The Myth of Arab Unity

It’s a beautiful thing.

Prophet Mohammad, Peace be upon him, said:

“Believers are like a structure, parts of which support one another. The believers, in regard to mutual love, affection, fellow-feeling is that of one body; when any limb of it aches, the whole body aches, because of sleeplessness and fever.” [Sahih al-Bukhari & Muslim].

So basically, all Muslims should act as one–a united ummah–and when one group of us are in trouble we should feel it and help them out.

Dreams are sweet.

On the dreaded treadmill today, right after Haifa’s mini-porno video clip Ibn Al Halal (English subtitles available btw) and before one of Nancy Ajram’s many ads for Damas jewelry’s Farfasha line that masqurade as video clips, I watched Tamer Hosni’s supposedly heartbreaking new song, Kolena wahed [We are all one]:

The lyrics go something like “Please Arabs, we only have each other..wake up. Your dust Palestine, is a crown on my head. I see my brother being tortured and all I do is watch. We need an Arab stance to fix this. We can’t shut up when our siblings are being killed” etc etc. Lot of truly heartbreaking images and footage, and Hosni tearing up. Sniff.

Perfect timing really. Just like he manges to pop out a song right after we win the African Cup of Nations, he managed to write, sing and produce a song (along with its video clip) in a couple of days. Now, I’m not cynical enough to say he’s capitalizing on the situation to earn some money, but I still find it loathsome.

What does it say about us when all we can do is sing? I can’t remember what’s it’s called, but a year or so ago this one hugely famous song with about half a dozen famous singers was all anyone could talk about. And what was it about? How our brothers and sisters were being killed in Palestine, Iraq etc, and we were all silent. Its aim: to make you feel all depressed and patriotic and mixed up and goose-bumpy. Then 10 minutes later, you’re back on facebook.

But wait, no. We weren’t silent. We sang!

And we complain. And we shout. And we try and make our voices heard. My entire facebook mini feed is dedicated to people posting links, notes, and pictures all about Gaza. I’ve received at least a dozen messages today asking for prayers, money, aid etc. But we don’t really change anything.

But what should we do? Should we really go to war? Or cover our own asses? (ehem second biggest recipient of US Aid in 2008, ehem, lapdogs, ehem). As bad as this sounds, is it really our responsibility? Our country is screwed up as it is. We’ve already fought so many times for Palestine. We’ve lost thousands of Egyptian men.

And yet, I was disgusted when Mubarak announced that the Rafah crossing would remain closed until the Palestinian authority regained control of the Gaza strip (Any time now). Robert Fisk’s widely-circulated scathing editorial, The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act, was spot on and hit home.

And yet I can’t help but feel that if Mubarak got up tomorrow and said “Let’s go to war,” all of Egypt will rally behind him. There’s a reason a prophet got sent to every tribe, but only Moses got sent to pharaoh: for if the pharaoh was convinced, Egypt would follow. Sheep, basically.

Then again, Arabs could all ‘unite.’

I hate the term ‘Arab Unity.’ It’s so wishy-washy. What does that really mean, anyway? We hear it all the time. We’re told stories of the wonderful days when Arabs were united, and of the wonderful days we’ll have when we’re reunited. Just unite, and all our problems will be solved. Like magic.

No, they won’t. Arab states are all so fragmented. If we ‘unite’ (whatever that means) we’ll just be diluting ourselves even further. We won’t get stronger. We can’t get stronger when we’re still fighting amongst ourselves. When our only aim for uniting is to fight Israel.

Then again, we can always sing.