Islamic Nationalism

Both Israel and the United States have throughout failed to see how the widespread perception that their strategic alliance is aimed at controlling the Middle East is affecting the peoples of the region.

If there are cycles to history, or at least stages evolving with some predictability, then it can be said that the Middle East, its diversity notwithstanding, may find its new identity and maybe even its unity in the rising Islamic nationalism.

Unlike Arab secular nationalism, which sprang from the top, Islamic nationalism rises from a popular base. Grounded in traditional Islamic values which strongly bind all Muslims irrespective of national characteristics, Islamic nationalism is stimulated by the failure of secular regimes to govern properly and to produce the necessities of their respective societies. The movement is also stimulated by the Israeli- American treatment of the Palestine Question, and more recently by the Palestinians’ treatment under Israeli occupation. Lastly, American arrogance and misguided approach has driven the movement’s rise.

It is hard to predict how Islamic nationalism will unfold and affect the region, but its impact is, in many respects, already evident. Islamic nationalism is, at this stage, more nationalistic than worldwide Islamicism. This is evident in the cases of Iran and Afghanistan, where an Islamic revolution seized power, and almost the case with Pakistan, Sudan, and Algeria, where the same result did not occur.

Even though it is hard to predict the success or failure of Islamic nationalism in the region, it is easier to predict its continued efforts at seizing power for at least the next decade. For sure, their resort to violence will increase in this decade. If Afghanistan and Iraq are an indication of how the United States will react to it, Islamic nationalism will gain ground. But it is mainly the way in which Israel and the United States deal with the Palestinians that will be the driving engine of Islamic nationalism in the region and beyond it. Thus, it is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which started as the Palestinian-Jewish conflict over sharing/dividing Palestine and which has reverted to that, that is critical to peace in the region. Just as Britain underestimated Arab and Jewish nationalism between 1914 and 1945 and thought it could control it, the United States is underestimating Islamic nationalism.

It should be noted, however, that all the region’s ills are not derived from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, nor for that matter, from Israel. For if that conflict were resolved tomorrow and Israel disappeared from the world map, the Arab world would remain in turmoil and the Islamic national revolution would continue to gain ground. The conditions within each and every Arab state are only marginally caused by Israel or by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, even when these countries are politically impacted by that conflict. Surely corrupt and inefficient regimes, growing populations, lack of productivity, weak economies, and lack of national purpose and social discipline cannot be blamed on Israel. Other countries facing conflict situations have managed to progress and develop—suffice it to recall Taiwan in the face of China, and South Korea in the face of North Korea.

Countries which faced almost insurmountable difficulties in the aftermath of WWII, like India and Malaysia, have overcome them and are now developed societies. Even populous Muslim societies like Indonesia have managed to made progress. And Turkey, dismembered after WWI, is now a developed European country. To blame Israel for the woes of Arab states is demagoguery. To blame it for the plight of the Palestinians is valid, but to absolve the Palestinian and Arab leadership from blame is historic fallacy.

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