(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.)
What Did the Arab Islamists Do?
In the previous part, I concluded that under the nation-state created by European colonialism—whose borders were drawn arbitrarily and without regard for the peoples who inhabited them—society divided into three broad groups: Islamist, nationalist, and communist.
Before examining what each of these groups did, a brief but necessary clarification must be made. We must remember that our region in the aftermath of the First World War was very different from what it appears to be today— something easily lost on the reader amid the pitiful attempts, amplified by equally pitiful media, of several artificial mini-states created after the Second World War to fabricate histories that exist nowhere, not even in imagination.
In the period following the First World War, when European colonialism carved up our region, there was no State of Kuwait, no United Arab Emirates, no State of Qatar, and no State of Bahrain. When I say these states did not exist, I do not mean merely in the political sense of sovereign entities; I mean that there was not even a historical consciousness, a social memory, or a collective sense among the people that such entities had ever existed in any form.
The political, intellectual, and social reality of the region after the First World War consisted of three active urban centres that shaped politics, thought, history, and geography: Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. Thus, when we speak of what the aforementioned groups did, we are in fact examining what these three currents did within those three cities.
And when I say that people divided into three groups, I do not mean that all the peoples of the region can be neatly classified under one of them. Most people are not sufficiently engaged with their reality to concern themselves with shaping tomorrow or altering today. Those who do concern themselves with such matters—and act accordingly—are the true agents of history, even if they are few.
The Arab Islamists perceived European domination as a challenge to the Islamic worldview upon which they relied—a worldview that had long provided continuity and reassurance without requiring them to confront questions of
legitimacy or rationality. When individuals are confronted with new ideas carrying values and principles unfamiliar to them, the easiest response is often retreat into the familiar. Thus, proponents of political Islam found the simplest way to confront European colonial thought was to call for a return to the Islamic state.
This necessitated cultivating an intellectual conviction that viewed the history of the Islamic state with unqualified approval, deliberately overlooking its injustices and flaws. The history of the Islamic state was thus transformed into a radiant page of justice, security, fairness, and progress. In truth, it was not so. Yet persuading people otherwise was not difficult, for the oppressed are naturally willing to overlook historical defects if the positive elements promise a future better than the alien European alternative imposed upon them.
Political Islam, however, soon encountered a fundamental obstacle: there was no single, unified political Islam upon which Arabs could agree.
This reality did not escape European colonial planners. In fact, they recognized it a century before occupying the region, while preparing their strategies and awaiting the collapse of the Ottoman state. Accordingly, they hastened to contain and nurture the alliance between Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud, which gave rise to what later became known as the Wahhabi movement—the oldest political party in the region.
The Wahhabi movement, which was not merely a religious doctrine but a political project, was hostile not only to Shiʿism but to all other schools of thought, including other Sunni traditions. Thus, the first political Islamic project was divisive rather than unifying, and it ultimately came to serve European
Zionist colonial interests rather than oppose them.
The Zionist project, preparing to invade our region, clearly understood the dangers that might obstruct its goals. Consequently, it supported and cultivated political Islam even before the establishment of the artificial nation-states created after the conquest of the region. The aim was to secure a tool capable of pressuring and blackmailing the nation-state by mobilizing political Islam whenever the state deviated from serving Zionist interests. Political Islam, in turn, became hostage to Zionist leverage exerted through pressure on the national state to distance itself from religious legitimacy.
Despite its early formation, the Wahhabi movement’s ability to influence regional politics was constrained by two factors. First, oil had not yet become a decisive force capable of granting Wahhabism the financial power needed to shape political outcomes. Second, the Arab of Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo
viewed with condescension any ideology emanating from the Bedouin societies of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Consequently, the Wahhabi project remained confined—until late in the twentieth century—within the political boundaries of what later became the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Its first overt regional manifestation occurred during the frenzied Afghan campaign, in which Saudi Arabia financed a devastating war that killed Muslims—Arab and non-Arab alike—alongside Russians, and destroyed Afghanistan, all in service of the Zionist objective of defeating the Soviet Union.
Recognizing the limited appeal of Wahhabism, the Zionist project sought Islamic political movements better suited to the intellectual climate of the region. Thus, it swiftly supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, encouraging them to confront Gamal Abdel Nasser rather than King Farouk. It supported the Brotherhood’s role in Syria’s secession from Egypt in 1961, then backed their uprising against the Baʿathist government under Amin al-Hafiz in Syria. It established Hizb al-Tahrir in Jordan and embraced the Daʿwa Party in Iraq—among other examples.
In this way, the Zionist project succeeded in using political Islam through two channels: sectarian fragmentation, as in Iraq, and the exhaustion and sabotage of the nationalist project that had dominated the region’s politics after the Second World War—a natural expression of the aspiration to build a unified national state to replace the colonial nation-states imposed after the First World War.
What ultimately occurred is that political Islam participated in dismantling national states that did not align with Zionist objectives, yet failed to build the religious state it claimed to seek. On the contrary, whenever it achieved even partial power, it closed the door on the very democracy it professed to desire, as in Egypt. It destroyed the country entirely and dismantled all state institutions, as in Syria. And it collaborated with invaders in the occupation of its own land—calling it “liberation”—then submerged the nation in staggering corruption, as in Iraq.
Arab Islamists have failed—utterly and disastrously.
So, what, then, did the communists do?
That is what I shall attempt to examine next…
To be continued…