Noor Dahri Photo Credit: Facebook
Noor Dahri – Arab Nationalism, Islamism and the State of Israel
We want to thank guest contributor Noor Dahri/Jerusalemonline for allowing israelseen to post his articles.
Pakistani writer Noor Dahri explained why Arab nationalism has nothing to do with Islam and that the Arab fight against Israel is based upon Arab nationalism rather than Islamic thought.
Arab nationalism is entirely different from Islam. Islamic ideology is humanistic while Arab nationalism does not preserve Islam. Turkey is affixed to socialist Ataturk and Egypt with Gamal Abdel Nasser. All Muslims are not against Israel, but some Arab states do not tolerate a modern country like Israel in the region. Since the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, the attitude of the Arab Kings has been hostile towards Israel because they were scared of the newly established Jewish state. They knew the Jewish state was more capable than the rest of the Arab states. They could not surpass the state in every field of life, from technology to military capability.
The bloody history of the Arab’s barbarism is full of genocide. Arabs did not desire a potent non-Arab country within their neighbourhood. Therefore, they tried hard to destabilise the Jewish nation by attacking them. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt were ruled by nationalist arrogant Arab leaders who advocated socialism for decades. The six day-Ramadan-war (1967) was initiated by the Arab nationalist leaders. They lost their war because this war was not an Islamic war, but an Arab nationalist war against the lone Jewish nation which was a heavy threat to them and their cruel regimes.
There are 10 out of 56 Islamic nations in the world who have recognised Israel. Turkey was the first Islamic country who recognised Israel. Iran recognized Israel in 1952 but adopted a hostile attitude towards the Jewish state. While there have been 15 wars between Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians, in every war, the Arabs were defeated. There are many reasons behind their humiliating defeat and one of them is their socialistic and nationalistic ideology which contradicted with their religion.
The Arab states have nothing to do with Islam, but they pride themselves to be Arabs instead of being Muslims. The Arab Israeli wars were not based on religious ideology, but for the greed of land. That is why, when the Six Day War started, Egyptian leader Anwar al Sadat delivered his speech in which he stated, “Oh descendants of the Pharaohs! You are contending with the sons of the Moses who had defeated us ages ago; now it’s time for you to call for revenge.”
The Arab nationalism had hijacked Islam, adopted a Takfiri ideological thought, and manipulated the teachings of Islam to be used against the Jewish community. As exhibited by the Egyptian leader Anwar al Sadat, they pride themselves in being descendants of Pharaohs rather than Muslims. Additional grounds for their defeat were that the resources of their military power were negligible. Whenever Saudi Arabia experiences trouble within the land, they seek help from Pakistan to protect them. One example was during the Arab spring in Bahrain. The Pakistan Army in the uniform of the Saudi Army entered into Bahrain and completely halted the uprising. When the Arab-Israeli Six Day War started; the Pakistani army participated in the warfare against the Israel, though Israel never did so with Pakistan.
The Arabs leaders always supported terrorism to damage the Israel’s governmental and civilian infrastructure. They fought many wars, but were defeated in every measure of war against the Jewish state. They also destroyed Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Syria by providing arms and funds to the terrorist organizations in the region. There is no democracy or freedom of speech and human rights for their public. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a great democratic rule and freedom of speech and equal rights for minorities.
Arabs can never accept a Jewish state near their borders because of the historical and sectarian background which prohibits them to support the Jewish people or Zionism. Terrorism is the weapon of these Arab nationalists. They stand and promote terrorism not only against the State of Israel, but against non-Arab Muslim states as well. After wars with Israel and defeat, they realised that they cannot gain ground in the war against Israel. Therefore, they created terrorist groups against Israel to shake every city of it with the flame of terrorism. Arab nationalists have another great danger within their borders, which is an Islamic violent extremism. They tried hard to defeat this ideology, but could not succeed. They lost their political leaders and head of states to Islamists. In fact, Israel never was a danger to an Arab country, nonetheless Arab countries attacked Israel. Arabs perceive that Zionist leaders as their utmost hope to survive so they eventually will normalise their relations with Zionists against Islamists.
For Arabs, Zionists are the actual problem of all matters they cannot solve. Jews never were a problem for Muslim states before the 19th century. Many Muslim states had good relations with Jews anywhere from businesses to the governments and the Jews always supported them. They didn’t want to see a solid and powerful Jew who can talk to them loudly for their rights and exemption. The root of the conflict lay then at the end of the nineteenth century in ethno-political rather than purely religious differences. Under the rule of the Ottoman Turks; the Jews, Christians and Muslims of Palestine coexisted peacefully under the framework of Islamic governance.
The relationship between Arabs and Jews heated up when Theodore Herzl published his treaties in 1896. He argued that assimilation of the Jews would never happen and that the Jews should find their own state, preferably in Palestine. The Zionist movement was not different than Judaism because it aspired Judaism, but the difference was only that Judaism was based on religious actions. However, Zionism was based on both political action and destiny. A Sudanese theologian stated: “Judaism is a religion in which the believers follow a certain creed. Zionism is the same as Judaism, but it seeks to achieve the end sought by Judaism but through political actions.”
Arabs, however, consider Zionism as entirely different as Judaism because they were habituated to living with Jews who were dwelling in fear under their dominion. However, Zionism was a powerful movement with a group of strong Jews who desired a separate state for their people where they can become robust. This was the only reason that Arabs did not want a Jewish state. The Arab nationalism is also opposed to Islam and this is why Islamists were always in battle with Arab nationalists. However, at the same time, Islamists were against Zionists because of the ideology of political Islam, which contradicted with the political philosophy of Zionism.
Arab leaders, especially Egyptian political leaders, were not Muslims, but socialists and they were not happy to see Islamists rise up against their regimes. The modern Islamist figures such as Hasan al-Banna recognised the symbolic importance of the unfolding conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. He is quoted as criticising Egyptian nationalists with regard to the issue: “Political bodies as parties in Egypt were totally diverted from supporting Palestine seriously because their nationalism had not reached the stage of developing a feeling for Arabism and for the Islamic bond.”
Arab Nationalist political leaders would never end their conflict with Israel, even if Israel conceded the entire West Bank and Jerusalem because they perceive every single Jew as the main problem for all Arab nationalists. They will not cease their conflict against Israel until one inch of Palestine is occupied by no Zionists. One former Israeli colonel asserted: “On the contrary- it may encourage them to say that a withdrawal to [the 1967 border] is just the beginning of the Salah a-Din victory on the heretics.”
We Pakistanis have not any issue with Israel or Zionism but we only blindly supported the Palestinian cause for money and pressure from the Arab nationalist leaders. Whenever India attacked Pakistan, these Palestinian leaders never helped and supported the Islamic state of Pakistan. PLO leader Yasser Arafat was a close friend of Indian leaders and he always considered Indira Gandhi (Slain Prime Minister of India) as his elder sister and we not only nurtured them, but provided them financial, civilian and military support against the State of Israel.
This is not a war of Islam or a war of Non-Arabs, but a war of Arab nationalists. Muslims should not suffer any fear and danger from the State of Israel. Yet, Arabs used Islam and promoted Political cum Religious Jihad against Jews and Israel to fulfil their dirty and greedy political desires. We must understand who and what to follow because Arab ideology is not an Islamic ideology but a socialist political theory.
