CAIRO, 6 July 2003 — A Kuwaiti academic on Wednesday lamented the modern Arab “culture of defeat” as he joined fellow intellectuals in pondering the decline of a great civilization, now tainted with despotism and religious extremism.
“The Arabs have become the biggest losers in history, especially since the military men took power” in coups in several countries of the region, Kuwaiti sociologist and political scientist Khaldun Al-Naqib charged.
“Afterward there was the defeat of June 1967 (against Israel) which pushed us toward a culture of self-flagellation, and a whole series of defeats crowned by the resolutions of the Beirut summit” in March last year, he said.
The summit called for Arab states to normalize ties with Israel in return for its withdrawal from lands seized in 1967. As the summit ended, Israel launched an offensive on Palestinian areas which gained self-rule under the 1993 Oslo accords.
Political repression in turn has stifled Arab artistic expression, leading to the dominance of US and Western culture, he said.
“Our defeat was not only political but also cultural,” Naqib told the intellectuals who gathered in Cairo’s dome-shaped Opera House, a landmark built with Japanese funds near the shores of the Nile.
“It is linked to the fact that the (people’s) will is thwarted and it is only possible to emerge from this tunnel by opening the door to the will of the Arabs,” he asserted.
Syrian-Lebanese intellectual George Tarabishi saw the problem in reverse from Naqib. “Our defeat is basically cultural,” he said.
“Since the revival of Arab culture (at the end of the 19th century), it has tried to counterbalance that of the West, but we don’t have enough weight to do that,” he added.
“That’s what puts us in a constant position of defeat with regard to the West,” Tarabishi said, adding Arab culture would benefit by opening up to that of the West.
Six Egyptian intellectuals, including writers Sonaallah Ibrahim and Gamal Ghitani, published a statement criticizing the gathering before it opened on Tuesday.
“Holding the conference ignores the most pressing questions, such as the American occupation of Iraq and the daily massacre of the Palestinian people,” it said.
The conference, which ended on Thursday, is entitled “Toward a New Cultural Dialogue.”
Others present are Sudanese writer Tayeb Saleh, Moroccan literary critic Mohammed Barrada, Palestinian sociologist Hisham Sharabi, Egyptian economist Samir Amin and former Lebanese culture minister Ghassan Salame.
