Arabb Spring Movement

WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL.
. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I II II: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I II I ISSN: ISSN: ISSN: ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print (Print (Print (Print) 83
Online version of the issue is available on www.wjll.contemporaryresearchindia.com ISSN: 2319-4960 (Online)
ARAB SPRING NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS: A READING IN POST 9/11 WHITE
AMERICAN NOVEL
Mubarak Altwaiji, Research Scholar, Goa University

Abstract: Arab nationalism has entered a new phase with the start of the twenty-first century when a small terrorist
group is taken to represent the whole religion and its adherents. The Orient that scholars used to read about is no
more apparent, rather neo-Orient emerges to refer to the Arab world with the exclusion of other nations such as
Indians, Turks, and Persians. The neo-Orient thus becomes something which is required to be represented, studied
and disciplined in the light of 9/11 terrorist attacks. This evaluation is strictly based on the superiority of the peaceful
American civilization and the inferiority of the aggressive Islamic civilization.
Key words: Nationalism, post 9/11, Arab Spring, Terrorism.

demonization of pan-Arab nationalism, a
thesis easily supported by overwhelming evidence.
Today almost anybody can get on TV and rail against the
so-called violence and irrationalism of Islam, without
providing any facts or reasoning, and anti-Arab racism in
the U.S. media is totally out of control (Gallagher. 123).
The term Arab world usually refers to twenty-
five countries extending from North of Africa to West of
Asia with a population of 358 million. Since the rise of
Islam in Arabia in the 7
th
century and its spread all
around, Arab identity and nationalism become very
much connected with Islam. Similarly, the spread of
Islam that establishes one of the most powerful
civilizations on earth is more known as Arabic
civilization rather than Islamic one: During the period
of greatness of the Arab and Islamic Empires in the Near
and Middle East a flourishing civilization grew up that is
usually known as Arabic(Lewis 142). Over the
centuries, Arab nationalism transcended regional and
religious identification. This part of the world lasted for
centuries as a whole body due to the fact that people
share common culture, language and religion. With the
advance of the European colonization, Arab world is
dismantled into smaller states separated by borders. Said
explains the effect of European colonization on this part
of the world:
Although an American, I grew up in a cultural
framework suffused with the idea of that Arab
nationalism was all-important, also that was an
aggrieved and unfulfilled nationalismMy Arab
environment had been largely colonial, but as I was
growing up you could travel overland from Lebanon and
Syria through Palestine to Egypt and points west. Today
that is impossible. Each country places formidable
obstacles at the bordersArab nationalism has not died,
but has all too often resolved itself into smaller units
(Culture and Imperialism. 298)
Modern Arab nationalist movement that emerged
in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon came as a reaction to the
European colonial heritage and the different imperial
competitions over the Arab world. Over the decades
Arab nationalism has taken different forms and
underpinned a variety of different states. Beginning with
the 1950s, the dominant form of Arab nationalism was
radical secular nationalism led by two wings Nasserism
and socialism. Nasserism has been the most well known
and powerful Arab nationalist movement that emerged in
1953. The movement emerged in Egypt and led by
Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, a high ranked Egyptian
officer during the war 1948 against Israel. Similar to
Nasserism, socialism has been an effective movement in
its attempt of reuniting the Arab world under one
powerful nation. This movement is led by the two
different socialist wings of Syria and Iraq. The Nasserit
and socialist achievements on the ground can be seen in
the attempts of both Nasser and Saddam Hussein in
reuniting the Arab world with the United Arab Re-
publicmore recently illustrated by the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait, which, whatever else it may have been, was also
an attempt to erase just such an old colonial border
(Makdisi. 94).
9/11 terrorist attacks has inspired a voluminous
literature on Arab nationalism in the United States. Post
9/11 American narrative on Arab nationalism resembles
the racist Nazi demonizing of the Jews in the first half of
the twentieth Century and forms a central part of the
American narrative of Islam, a part whose basic tenet is
that Islam teaches violence and terrorism. From an
American point of view, both secular Arab nationalism
and Islamic nationalism are ideological entities based on
WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I II II: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I: ISSUE: I II I ISSN: ISSN: ISSN: ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print (Print (Print (Print) 84
a broad ideological construct as Jonathan Scott briefs it
Arab nationalism means hostility towards Zionism
and briefly equals violence and irrationalism (34-123).
