Talk:Arab nationalism

Comment by RK

Wait a tick...we already have an article on Pan-Arabism, which is on the same topic. Shouldn't we merge these articles into one, and turn the remaining one into a redirect? RK 00:25, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree, it seems to me like its just a different phrase for the same thing but I don't know enough about the subject to say for certain one way or the other. I've created a links from one article to the other. Maybe someone who knows more about it than me can merge the two. Saul Taylor 03:56, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism are not the same thing. Pan Arabism calls for the creation of an Arab super STATE. Arab nationalism is declaring that the Arabs constitute a nation. It makes no call to unify them in any capacity outside of "feeling". Many Arab nationalists during the era of Pan Arabism advocated panArabism but many did not and are quite attached to their own Arab states. Algeria which was controlled by the Arab nationalist FLN was not Pan Arabist. It didnt want to unite with the other Arab countries but it did want to form alliance and have "solidarity". Pan Arabism is a specific form of Arab nationalism, similar to Ba'thism or Nasserism. There should be two separate articles on these topics because they are NOT one in the same. They are related but are at the same time very very different. It is like "ISlam", there are subforms of ISlam, Sunnah and Shiiah, still ISlamic, but they each have their own article because they are different forms. Arab nationalism would be "ISlam", PanARabism would be "Sunnah" or "Shiah" in this way. Keep them separate! They are not different names for the same thing, they are related ideologies. Like communism and socialism or Marxism. These are not the same things. -El Moro

Arab Nationalism "makes no call to unify [Arabs] in any capacity outside of `feeling`"??? Here is a quote from "Requiem for Arab Nationalism" by Adeed Dawisha, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003, http://www.meforum.org/518/requiem-for-arab-nationalism

Arab nationalists advocated the rejuvenation of the Arab nation, its political unity, its secularism, and its sovereignty.

Note: El Moro's page was deleted for marketing --BoogaLouie (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

How can anyone dispute the neutrality of this entry, its concise and to the point without any of the leanings for or against such an idea. -IbnRasheed

POV

If someone has a POV objection, they should state it here before adding the template. - Mustafaa 16:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It should be Islamic, not Islamist.

The colors of the Arab flags

It is mentioned that Sykes is the one that proposed the flag colours. However, up to my knowledge it is based on a verse of poetry by Safi al-din al-Hilli صفي الدين الحلي (forteenth century) which was quite nationalist. The verse is:

سُودٌ وقائِعُنا بيضٌ صنائِعُنا======خضرٌ مرابِعُنا حمرٌ مواضِينا

Which specifically mentions the four colours (black, white, green and red) in a verse describing Arabs. I don't have a reference, but I'm sure there is if someone is determined to find one. --Maha Odeh 05:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The citation for that, evidently, is Fromkin's Peace to end all Peace. Maybe someone needs to check it out. Slacker 08:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I read that Idea came from Safi al-din al-Hilli. Mussav (talk) 15:38, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Some areas for improvement

George Antonious deserves much more than a "see also" link at the end. Also, there should be some mention of the fact that the Arabic language has two quite distinct and separate words for "nationalism": wataniyya وطنية (loyalty to one's home region or specific country) and qawmiyya قومية (broad pan-Arabism). Without being seeking to become polemical, it seems only too obvious that qawmiyya has a distinct lack of specific practical concrete achievements, when compared with the broad sweeping claims and grandiose bombastic rhetoric that were closely associated with it over many decades -- and there should be some way of alluding to this fact in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 10:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Tagging POV

Questionable stuff in the article with no or scant sources:
Within the Arab nationalist movement are three differentiations: the Arab nation, Arab nationalism, and pan-Arab unity ... Local patriotism centered on individual Arab countries was incorporated into the framework of Arab nationalism starting in the 1920s. --BoogaLouie (talk) 21:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

new section 1920s - 40s

after reading this article i noticed in the hisotry section there was a gap in the years between the end of WWI and the end of WWII, so i've copied content covering this period from Racism in the Palestinian territories#British Mandate in Palestine. this content is already related, but it could be improved to make it more relevant to this particular aticle. WookieInHeat (talk) 20:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

