Identity and democracy

Azmi Bishara delves into the use and abuse of Arab, as adjective and identity
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/753/op31.htm
One cannot help but notice in the course of the ongoing debate on democracy and reform in the
Arab world that those who are most adamant in denying the existence of such a thing as Arab
identity are the quickest to lump all these countries together when it comes to criticising them.
Arab, as a collective designation, is okay as long as it is used in a negative context. This raises the
question as to what Arab identity might mean these days to those with good intentions.
I have no intention of resurrecting identity politics of any sort. Far better remain hungry for
theoretical insight than gorge oneself on illusory answers that play on the emotions. Identity
politics are disastrous. They blur differences between social and political forces. They give rich and
poor a single identity, and allow the former to speak for the latter, happy to share an identity if not
the nation's wealth.
Instead of civil rights -- the right of individual citizens -- to have their views and interests advocated
on representative bodies, identity politics allows only for the representation of identities, for which
purpose people are divided according to their ethnic or denominational affiliations rather than on
the basis of their convictions and political beliefs.
The question of identity must, of course, be addressed. It must be addressed because the power
that dominates the world is pursuing the most pernicious sort of identity politics, imposing a clash
of civilisations where no such tensions had previously existed. It must be addressed because,
among those who formulate the policies of the sole superpower, suspicious eyebrows are raised at
the mere suggestion of an Arab identity.
Persistent attempts to refute an identity are the most telling confirmation of its existence. Such
attempts also underline the existence of an ulterior motive for the refutation. Deconstructing
theories in such a way as to pinpoint that motive is the challenge that faces all who want to
seriously address the issues raised by identity.
There is no point in enumerating traits that make up Arab identity: that is a kind of knee-jerk selfdefence. Rather, we should first ask what lies behind this scepticism over the very existence of an
Arab identity. In this context, it is germane to wonder why in Iraq, after recognising a Kurdish
identity, they now speak of a Shia-Sunni-Kurdish federation rather than an Arab-Kurdish federation.
Why are the Kurds treated as though they are bound by an identity founded upon common ethnic
and cultural origins, or upon a belief in their descent from a legendary forefather, whereas the
Arabs are not allowed an ethnic affiliation, let alone national identity? People from more than a
hundred different nationalities and as many cultural and ethnic origins were subsumed under a
single national identity in Israel. It was a process that took place in the modern world and no one
batted an eyelash. Moreover, today, the Arabs are being asked not only to recognise Israel but to
recognise its national character as a Jewish state. Yet, the Arabs have to justify the existence of an
Arab identity. How very odd indeed.
There is no reason why we should not discuss the benefits to be had from regarding our Arabness
as a national identity that supersedes cultural bonds. Many democratically minded people admit to
the existence of only a single nation, based on citizenship, the community from which the nation
state arose or else itself created in the process of nation building. The existence of an Arab national
identity without citizens hinders the emergence of any meaningful form of citizenship capable of
taking the issue of democracy in existing Arab states seriously. If the aim of the state is to serve its
citizens, then there are bound to be those who would rather wait until the Arab nations unite,
postponing the task of democratisation and taking refuge in national causes in order to obstruct
democratic rights and institutions and the sovereignty of law.
So what is and what is not meant by the notion of adhering to Arab identity? What, in so doing, is
legitimate, and what is not?

It is alarming that when Arab states shrug off their Arab identity or withdraw their commitment to
an overarching Arab nationality they continue to attempt to solidify a national identity that
conforms with the boundaries of the state and that can serve as a foundation for building an
overriding concept of citizenship. As a result the state disintegrates into a motley collection of
sectarian, regional or tribal affiliations producing, at best, a state for sects or tribes rather than a
state for all citizens. In other words, the juridical personality that stands before the state is not the
individual citizen but the pre-modernist organic group. Since, in many instances, dictatorial regimes
demolished the civil structures they inherited without providing alternative structures to establish
the bond of citizenship people had no alternative, when these regimes collapsed or succumbed to
outside pressures to reform, but to fall back on the only remaining social structures, the clan or the
religious sect. These were the only structures that could mediate between the individual and the
state, and the only structures to which the individual could turn for support and protection, even if
this came at the price of individuality and the free and independent exercise of political will. These
dictatorial republics also made their populations recoil from pan-Arabism, which had been co-opted
as an ideological prop for the regime.
Just as it is useful to examine the political and economic interests that gave rise to pan- Arabism as
a political identity in the reputedly liberal post-World War I period, and then as a political ideology
following World War II and, specifically, after 1948, it is also useful to useful to examine the political
and economic interests that are prompting the denial of Arab identity, or at least its
depoliticisation, at a time when existing regimes and American hegemony are politicising kinship
and sectarian affiliations and when their opponents are politicising religion.
The tragedy is that the identity of the regional state, as opposed to pan-Arab identity, is laden with
-- indeed, perceives itself in terms of -- its indigenous and potentially politicisable tribal or sectarian
composition. This applies even to those instances in which state boundaries have historical
legitimacy and are not regarded as the product of colonialist partitions, as is the case with Egypt,
Morocco, Bahrain and, to a certain extent, Lebanon if we confine ourselves to its status under the
Ottoman Empire, which some posit as favourable to democracy. In fact, pushing regional state
identity as the alternative to Arab identity, rather than as complementary with it, exacerbates the
crises of identity allegiances within the region state.
The importance of Arab identity does not reside in the fact that it is an expression of nostalgia for
regimes that once used it as an ideological prop. Rather, it resides in the fact that it has remained in
the collective political memory as an expression of the dream that emerged among Arab elites and
middle classes in the Levant and Fertile Crescent at precisely that period when succumbed to a
modernist optimism. Since Arab identity was associated with the modernist project of the Arab
middle classes, which envisioned a united Arab market and economy within the borders of a united
Arab state, it was conceptually more open. In actual application it permitted for the inclusion of
non-Arab peoples, whose actual origins are now obscure except perhaps to ethnologists, into the
fold of urban Arabism, and by virtue of its inclusiveness it worked to politically neutralise their
other identities. Arabism was not an ethnic, but rather a political and cultural construct. Because
Arabism was associated with the drive to throw off Turkish hegemony, and then with the struggle
against the partition of Arab lands according to the rulers of the colonialists, it has retained a
cherished place in the hearts of the Arab peoples and a mobilising power that every progressive
movement in the region has sought to tap.
There are several reasons for viewing the battle over democracy within this context. Only much
later was Arab identity recruited into the service of conformist ideologies that negated the rights of
non-Arab minorities, and the more fragmented the Arab world became the more strident and
exclusivist these ideologies became, as if demagoguery could compensate for reality.
Arab identity continues to exist as a language, a shared history, a legal identity and a call for
solidarity in the face of foreign intervention. Within a democratic programme it could become an
instrument for uniting the Arab majority in every individual Arab state within the framework of a
homogeneous cultural identity, without obviating the state's character as a state for all its citizens --

