Hutlan wrote about this just last week, the question still remains, and pondering over its details and the matrix of possible answers reaches as far and wide as the space between the Straits of Hormuz and Gibraltar. Is it because your typical Arab is programmed - or coaxed - to adopt and embrace the differences of his politicians? To fight for the personal problems of his leaders? At first glance, all that seems to make sense. But the same twisted logic that makes it ok for us to accept these justifications plunges us right into the thick of much more profound images of the Arab's inner war with himself and with civilization. It will open up much more complex record books, and will force us to have to delve into much more bitter, embarrassing details. So are we really concerned with answering that headline-making question? Well, then, a little patience and perseverance is in order. Let's get one thing out of the way first. The “Arab” we're talking about here today is not the same Arab who invented the zero, carried the torch of civilization and ruled the earth, as the all-too-familiar rhetoric would have us believe. Not that this is simply untrue, to say the least, but because of the fact that just about nothing links that Arab with the Arab who woke up one morning to find himself in the 21st century. Dare we say that the heavy burden of a legacy our “ancestors” have thrown upon our shoulders is at the very heart of our dilemma with each other? Let's wait and see. So, today's Arab is a creature lost in the geography of history. He - in his own homeland - suffers a compound identity crisis, because the concepts of “homeland” and “Arabism” remain all too fluid and loosely defined to him. He leads himself to believe that he is some mythological hero or historical figure, and publicizes it, and he does that for things as mundane as cursing borderlines of his perceived homeland as defined by today's maps, even if those maps weren't made by Arabs. Heck, the very concept of “the map” is a real dilemma to him. For a true-blue Arab, there's only one big map that stretches all the way from the Raging Gulf to the Roaring Ocean. That Arab is the same one who swears by the soil of the land the shadow of his national flag covers... his flag, which flies higher than all the other 21. And because today's Arab had no hand in drawing the lines on that map the conflict within his battered soul will rage on - a conflict with recent history and its forces, which imparted the slashed up map in the first place. A conflict with ancient history, which by nature remained oblivious to the divisions - real or imagined - outlined on the modern-day map. So is the shared hatred among Arabs today just blowing off steam about their hatred for the curiosities of time, and their now-hereditary resentfulness for Mr. Sykes and Monsieur Picot? Now that we've mentioned colonization, let's admit it: the contemporary Arab is the direct product of that colonization. He, with his setbacks and defeats, with his tyranny and brutality towards himself, and with his proudly inherited backwardness, lives with the inferiority complex of the era of colonization. The typical Arab is still living the fantasy of a struggle against the oppressing occupier - a struggle that has grown into something of a joke, simply because our traditional oppressing colonizers are now closer to our hearts than all the long-running list of other “brothers and brethren.” and the proof of all that is all those entry and exit stamps on our passports as we continue to travel to the countries of our former oppressors for education, medical treatment and even tourism. An even stronger proof is the manifests of our imports and exports. So, does the Arab hate himself in historical resentment of the colonization that tore up its map and “planted the seeds of disarray,” for him to pick up and swallow like a blind chicken? Or is it that those colonizers, with their imperialistic ideologies, had destroyed the traditional balance of power between “privileged” and “submissive” Arabs. Provoked by those labels? Are you laughing yet? Are those the very answer to our lingering question? The answer, to some extent, is yes. The Arab, eternally shackled by legends of grandeur and glory that are all that's left for him by his bone-dead ancestors, the Arab who, as fond of maps and expansion and conquest as he is, while never able to leave the boundaries his revered oppressors had already predetermined for him, is unwaveringly convinced that he is the rightful heir to all that “glory.” He looks down his long nose upon all his “brothers and brethren,” on the basis that they, and only they, are the reason for his nation's downfall. Is it they - in some way - who are the ones keeping him from his ingenious attempt to rise like the phoenix that he thinks he is. It's even worse than that. The Arab, imprisoned as he is within the boundaries of his locale on the cursed map, feels that every other spot on the map is the lesser of his own - a mere “strategic depth” for the eminently great project of which he is the core. Could it possibly be that the shared hatred among Arabs is out of mere envy? What's to envy? The rampant poverty - save for a few filthy rich countries? Or for the runaway ignorance and illiteracy - save for some beacons of knowledge whose dim light dims out the others? Could they possibly envy each other for weak development and growth? Or for the poor urban planning and infrastructure? Or for corruption, nepotism and suppression - save for some oases of hope scattered here and there? Would these exceptions be the very reasons why Arabs resent themselves, based on the perception that bad should prevail or else? Or is it that Arabs hate their brethren precisely because they love them - because they didn't turn out better? Because they made the same blunders and the same mistakes? Because they became just another effigy of the failure they themselves represent - an image of the self, only slightly different, in a different place on the map? One last, very interesting question. Does your typical Arab hate his compatriot - the one who bears the same “nationality” - exactly as intensely as he does the “other” Arabs? Does he hate that one all the same, only less? Or would that hatred disappear automatically once the national flags and the passports become the same? The reason I ask is because, if that were the case, we would've found the magical answer to this age-old question that baffled generations. Or maybe this idea of Arab “unity” had been tried and tested and found to be a complete failure as well. So, then if unity won't answer their demands by bridging the abyss of their disarray, what is it that they want? The truth is, in this case, that Arabs don't hate each other. It is themselves, their selves, that they hate. And this hatred of theirs is nothing more than a direct result of the massive and mass - frustration they live in, caused by all of the above. Until Arabs in Arab countries small and big, rich and poor, the ancient and the ones that believe to be ancient, find their own solutions to their own problems in their own disarrayed countries, only then, maybe, just maybe, they can get rid of this hatred for others, Arab or not. – Al-Watan __