This focus on Arab nationalism serves two major
themes; first is to produce Arab nationalism as a terrorist
form of nationalism and the second is to fuel the fire of
the neo-conservatives and their liberal neo-imperialist
allies to get accession into the Middle East rich region
(Gallagher. 34). If not imperial energies to achieve
dominance on the oil richest region are behind writing
these narratives, what, then, are the energies that go into
the production of discourse about Arab nationalism in
this particular time?
John Updikes Terrorist (2006) is a counter-
terrorist discourse aims at defining Arab nationalism in
the light of 9/11 terrorist attacks by reducing Arab
nationalism to terrorism. In Updikes Neo-Orientalist
ideological portrayal of Muslim Arabs in Terrorist,
terrorism forms the core of Arab nationalism as he
quotes from the Quran, a translated copy by nineteenth
century European Orientalists: Mohammed is Allah's
apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the
unbelievers but merciful to one another (103).
Accordingly, Updike comes very close to the Kramers
analysis of the Psychology of Muslim terrorist
nationalism that violently denounces the United States
and France, and calls for the obliteration of Israel (166).
Contribution of Islamic nationalism to terrorism that
results in willingness of attacking the America territory
is a dominant subject matter in many post 9/11 White
American writings. Coury observes that post 9/11
American literary texts on Arabs are highly ideological
and imperial: these scholars who demonize treat pan-
Arab nationalism highly ideologically which lends fuel
to the fire of the [American] neo-conservatives and their
liberal neo-imperialist alliesThe effort to demonize
serves several functions: it provides a vulgar intellectual
version of the Bush administrations argument that they
hate us for who we are rather for anything we have
done; it conveys the impression that Arab hostility
towards Zionism is grounded in racism and not in
resistance to settler colonialism (10).
In Terrorist, there is an obvious enhancement of
the love and respect for the Palestinians inside Arab
characters particularly Ahmed who believes in resistance
against Israel as a colonizer and America as the empire
that sustains Israel and inflicts death every day on
Palestinians (Updike. 105). Ahmeds determination
emanates from his nationalist thought against what he
believes the Great Satan referring to America that
builds its power from Arabian underpriced petroleum
(111). Regardless, Updikes Neo-Orientalist
representation of Ahmeds intention toward Israel, Arab
resistance against the aggression of Israeli colonization is
clearly illustrated in the observation of the Indian pacifist
nationalist Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi who made the
following observation regarding the legal Arab
resistance: According to the accepted canons of right and
wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in
the face of overwhelming odds...Let the Jews who claim
to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the
way of non-violence for vindicating their position on
earth. Every country is their home including Palestine
not by aggression but by loving service. (The Jews. 369)
The mentality of Arab terrorist in Updikes
Terrorist symbolizes all the Muslim Arabs of the Middle
East; a representation that makes the nexus between
nationalism and Islam even more dangerous to the
United States than that between nationalism and
communism: The enemy is obsessed with holy sites,
and as convinced as the old Communist archenemies had
been (Updike. 26). Updike creates a nationalist
personality from Ahmed and makes him avenge his
fellow Palestinians by bombing civilians in America
whose Christian-Jewish God is a decrepit idol, a mere
mask concealing the despair of adieists (111). Ahmed
contemplates his act of terror to be a nationalist act for
which all the Muslim Arabs of the Middle East will be
overjoyed: It'll do a ton of damage, minimum. It'll
deliver a statement. It'll make headlines all over the
world. They'll be dancing in the streets of Damascus and
Karachi (142). Updikes generalization aims at putting
all the blame on the entire Muslims for the deeds of a
small group. Tarek Cherkaoui observes that such
representation has been one of the main characteristics of
the post 9/11 American discourse on Islam and Arabs:
After the 9/11 attacks, the Orientalist frame was
employed by official sources and establishment media to
differentiate foes from friends, and to reinforce the
constructed linkage between Islam and terrorism (131).
