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ARAB INTELLECTUALS: A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
Saad A Sowayan

The Arab masses seem to be putting too much faith in Arab intellectuals to deliver the Arab World from its quagmire of political malaise. The general feeling among most Arabs is that it is the sole responsibility of the intellectuals to speak out against all sorts of oppression and injustice, and offer themselves as fodder for change and revolution, as if martyrdom is the exclusive privilege of the intellectuals. While everybody remains silent, it is the intellectuals who are expected to single handedly combat the fundamentalists and extremists and alert the governments to their danger. This is an overestimation of the social role and capabilities of intellectuals.

If, as an intellectual, you happen to be invited by one of the business people to a weekend soiree, you will find yourself in the odd position of having to defend yourself, along with your fellow intellectuals, for not raising your voice against the government and for remaining free still and not yet being thrown in jail for expressing opposition to the establishment. One of the people present, after taking two sips from his glass of expensive scotch and gulping a handful of roasted peanuts, would come up to you to reprimand you for your pacifism and give you a long harangue about the necessity of reform. You look at his manicured, shiny face and his stiffly starched headdress and wonder to your self: Is this guy really serious? You leave the soiree a bit tipsy but hopeful and full of enthusiasm. The next day you write up a petition addressed to the king or president, whoever happened to be the head of your state and whichever happened to be the system of your government, asking for some moderate measures of liberal reforms. Then, you take the petition to your fellow intellectuals for signature assuring them that some of the most important and influential business people would cosign it. After that, you take the petition to the same business people who two nights ago were full of talk about change and reform. As it turns out, every one of them has his own excuse and ÔgoodÕ reason for not signing. You decide to go ahead anyway with your petition. As a result, you and the handful of your colleagues who signed with you are either thrown in jail or fired from your jobs or your passports are withdrawn from you to prevent you from leaving the country or, in case the language of the petition is not too bold and does not deserve a jail sentence, you are prevented from ever appearing on TV or writing in any newspaper to express any opinion on any subject whatsoever. Any false charge could be trumped up and lodged against you to justify the sentence, from political treason to religious blasphemy. Yet, none of those manicured businessmenn would dare ruffle his starched headdress and come to your rescue. It is only then that you realize that their pompous harangues about reform were meant only to clear their conscious for being so wealthy despite their illiteracy and to prove to their own satisfaction that members of the educated class are losers and failures which shows that education is useless anyway.

Let us now move to the other side of the fence and tell a different story. Suppose that one of the religious extremists grabbed a microphone after Friday prayers in any mosque and started a sort of soapbox sermon on the moral ills of the time. Overcome with zeal, he would most likely step over all bounds in seeing heresy everywhere and accusing everybody of infidelity and pointing to government officials as cohorts of the devil for remaining silent while they see all these travesties. He might even challenge the sovereignty of the state and exhort everybody to take the law into their own hands and rise up in the name of the true faith to correct such flagrant transgressions against the Lord. If authorities find the guts to arrest him, multitudes would flood the offices of government officials demanding his release. If his sentence is prolonged they will see to it that his family is well taken care off. Websites will be created to collect signatures for his release and donations for his family. When he comes out of jail, he will be received by the people as a conquering hero. On the other hand, the other fellow, our friend the intellectual cum liberal, will be avoided like a camel with scabies after serving his sentence and being released.

Actually, governments are not to be blamed for being more lenient with the fundamentalist and not so lenient with liberals. What they are doing is the political thing to do. This is the nature of the power beast. Politicians take note only of those who have backing behind them, those who express the interest of a class, a block of constituents. The fundamentalist discourse, in its emphasis on the importance of religion in life, is, more or less, expressing the interest of the clerical class, which is quite sizable; from callers to prayers, to leaders of prayers, to judges in courts, to teachers and students in religious institutions, etc, etc. The clerics are the only well established professional class in the Arab World with historical roots, which go a long way back in history, with well articulated discourse, substantial literature and a broad public base, not to mention that practically all endowments and philanthropic contributions in the Arab World go to religious functions and institutions with only very negligible share directed towards scientific research, cultural activities, the humanities and the arts. So what if a handful of intellectuals go round talking to a score of audience in few soirees a week! The clerics meet with millions of devotees five times a day. If the government takes any harsh measure against a cleric or a fundamentalist it would look like as if it were taking that measure against the religion of the people. Yet, it could easily jail liberals under any pretext and no one would dare or care to raise a finger or express support or give a helping hand.