And I've reverted. Please don't censor things just because you don't like it. Thanks. --GHcool (talk) 18:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

huh? i didn't remove anything, i added stuff. WookieInHeat (talk) 04:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I think he was talking about me. I had since filled that gap and removed the information which really doesn't belong in this article and is highly biased and misleading in regards to the overall topic. GHcool hasn't provided any reason for keeping this sore thumb of a section in the article and I'll probably remove it in a few days whilst adding information on the Arab nationalist germanophilia which only developed in the 1930s and is certainly relevant to the article. Prior to that Arab nationalists centered their favor on French nationalism and ideas and that should be included as well. By the way, I mean no offense to you at all. You were just to trying to improve the article by providing information for that 20-year gap so your efforts are of course appreciated and I encourage you to continue editing the article if you're interested. Cheers! --Al Ameer son (talk) 04:56, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Too much mufti emphasis

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on Haj Amin al-Husayni and the implication that Arab nationalism is rabidly racist. The entire 1920s-40s section is centered on the Arab national movement in Palestine during the colonial period, but more so on the idea that Arab nationalists were Nazis and racists. There certainly needs to be a more comprehensive and less biased section on this period of Arab history. I will edit the section (clean up, expand) and I ask anybody who is interested to please join me. Thank you. --Al Ameer son (talk) 04:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It would be vastly oversimplified to say that they "were Nazis and racists" but unfortunately several strands of Arab nationalism were not too fastidious about drawing inspiration from general fascist movements during the 1920s-1940s (at first more Mussolini than Hitler), from Anton Saadeh to Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to Haj Amin al-Husseini -- and the literal translation of the Arabic word for "pan-Arab nationalism" قومية is "tribalism"! 20th-century Arab nationalism had many noble aspirations, but also had its seamy side -- as many Kurds, Berbers, Copts, other Christians, and Jews have become painfully aware of over the years... AnonMoos (talk) 12:26, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but these were the actions and/or beliefs of proclaimed Arab nationalists (Haj Amin, Rashid Ali, Saddam) and this article is on the ideology of Arab nationalism. These men were certainly important figures in Arab history, but they should be given only brief mentions in this article. They were not the thinkers, intellectuals, or developers of the ideology. They did not advance it poltically like Abdel Nasser, the Hashemites and the original Baathists (all three viewed Arab nationalism in a different way I should add). Besides Rashid Ali, these figures (Haj Amin, Saddam, Hafez) clearly rode the wave of Arab nationalist feeling that was sweeping the Arab world at the time and used it to advance their particular political aspirations. The latter two just replaced existing Arab nationalist governments. I would also like to add that Christians were primary founders of the ideology and I never heard of Arab nationalist-led discrmination against Copts or other Christians besides the conflict between the nationalists and the Maronites in Lebanon. Also, Antun Saadeh actually opposed Arab nationalism, favoring Greater Syrian nationalism. What I'm trying to say is that the current section seems like blatant cherry-picking to describe Arab nationalism as a Nazi fueled movement and concentrates on the developments in Palestine in which Arabs began to revolt against who they saw as unwelcome occupiers of their land i.e. Jewish immigrants and British forces. Obviously, hate for Jews was developing rapidly because of events unfolding in Palestine not because Arabs just simply hate Jews. No excuse for hate, but it's clear this was all politically motivated. --Al Ameer son (talk) 06:38, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Many Christians (from Antonious to Aflaq to Habash) were more enthusiastically nationalist than most Muslims, but that didn't prevent the majority of Arab governments which claimed to be inspired by Arab nationalist ideology from discriminating in a number of subtle or not-so-subtle ways against Christians. Many Christians in the middle east remember that the first Arab government to be given a degree of independence from European rule celebrated its newly-found independence by massacring Christians (and the Jews remembered it very clearly too, when they were deciding during the 1930s and 1940s whether not it would be realistically tolerable to live under a future exclusively Arab-run Palestine government) -- and they also remember that Michel Aflaq was given a faked up deathbed "conversion" to Islam, apparently because some Arab nationalists believed that only being a Muslim is truly compatible in the long run with Arab nationalism...