Martha Crenshaw observes that many terrorist
acts are motivated by nationalistic sense when concrete
grievances and exploitations exist among an identifiable
subgroup of a larger population (383). In Terrorist, the
reader often observes that Ahmeds priority is to avenge
his Arab cause. His intention is developed from a
nationalist act to an Islamist terrorist one. He
contemplates: The Western powers steal our oil, they
take our land. They take our God (106). He is very
disappointed with the current Arab leaders who lose their
Arab nationalistic soul and become Tools of America
(142). Updikes connection between Arab nationalism
and terrorism helps to reinforce an Orientalist theme of
Islamic terrorism. He views Arab nationalism as
synonymous of Arab terrorism. According to his
portrayal of Arab nationalism, a reader observes that
Osama Bin Laden lies on the top list of Muslim Arab
nationalist figures. When Ahmed is asked about every
individual Arab leader, he replies Now, too. Tool. Very
sad(143). The only nationalist figure he knows is
Osama Bin Laden and labels him as Great
heroCannot be caught (143).
Post 9/11 American literary writing is impacted
by the hegemonic policies of the U.S in the Middle East.
In Terrorist, Arab characters define themselves as
opposite to American political hegemony. For Ahmed,
America is an imperial nation as manifested in the White
treatment of the Native Americans: Look at the history
the school teaches, pure colonialist. Look how
Christianity committed genocide on the Native
Americans and undermined Asia and Africa (21).
Ahmeds sympathy for Red Indians equals his sympathy
for his own people of Palestine. He feels enraged at the
American policy in the Middle East that encourages
Israel to swallow the Palestinian lands now is coming
after Islam, with everything in Washington run by the
Jews to keep themselves in Palestine (21)
As far as the American-Israeli relation is
concerned, Ahmed believes that the American support
for Israel has been both direct and unconditional for two
reasons. First, the US insistence on the survival of Israel
is due to the fact that everything in Washington run by
the Jews to keep themselves in Palestine (21).
Secondly, this relationship is a pure American
hegemonic policy: They forced a country of Jews into
Palestine, right into the throat of the Middle Eastto
make it a little U.S. and have the oil (83). Regardless
the American demonization of Arab nationalism for
being ideological, Balibar argues that ideology is an
inherent characteristic of any groups nationalism, like
that of Britain or Arabic that constructs those outside the
nation as racial others (24). Hence, the claim that Arab
nationalism is defined by ideology comes under Neo-
Orientalist claims.
Following in the footsteps of john Updike,
Richard A. Clarke, a counter-terrorism officer in the
administration of George W. Bush, describes the Arab
revolt against Saudi royal family in his novel The
Scorpions Gate (2005) as an anti-American movement.
The novel provides a clash between Arab nationalist
movement in Saudi Arabia against the pro-American
royal family and the American interests in the Gulf. In
the novel, the nationalist movement came as a result of
Arab realization of the American exploitation of their oil
resources and their nostalgia for Arab powerful nation
that prevailed from the seventh to the sixteenth
Centuries. This nationalist spirit is manifest in the
character of Ahmed who got his education in Canada and
is a brother of Islamyah Leader Abdullah: We are not a
country, we are an oil deposit! And if that is all we are,
others will come, the scorpions will come for their food,
their precious black liquid. They will keep us enslaved,
buying everything we need from them, including
weapons which we do not need. We could instead use
our wealth to join the twenty-first century, to revive the
time of greatness when Arabs invented mathematics,
astronomy, pharmacy, and the other sciences. You could
do that, brother. (Clarke. 119).
In fact, the Arab Spring which refers to waves
of protests against authoritarian governments in the Arab
world opposes Clarkes and Updikes representations of
the Arab nationalism. The unprecedented nationalist
wave taking place across the Middle East and North
Africa has falsified the neo-Orientalist notion that
Muslim countries host the most terrorists and the fewest
democracies in the world (Pipes. 19). The spark of the
current revolutions has started in Tunisia by a desperate
unemployed young college graduate in 31 Jan 2011 and
now encompasses the entire Arab world. The result of
this protest till August 2011 is the overthrow of five
dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Libya
that are replaced by nationalist democratic governments.
