World War 4 Report, NY
March 25 2006
Multicultural Iraq: possible?
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 03/25/2006 – 03:34.
A March 23 commentary from Lebanon’s Daily Star:
A foolish new attraction to oppressive Arab nationalism
By Rayyan al-Shawaf
We are at a critical juncture in the history of the Middle East and
North Africa. The continuing and oftentimes violent debate over
Iraq’s national and religious identity has revived the fortunes of
diehard Arab nationalists, who are now clamoring for a return to the
old formula where Iraq was identified as a purely Arab country.
The irony of this is the obvious unsuitability of any ethnic-based
ideology for the multiethnic societies of the Middle East and North
Africa. If Islam under the Ottoman Empire proved unviable as a
political bond because not all the subjects were Muslim, and not all
Muslims were religious, how can Arab nationalism be any good for the
non-Arab citizens of the region, or even for Arabs who do not
identify strongly with their ethnicity?
Fully 20 percent of Iraqis are not Arab, as is the case with a
similar percentage of Algerians, half the Sudanese population, and a
majority of Moroccans. Syria and Egypt also are home to significant
minorities – Kurds and Copts respectively. Yet all these peoples are
officially relegated to second-class status in their societies. The
solution to such systemic discrimination is abandoning the idea that
the state must be Arab or Islamic or anything else. After all,
coloring the state with an ethnic or religious hue serves to create
one or more social underclasses.
Though the problem is to a large extent the marginalization of
non-Arabs and non-Muslims in a predominantly Arab and Muslim region,
this is not the whole story. Even minorities that are both Arab and
Muslim, for example Shiites in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf
countries, have been oppressed for decades in countries that derive
their legitimacy from Sunni Islam. Similarly, certain Arab
nationalist regimes have oppressed not only non-Arabs, but fellow
Arabs of a different sectarian persuasion. The Shiite Arab majority
in Iraq was disenfranchised under the former, Sunni-led Baath regime,
despite the latter’s Arab nationalist orientation. In Syria, which is
run by a Baath regime under Alawite authority, participation by the
Sunni Arab majority remains controlled.
Non-Arab countries like Israel, Turkey and Iran, where the state
often identifies itself with a specific ethnic or religious group,
are no better. Israel discriminates not only against the Palestinians
of the Occupied Territories, but even against its own Arab citizens,
who make up 20 percent of the Israeli population.
Modern Turkey emerged following the widespread massacre of the
Armenian community, and has in the name of Turkish nationalism sought
to erase the cultural identity of Kurds, who constitute 25 percent of
the population. Alevis, a heterodox Muslim sect, make up 20 percent
of the Turkish population, and like Kurds have traditionally gone
unrecognized.
Islamic Iran not only assigns an inferior status to its Christian and
Jewish citizens, it also discriminates against non-Shiite Muslims.
There is not a single Sunni mosque in all of Tehran, despite the
presence of a large Sunni Muslim minority in the Iranian capital.
As for Arab nationalism, it began as an attempt to forge an
alternative socio-political bond to that represented by Islam, the
ideological underpinning of the Ottoman Empire. Many of its earliest
proponents were Christians, who as subjects of the empire had two
principal reasons for being disaffected: they were neither Muslim nor
Turkish. Though Arab nationalism itself ended up undergoing a process
of “Islamization,” this was but one of many self-defeating
characteristics ingrained in an ideology based entirely on ethnic
affiliation. For while Arabism may have theoretically succeeded in
placing Muslim and Christian Arabs on an equal footing, and can be
credited with making possible the rise of individual Christians to
positions of prominence in countries such as Syria or Iraq, it also
proved a disaster for non-Arabs.
Non-Arab Muslim minorities such as the Amazigh, or Berbers, Kurds,
and Turkmen found themselves officially out of favor. They faced the
prospect of becoming “Arabized” or of being denied political and even
civil rights. Groups that identified themselves as neither Arab nor
Muslim had it even worse: Southern Sudanese, Copts, Jews, and
Assyrians were plunged into a protracted nightmare that saw their
communities ground into anonymity, forcing many to emigrate
permanently. Even Maronites, whose retention of political power in
Lebanon immunized them from utter marginalization, watched with alarm
as Arab nationalist propaganda increasingly portrayed them as a
foreign and sinister element in the heart of the Arab nation.
So Arab nationalism, but also Syrian nationalism and communism (which
were no less destructive), proved to be just as tyrannical and
intolerant as the political Islam of the Ottoman Empire. Despite this
reality, many Arabs continue to cling to these supposedly secular
ideologies as the only buffer against resurgent Islam. Indeed, too
often Christian Arabs and secular Muslims have gravitated toward
nationalism and communism as an attempt to banish the terrifying
specter of an Islamic state.
After all, when democracy is allowed to flourish, they argue, it
results in successes for intolerant Islamic parties, whether in Iraq,
Palestine, or Egypt.
Are Arabs forever doomed, then, to fight one totalitarianism with
another? Will they always be obliged to choose between the lesser of
two evils? Not necessarily. Though it is unwise to ban political
parties with clear religious and ethnic biases, societies can ensure
that the state remains above the fray. They can make it
unconstitutional for any party, regardless of popularity and election
results, to associate the state with a particular religion or
ethnicity. Indeed, states should avoid identifying themselves with
Arab or Turkish or Jewish ethnicity, and Islam or any other religion.
Only then will Arabs and non-Arabs in Middle Eastern societies,
regardless of ethnic and religious affiliation, attain freedom and
equality. Only then will states become states for all their citizens.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