On your larger point, Haj Amin al-Husseini certainly didn't significantly contribute to the development of Arab nationalist ideological theories, and I'm not sure why he has to be specifically mentioned in this article at all -- but on the other hand, reducing this article to noble-sounding purely theoretical declarations only, and omitting any mention of the unfortunately all-too-many examples in which such theories ended up having strikingly negative effects when people attempted to implement them in the real world, would unbalance the article. AnonMoos (talk) 08:17, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't tie the massacre of Assyrians in Rashid Ali's Iraq to Arab nationalism, but I'm not informed enough on Iraqi history to really argue that point. Anyway, my disagreement with most of your first statement is irrelevant. On your second note, however, I agree with you 100%. After all that's why there's a History section. Emphasis of the 1920s-1940s period should be on the popular rise and political domination of Arab nationalism in the Mashreq (Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, Hejaz). It should concentrate on the indigienous Arab struggles against the various European occupations of those lands, the inter-Arab nationalist rivalries developing at the time, the problems arising in Palestine and its significance as a rallying point for Arab nationalism, and of course any cases where Arab nationalist governments committed any crimes or atrocities against non-Arabs should also be mentioned. Then we could get into the 1950s when Egypt took up the mantle of Arab nationalism and brought it to its peak (and demise). The goal of course to create a comprehensive and balanced article. There is certainly major criticism of Arab nationalism by Arabs and non-Arabs alike. So much actually, that I think the best thing to do is create a Criticism section. --Al Ameer son (talk) 17:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Clarifications needed

Some of the info in the "Links with Nazism" which I think many would consider controversial needs some clarification. The particular instances are "Due to al-Husayni's role of leadership and his association with the Nazi leader, he was sometimes referred to as the "fuhrer of the Arab world". Who sometimes referred to him as the "fuhrer of the Arab world"? I would presume it was his opponents, but this needs to be clarified. Similarly, in the sentence "In 1935, Jamal al-Husayni (Haj Amin's brother) established the Palestine Arab Party, the party was used to create the "fascist-style" youth organization, al-Futuwwa; also sometimes called the "Nazi Scouts." Again, who sometimes called them the "Nazi Scouts"? --Al Ameer son (talk) 23:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

As you were posting this, I rewrote the two sentences in question, eliminating the weasel wording ("sometimes called") and more clearly substituting what the cited sources say. I also tagged one of the sources as being of questionable reliability, but had no obvious reason to ignore the other. If you, on the other hand, have some reason to believe the sites used are not reliable sources, you might want to raise the question at WP:RSN. Fat&Happy (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow. Thank you very much for the clarifications. This alone has improved the section's NPOV. As for reliable sources, upon a quick scan, the Palm Beach Post source seems to be biased against Arabs while also borderline irrelevant. I won't bring it up myself at the reliable sources noticeboard until I do a slightly more focused background check though. --Al Ameer son (talk) 06:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Nazism section

I have some concerns with this section and they do not relate to WP:Censorship. One problem is much of the section, especially about the mufti, are irrelevant to this article. It is clear that the mufti was not an Arab nationalist. Sources used in this article, including some used in this section, emphasize the fact that he was not a pan-Arabist, but actually a Palestinian nationalist or a pan-Islamist or both. He may have rode the wave of Arab nationalism which was dominant in this time period to help his own cause and his role in the general Arab movement should be mentioned and is mentioned in the article. It is also made clear in the article that the mufti was not an Arab nationalist. However, the first passage of the "Links with Nazism" section completely focuses on the mufti and his ties with Hitler as if the mufti was a representative of the Arab nationalists or an activist in the Arab nationalist movement. This is dangerously misleading. This article is about Arab nationalism and the history of the Arab nationalist movement and not about the relationship between the mufti and Hitler or the mufti's tirades against the Jewish people. This information belongs in the articles on the mufti, Hitler and perhaps Palestinian nationalism, but not this article. It is true, as I could tell from a wide range of sources, that a segment of the Arab population, and Arab nationalists in particular, were sympathizers of Nazi Germany, but it must be clarified as to why. Some of the same sources that are used in this section provide some context behind this sympathy; Arab nationalists at the time were in conflict with the British and French colonial authorities who were also at war with Germany and the Arab people in general fiercely opposed Zionism and Jewish settlement in Palestine. This information must be provided if it is to be a balanced section. This latter issue is why I added the POV tag.