The main reason the liberal voice in the Arab World is powerless and ineffectual is because it does not express the interest of any social class. At the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the liberal voices in Europe were expressing the interest of the rising class of the mercantilists and the bourgeoisie in their struggle against the nobility and the feudal lords. Without the material support and political backing of the merchant class, liberalism in Europe might not have achieved such tremendous success. Before the rise of the merchant class in Europe, many reformers, from John Wyclif to John Huss, were burnt at the stake with no one rushing to take their side. We should also remember that the timing of the reformation movement of Martin Luther was the secret for its success. It came at a time when the German provinces were anxious to throw the yoke of the Vatican and wanted to keep the taxes and revenues of their provinces to themselves instead of sending it to Rome. We might say the same thing regarding the Wahhabi movement. It succeded because it managed to recruit a power base, that of ad-DeÕiyyah.

The roots of the European merchant class go back to guild associations, a professional class independent from both church and state. The merchant class in the Middle East, and Arab World in particular, especially in the Gulf Region, has a completely different story to tell. Let us start with the prophet. His tribe, Quraish is a merchant tribe. Even before then, the temples in the ancient Middle Eastern States have always been associated with merchant activities. Sacred precincts in the East were meant to be safe areas to engage in trade. The spread of sufi zawaya and the religion of Islam in Africa and the Far East are associated with the itinerant merchants. Furthermore, all traditional sultanates, emirates, chieftains and peti-states in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf Region were established by merchant families. The revenue from merchandise gives them their material base, while their alliance with the clerical class give their political and legal authority the necessary legitimacy. This shows the political and religious roots of mercantilism in the Arab World and the intertwining of the merchant class with the ruling class and the religious class. This leaves the intellectuals and liberals out in the cold with no role to play, at least up till now.

Being in league with the ruling class, any liberalization of the laissez faire type might hurt the merchants more than benefits them, since it could break their monopolies. Also, since they draw their wealth mainly from trade and lucrative government contracts, more than from industry or entrepreneurship, they have no interest in scientific research and technological development. As for clerics, their hostility towards natural and physical sciences and secular knowledge in general need no proof. In such social formation there is no room for any intellectual enterprise.

What is needed is not only a separation between church and state in the Arab World, but rather to disengage the ruling class, the merchant class and the clerical class from one another.

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In short, Arab intellectuals enjoy neither power base nor popular support. Feeble and impotent as they are, many are the odds they face and insurmountable are the obstacles preventing them from fulfilling their mission of enlightenment. They have to combat outmoded but well entrenched traditional values, values which are congruous with the conservative outlook of the masses and which are organically linked to the interests of the ruling elite and religious establishment. Media and educational institutions which are financed by the government and dominated by the clerical class are diverted from their true functions of raising consciousness and providing useful information and education and turned into machineries for the dissemination of such conservative discourse, a discourse revolving around certain interconnected traditional norms which don theological garb in order to elevate them from the status of social norms to that of religious principles. Such discourse is dominating academic institutions, professional associations and literary clubs which leaves no podium for any true scientific, philosophical, inquisitive pursuit of true, objective knowledge.

Appeal to such traditional norms as a way to run a modern state may seem anachronistic, but they are politically useful because they sell very well with the great majority of the general public and semi-literate masses, not to mention the fact that many policy makers and people in the government are themselves people with traditional mode of thinking and meager education who sincerely believe in the efficacy and merits of such methods.

