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The Arab world consists of those countries which use
Arabic as the language of government and domestic usage. However,
spoken Arabic is not now a unified language. The Arabs spread
out from the Arabian peninsula in the time of the Prophet Mohammed,
1300 years ago. The spoken language has diverged into dialects,
just as Latin grew into Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian
and Romanian.
Thus at one extreme the spoken Arabic of Morocco is not easily
understood by Arabs of the original homeland in the Arabian peninsula
where the most conservative Arabic is spoken, close to the language
of the Quran.
Nevertheless, a standard written Arabic is taught in the schools,
based on the language of the Quran, so that books and newspapers
can circulate throughout the Arab world. Moreover, in the electronic
media Egypt has a preponderance in the production of television
soap operas and other programs. The result is that just as American
English is familiar to British people, Egyptian Arabic is familiar
to most Arab people.
This has implications for the ideal of Arab unity. What is
a nation? Must it consist of people who understand each other?
It seems unlikely that all these states will unite into a single
Arab state, but there are calls for such unity from many political
parties.
The Arabs originated in the area of modern Saudi Arabia. One
strand is regarded as descending from Ismail, Ibrahim's son by
Hagar. By Roman times there were settled Arabs living in the
area of modern Jordan and the Sinai. Two kingdoms of Arabic speakers
were maintained by the Persians and Romans as buffer states:
in the west the Romans supported the Ghassan who occupied the
land once belonging to the Nabataeans; to the east the Persians
similarly supported the kingdom of Lakhm along the south coast
of the Gulf. These kingdoms were the area where the main group
of nomadic Arabs met the settled states. The kings were paid
a subsidy by the governments of the empires. Byzantium for much
of its history had a policy of subsidizing buffer states on its
borders to keep them quiet. Before Islam there was an Arab Roman
Emperor, which indicates that Arabs served in the Roman armies
of the later Empire.
What brought the Arabs out of this area was the spread of
Islam. The Arabs were
converted by the Prophet Mohammed and took their religion to
the area now shown on this map. After a period of some centuries
their language prevailed over the previous languages used in
the area of the conquest. The difference in modern dialects probably
reflects the influence of the original languages: thus in the
Levant Arabic replaced
Aramaic, a similar language, and Greek; in Egypt it replaced
Coptic - the language of the Ancient Egyptians - and in North
Africa it still coexists with Berber. To the east of the Euphrates
Arabic became a language of education but Old Persian and Arabic
formed a new synthesis of modern Persian (Farsi) which became
the language of the people and government and Arabic is now taught
only as a second or foreign language.
Arab unity has been a political aspiration since the late
19th century, perhaps inspired by the work of Jamaludin Al Afghani,
an Afghan statesman of the period. Some Arab thinkers wished
to restore the Arab empire of the time of the Omayyad and early
Abbasid Caliphs - before the world of Islam came under the control
of Persians and Turks. Most Arabs believe that unity has been
frustrated by the western powers who replaced the Turks as overlords.
During the first world war there was a revolt by the Arabs
(assisted by T.E.Lawrence) in what are now Saudi Arabia, Jordan
and Syria against the Turks, who were defeated. They believed
Lawrence had promised them western support in setting up their
own Arab nation state in succession to the Ottoman Empire. But
the Peace Conference ignored their wishes and divided them between
the British and French as quasi-colonies - League of Nations
Mandated territories. This was the result of the so-called Sykes-Picot
Agreement (after the foreign ministers of Britain and France).
Both imperial powers behaved much as they did in the rest of
their colonial empires. The British Intelligence officer, T.E.Lawrence,
apparently represented a faction in the British government that
intended to create a British Arab Dominion similar to British India with
the Hashemite Prince (Sharif) of Makkah as its nominal head.
This was frustrated by the French who desired their own share
in Syria and Lebanon.
Thus the British controlled directly Palestine, Jordan and Iraq
and occupied the Gulf states of Kuwait, Bahrain and Trucial Oman
(now United Arab Emirates). Over Saudi Arabia they exercised only influence
which was lost to the Americans after oil was discovered.
A useful article by Jonathan Raban on the real problem of
the Middle East - artificial state borders.
Following the second world war the Arab world found itself
divided into a number of separate weak and unstable states which
share with much of the post-colonial world the condition of lacking
historic legitimacy. The north African Arab countries, in addition,
were still colonies and several them of them fought against their
European overlords - in Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. The coming
of oil brought great wealth to several Arab states but until
the 1970s the wealth was controlled by Western oil companies,
and after 1973 was in the hands of the traditional ruling families.
In few states was the wealth used to benefit the whole people,
and in none of them was there democracy. At present only in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco,
Kuwait and Tunisia is there even the possibility of
more than one party in parliament (Lebanon,
as so often, is a special case).
At the end of the second world war the Arab states formed
an Arab League as a forum in which they could co-operate and
perhaps as a vehicle for future unity. Like many such regional
organizations it has had little political effect.
The frustrations many Arabs feel about their powerlessness
in the face of Israel, and western control of the world economy,
has led to popular support (usually outside their home countries)
for dictators, such as Saddam Hussein and Hafiz Assad. Publicly
these were seen by westerners as reminiscent of the European
totalitarian
dictators of the 1930s. Privately, western governments may
have preferred them to democracy as they were more predictable.
Most Arabs blame the western powers for their support of Israel
which is universally seen as a western settler state on Arab
land. Can the instability of this area and the hatred of many
of its politicians for western powers come to an end? Probably
only if the Palestine
problem can find a solution.
There is a question about whether Arab culture prevents the
evolution of democratic politics in a western sense. Almost all
regimes are composed of tribal, clan or family groups. Like the
alleged structure of the Mafia,
every president or king surrounds himself with people from his
own kin group. Saddam Hussein's government was composed almost
entirely of people either from his own family or from his home
town of Takrit. Hafiz Assad (succeeded by his son, Bashar) of
Syria represented only a small religious sect: the Alawites,
an offshoot of Shi'ism. The Gulf monarchies are all family ruled.
Only Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan have any measure of electoral
politics and there too, it seems unlikely that the voters could
or would change the party in power.
Not all Arabs are Muslim.
There are significant Christian minorities in Egypt (20%), Lebanon,
Palestine and Iraq. There are also Druze in Palestine, Syria
and Lebanon. The Druze religion appears to be a sectarian development
out of Islam.
Somalia,
although not Arabic speaking, has been a member of the Arab League
(when it had a government).
In March 2005 it was being said that change is on the way.
In Lebanon a popular uprising, similar to that in Ukraine (and
consciously modelled on that) called for the removal of the Syrian
occupation forces, and democracy to follow. They did leave. In
turn this is leading to possible questioning of the dictatorship
in Syria itself. In Egypt Mubarak announced that opposition candidates
could stand for election for the presidency in August 2005. Did
this happen? Not really. It was only a token gesture.
In 2006 the progress was halted when Israel attacked Lebanon
with aerial bombing and a land invasion, ostensibly against Hezbullah.
The main result of the attack was to strengthen Hezbullah's popularity,
and to destroy much of the Lebanon's infrastructure.
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