A Necessary Dichotomy: Towards Delimiting Nationalism and Intellectualism

By Ahson Azmat

Although of course the dominating themes of modern Middle Eastern conflict are grounded firstly in the perceived Western hegemony and secondly in the indigenous response to it, these themes branch off into more specific, if not localized, problems. As a knot which is continually retied rather than loosened, isolating the various strings and working on them specifically in order to build towards an ultimate goal, sometimes helps identify the problems, or at least, contextualizes them in a more helpful manner.

The modern Middle East seems, in this regard, to be a case study of a problem which was never resolved, a problem whose solution became more and more elusive as less and less successful attempts were put forth, collectively complicating the situation more so than anything else. Any three page essay aspiring to resolve this conflict is doomed to fail, for as with an overgrown knot, individual strands must be evaluated before an exhaustive rooting or ‘revolution’ can take place. Here, two of the more important elements of the problem are considered, the ideas of nationalism and intellectualism.

As Herman n Goering noted amidst the Nazi regime, “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ” Unfortunately, few things have changed since Goering’s time. In a world where relativity runs rampant and legalized torture is actually under review, the success of any theory depends more on its proponent’s voice than its autonomous merit. Political parties hold two or three “hot button” callings (parallel to Goering’s “patriotism”), ready to use them when the time comes. Nationalism and intellectualism are some of the most prominent of these callings.

Our problem rises when the two are mixed together. That is to say, when nationalist guerillas attempt an intellectual justification for their actions; when intellectual leaders succumb to nationalist agenda for a voice or a platform. In the Arab world more so than anywhere else, this recipe is not only prevalent but is subtly destroying the very fabric or space between the ‘ammah and the sulta, the people and their leaders. Alienating both scholars and lay and betraying religion, it may be the most dominating feature which will forever proscribe an enduring Middle East peace. In fact, the trajectory of their course give us, crudely, two conclusions: the Western (the America, the Neo-Con) project in Iraq is doomed to fail. But derivatively, this fate falls upon every other political party which employs the same formulas, including the grassroots jihadists who speak of nationalism in the name of religion, the democratizing Iraqis who answer to the occident, the revolutionist terrorists who act without thought. Secondly, the logical corollary: the sectarian nature of Iraqi politics (and here Iraq is a microcosm) combined with the ideological realities rooted in the land will together perpetuate civil war until either the entrance of a new brute power whose success will rise firmly from its force and not its nationalist appeal on the one hand or intellectual rigor on the other.     

This ominous future hinges directly on the confusion between nationalism and intellectualism, their mutually exclusive ideals and their diametric methods. True, when one will run its course and the other its own, they can intersect at a given point and produce some sort of productive framework, but when one is bent to the function of another, problems arise. Historically, this is one the main cause-and-effect equations in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, its roots lie in the West, where two modern trends dog all political/ideological (or known in some circles as “scholarly”) pursuit.. The first is historical and the second, stemming from it, philo-linguistic. Historically speaking, the modern West has reached critical mass. It is on top of the world; its prince, America, the lone superpower, holding the most powerful weapons (economically as well as martially speaking) and exerting a hegemonic potency deeper and more intricate than any other civilization before it. Ipso facto, it have a tendency, as do all civilizations who conquer the world and look, next, to conquer time itself, to situate itself outside the normative bounds of space and study everything within it in an uncannily omniscient fashion.

        In light of this, it find no problems (or at least, its misgivings are not real enough to stop it from) mincing words and meanings here and there, toying with ideas, avoiding systemization and juxtaposing any two or three concepts, disparate as possible, together and synthesizing them to conveniently represent our current whims, desires, or philosophical outlooks on the world. The imposition of democracy on a traditionally mono/theocratic Middle East is one good example. Another is the idea of a ‘war on terrorism’: physical opposition to an ideal that possesses neither limb nor lung, breath or body.

        To be fair, many modern scholars have realized this, as the emptying of reason from rhetoric is by no means an unforeseen event. More than twenty years ago Harvard University professor Stephen Greenblatt alluded to his in his commentary on new historicism: “[is] new historicism a completely empty term, its relative success due entirely to the felicitous conjunction of two marketable signs, ‘new’ and ‘ism’?” [1] The implicit reading into the modern world could be no clearer: take a word and add to it an ‘ism’, and presto, we have ourselves a new science, marketable and appealing; and it is ours alone, to do with it as we see fit: to build nations and to break them, to start wars and to stop others’, to introduce cultures and traditions ex nihilo, to the very places whose very peoples have never seen or heard of them before. In other words, to further introverted agendas and to justify ideas whose applications are devastating, we need only to market new concepts and style them ‘scholarly’. 