The sentence In the 1930s, wealthy Arab youths, educated in Germany and having witnessed the rise of fascist paramilitary groups, began returning home with the idea of creating an "Arab Nazi Party". needs to be verified. Besides the only reference used to back this information, I could not find it in google books. Maybe a better search is needed.

Finally I would like to suggest again that we might need a different section centering on allegations of prejudice by Arab nationalists or Arab nationalism. In that section, we could include the ties with Nazism and anti-Semitism. This section would also include the attempted Arabization of Kurdistan by Saddam's Iraq and Hafez's Syria. We need to address these issues as soon as possible. Any ideas on how to move forward? I would prefer we discuss things here before removing information to avoid edit warring. --Al Ameer son (talk) 04:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Re:

The sentence In the 1930s, wealthy Arab youths, educated in Germany and having witnessed the rise of fascist paramilitary groups, began returning home with the idea of creating an "Arab Nazi Party". needs to be verified. Besides the only reference used to back this information, I could not find it in google books. Maybe a better search is needed.

the actual statement on page 106 of the cited book is:

Palestinian students educated in Germany returned to Palestine determined to found the Arab Nazi Party of Palestine.

it has a footnote (67) appended, but the page containing that footnote was not available in the preview I used. Not to get into the business of linkspam, but Amazon (U.S.) has a better preview for this book than Google (which only provides snippets). It can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Armies-Young-Soldiers-Terrorism-Childhood/dp/0813535689#reader_0813535689 and if you search for Arab Nazi Party in their preview you can view page 106. Again, I make no assertion as to whether the book is a reliable source or not. Fat&Happy (talk) 05:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

the section seems professionally written. type "arab nationalism nazism" into google and you get millions of hits and articles by scholarly sources. 82.102.73.55 (talk) 19:11, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I'm not sure you are aware of Wikipedia policy. You can't just remove the POV tag because you feel it's not justified. Your revert actually constitutes as WP:Vandalism and more so WP:Edit warring. And you certainly need a better argument than the one sentence you gave above. You and nobody else haven't even bothered to address my concerns listed above. Particularly, but not limited to, the irrelevance of the Mufti and his dealings with Hitler since the mufti wasn't an Arab nationalist and the fact that this article isn't centered on individual nationalists, but on the Arab nationalist movement, its history and above all the ideology itself. The section, written professionally or not, is quite misleading. I have studied and continue to study Arab nationalism and I am fully aware that Arab nationalists began to look to Germany for support, militarily and ideologically, in the 1930s because of their main conflict with Britain, France, and Zionism. Germany was at war with the first two and made clear its disapproval of the third. They also believed Germany had no colonial intentions. Furthermore, their ideologues were impressed with 19th-century German nationalism not 20th-century Nazism. Thus their attempts to gain the support of Nazi-run Germany was mostly political. None of this is even mentioned in the section so therefore you have a very unbalanced section which if you take a look above, was simply copied and pasted from Racism in the Palestinian territories article. Read Bassem Tibi, Sylvia Kedourie, Salim Yaqub, Youssef Choueiri, and Adeeb Dawisha's books on Arab nationalism. Since you appear to be fond of using google scholar, you'll easily find those books (all of which you could at least preview) since they're the first selections google books lists when you search "Arab nationalism." Also, if you want to improve this article, you should rely on sources that are not attacking or praising the ideology, just writing about it in a neutral manner. As I have stated a number of times at this talk page, I intend to work on these issues, clarify and balance them out. In the end there won't be a blatantly POV and misleading subsection titled "Links with Nazism." Instead, the information will be added to existing sections, mostly the "Expansion of the movement" subsection and the "Ideology" section. Do NOT remove the POV tag until something is agreed to or you at least achieve something of a consensus until the intended changes are made. Thank you. --Al Ameer son (talk) 20:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

i originally removed the POV tag a few days ago, the IP address is not me though. my reasoning: after reading over the talk page, it appeared the concerns you raised about POV had been addressed, and you hadn't raised any further issues in over a month. the inclusion of the mufti didn't seem to be a POV issue so much as a relevance issue. i disagree though that the mufti was not an arab nationalist, considering that he was a significant leader in the arab world and had close associations with the leaders of various arab nationalist political parties. which as the section establishes, were linked with the rise of nazism in germany in the 1920s-30s, after the defeat of the germans and ottomans in WWI at the hands of the allies.

