Europe and the Arab World

Abstract

Concise, succinct, and informative, this book skillfully elucidates and assesses the patterns, prospects, and complexities of Arab-European relations contextualized in a globalizing (read “Americanizing”) world. It also identifies the ambiguities and limitations of social movements and struggles within the Arab world, as well as their implications for mutual relationships (p. vi). The authors’ main thesis is that both global capitalism and the American determination to construct a “new” Middle East in its own image have undermined the possibilities of domestic reforms and external realignments in most Arab countries. American hegemonic influence, together with the growing sway of politicized Islam on public life, have added more limitations and constraints to other failures to transform the underlying economic and political structures defining the relations between members on both sides of the Mediterranean. The book comprises four chapters: three written by Amin (chapters 1, 2, and 4), and one (chapter 3) by El Kenz. The first chapter is a critical survey of conditions in the Arab world in general and that of the Arab “state” in particular. Amin designates the latter structure as a manifestation of “mameluke power,” reflecting a complex traditional system that has merged the personalized power of warlords, businessmen, and men of religion (p. 3). The Arab state, he argues, has never really embraced or understood modernity. Egypt, Syria, and the Ottoman Empire underwent a first phase of ineffective modernization during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second phase was associated with the populist nationalism of Nasserism, Baathism, and the Algerian revolution between the 1950s and 1970s. With the end of this phase, a multiparty system gave way to a paradoxical regression into the mameluke type of autocracy (pp. 10-12). Whereas Europe broke with its past, which allowed for its modern progress, the Arabs have not. Amin identifies modernity with such a historical break as well as with secularism, the differentiation of religion and politics, the emancipation of women, and the rest of the term’s conventional elements (pp. 2-3). He criticizes currents “claiming to be Islamic” (p. 6), particularly those of the Wahhabi type, viewing Islamic militant groups as manifestations of a revolt against “destructive” capitalism and “deceptive” modernity (p. 6), more interested in sociopolitical issues than in matters of theology. Amin dismisses Iran as being no different, although he provides no details (p. 8), and ...