This nationalist wave is described by Zibakalam as a
movement against the arrogant powers (meaning the
United States, the European powers and Israel) (1) and
whose basic tenet is non-violent change, adhering to
Gandhis famous words: Victory attained by violence is
tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary (Satyagraha.
5). Change has finally come to the Arab world where the
longest pro-American dictatorships have ever survived.
With regards to the American administration who has
been exploiting the area in the name of democracy, the
only question is: How America will perceive these
nationalist changes?
The decline of Arab nationalism in the twentieth
and twenty-first Centuries can be attributed to two main
factors: the Arab defeats in the struggle against Israel
and internal political dynamics of the political in the
Arab world (Aliboni2). This Arab dilemma is one of the
main issues elaborated by Clarke. In The Scorpions
Gate, the hollowness in the Arab world results in a
realization of the present failure with a remembrance of
the bright old days when the Arabs were among the
powerful nations and cultures. In The Scorpion, reader is
informed that Arabs realization of their failure is part of
the nationalist revival in the Arab world as Ahmed tells
his brother: Look at these numbers, he said, paging
rapidly. Two percent of our people have Internet access,
compared with ninety-eight percent in Korea. Five books
are translated into Arabic a year per million people,
compared with nine hundred translated into Spanish.
Even in our own language, we publish only one percent
of the worlds books. One out of five books published in
Arabic is on religion. We spend less than one-third of
one percent of our GNP on research. Maybe this explains
why one out of four of our university graduates leave the
Arab world as soon as they can. We do not create
knowledge; we do not import knowledge. We import
finished goods. This is not the way of the modern world,
which is leaving us in the dust (118).
Nationalism is a key concept in understanding
Arab-America relationship in the twenty-first Century.
Many Arab nationalist leaders observe that establishing
independent Arab states free from American hegemonic
policy should be first priority. This basic Arab-view is
well represented in a 1981 speech by Syrian President
Hafiz al-Asad: The United States wants us to be
puppets so it can manipulate us the way it wants. It
wants us to be slaves so it can exploit us the way it
wants. It wants to occupy our territory and exploit our
massesIt wants us to be parrots repeating what is said
to us (qtd. Rubin. 227). Arab characters in post 9/11
American novel share this view with their politicians. In
Terrorist, Ahmed, who is half Arabian and half
American, is more attracted to the Arab world, tradition
and culture. From an early age, when The mosque took
him in as a child of eleven; it let him be born again
(56), Ahmed develops very strong hatred to America that
wants to take away my God (22).
In Terrorist, the mosque plays a central role in
building Ahmeds nationalist character and leads him to
believe that he belongs to the exotic environment of the
Arab world. The first nationalist act Ahmed thinks about
is to change his name: My [American] mother attached
her name to me, on my Social Security and driver's
license, and her apartment is where I can be reached. But
when I am out of school and independent I will become
[an Arab] Ahmad Ashmawy (20). Ahmeds love for his
Arab heritage persuades him to reject Americaness and
the service in the American army that fights in Arabia
against his brothers: The Army would send me to fight
my brothers (22). Nationalism reflected through
Ahmeds character is a minimized picture of Pan-Arab
nationalist movement led by Jamal Abdul Nasser in the
1950s. Like Nasser, Ahmed detests the American policy
that creates a Jewish state on part of his motherland of
Palestine: Everything is war, right? Look at America
abroadwar. They forced a country of Jews into
Palestine, right into the throat of the Middle East, and
now they've forced their way into Iraq, to make it a little
U.S. and have the oilThose people worked in finance,
furthering the interests of the American empire, the
empire that sustains Israel and inflicts death every day on
Palestinians(83-105).