Arabs and non-Arabs alike -- and without encroaching on the collective cultural rights of non-Arab
minorities. Such homogeneity works to neutralise sectarian differences in the political arena while
providing the framework for the plurality of opinion and political platforms.
Would a common supra-national affiliation to Arab identity conflict with democracy? Not at all.
Such an affiliation can still form the basis for realising the dream of a federal unity between
democratic states, as occurred in Europe for example, even in the absence of a common national
identity. Nor is there a reason why such a drive should not draw on the old dream of Arab unity,
even if it is out of date and can no longer be put into effect in the fashion imagined in its heyday. It
was an enlightened dream, foregrounding the right to self determination. It was also a dream for
wresting control of the region's natural wealth and then using this wealth for the benefit of all its
people instead of creating a statelet next to every oil well.
To strip the identity of the majority of the population of the adjective Arab can only work to hasten
the disintegration of societies not only into fractured identity affiliations, but politicises these
identities. At best this process produces denominational/sectarian quota systems (which for some
curious reason are called consensual democracies) that entrench traditional, non-democratic
sectarian leaderships. In the worst of circumstances it produces civil war. But it is civil war -- cold or
hot -- that prevails in either case because politics in such societies -- and discrimination, oppression
and other injustices -- does not revolve around policies, counter policies or the analysis of policies,
but simply around identity affiliations and the pitting of one affiliation against the other.
What makes it easy for outside powers to neutralise Arab identity is that each regime has its own
direct and unmediated link with American hegemony. This phenomenon is reflected in the way in
which every Arab nation gives priority to its bilateral relations with the US and European countries
over its relations with other Arab nations. It is also reflected in their readiness to improve relations
with Israel, whenever circumstances permit, by ironing out their differences with Israel as if these
differences had somehow sprung from their Arab identity.
Arab identity, here, is neither a cause nor an effect. It is a phenomenon associated with ruling elites
and their policies. But there is no reason why it should not be asserted, as long as people realise
that it does not hold all the solutions. Nationalism, as an ideology, has always been the property of
right-wing movements, which take nationalism as a guise for identity politics, often of a fascistic
bent, the most extreme examples of which could be seen in many European countries in the 20th
century. However, nationalism is the framework for an affiliation that transcends local organic
affiliations, and in the context of democratic thought there is scope for asserting national identity,
so long as such confirmation promotes the processes of modernisation and democratisation and
helps resistance against Western domination. There is nothing wrong, then, if an advocate of
democracy and social justice in the Arab world appeals to Arab identity, for this helps create a
climate inimical to American hegemony, as well as a climate obstructive to the fundamentalist antiAmerican response which emanates from an antagonism to modernism itself.
Arab democrats, or at least those that are not waiting for the American tanks to arrive, realise that
democracy is a set of values given force by a set of principles and systems -- the peaceful rotation of
authority though the electoral process, the separation of powers, the autonomy of the judiciary,
mechanisms for checking and punishing the abuse of power, a range of civil rights, etc. -- and that
together these make up a cause that has to be fought for and gradually won. However, one also
presumes that they realise that democracy can only take root in a state grounded on popular
legitimacy, for without this precondition only despotism can hold the state together. Either that, or
the process of democratisation triggers the splintering of the country into petty entities. The
presumption of a minimal common identity among citizens is crucial to establishing the legitimacy
of the state. It also makes it possible for the citizenry to side for and against political and social
programmes intended to promote the welfare of the whole, without such divisions degenerating
into civil war