        Digesting these two new tools, we present the focus of our essay. The eminent Ottoman historian, Bernard Lewis, ends a previously unpublished essay entitled “On Occidentalism and Orientalism” in his recent collection of writings, From Babel to Dragomans, with the following observation, confirming our thesis and synthesizing it further:

The assumption is that the past is another territory which has been conquered, subjugated, settled and exploited by imperialists foreigners and the time has come to liberate the past by assault, by an intellectual liberation struggle. The struggle is on at the moment. It is the guerilla or, as some people would put it, the terrorist phase. [2]   

        Lewis’ perspective is obviously third-party: he is articulating the mentality of a second party — those historically under the Orientalist microscope — in their resolutions against a first party — the ‘colonizing’ Orientalists themselves — who have “conquered, subjugated, settled, and exploited” the Oriental world. We may clarify, for emphasis, that by ‘Oriental’ is meant the Middle Eastern, culturally and geographically speaking. The fact that this Orient has been settled is a given; under scrutiny here is the modern effort towards decolonization, the forms, methods and overarching philosophies which fuel it.

        Lewis names two forces which, in his estimation, lead decolonization. One is an intermediary, an approach; the other is a concrete expression, a force. The former, intellectualism, the latter, guerilla tactic, or terrorism. Politically speaking, the general estimation of a decolonization effort is astute: various contingents everywhere in the modern Middle East are pressing for ‘revolution’, calling for reorientation towards Islam and reprioritization of all political targets. But these efforts, perpetuated whether by propaganda or militia, are not in conformity with Lewis’ estimate of their approach, that is, intellectualism. They are, in fact, undifferentiated forms of and towards nationalism, the term delimited either actually (that is, every nation for itself) or geo-politically (that is, every nation for a renewed pan-Arabism). Nationalism is, moreover, in prefect concordance with post-‘67 Arab mentality. Palestinians found that they must rely on themselves for independence; Egyptians realized that they must concentrate on shoring domestic affairs before aspiring to lead a pan-Arab polity; Syrians faced a major internal autonomization in the form of a Ba’th regime which was totalitarian to the letter;  the Lebanese were forced to consider anew their alignment with the displaced Palestinian entity in the face of Palestinian intrusion into Lebanese affairs.   

        In other words, social, economic, and political troubles at the hand of colonial powers were lifted, only to be replaced by social, economic, political and now religious troubles begotten internally and woven regionally, not colonially. With nationalist concerns in the air, it is nationalist elements which wish to ail the modern Middle East. These wishes for reform are tied to the immanent Arab mentality that the West has usurped its pride and power, its cultural dignity and its traditional autonomy. Still, however, an overarching shortcoming in the Middle Eastern world is the failure to distinguish between two problems and their concordant pathways to remedy. In his estimate, in fact, Lewis too confuses the two. On the one hand, there is a real and temporal regional crises. Misrepresented peoples resent the elitist contingent which rules them, naming religion to unite them. On the other, a marginalized peoples resent a perceived cultural inferiority-complex, ingrained into them, it is widely believed, by a colonial juggernaut, now gone but whose shadows still linger.

        These two problems are connected. But their solutions are not one and the same. Moreover, the appropriate pathways with which to address them are not only distinct: in many ways, they are mutually exclusive. Nationalist aims call for nationalistic action; intellectual aims call for intellectual endeavor. And while it is true that the establishment of any national political entity cannot last without an intellectual dimension — that is to say, intellection, somewhere, some time, will be needed — it cannot be thrown into the mix as just another tool toward liberation. It is, in a sense, transcendent of liberation, and cannot be tied to it. It must be fostered independently to garner a credibility autonomously, and ipso facto, authentically. 

        United forms of nationalism may lead to a series of revolutions which will overturn the current seats of power in the region. Forms or methods towards propagating these revolutions will involve, as is historically precedent, war, battle, guerilla tactics, and terrorism. These are normative forms of protest in the Middle East. However, they cannot be characterized as ‘intellectual’. That is to say, terrorist operations may very well succeed in overthrowing monarchies and instituting new (however temporally limited) governments in the Middle East. This liberation may be quick and ruthless, effective and potent. But it will not, in any way, be intellectual. Terrorist operations and intellectual currents do not coincide, no matter the common object betwixt them.

        The “intellectual liberation struggle” must be aimed at cultivating a positive and independent Islamic or even Arab identity immanently: that is, in the minds of men whose recourse to action is characterized by speaking, lecturing, writing, and philosophizing, and not by arming, shooting, exploding, or killing. As long as ‘revolutionary’ contingents in the region aim to institute a new and intellectually-effective government but go about trying to procure it through sheer force, there will never an element of real intellectual force, which alone can stand against time, money, and numbers to display to the world a self-affirmed identity in all cases indestructible, politically or economically speaking. And as long as these groups, whether in bombing civilian areas or proselytizing Arabism through ‘intellectualism’ on media air waves, Al-Jazeera or otherwise, continue fighting Western hegemony through Western political or ‘scholarly’ forms, there will be no empathy from the intellectual elements, as mockery rarely if ever generates sympathy.   

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[1] Introduction, Learning to Curse, p. 3.

[2] “On Occidentalism and Orientalism”, From Babel to Dragomans, p. 438.