State Formation and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa

K. Christie, M. Masad, K. Christie, M. Masad

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349475032, 9781137369598
• eBook ISBN: 9781137369604
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Social Sciences

For states in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, the "Arab Spring" has had different implications and consequences, stemming from the politics of identity and the historical and political processes that have shaped development. This book focuses on how these factors interact with globalization and affect state formation.

CHAPTER 1

State Formation, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Middle East and North Africa: An Overview

Mohammad Masad and Kenneth Christie

Introduction

The myriad ways in which religious and ethnic identities interact with state formation in the MENA have been amply demonstrated throughout the history of the region, and in some spectacular ways during the last two years since the eruption of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. With one exception (namely Turkey), MENA states have discreetly or explicitly employed some sort of religious or ethnic identity in the quest for legitimacy, notwithstanding the significant differences between the strategies they used. The Arab Spring has highlighted the fractured nature of MENA states and the fragility of their state foundations, as countries imploded (such as Libya) or violently unraveled (such as Syria), or lost whatever little cohesion they might have had (such as Yemen), or saw religion dominating new political systems (with Islamists making dramatic gains in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and, to a lesser extent, Libya), or religion polarizing societies and splitting institutions (as is the case with Bahrain and Syria). This is all in stark contradiction to the initial promise of the Arab Spring of a different order. Indeed, instead of ushering in a new era with some sort of a secular or liberal alternative to the traditional rule of oppressive elites and regimes of military or strongman dictatorships, the Arab uprisings seem to throw the region back into the formative pre-state conditions when such identities were the norm in MENA societies that had not yet evolved into recognizable political entities. Commenting on the rise of Islamic ideology during the Arab Spring, one writer, Fatima el-Issawi, observed that

The growing signs of a radical Islam empowered by the loosening grip of Arab dictatorships raise concerns that go beyond the question of security and political representation for minorities. There is a bitter race between, on the one hand, secular forces weakened both by the absence of any previous organizational cadres and by the misuse of secularism by nationalist Arab regimes and, on the other, religious forces that are pushing forcefully for further overlap between religion and the state.¹

The fears of a continued status quo, or even a worsening situation, for minorities have been amplified by events on the ground. Following a particularly violent sectarian incident in Cairo, one NGO monitoring minority rights in the Middle East made its fears clear as the religiously charged atmosphere of the uprising became more ominous:

Future prospects for minorities in the region became a much discussed topic, especially following the tragic outcome of the Maspero demonstrations in Cairo in October 2011, during which Coptic Christians, who were protesting against the destruction of a church in Aswan, were attacked by the Egyptian army, with up to 27 protesters killed. Maspero also symbolized the current predicament of minorities in the Middle East after the Arab Spring: will the prejudices and identities of the old order continue to dominate or will public space open to allow minorities to express their culture and enjoy full political participation?²

This might be worrying for those in the region and the West who fear the rise of political Islam and consequently the diminishing prospects of civil society and the modern state. Though such fears were heightened during the recent Arab uprisings, they in fact go back to several decades before that. Despite a plethora of books and articles dealing with the Islamic resurgence, especially since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, there seems to be a deep misunderstanding of Islamic movements and an equally glaring underestimation of their appeal and power, which is another of the ironies revealed by the Arab uprisings. Explaining the popularity of Islamic movements, as one writer puts it, “has become an academic industry, with writers ascribing the Islamist resurgence as the product of successive historical failures by the state—the crash of pan-Arab ideology in the 1950s, bankrupt socialist development models in the 1960s, military defeats to Israel in the 1970s, and declining socioeconomic conditions in the 1980s”;³ yet, this industry has yielded very little useful scholarship and much ideological rhetoric, from political fear-mongering and total exclusion from modernity on one side, to empty praise of Islam and the “Islamic state” as “the solution” for all the troubles of Muslim societies on the other side.

