Three Arguments of Arab Nationalism:
Arab nationalism is not a well-argued or defined doctrine, as has already become clear in the previous sections of the present paper. Its advocates usually have a limited repertoire of arguments that derive their only strength from being tirelessly repeated by their propaganda and uncritically circulated as self-evident truths.These arguments are weak and they reveal the stress of the contradictions we have examined. I now propose to round off this criticism of the idea of Arab nationalism by discussing three of such arguments that are frequently advanced.

1. The Argument of 'National Unity:'
The most powerful argument proudly displayed in the arsenal of Arab nationalists is that their doctrine will solve the problems of the non-Muslim minorities in the Arab countries by abolishing the principle of religious rule by the Muslim majority and substituting it with nationalist rule in which the higher authority will be secular and under which the minorities will regain their 'rights.'
There are no religious minorities in the 'Arab world' except the Copts in Egypt, who have been assimilated into the Muslim majority in all walks of life and who live in harmony with it unless provoked from the outside, and the Christians and some deviant sects in the Levant. The latter have been hostile to Islam for centuries and have cultivated close ties with the imperialist powers and world Christendom in modern times. It is among them that the idea of Arab nationalism emerged to serve as an instrument of attack upon the Caliphate and Islam and to separate the Arab countries from the rule of Islam to be an easy prey for the European imperialists and their clients -- the Westernized elite. It was these early `pioneers', who could not write Arabic proficiently, that called for `Arab' nationalism with their entire inspiration coming from the West and their sentiments drawn to it.
In the light of the confinement of disaffected minorities to a narrow corner of the Arab world, the primacy given to this issue by Arab nationalism raises doubts about this movement. It has very wide claims over all aspects of life and it declares its intention to replace Islam as the guiding `project' of the Arabs. When the major justification given to these bold claims turns out to be the solution of a limited minority's problems that only exist in the minds of some members of those minorities themselves, suspicion is naturally aroused.Religious minorities in the Arab world did not suffer from persecution under Islam or the 'Uthmani State. Barring the usual tensions that may occur, they have attained a secure and advanced status that made them ambitious for more, particularly with the penetration of European influence into the Ottoman-ruled Arab provinces. The Maronites in Lebanon used their links with France to agitate against the 'Uthmani State calling for an independent Christian-dominated enclave in Lebanon which was actually realized almost a century later under Western auspices. This agitation and similar rebelliousness by other Levantine minorities against a tolerant Islamic rule were primarily motivated by religious sentiments and were coupled with enthusiastic entry into alliances with such colonial powers as the French and the British in the nineteenth century. There was no talk initially about an Arab dimension or 'nationalism' when this minority first began its plotting against the 'Uthmani State.
Into this context the 'Arab' dimension was suddenly introduced to serve both as a cover for these moves towards minority secession with Western backing and as a skilful tool to engage the Arab Muslims in a struggle against Islam and its rule. For, 'Arab' is a critical and sensitive term to use. It has been indissolubly tied to Islam as almost to become synonymous with it. At the same time, it does not clearly indicate Islam and may be filled with non-Islamic, if not anti-Islamic, content, such as the reference to the pre-Islamic age. In this way, it can be used for deception and propaganda purposes with the first meaning displayed and the second implied or intended. This is how it came to serve the conspiring minorities of the Levant and disguise their far from 'nationalist' ties to the West. It dragged with it the idea of nationalism with its secular essence as a further aid in disguise and in luring the unsuspecting Arab away from his Islamic allegiances.
This basically religious agitation against Islam and its rule is exposed fully in the insistence by Arab nationalism on the argument of 'national unity.' It explains to us why a movement that is supposedly secular and engrossed in a wide-ranging 'project' for the renaissance of the Arabs should pay such exaggerated attention to an imaginary problem that does not arise in Islam either theoretically or in practice, and that, if it arose, can easily find a solution within the tolerant and humane precepts of Islam. This argument only reveals that the main concern of the Arab nationalists is to continue that plan of the Levant minorities---independence from Islam and ties with the West---and to place before the other quiescent minorities the prospect of a similar project.
