The Function of Arab Nationalism

I The World ranges from west of the Zagros Mountains of Asia to the Atlantic shores of North Africa and from the plains of Aleppo to the Isle of Perim. Within that area some eighty million Arabs are experiencing continuous revolution. At times this revolution is violent and disorderly; at times it is more subtle in manifestation, evolving as a revolution in rising expectations or as a revolution in literary or poetic expression.1 In either case, this contemporary human condition for the Arab is rending the very fabric of traditional Arab society. The West takes cognizance of the more dramatic exhibitions of this ferment, such as the coups d'etat, the armed struggles with the colonial power, or the episodic military confrontations with Israel. But these examples only reflect the more fundamental upheaval (inkilab) that is going on in the Arab world, namely, the transformation that is taking place within the mind of the Arab. In what appears to be a veritable kaleidescope of disparate events, the individual Arab is called upon to find himself-to discover a psychological framework within the context of which such events may be ordered, evaluated, and made meaningful to his own personality. In brief, the Arab is experiencing a revolution in intellectual orientation. In the past it was Islam that provided the vast majority of Arabs with an intellectual orientation-a world-view-to understand their environment and provide them with a referent that was free of the mundane restrictions of space and time. For millions of Arabs this is still the case, with Islam providing the prism through which reality is perceived. The theological and intellectual configurations of this reality were firmly established by the classical Islamists almost a millenium ago. The culmination of this classical exegesis was reached by