Experts warn Islamism, social media behind declining Arab identity, national belonging

ASSILAH – Experts, analysts and writers expressed their worries on Tuesday about the future of the Arab identity and national belonging due to many factors, including wars and advanced technologies, that have jeopardised their existence and in the face of a fast developing virtual world that has not been properly exploited.

During a debate called “Identity and National Belonging in Contemporary Arab Thought: Backgrounds and Outcomes”, Moroccan writer Ahmed El Madani said he was deeply shattered in dealing with the subjects as he wondered whether everybody was gathering in the Assilah Forum as militants of perished ideologies or they did not want to lose their illusions.

“Pan-Arabism might be that decaying ash,” said Madani with a grim face, questioning the fact whether he became an Arab writer because “I write in Arabic, grew up in an Arab society and have had a gradually open Arabic education.”

“Pan-Arabism for my generation and myself was the battle of post-independence liberalisation and democracy besides the founding of a national state,” said the writer.

Madani stressed that “our national project” was part of the common Arab circle. But he warned that the Arab identity was in total collapse.

Rashed Saleh al-Araimi, former Secretary General of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and former chief editor of al-Ettihad newspaper, briefly read out the introduction of the final statement of the Arab League summit that was held in Riyadh in 2007 about the definition of Pan-Arabism.

“Pan-Arabism is not an ethnic and racist meaning. It is a common cultural identity. Arabic plays a role expressive of Pan-Arabism and preserves its heritage,” said the statement.

Araimi said that, two years later during a seminar about Arabic, many experts expressed diverging opinions and their worries about the language which was not coping with the current dangers, including the retreat of Pan-Arabism as an idea or a political ideology.

The Emirati analyst pointed out that the defeat of Arab states in the 1967 war against Israel hit political Pan-Arabism hard because countries –Egypt and Syria - which led the conflict bore its brunt in the first place.

“Even Moamer Gadhafi quit Pan-Arabism and headed towards Africa after feeling some kind of despair from his neighbours,” said Araimi.

“The failure of the leftist movement and the icons of Arab nationalism, including (Egyptian President) Jamal Abdennaser in 1967, gave way to the Islamist movement to rise and instill Islam as an important component of Arab unity and was accentuated in the post-Arab Spring,” he said.

Araimi explained that all these factors took their toll on Arab nationalism as a political project.

“If we want to live in this world, we should stick to Arabic and the modern Arab state,” he concluded.

Hatem Ahmed Al-Sridi, professor at the University of Bahrain and communication expert, warned that the Arab identity was going through a deep crisis amid an important role played by social media in worsening it.

Sridi said that Arabs have failed to use the media and social platforms in defending the Arab identity and strengthen the Arab nationalist thought and belonging.

He said that the first failure began in the 1980s, an era that saw a mushrooming rise of broadcast satellites, during which they missed a priceless opportunity to produce cultural and intellectual Arabic television programmes that could have promoted and bolstered the Arab identity.

The second failure was in the 1990s that saw the use of the internet and the collapse of Shiism.

“The internet gave Arabs a chance to support the Arab identity thanks to the network’s international reach in one click amid a fierce rivalry between the different international identities,” he Sridi.

“Unfortunately the Arab world left early this battle of identities,” he added.

Sridi concluded that the third and current failure lied in the misuse of social media to reinforce the Arab culture and identity, citing the example of leading international corporations, including Google and Netflix, which dominate the flow of information and online streaming.