It is ironic that the Arab nationalists, who come to the Muslim majority and ask them to shed their allegiance to Islamic teachings on unity and to Islam's priority and authority over their lives, come also with a call for more commitment by the non-Muslims towards their own creeds. They completely ignore that their alleged championship of the very small minorities comes at the expense of the overwhelming majority of Muslims whom they address. This is because their definition of minority rights has been of the negative type. These rights will be secured only against Islam, when Islamic rule has been abolished, and when the Muslims have been secularized and Westernized. In fact, the last words point to the paradox involved in this Arab nationalist view.The rights of the minorities will be guaranteed and their problems solved only when the majority of Muslim Arabs have become like the Christians of Europe; that is, like the Christian minorities in the Arab world. This can only be described as a form of sectarian blackmail.
The nationalists, who are so enthusiastic for minority rights, do not attempt to search for them in Islam or to work for them, supposing that they have been violated under its rule. They do not even care to define these rights and problems except in the negative sense mentioned above: the rights of the non-Muslims will be guaranteed and their problems solved when Islam itself is liquidated. Thus, Arab nationalism poses itself primarily as the solution of certain undefined problems occurring to some small minorities at the expense of the Muslim majority. Their proposed 'nationalist entity,' which has so far failed to solve the minority problems, as witnessed by the renewed sectarian tensions in some Arab countries, will also create other problems. It will clash with the strongly entrenched local nationalisms in many Arab countries, it will come into conflict with racial and linguistic minorities in these countries, and it will collide with the universally-oriented movements like the Islamic and, to some extent, the communist.The grand scheme of Arab nationalism boils down to a suspicious obsession with a so-called minority problem for the solution of which a host of other problems will be created, foremost amongst which is the obliteration of the identity of the Muslim majority of Arabs. In practice, these problems have actually been created and Arab nationalism has, in that sphere, proved itself a mere tool for achieving the hegemony of religious and political minorities.
In Syria it was the Christians and then the Alawites who used Arab nationalism as a cover ideology to disguise their power-seeking that ended in tragedy for the Muslim majority. In Iraq it is the secularist-Christian minority that rules under the banner of Arab nationalism and leads the Muslim people of their country to attack the Muslims of Iran.In Lebanon the Christians raised the same nationalist slogans only to drop them in recent times and uncover their real designs and alliances with the enemies of Arabs and Muslims alike.
The Arab nationalist argument concerning the minorities, often disguised by the positive-sounding phrase of 'national unity,' betrays much about the backgrounds, intentions, and inconsistencies of this idea.

2. The Argument of 'Modernity:'
There is a constellation of words that are always present in the Arab nationalist propaganda and which are produced as arguments in favour of this idea. These words include 'modernity,' 'progress,' 'the age,' 'reason,' 'enlightenment,' and similar phrases that supposedly support the Arab nationalist doctrine against its Islamic opponents, who are usually described by a counter-group of words like 'reactionary,' 'backward,' etc.
It is obvious that the mere repetition of a handful of favourable terms does not in-itself constitute an argument, but may be of some propaganda value. However, when these words are used in Arab nationalist writings they usually carry a Westernized content of a leftist character. This is another evidence to the essentially dependent nature of a doctrine that brags about being 'Arab' and 'independent.''Modernity,' in nationalist usage, means to establish a society similar to that of the West, and 'progress' is measured with reference to that model. 'Enlightenment' and 'reason' mean thinking and behaving in the secularist, materialist modes of Europe.
Islamic thought has come in recent years to analyze and criticize the arsenal of favourable terms circulated by the Arab nationalists and, indeed, by all sections of the secularist spectrum. It is usually pointed out that these terms are relative and abstract and must be placed in a certain frame of reference when used. The critics often indicate the confused use by the nationalists of these terms.
However, it can easily be demonstrated that even in the Western context the content of the Arab nationalists' terms cannot be described as modern, progressive, rational, or enlightened. Nationalism of the kind that prevailed in Europe has been superseded by 'the modern age.' An 'enlightened' and 'progressive' socialism or Marxism, from which the Arab nationalists borrow much of their ideas, thinks in global terms and defines man in universal material terms that are basically socio-economic and not racial or even cultural. A new 'nationalism' has been created in the Soviet Union (I am only speaking here about the ideal claims) that cuts across old nationalist lines and unites and merges them on the basis of an internationalist creed.
The 'enlightened' and 'rational' secular ideas or attitudes that the Arab nationalists display are more often than not hackneyed remnants of nineteenth century positivist-materialist thought which are now dead museum pieces. It is certainly not rational or enlightened to present vague emotional formulations mixed with outmoded racist thought as the basis for Arab nationalism. It is equally far from reason to steal the cultural unification factors created by Islam to join all those who believe in it and make them constitutive of an Arab nationalism that ignores Islam or sets itself against it.