From an Islamic nationalist point of view, Arabs
will not be able to define themselves among other
nations unless they go back to their own history and
Islamic tradition. This religious awareness seems to have
been serving as a nationalist motivator for many Arab
intellectuals in the Arab world and the west as well in the
twenty-first century. Clarkes highly educated and
westernized Arab characters, who topple the pro-
American Saudi family, are motivated by religion to
confront both American Imperialism and the Israeli
occupation of Palestine: Then they [Americans] think
they are so superior that they must reshape the Arab
world in their ghastly image. How? By bombing our
cities, killing our women and children? Locking up our
people forever? Raping them? Abdullah said, repeating
a rant Ahmed had heard before (117).
In the theory of the New Middle East The
United States has long pursued two core interests
access to Arab petroleum and protecting the state of
Israel (Ottaway, Brown, Hamzawy, Sadjadpour and
Salem. 22). Accordingly, the United States observes that
a full dominance on the Middle East shaped by its policy
will secure its interests: After September 11, 2001, the
Bush administration launched an ambitious policy to
forge a new Middle EastThe new Middle East was to
be a region of mostly democratic countries allied with
the United States. Regimes that did not cooperate would
be subjected to a combination of sanctions (1).
Therefore, re-emergence of Islamic nationalism in the
twenty-first Century can be attributed to many reasons
embedded in the Theory of the New Middle East such as
democracy and womens right in the Arab world. In The
Scorpion, Clarke highlights the Arab anger at imposing
these American values: Then they [Americans] think
they are so superior that they must reshape the Arab
world in their ghastly image. How? By bombing our
cities, killing our women and children? Locking up our
people forever? Raping them? Abdullah said, repeating
a rant Ahmed had heard before (117). So in order to
prevent American imperialism, Arab have to shut the
doors in front of these allegations: With respect, it is not
about our becoming like the AmericansIt is about
what was promised to our people: more freedom, more
progress, more opportunity, participation, ownership of
their country(117). And instead, Arab nationalists
believe that returning to their past to re-establish a
considerable nation is an utmost priority: Things that
Islamic scholars created and promoted centuries ago at
the height of our powerWe also need to lead the Arab
world back to the leadership it once had in the arts,
sciences, medicine, mathematics, Abdullah said,
looking across at his brother. We have lost all that. We
have closed the minds of our people.Think about how
we Arabs can restore our greatness, how we can
contribute to the worlds progress. We must contribute
more than just the energy from fossils millions of years
old. Once again, we must turn the power of our minds to
math and science, to medicine and engineering, to learn
to unlock the secrets of what Allah has given to us. It
will take tapping the skills of all our people, men and
women.(234-298).
This connection between Islamic weakness and
violence is central in the neo-Orientalist tradition of
white American novelists like John Updike and Richard
A. Clarke that the former causes the latter: God says, in
the Qur'an, Be ruthless to unbelievers. Burn them, crush
them, because they have forgotten God"So kill them
now. That seems pretty severe(Updike. 168). According
to this tradition of Neo-Orientalism, Islam is doomed to
be eternally associated with anger and hatred to the
American civilization. To put it in Cheryl Benards
words: Islams current crisis has two main components:
a failure to thrive and a loss of connection to the global
mainstream (ix). Bhabha articulates tensions inherent in
nationalism where he notes that nations are like
narratives and those narratives and discourses signify a
sense of nationess: the heimlich pleasures of the
hearth, the unheimlich terror of the space or race of the
Other; the comfort of social belongingthe quality of
justice, the common sense of injustice; the langue of the
law and the parole of the people (2).
So what does Othering mean here? In Strangers
to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva writes, At first one is struck
by his peculiarity those eyes, those lips, those
cheekbones, that skin unlike others, all that distinguishes
him and reminds one that there is someone there I am
at least as remarkable, and therefore I love him, the
observer thinks; Now I prefer my own peculiarity, and
therefore I kill him, he might conclude (7). Othering
the other is a confrontation with foreignness. Edward
Said endeavors on the Other as a power emerging
from the need to justify and sustain existing power
relations (Orientalism. 40). Accordingly, Orientalist and
neo-Orientalist discourses share a major common nature
that is an Arab is always inferior in front of his superior
western fellow.

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