It should also be noted that this overlap of religion and state, both in thought and in practice, has been integral to the experience of state formation in the region, as far back as what Albert Hourani calls the “Liberal Age,”⁴ if not even before. The earliest stirrings of nationalistic independence in the MENA under late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European imperialism evoked both ethnic and religious, particularly Islamic, identities. One of the first states that arose under the shadow of British control, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was a tribal theocracy, where Islam, in fact a very conservative version of it as expressed in the Wahhabi doctrine, served as a binding identity for a coalition of tribes who also shared Arab ethnicity. Half a century later, on the other side of the Persian Gulf, an Islamic revolution toppled the autocratic and secular regime of the Pahlavi dynasty and reshaped Iran as a religious state ruled by the absolute religious authority of the Shia mullahs. Lebanon, both secular and strongly sectarian, was granted independence as a state based on a constitutionally confessional balance of power between different Muslim and Christian denominations: a condition that persists to this day and is typically blamed for the country’s fragility and incessant internal conflicts. It is also noteworthy that certain sections of Lebanese Christians do not see themselves primarily as Arabs and prefer to subscribe to different identities (including, e.g., Maronite Christian, Phoenician, etc.).⁵ As MENA states strive to assert their national character and build strong states anchored in modern concepts of national identity, the multiple religious and ethnic identities and loyalties that persisted since the postcolonial period continue to haunt the process of state formation and impede the emergence of strong state institutions. The apparent fragmentation of the ethnic and religious mosaic of the Syrian state and society after the March 2011 uprising there is the latest and perhaps most dramatic example of this reality. This process is further complicated and accelerated as it takes place within the context of an intensifying regional and global polarization between Sunni and Shia Muslims, not to mention the other conflicting identities and ideological and global associations that bedeviled state formation across the MENA for decades.⁶

A History of Multiple Identities

The experiences of the MENA countries with the convergence of ethnic, religious, and national identities varied considerably. However, and with few exceptions, they have the common feature of resulting in a tenuous process of state formation. According to Kelidar, the precariousness of the national political growth of these states is attested in the rejection by the people, and even the rulers, of political structures that are seen as alien and that “rendered the emergence of a political community with a single focus of loyalty and allegiance difficult, if not impossible. The conflicting demands of the various nationalist ideologies have prevented the development of a uniform political identity in heterogeneous societies.”⁷ The author seems to suggest that the problem is not simply political, but also cultural. The Arabic language is cited as evidence, specifically its lack of a term that can define a state as a “territorially delimited population,” using instead terms such as dawla, saltana, mamlaka, and jumhuriyya, all of which denote other ideas (dominion, system of government, etc.). These perceptions of Arab societies as emphasizing people rather than territory led Kelidar to conclude that “the affinity of the modern concept of state in the Arab world with the religious ethos of the Islamic political culture has been maintained.”⁸ In other words, given the cultural and political legacy of Islam, the seeds of truly territorial national states have yet to be planted in the Arab Middle East, if that is even possible at all.

The state of Israel was founded as a Jewish state, with religion and ethnicity serving as two faces of the same coin. It is also a state where other religions and ethnicities, including a large minority of Arabs, against whom the state fought a war that led to its establishment, are less than equal citizens of the state, despite their participation in the country’s political system. The debate as to the nature of the Israeli political system has been raging between scholars for many years, with some claiming it to be a liberal democracy, others saying it is an ethnic democracy, and some maintaining that the state there is not a democracy at all, but rather a purely ethnic state.⁹ Another characterization of the Israeli system as something less than a democracy, on the basis of its self-definition and the treatment of non-Jewish ethnic and religious groups, is offered by Baruch Kimmerling.¹⁰ Arguing against these analyses is a group of social scientists who do not agree to approach the Israeli political system as the outcome of the clear tension between liberalism and ethnonationalism, resulting in a retreating ethnic democracy (or ethnocracy), but rather as the net result of the confluence of three elements: republicanism, liberalism, and ethnicity.¹¹ Regardless of the approach, Israel has been one of the more aggressive states in constructing its Jewish identity, with Zionism, the state’s founding ideology, spearheading that effort.¹² The drastic changes in Israeli politics in the last few years have led to more emphasis by ultra-nationalist and religious groups on Jewish identity. Recent legislations that jeopardize minorities’ civil rights, restrict activities of NGOs, and strengthen the Jewish identity of the state are increasingly seen as confirming the aggressive Jewishness of the state at the expense of its half-hearted integration of other minorities, especially the largest one, the Arabs.¹³