The Arab nationalists usually argue that they are working in the spirit of the age to create a larger entity out of local nationalisms in the Middle East area just as is now being attempted in Europe through various 'unions.' This, however, does not hide the fact that their call is essentially disintegrative and not unifying. To unite some local nationalisms, a task in which Arab nationalists have failed miserably, is surely a paltry game compared to the serious cleavage which Arab nationalism has caused in the Muslim world along with non-Arab chauvinism. It should also be mentioned that the claimed unity will be in a secularist, Westernized framework which is a loss to Islam. In fact, Arab nationalism has a chronic tendency to degenerate into local nationalism which in its turn keeps the old Arab slogans to legitimize the local tyrants' claims to leadership outside their own countries.The Arab nationalists ignore the fact that religion -- Judaism and Christianity -- is now a strong unifying force in the West. The rational, enlightened, and modernist Westerners to whom the nationalists owe so much are now flocking back in increasing numbers to their religion which is employed to establish a world-wide identity and entity through the activities of the big churches. The other Westerners are engaged in a similar universal quest through the other Western creeds: liberalism, socialism, and Marxism.
This argument of Arab nationalism turns out to be a mere empty rhetoric that only reveals the depth to which that doctrine is attached to Europe in contradiction to its declared principles, at least from the theoretical point of view.

3. The Argument of 'Practicality':
With the weakness of their ideas being felt more and more, the Arab nationalists have developed this argument in the face of criticisms from Islamic quarters. Islam, which they view in a secular perspective, is seen by them as an unfit alternative for nationalism. Its civilization has failed many centuries ago and its political expression, the caliphate, has gone for ever after displaying its inherent defects.Moreover, according to views propagated by some orientalists, Islam does not really have anything to offer beyond some general moral tenets. The social and political spheres are thus open before an Arab nationalism that offers a practical alternative.
It is tempting to quash this argument by citing the practical record of Arab nationalist forces that have ruled most Arab countries for different periods throughout the last thirty years or more. They have ruled in dictatorial fashion liquidating all other political tendencies and singling out the Islamic for particular harshness to prevent the evolving of a credible Islamic removement and, hence, a viable alternative to their rule. However, their failures in the social, economic, and political fields have been resounding. All of the famous 'socialist experiments' introduced by the Arab nationalist regimes and elites have ended in ruin and their political and military efforts have been unable either to unify the Arabs or face Israel except in one war---that of Ramadan -- which was won in its initial stages only by Islamic fervour and slogans.
Arab nationalist regimes led by military, intellectual, and sectarian elites of a secularist and Westernized bent have practised dictatorship at its worst, strangling all sorts of liberties and human rights. They enforced Western ideas and values on Islamic societies, causing chaos and deterioration in them, Their much-vaunted development schemes were mostly ill-conceived and badly planned as well as incompetently and corruptly managed.
In contrast, one can point to many practical successes of Islamic rule throughout its history though the comparison would be unjust to it because the Arab nationalists have such power in their hands that not even the most despotic Muslim ruler could have dreamt of. It may be more to the point to refer to the contemporary success of Islamic movements on many social and intellectual levels even when they have been subjected to severe persecution and distortion of their ideas and goals. The case of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt as well as that of the Islamic Societies in recent years may be considered in this connection.Arab nationalism is in a worse condition, in the estimation of viability, than what it thinks Islam is in. If we grant that both movements currently exhibit signs of failure or weakness, Islam has at its credit the fact that it has been forcefully excluded from the sphere of action in its own countries for more than a century now by repeated colonialist and, then, nationalist attacks. Islam is viable as a living creed which shapes the believers' values and view of life and it is not, as Arab nationalism, a travesty of certain nineteenth century European ideas which have outlived their interest there. If both Islam and Arab nationalism are seen, for the sake of argument, to be in an equal state of failure from the political point of view, the decision to opt for one or the other reflects a value judgement. The Muslim can have many arguments to justify his choice of Islam, some of them appealing to Arab heritage. The Arab nationalist, on the other hand, can only argue by reference to Western or non-Arab terms and views to defend his doctrine.
