These days the Arab mind seems to be at a complete loss as to how to react to what is happening around it. Having lost the ability to exert any significant influence on rapidly unfolding developments, the Arab mind is on the retreat. The nation has been reduced to the mentality of a baying crowd detached from its surroundings.
This is a time when the very existence of the nation is threatened, its glorious past about to be falsified and any reference to its contribution to human civilization stricken from the history books. The picture has now become clear, as we can see from what is happening in Iraq at the hands of the United States and Britain.
Yet we still continue to ask what has become of the Arabs, who have been in a state of limbo for so long they are unable to act or even react to escape their dilemma.
What makes our enemies better than us? Is it that their brains are different from ours? What makes them superior to us in almost everything while we continue to lag behind as if we are living on the margin of history? The Arabs continue to live in constant fear of being suppressed both internally and by foreign forces. It is as if fear has become the defining characteristic of Arab life, and we do everything in fear.
The Arab intellectuals who are supposed to lead the way have either chosen to absent themselves altogether or willingly agreed to be sidelined. Some have already started likening the fate the Arabs are going to meet with that met by the Red Indians in the United States. If things go the same way, a time may come when the Arabs will cease to exist as a people and a nation. They will find themselves contained to isolated reservations cut off from their history and heritage.
This is the fate that awaits all those who fail to learn from history, who fail to apply their brains to and spend their energy and resources to building modern and viable states and ultimately one nation sharing the same religion, language and destiny.
Arab News From the Local Press 13 April 2003
