It is invoked at every corner. It is the substance of nearly every conversation. It is a negative wish that binds positively. But why? Let us go to the roots, both factual and perceptional.
In 1916, the Arabs joined Britain and France in their campaign against the Ottomans. The prize was to be a State, independent from the Turks. Liberty was a priority trumping the ailing Caliphate. Lawrence of Arabia was an embedded witness, spy and advisor. Sherif Hussein and his sons, Faisal and Abdullah, could taste the sweetness of an Arab power stretching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and from South Anatolia in the north to nearly the Arabian Sea to the South. A great expanse, strategic, where Arabic was spoken.
But London and Paris had up their sleeves a different expanse. France, in secret and deceitful agreement with Britain, would chop up that Arab territorial dream. France would take Syria and Lebanon. The rest, with the exception of arid and pre-oil Arabian peninsula, minus the Gulf, would be the share of the British lion. In North Africa, Egypt was, as of the defeat of the Turks at Suez in 1917/1918, to become a British protectorate; the Sudan would have two flags, the Union Jack and the Egyptian flag that fluttered but was not sovereign. The great Arab/Berber west from the Egyptian borders to the Atlantic would be ruled from Rome, and Paris.
Gone with the western winds all dreams of Arab independence. Western treachery? To a reasonable person, "yes;" To western capitals, "well, reasons of state;" to future Arab generations, only the daily prayer "Death to the West."
In Egypt, rebellion against British occupation, was a nationalist reaction. In 1919, the great Saad Zaghloul, raised the banner of the Wafd (The Delegation -inspired by the Indian and Irish struggles against London). It was a banner of modernity, secularism, articulation, mass support behind an enduring national symbol bearing both the crescent and the cross. Seeking to make a plea before the Paris Peace Conference, the Egyptian Delegation was quickly shown the exit. Colonialism became the order of the day, and "the white man's burden" became an accepted norm.
At the League of Nations, the enfeebled organization sanctified Lord Balfour's 1917 declaration of a homeland in Palestine for the Jews. He was Britain's Foreign Secretary bequeathing non-British lands. Palestine would accommodate a homeland for the Jews, with the rights of other communities unaffected, the word "Arab" slipped from the typewriter at the British Foreign Office -sorry, an intentional typo.
Oh, but don't worry, look all of you Arabs what we have for you -a lollipop -the British Mandate over Palestine west of the Jordan. You see, Arabs, the Mandate is intended to help people like you to learn how to govern. When you, Arabs, graduate, we shall certify that you may now govern yourselves -a governance which we, Brits, shall mentor.
In Palestine, both Jews and Arabs rose against each other and against the Union Jack. The Jewish population proceeded to build a State; the Palestinian Arabs, accustomed to feuding tribally internally, looked to other Arabs to adopt their cause. Relying on several "intifadas," and on their being the majority in the land, state building was perceived by the Palestinians as an enterprise which might automatically happen. When the UN was born, its Charter provided for some hope: the mandates would become trusteeships.
But Southwest Africa (new Namibia) under South Africa's mandate, and Palestine, under British mandate, were the exceptions. No trusteeship; continuation of the mandate!! In 1947, the US, under President Truman was for a UN trusteeship over Palestine. Then, it switched its affections, voting for partition. Ben Gurion, accepting partition, declared "the State of Israel" on May 15, 1948, the date of the mandate's death. The Arabs, leaderless, refused partition, and no State of Palestine was declared. The Arabs wrongly felt that you don't declare the establishment of what you already have -Palestine. Subsequently, their armies, untested in battle like the Haganah of Israel, failed on the battlefield. Another Arab deep wound. And it is still throbbing.
Defeat, on top of defeat, on top of yet another defeat. But these setbacks were, to the Arabs, bad wind, seemingly blowing only from the bad west. Thus they immersed themselves on three non-winnable fronts: building up armies without building industrial societies; sanctioning dictatorship as a way of creating a unifying national consensus; and interpreting Islam in a way which made western ways nearly an apostasy. Three losses wrapped in one: loss of material advancement; loss of individual liberty; and loss of the Islamic tradition which is governed by the Quran whose first word is IQRA (Read-meaning: acquire knowledge).
