Thursday, June 04, 2009
The Twin Fascisms: Arabism & Islamism
The Twin Fascisms: Arabism & Islamism
All minorities living within the Arab world are under siege. Tunisian human rights activist Muhammad Bechri has traced this to the “twin fascisms” – his term – that dominate the Arab world, Islamism and pan-Arabism. The first promotes murderous intolerance of religious minorities. It helps explain why Christians are under siege across the Arab world and why Sudan enjoyed broad Arab support as it killed some two million non-Muslim blacks in the south of the country.http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=688A19CA-9922-45EB-A57D-B6E67266E79A
Pan-Arabism translates into endorsement of murderous policies toward Muslim but
non-Arab groups and accounts for Arab support for Saddam Hussein as he
slaughtered 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq, as well as backing for Sudanese
policies toward the Muslim but black population of Darfur.The Arab world is not about to make an exception for the Jews. This broad intolerance of minorities is further evidence of how unlikely it is the Arab world will accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in its midst any time soon.
MEMRI: Special Dispatch - No. 835 'The Arab Silence Can Only Be Explainedhttp://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=sd&ID=SP83504&Page=archives
Once We Understand the True Nature of the Twin Fascisms of Islamism and Pan-Arabism' ...
Israel
as the result of the national liberation movement of the region’s aboriginal Jews. Liberation of the aboriginal Jews (and anyone else lucky enough
to find refuge within Israel’s borders) from the twin fascisms of pan-Arabism and Islamism which have oppressed and even eliminated so many of the region’s aboriginal ethnic groups. Israel’s aboriginal Jews were not unique in accepting outside help (and even immigration) in their liberation struggle. Lebanon’s Maronites; Egypt’s Copts, Iraq and Turkey’s Kurds, and Iran’s Zoroastrians have all sought and received outside help in their liberation struggles, each group according to its own circumstances.http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzY4ZjgzMDY3NmExNmE4ODM5NDRmODg3N2I5YTU4YWI=
Non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the “Arab” world
One key element missing from the discussion is the question of non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the “Arab” world. The Arab nationalists have succeeded in establishing some 23 non-democratic, ethnically (Arab) and religiously (Islam) defined nation-states in over 1 million square miles of territory, often at the expense of non-Arabs, such as the Kurds (Muslims, non-Arabs), Assyrians (Christians, non-Arabs), Copts (Christians, non-Arabs), southern Sudanese (Christian and pagan non-Arabs), Maronite Lebanese (Christian and mostly identified with their Phoenician ancestors) and Mizrahi Jews. Arab nationalist ideology claims all this territory exclusively as “Arab” despite the legitimate claims of non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims to ancient homelands long ago arabized with the spread of Islam, often through conquest.
I believe that the Arab opposition to the existence of non-Arab, non-Muslim Israel is based on the ideological motivations which led to the persecution of non-Arab minorities. The Assyrians suffered massacre and expulsion by the Arab nationalists of Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s. The Kurds have been persecuted and have suffered terribly for their struggle to establish an independent Kurdistan (at the hands of the Turks and Iranians as well, but that is another story.)
Arab nationalist ideology, and its Islamicist couterpart, cannot and
will not tolerate non-Arab and non-Islamic peoples organizing themselves into their own independent nation states. Indeed, I have seen on Islamicist web sites the goal of “regaining” Spain in the name of Islam.
I believe that we need to place Israel’s struggle to survive into this context. Any non-Arab/non-Islamic state in the region must rely on strength (political, moral, spiritual and military) if it wants to survive in the Middle East. In this context can we thus place
Israel’s demand for security. It is not security for the sake of security, not seucirty for the sake of oppressing another people, but security for the sake of survival against two racist and exclusivist ideologies (Arabism and Islamicism) which have succeeded in repressing the just struggles for national self-determination of most non-Arab peoples in the Middle East.
Labels: Arabism is racism, Islamism, twin fascisms