The argument from practicality is reduced, in fact, to the contention by Arab nationalists that since their elites are in possession of power and influence, their idea is more practicable than Islam which has been excluded by them from the spheres of action. It is the old 'status quo' argument that the nationalists must have imported from bourgeois Europe of the last century. In this attitude, they do not only attribute revolutionary (and, hence, 'progressive') tendencies to Islam but also deny their own claims to such tendencies. They consider the wider and deeper Islamic ideas which go beyond race and view man in his entirety as impracticable. They reject the comprehensive Islamic 'project,' whose features they consistently distort by their secularist approaches, and prefer a limited, racially-based, vaguely-defined, and practically disproved idea as a viable alternative to it for no other reason than that they happen to be in power and that they resent an Islamic change. Perhaps the most telling 'practical ' criticism that can be brought at present to bear on Arab nationalism is that its elites have become reliable tools of conservative Arab regimes who shudder at the prospect of an Islamic revolution. At the same time they have become respectable and rich tools of blase, 'radical' regimes similarly apprehensive of an Islamic upheaval.

Conclusion:
The present paper has set itself the rather narrow task of criticizing what it described as logical inconsistencies bedevilling the current, and old, presentations of the idea of Arab nationalism. It suggests that these contradictions which affect the positions and arguments of that idea can be explained by the fact that Arab nationalism has been envisaged from the beginning not as an intellectual creed or a philosophy but rather as a political instrument to achieve certain ends; i.e. the arousal of some eastern Arab provinces against the 'Uthmani State. These ends have later developed to include the secularization and covert Westernization of the Middle Eastern Muslim Arabs, the lifting of non-Muslim or anti-Islamic elites to positions of influence and power, the legitimization of leadership ambitions either by certain dictators or by Arab nationalist parties, and the establishing of an 'Arab entity' separate from the Islamic entity and made to stand against it while using some of the elements it created.
Arab nationalism was primarily conceived for an emotional, demagogic mode of propaganda and dissemination. Hence, the contradictions. The crowds of Arabs, it seems, could sufficiently be aroused by a jumble of slogans. Arab nationalism, that is, started life with a derogatory view of Arab mentality. There is nothing strange in that, keeping in mind its Western inspiration.
When Arab nationalism began to feel the need for intellectual development it could only magnify the contradictions inherent in it in the way that this paper has traced. With its overwhelming Western content Arab nationalism has, in fact, lost its independence and become a mere branch of some ideologies of the West but without the intellectual sophistications and equipment. As I have earlier emphasized, it has practically ceased to be 'Arab' or 'nationalist' in the strict or usual meaning of these terms and turned, intellectually as well as politically, into a Trojan horse for internationalist forces encroaching upon the Muslim world. It combines with other secularized and Westernized nationalisms fostered in various areas across the Muslim world to yield a pattern of attack upon the unity of that world and its identity.
The various brands of nationalism use the unifying elements created by Islam to forward their own claims of independent and separate entities vis-a-vis Islam. They disintegrate the universal Islamic identity but they do not end up in several entities as might be expected. Rather, they are re-unified again into another global system, that of Western civilization in its widest sense. The nationalisms are claimed as smaller but more valid entities than the larger identity of Islam; but the valid and sure nationalist identities soon reveal their essentially dependent, Westernized nature and merge into the universal Western system in any or all of its political, economic, or cultural manifestations.
The crucial point in this development is the two contradictions that I isolated and attempted to explain. The nationalisms forced upon the Islamic identity represent intermediate stages in the confrontation between Islam and the West. They are secessions from Islam which claim an identity independent of Islam and, apparently, of the West, but their essential and characteristic content is basically and inescapably Western (secularist) in addition to their political orientations.This content and the practice of the ruling nationalist elites leads inevitably to identification with, involvement in, and gradual incorporation into the universal Western 'project' in any of its major branches.The nationalist elites cannot revert to Islam even if they wanted to because they have destroyed its universal system and have interpreted away its fullness and programmes.
Thus, nationalism of any type can be seen, from the strategic point of view, as a mediate phase between the disintegration of a total Islamic polity and identity and the incorporation or assimilation of the resulting nationalistic identities into the global Western polity. This is the logic that is inherent in the content of the idea of nationalism itself as it was, and still is, presented across the Muslim world: a secularist, Westernized content. Nationalism can only lead to Western internationalism and it is in essence a temporary, unstable phase of political development that has been forced on the Muslim countries aimed at throwing them into the lap of the West. No amount of chauvinism or calls for a return to 'original culture' or 'the roots' can save the nationalisms from that fate, assuming that the nationalist elites s