Allow me to spell out some of these norms in order to show how they interrelate with one another to form a comprehensive value system and how, in turn, this value system serves to intermesh political discourse with religious discourse and thus create an intellectual climate that is conducive neither to progressive change nor to individual freedom and innovation. I will show to what extent such traditional norms and values color and influence political behavior.

I will start with the notion of unitarianism at-tawHied, since this is a pivotal concept, both religiously and politically. Unitarianism is a religious doctrine. But it is also a state of mind amenable to political manipulation. It is a mode of consciousness shaped by the interweaving of cultural values and religious conviction. The unitarian view spelled over from religious to political discourse and was generalized to encompass all aspects of mundane worldly existence. It is manifested not only in the ethical and religious sphere but also in the socio-political domain.

Unitarianism gives room neither for rational choice nor for individual freedom. According to the unitarian view, the society is held together not so much by complimentary associations and mutual interdependencies, but by binding sentiments and common belief, a collective consciousness. It is based not on utilitarian and expedient considerations, but on shared moral principles, on the organization of human sentiments into implicit convictions. Collective sentiments embrace the greater part of the individual sentiments. No matter where your mind or taste leads you, you are not allowed to leave the fold or swerve from the right path followed by the community of the faithful. Innovation and variation are suppressed and dissident voices are stifled. This leaves no room whatsoever for differences in opinion or in life styles. Even dress codes and personal appearance become regimented.

This submergence of individual personality in the group limits the possibility of free choice and individual preference. If any one ever makes the slightest attempt to assert his uniqueness or individuality, he will be subject to censorship. Any alternative is resisted and treated not as a licit substitute stemming from a rational free choice, but as a detrimental antithesis of the fundamental truth of the archetype. Any change is a deterioration from a pristine, original archetype. The archetype is a model to be emulated and reproduced, not dissected or scrutinized.

Such insular mode of thinking is typically characteristic of archaic, pre-industrial, pre-scientific societies, which are generally small, isolated and homogeneous. Such societies are characterized by a static conception of the universe. Not only do they censure individual differences but they also do not tolerate temporal social change. Social change is not progress and evolution. It is decay and degeneration, always for the worst. According to this conception, the further we turn back in time the closer we get to the ideal golden age of pure innocence.

In a traditional society, political, economic, social and all other forms of relationships, with all that is incumbent upon them in terms of rights and obligations, are couched in familial and kinship terms. The whole community is seen as one extended family. The jural aspects of the relationships and obligations of citizens to one another are articulated in familial terms and tinged with familial coloring which shows that we have not yet completely moved from the status stage to the contract stage, a la Sir Henry Main. This, in turn, has its impact on political behavior. To fudge the political and merge it with the social relieves the state from elaborating viable and efficient political institutions with clearly defined responsibilities and legally accountable apparatus. The relationship between ruler and ruled is not governed by a social contract with clearly stated and mutually binding legal codes and constitutional precepts so much as by mutual obligations vaguely couched in familial and paternal expressions. This leaves the citizen perplexed. He is living in an impersonal crowded urban setting, yet he is supposed to operate and run his daily business according to rural, traditional, small community, face-to-face principles. To deal with such challenges, which are compounded by institutional inefficiency, the citizen is forced to reduce all jural and administrative problems he faces to the level of personal issues. He attaches himself as the clientele of an influential figure with wide network and good connections who would be his patron, or waastah, to look after him, further his interests and help him get what actually should be his right as a citizen.

Furthermore, the familial conception of society has its impact on how the role of public media is perceived. Public media means public exposure, which would violate the concept of sitir. The concept of sitir is an important concept in traditional Arab culture, which is hard to translate into English. It is related to discretion, privacy and cover up. When you pray to Allah to grant you sitir, you are hoping that you live your life honorably and decently without ever being exposed to public shame, disgrace or embarrassment. Public exposure could reveal your weaknesses. You should never reveal your vices, nor your physical and material weaknesses. You should always appear to the outside world as an honorable man of substantial means and strength. That is why you should walk in the streets wearing expensive clothes, even if you have to do it on an empty stomach, because people could see what you are wearing but not what you have eaten.

