(This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)
Who Is the European?
In the first part of this essay, I offered a concise explanation of what I mean when I speak of “we Arabs.” That definition may not correspond to what others understand by the phrase, nor to one upon which there is general agreement. Yet since I am the one engaging this subject, the reader has a right to know precisely how I use the term. I was struck by the reactions that reached me from friends whose perspectives I value deeply.
For the same reason, I find it necessary to clarify what I mean by the word “European”—or “Western,” terms that are often used interchangeably in our discourse. By European I do not mean every individual who happens to reside on the landmass conventionally labelled the European continent. Such a definition is, to me, devoid of meaning. The borders of that continent were drawn arbitrarily, and its inhabitants comprise a mosaic of peoples who share no single, unified identity. To speak of a European in this sense is no different from speaking of an Asian: it signifies nothing more than geographic location.
For the term European to carry meaning in this discussion, it must denote a shared political and intellectual project. Given the brevity of this essay—and I regret to admit that I am constrained to such brevity by the way social media has eroded the modern reader’s patience for sustained argument—I cannot delve at length into the historical roots of Europe’s political and ideological divisions. I will therefore confine myself to the essential elements that inform my definition of the European, in order to connect that definition to the way this European confronts us.
By European, I mean one who belongs to those peoples who descend primarily from the Germanic tribes that settled central and western Europe; who embraced Christianity following Rome’s official conversion in 380 CE; whom Rome succeeded in mobilizing into a unified force that invaded and colonized the Mediterranean shores of our region; who founded the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and later American fleets that traversed the oceans of the world as conquerors; who seized the continents of the Americas and Australia and settled them only after annihilating their indigenous populations; who harnessed the Industrial Revolution to a vast project of expansion and exploitation that culminated in the most catastrophic wars in human history; and who, in our own time, transformed the digital information revolution into a new instrument of global domination.
The European of whom I speak is one among these peoples whose shared identity I have only sketched. Today they inhabit a geographical arc extending westward from Vienna to the American continent, curving to encompass Australia and New Zealand, passing through South Africa, and terminating in Palestine. They are bound by a common political and intellectual identity, elements of which I will outline, as circumstances permit, in this essay and those that follow.
My choice of Vienna as a geographical boundary is neither accidental nor arbitrary. I borrow here the famous dictum of the Austrian statesman Metternich (1773–1859), who declared that civilization ends at Vienna. In this pronouncement, Metternich gave voice to a European conviction: that Western Europe alone is civilized, and that everything east of Vienna lies beyond the pale. What escaped Metternich—and many European statesmen like him—is that Greece, from which Europe proudly claims to have drawn the foundations of its thought, lies east of Vienna.
My definition of the European, then, is not idiosyncratic; Europeans themselves have long embraced it, as Metternich so succinctly expressed. The clearest evidence lies in Europe’s enduring stance toward the Slavs—the constellation of peoples who settled Eastern Europe and geographical Russia. Europeans have persistently refused to recognize them as part of their own and have demonstrated centuries of hostility toward them. I do not seek here to analyze the causes of this hostility; it suffices to note it in support of my argument. Indeed, it is the Russian scholar who is best positioned to illuminate its deeper roots.
What history reveals is a sustained European antagonism toward Russia, regardless of Russia’s internal political order—an order that is invoked merely as a convenient pretext. Napoleon once marshalled a vast army and rode across Europe in an attempt to seize Moscow, only to collapse at its gates. Europe failed to learn from this catastrophe. Hitler later unleashed the full might of Germany—its armour, artillery, and air power—against Russia, laying siege to Leningrad for a thousand days, only to be repelled by the legendary resilience of the Russian people.
The Soviet Union eventually fell, and from its ruins emerged a nationalist Russia aspiring to become a capitalist state, embracing the market economy that Europe itself had set as a condition for acceptance. Yet Russia remains excluded. Despite its repeated overtures—despite its insistence on speaking of Europeans as partners or allies—Europe continues to depict Russia as an existential threat, as though Russia were the one deploying missile systems along the borders of Paris, London, or Washington, rather than the reverse.
Some have sought to justify Hitler’s invasion of Russia by citing his opposition to communism, thereby unwittingly affirming a deeper European conviction: that Europe alone possesses the authority to decide how the rest of humanity ought to live. Yet this argument collapses when applied to Napoleon, for Tsarist Russia was neither communist nor an ideological menace to France. Nor does it explain Europe’s continued rejection of Russia today, even after Russia abandoned communism and became one of the world’s most vocal opponents of one-party rule.
For the purposes of this inquiry, Europe’s hostility toward the Slavs confirms my central claim: the European I describe is defined by a shared political and intellectual lineage that excludes even those who inhabit Europe but do not partake in that heritage, whatever the reason. Vladimir Putin may be unjust—but is Netanyahu any less so? And how does European media portray each of them?
Some years ago, I was invited by the English Bar to attend a lecture delivered by the President of the International Criminal Court. During the intermission, a British colleague posed a question that surely haunted many minds: could the president imagine a day when Tony Blair might stand before that court to answer for the invasion and devastation of Iraq? The response was not an argument, nor a denial—but laughter.
Yet when Europe took offense at the defiance of the Slavic leader Slobodan Milošević, it hastily constructed a special tribunal in violation of international law, for the United Nations Charter grants no authority to create such courts. Milošević was humiliated and made an example of—not merely to punish a Slav, but to intimidate every non-European leader, to impress upon them that Europe alone writes the law, alters it at will, and dictates the moral standards by which others are judged. Even the laws of human rights may be revised at Europe’s discretion, for Europe is their grantor; they are not, as the naïve imagine, inherent in human dignity itself.
This, for me, is history. And whoever fails to understand history cannot grasp the present, nor can they hope to anticipate the future.
In the coming instalments, I will attempt to examine how Europe came to choose us as its enemies, how the confrontation unfolded, and where this path is leading us.
To be continued…