Within that hopeless mix on the part of the Arabs, a new Western bad wind began to blow: Orientalists rewriting Arab history and Islam in the image of its authors. These advocates painted the Arabs as a pitiful bunch. A prime example was Bernard Lewis's two books: The Crisis of Islam and What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity. A total mis-reading of the faith of 1.6 billion Muslims. Yet Professor Lewis of Princeton was considered in the U.S. the guru of Islam. His misleading books were freely given to the US armies heading for the subjugation of Iraq in order to help the troops deal with the Iraqis!! A double calamity: invading an Arab country, while misrepresenting its faith -both reminders of earlier acts of western aggression.. While the American War chieftains, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, cheered, the Arabs seethed. And a wave of sectarianism became a permanent weather-changer!!
Yet the Arabs, in defending Islam, their last ideological refuge for their bruised dignity, went about it in the most ill-advised way. Not fully understanding it, they interpreted Islamic law as if it was incapable of evolution since the time of the Prophet Muhamaad, 1436 years ago. The primary casualty was their minorities, especially the Christian and the Shiis. That slippery slope led to the engineering of an alien concept of jihad. Jihadism is basically un-Islamic, and was totally contrary to the concept of ijtihad which is luminously Islamic. To them, jihad was death to "the other," yet ijtihad (application of reason to the revealed text) was acceptance of the other. Even the great institution of Al-Azhar, established in Cairo by Shiis since 975 AD as a beacon of an Islam which is moderate, inclusive, minority-oriented, and progressive. Yet Al-Azhar could not effectively overcome the tsunami of that colossal ignorance.
The west watched, and became convinced that its outlook on the Arabs was well-founded. It perceived Islam was warlike, and that democracy and the Arabs are mutually opposed to one another. Western media propagated that mythology; Arab media, unable to respond in ways understandable to the western mind, underpinned "Death to the West."
As the Arab Street, oppressed by its domestic dictators and buffeted by the hated West, was burning Western flags, especially the American flag. Suddenly the Arab street had a new adversary. It had previously thought the Soviet Union was a friend. But in the late 1960s, the Soviets struck with thousands of red troops pouring into Afghanistan. That was the first Soviet grab of Muslim lands since Russian absorption of the great Islamic "Stans" to the north of Shii Iran.
Equally suddenly, the west saw in jihad a weapon of manipulation -a ready-made tool for Soviet containment. The West, especially the U.S., discovered Osama Bin Laden spearheading guerrilla warfare against the U.S.S.R. An opportunity to be exploited in the context of the Cold War. Al-Qaeda benefited from military training by the US and Pakistan, and stinger missiles became readily available. Fired at Soviet aircraft from the shoulders of the Mujahedeen, these missiles became the weapon of choice.
The Soviet fled the onslaught; America and the rest of the West cheered prematurely; but the jihadists now saw their window of opportunity to even the old score with the hated West. The Mujahedeen marriage of convenience with the West was over. A new pan-Arab/pan Islamic Foreign Legion began to look for recruits and targets.
With fury, Al-Qaeda struck on 9/11. A total tragedy for the families of 3000 innocent civilian victims, including hundreds of Muslims, and for Islam itself. Now Islam was broadly perceived by the West as a faith of death through terrorism. Consequently, every beard became suspect; every hijab became a threat; every traveller to the West under the name of "Muhammad" or "Ahmed." was subjected to enhanced scrutiny.
On my return from co-defending in Iraq an Iraqi wrongly detained by the marines, my U.S. passport was subjected to that over-scrutiny by Customs at JFK. The police inspector asked: "Don't you know that an Egyptian-born person like yourself travelling frequently to Iraq, raises a warning flag?" As an attorney whose profession exalts forked-tongue answers, I responded: "The only flag I am raising now is the U.S. flag!!" Smilingly, he shook my hand, while returning to me my passport. On the next arrival at JFK, the same Customs officer greeted me warmly: "How is Baghdad this time, counsellor?" I responded, describing Baghdad of 2007 with an unprintable epithet as it was mired in sectarian strife.
Now with the Arab Spring, calamities began falling on Arab heads like Autumn leaves: the Gaza recent massacres; the Syrian civil war; the Sudan's fragmentation; the Libyan rule by militias; the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); the Yemeni territorial conquests by Al-Qaeda; the conversion of the great city of Mosul to be the new presumptive capital of a lunatic by the name of Caliph Al-Baghadi; the renewed sectarian battles spilling over from Syria into Lebanon. With no end in sight, who can blame the West for fearing the Arabs, and who can blame the Arabs from daily intoning "Death to the West!!"
Keep in mind that historic frustrations have been seeding the fertile field of "Loving to Hate!!" A type of psychosis bequeathed by accumulated injustices which cannot be easily overcome. It is also hereditary!!
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