Being Arab
Samir Kassir Verso, 128pp, £10.99
ISBN 1844670996
Contrary to a notion common in the west, in Arab countries no opinion is too dangerous to express. People say whatever they want to say - they simply do it in private. Those who try to disclose in public what is meant to be shared only with a small circle of trusted friends, especially if it relates to political or religious matters, could pay a high price. Samir Kassir, who was murdered last year, was one of these.
Kassir was a journalist and historian of a rare kind. Born in Lebanon in 1960 to a Palestinian father and a Syrian Christian Orthodox mother, he was educated in France and held dual Lebanese and French nationality; a thoroughly secular intellectual, he wrote in both Arabic and French. This variety of education, identities and affiliations encouraged him to express daring views without the fear of being accused of bias and sectarianism; his criticism of the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon could not be seen as an expression of common Lebanese prejudice against Syria. Yet this didn't spare him the wrath of the Syrian forces and their Lebanese servants.
Part historical essay and part political pamphlet, Being Arab is a protest against what Kassir calls the "malaise" and "impasse" of Arab societies. Compared with other nations - not only in western Europe and North America, but also in Asia and Latin America - Arabs' absence from the records of economical growth, democratic politics, liberal institutions and technological progress is all too visible. Worse still is that most Arabs, apart from adherents of political Islam, have resigned themselves to the current stalemate as if it were their inescapable fate.
But Kassir was not a "self-hating Arab", nor did he belong to the Arabic group of neo-cons, such as Kanan Makiya and Fouad Ajami, who believe that redemption is possible only through American troops invading Arab capitals. On the contrary, he argues that British, French, American and Israeli interventions, from the collapse of Ottoman rule to the current occupation of Iraq, have been major contributors to the Arab deadlock. Though he is critical of suicide bombing and the tendency among Arabs, particularly followers of Hezbollah and Hamas, to idolise the resistance, he is soberly proud of the Palestinian and Lebanese fighting spirit.
Above all, Kassir believes neither that the roots of the current situation lie a long way back, nor that it is insurmountable. The problem began less than three decades ago, when secular institutions and culture started to deteriorate and political Islam arose to take their place. This is a genuine cry against the forces of Islamic extremism that seem to have exploited every inch of free space - especially in Lebanon, Palestine and the new, widely spread Arab media - to advance a fanatical ideology and fascist political agenda.
Kassir is particularly angry with left-wing intellectuals who betrayed the Nahda, the Arab renaissance that began in Egypt in the 19th century and continued in various forms into the late 1970s. He identifies the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as the moment the Nahda ground to a halt. Until then, and in spite of civil war and political chaos, Beirut had been the last Arab refuge of secular politics and culture.
It is possible to object to Kassir's inflammatory rhetoric, but impossible not to respect what he was trying to do. Writing in Beirut, with such knowledge and passion, Kassir attempted both to revive the past spirit of the Lebanese capital and to embody the role of a Nahda intellectual. In a city where fanatics such as Nasrallah are depicted as stars, it's the duty of secular Arab intellectuals to keep Samir Kassir's memory alive.
Samir el-Youssef's "The Illusion of Return" is published in January by Halban
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