrahim, Can Bush Match Words with Deeds, Washington Post, Nov. 26, 203). Some of the early debaters continue to assert the same positions or even push them to more extremes. In other words they have continued to talk past each other. One is pressed to find one case with a changed or position as a result of the nearly six months of passionate exchange. One wonders about the real value of debating beyond the first round in which initial positions are enunciated. Whether or not a “sleeper effect” is at work where attitudes do slowly change beneath the surface without being publicly recognized. Admitting a change of position is still a question of “loss of face” in a highly “honor-obsessed” culture.

Three important features, however, are worth noting in the current Arab debate. First, there is a near consensus on the necessity for change among all those reviewed. Second, there were complete absence of advocating violent or revolutionary means to bring about change. This is in sharp contrast to similar debates fro the 1950s to the 1970s. The code word this time is “reform”, which is understood to be gradual change. Third, while the bulk of the debate focused primarily on political reform, religious and educational reformation were more frequently touched on than any other side issues. Obviously the worldwide controversy about Islam since 9/11 has somehow seeped into Arab intellectuals’ consciousness. Coupling it with educational reform suggests that the quest for overall change is pervasive.

Despite all the passions and anger entailed, at the end of the review of the six-month debate, a careful observer would scarcely find a semblance of a vision or even competing ones for the future. Hopefully, this will soon emerge. Otherwise, Raghida Dhirgham’s worst fear may materialize – i.e. outsiders will impose their own.