Other examples of states that have had to struggle with the multiple identities and loyalties of their peoples as they tried to cobble together a modern state include Egypt, Turkey, and Sudan. Egypt, one of the most distinctive and ancient geopolitical entities, created a state that emphasized and championed Arab identity rather than an Egyptian or Islamic one. Egypt is also the home of the most influential Islamic political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the target of terrorist attacks by extreme Islamists and increasingly violent protests by its Christian Coptic population, who are unhappy with what they see as religious discrimination against them by the state, despite the promise of equal citizenship. Turkey, on the other hand, is the most secular state in the MENA, with a strong national state based on the Turkish national identity, but still fighting a conflict of attrition against Kurdish national forces, who seek to be recognized as a separate group, ideally in a state of their own in their historic Kurdistan, or at least within an autonomous region like the one that now exists in Northern Iraq. The prospects of an independent Kurdish ministate on Turkey’s southern borders, something the Turkish government has maintained all along that it would be intolerable, have greatly increased after the recent political turmoil in Syria.¹⁴ In contrast, the Sudan, the largest Arab country, with a population divided along tribal, religious, and ethnic lines, has gone most recently through a rare experience of fragmenting into two entities. The separation and independence of South Sudan in July 2011 saw the birth of a new state that regards itself as both ethnically and religiously distinct from the Arab Muslim-majority population of the north. But within less than a year of its creation, the state was already embroiled in military confrontation with its northern neighbor over disputed border territories and oil fields while facing serious internal trouble, namely an increasingly violent confrontation between some of its tribes.¹⁵

Identities and State Reformation in the MENA and the Arab Uprisings

It seems that over the past few decades the MENA has witnessed a revival of sorts of ethnic and religious identities and a reemphasis on their role in shaping and reshaping established as well as emerging states in the region. Most recently, the fate of the newly designed constitutions and parliamentary and presidential elections of countries that have gone through popular revolutions, such as Egypt and Tunisia, is strongly linked with the rise of Islamic political parties and their particular Islamic vision of state and society. While it might be somewhat early to pass judgment on the impact this resurgence of Islamic ideology would have on state formation in these countries, anecdotal evidence points to significant changes and different experiences. In October 2011 in Tunisia, nine months after the fall of the Bin Ali regime, a moderate Islamic party, Ennahda, won the country’s first free elections for the Constitutional Assembly and went on to form a coalition government.¹⁶ In Egypt, parties and candidates representing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafists swept the parliamentary elections, and, six months later, in June 2012, Dr Mohame...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Thinking about Identity and the State in the MENA
• 1. State Formation, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Middle East and North Africa: An Overview
• 2. Extra-Regional Interests, Authoritarian Elites, and Dependent State Formation in the Arab World
• 3. The Interplay of Palestinian and Jordanian Identities in Re/Making the State and Nation Formation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
• 4. The Ikhwan Movement and Its Role in Saudi Arabia’s State-Building
• 5. The Post-14/02/11 Bahrain: A State in the Remaking
• 6. Muslims and Christians in Egyptian State Formation: A New Beginning in 2011?
• 7. Religion, Ethnicity, and State Formation in Algeria: “The Berber” As a Category of Contestation
• 8. The Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah Political Entente: A Paradigm Shift in Lebanese Identity and State Formation?
• List of Contributors
• Index