CIAO DATE: 11/2008
June 2006
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
In this article Dr. Salam Hawa provides some philosophical reflections on the evolution of Arab political identity. She notes at the outset that little work has been done on the complex relationships that exist among culture, religion, language, and identity in the Arabic world. The Arabic language is closely tied to the Islamic religion, with the Quran itself serving as a model text for the language. The situation is complicated further with the globalization of Islam and of particular forms of Islamic religious beliefs and practices. These globalizing processes further confound the relationships between one’s identity as a Muslim, as an Arab, and as a member of a given nation-state.
Dr. Hawa takes a long historical view of these relationships, focusing on the relationship between the identity that arises from being part of the Muslim world (ummah) and that of being Arabic. She argues that this relationship is one where Arabic political identity tends, over time, to become subsumed by the global religious identity of the ummah. Part of this development, she suggests, involves the long-standing effects of successive waves of colonization of Arab peoples over the past seven centuries. She concludes that it is important for Arab peoples to recognize these effects of colonization on the one side but not to romanticize or orient themselves toward rebuilding the Caliphate of pre-colonial times on the other. Rather, this recognition is important for understanding who they are at present and thus for building a new, more autonomous future.
Resource link: Globalized Islam: Arab Identity Sous Rature [PDF] - 446K