regardless, i agree that the section could use some further elaboration and expansion, it is not clear enough in certain areas. if you have reliable sources to support what you would like to add, by all means. i do however object to its total removal as you propose, denial/suppression of this part of arab history would be far more POV than inclusion in its current form. WookieInHeat (talk) 02:27, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

A lot of the significant Arab leaders at that time were not specifically Arab nationalists; rather, many were regionalists (Egyptian, Syrian, Sudanese, Saudi, Lebanese, and Palestinian). I don't want to go at lengths about the mufti since this article is not about him, but the mufti was more of a Palestinian nationalist with pan-Islamic tendencies. He was indeed a significant factor in the Arab political scene as the article already illustrates. I just believe we're giving much undue weight to the mufti and the details of the anti-Zionist and anti-British movement in Palestine. There's already a sizable passage on it in the prior section. The second sentence of the second passage seems relevant enough for a mention: it entails the Baathist take on the general atmosphere in the Arab world. Whether Sami al-Jundi is relevant I don't know. The info on the Futuwwa movement and the British concerns in Palestine about it need not mention in this article. In any case there shouldn't be a section on "Links with Nazism" as if it's an implication against the Arab nationalist movement or a major part of the movement's development. I renamed it such in haste, thinking it would be temporary and a matter of time before I wrote a more elaborate take on the new and growing Germanophilia of 1930s Arab anti-colonial politicians. I have to disagree with your statement that Arab nationalism was linked with the rise of Nazism. The two ideas had been completely separate and developed separately and for different reasons. It was only in the 1930s where they formed something of a natural alliance. We should relocate the relevant info in the section to wherever it fits in the "Expansion of the movement" section. I don't want to have a filibuster-like situation where I insist on keeping the POV tag until I make the necessary changes so I encourage editors interested in the improvement of the article to be bold. Find info on the history, progress, and development of the Arab nationalist movement in the 1930s-1940s (recommend using the unbiased sources) and help balance the present info. I don't want to "deny or suppress" this part of Arab nationalist history. I pretty much wrote the previous section which focuses on the same time period: 1920s-1930s. It might take a little while for me to continue, so until then I propose anybody else take a crack at elaborating and expanding the info and then we could remove the tag. I can't stress enough, however, that having a separate section for Nazi links is undue. I also would like to stress that I can't agree to the removal of the POV tag until some of the aforementioned points are addressed. --Al Ameer son (talk) 02:32, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Al Ameer son makes some fair points. I don't think its necessary to have a Nazism subheading, but I disagree with Al Ameer son when he implies that Nazism was not an important part of Arab nationalist history and philosophy. Furthermore, I believe that the Husseinis were Arab nationalists both at the local level and at the global level. Their contribution to Arab nationalism is vital to an overall understanding of the phenomenon. --GHcool (talk) 05:26, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

sorry for the delay, i've been very busy lately. any way, just wanted to respond to a specific point...

"the mufti was more of a Palestinian nationalist with pan-Islamic tendencies" -- Al Ameer son


Mohammad Amin al-Husayni was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. -- Wikipedia

Amīn al-Ḥusaynī, grand mufti of Jerusalem and Arab nationalist figure who played a major role in Arab resistance to Zionist political ambitions in Palestine and became a strong voice in the Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist movements. -- Encyclopedia Britannica

al-Husayni's ... political orientation was plainly Arab nationalist after the war. (WWI) -- Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine pg.31


al husayni is very relevant to this article, he was a prominent figure of the movement. not to mention literally every other reference - including his wikipedia article - refers to him as an arab nationalist. i will address your other points soon. cheers WookieInHeat (talk) 22:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC)