Being Arab Quotes

“Everyone is entitled to change and one should no doubt concede the possibility that the Islamists' transformation is permanent and their stand against foreign domination sincere. But this is still not enough to make one accept Islamism as the only possible way. For whether it is no longer a foreign agent, Islamism still reinforces the Other. In justifying, or enacting, the clash of civilizations, it gives supporters of the crusade their rationale and enables the West to use all the means afforded it by its technological capabilities to maintain its supremacy over the Arabs, and thereby to perpetuate Arab powerlessness.”
― Samir Kassir, Being Arab

“As a product of the democratic deficit, political Islam's rise could only be a response to the crisis of the Arab state and the deadlock of Arab societies. A form of resistance to oppression, it also arose from the failures of the modern state and the broken egalitarian promises of progressive ideologies; in this sense, it resembles the rise of fascism in Europe. Indeed, once the religious veil is removed the societal attitudes of the Islamist movements reveal many similarities with fascist dictatorships. If one is to admit political Islam's claim to be a force for change therefore, one must accept that the democratic deficit is permanent and that the Arab world will never make its appointment with modernity.”
― Samir Kassir, Being Arab

“Freeing Arab history from the grip of religious pre-destination, therefore, entails deislamizing its beginnings; refuting nationalist teleology, on the other hand, involves recognizing how much more important Islam was than ethnicity as a unifying bond in its subsequent phases, Within three decades of being galvanized by Islam, Arab history has merged with the history of other peoples incorporated into the Muslim state - and subsequent Muslim states - to form a culture in which religion is but one among many shared values. With this in mind, it is much harder to assert the idea of this culture's decadence without at the same time denying the reality of its golden age and all that period's imaginative worlds.”
― Samir Kassir, Being Arab