Arab Nationalism - Ideology

Ideology

Arab nationalists believe that the Arab nation had existed as a historical entity prior to the rise of nationalism in the 19th–20th century. The Arab nation was formed through the gradual establishment of Arabic as the language of communication and with the advent of Islam as a religion and culture in the region. Both Arabic and Islam served as the pillars of the nation. According to writer Youssef Choueiri, Arab nationalism represents the "Arabs' consciousness of their specific characteristics as well as their endeavor to build a modern state capable of representing the common will of the nation and all its constituent parts."

Within the Arab nationalist movement are three differentiations: the Arab nation, Arab nationalism, and pan-Arab unity. Jamil al-Sayyid, a founder of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party, claims the nation is the group of people who speak Arabic, inhabit the Arab world, and who have a feeling of belonging to the same nation. Nationalism is the "sum total" of the characteristics and qualities exclusive to the Arab nation, whereas pan-Arab unity is the modern idea which stipulates that the separate Arab countries should unify to form a single state under one political system.

Local patriotism centered on individual Arab countries was incorporated into the framework of Arab nationalism starting in the 1920s. This was done by positioning the Arabian Peninsula as the homeland of the Semitic peoples (the Canaanites and Aramaeans of the Levant and the Assyrians and Babylonians of Mesopotamia) who migrated throughout the Middle East in ancient times or by associating the other pre-Islamic cultures, such as those of Egypt and North Africa and Horn of Africa, into an evolving Arab identity.

The modern Arabic language actually has two distinct words which can be translated into English as "nationalism": qawmiyya قومية, derived from the word qawm (meaning "tribe, ethnic nationality"), and wataniyya وطنية, derived from the word watan (meaning "homeland, native country"). The word qawmiyya has been used to refer to pan-Arab nationalism, while wataniyya has been used to refer to patriotism at a more local level (sometimes disparaged as "regionalism" by those who consider pan-Arabism the only true form of Arab nationalism).

In the post-World War years, the concept of qawmiyya "gradually assumed a leftist coloration, calling for ... the creation of revolutionary Arab unity." Groups who subscribed to this point of view advocated opposition, violent and non-violent, against Israel and against Arabs who did not subscribe to this point of view. The person most identified with qawmiyya was Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, who used both military and political power to spread his version of pan-Arab ideology throughout the Arab world. George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, influenced Palestinian Arabs to accept a Nasserist approach to politics. While qawmiyya still remains a potent political force today, the death of Nasser and the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War has weakened faith in this ideal. The current dominant ideology among Arab policy makers has shifted to wataniyya.