Therefore, the media should always be laudatory, never critical. Outward criticism of any state official is conceived as parallel to showing disobedience or disrespect to a family authority figure. Criticism could convey the wrong message to the outside world, that the house is divided and, by implication, weak. Any complaint or objection should be communicated to the ruler in his majlis or submitted in a written letter addressed discretely to the proper channels without broadcasting it to the outside world. A nation, like a family, should appear strong and united behind the ruler, like members of a family behind a patriarch. The ruler is like a patriarch and the people are his children. This is aptly expressed by one of the princess when the three Saudi reformists were released from jail at the inauguration of king Abdullah. The prince justified their release by saying that they were children who erred against their father and their father forgives them.

What I have said so far is intricately interlinked with another widely circulated concept that has been gaining grounds lately because it has proven to be politically expedient. This is the concept of khusousiyyah.

khusousiyyah has a broad semantic field and a wide range of different shades of meaning, among them: authenticity, uniqueness, distinctiveness, peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, and many more. But, as a political slogan, it is an ill-defined concept, which is used as a bulwark against change by conservatives who want to maintain the status quo.

The obscurity and indeterminacy of meaning makes the word an ideal trump card to be used when you want to silence the opponent and win the argument by fiat through appeal to sentimental rather than logical grounds. The concept of khusousiyyah is so loose, any form of oppression, extremism or chauvinism can be justified in the name of preserving and maintaining our khusousiyyah. The word could be used to defend many abuses such as oppression of women. Democracy and human rights go counter to our khusousiyyah. Satellites, the internet and all modern means of communication are resisted because they would impinge on our private culture and dilute our khusousiyyah. Streamlining of the country with the rest of the world is resisted because it means the giving up of khusousiyyah. When liberal voices are raised demanding change they are silenced in the name of khusousiyyah.

The ruling elite and the religious establishment both are allied in their championing of khusousiyyah. They use it, each in its own way, to entrench their positions and strengthen their hold on the populace. But this alliance between the political and the religious establishments does not always work out smoothly. Considerations of expediency, realpolitik and pressures, internal and external, may force the political establishment sometimes to make calculated concessions. This offers the religious establishment the opportunity to present itself to the masses and pose as the real champion of khusousiyyah. Thus, khusousiyyah becomes a political commodity that goes for the bidder who offers the highest price, in terms of more extreme rhetoric and more fundamentalist discourse. That is why the government can not have its cake and eat too. Relying on the religious establishment for legitimacy entails succumbing to their fundamentalist ideology.

Even people with no vested political interest in maintaining khusousiyyah adhere to the concept as a self defense mechanism against the sudden onslaught of the modern world which barged unexpectedly as an uninvited guest on their private world and their private homes.

There is no objections against using khusousiyyah in the anthropological sense of cultural relativity, meaning that each culture is unique to itself, or when it is used as a symbol of national identity to promote national cohesion and instill pride and self-respect. But when the concept is used as a political and ideological club to be weilded against progressive thinking, then it becomes very harmful indeed.

Let me conclude by asserting that the point of this presentation is not to make a political statement or to lodge a protest against the status que. My purpose, which I hope that I have managed to accomplish, is to present you with a detached socio-political assessment of what is happening and why it is happening. I only hope that this is a cultural stage we will soon pass by. After all, we have to keep in mind that the idea of cultural evolution and social progress, as well as the idea of individual liberty, are late discoveries in the intellectual development of mankind. Less than two centuries ago, Europe was still debating merits of the ancients versus merits of the moderns. Individual liberty and freedom of choice are the products of the principle of laissez-faire, which is concomitant with capitalism and market economy, themselves products of the industrial revolution, itself a product of the scientific revolution. So, may be before we clamor for individual freedom and liberty we should work towards reaching scientific and intellectual freedom.

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