I would like to – first – express a straightforward statement. Some may think that our presentation of the book and our positive evaluation of it is a foregone conclusion, as the author is a prominent Syrian figure with significant influence. It might be assumed that praising his words and considering his book as a new opening in Arab political thought is a given. I assure you, with all sincerity and through an objective reading of the book, employing my critical and realistic approach, and constant critical review of my political experiences since the Arab nationalist movement in the 1950s and 1960s up to the present day, spanning numerous stages and various intellectual and political experiences, with their lessons and implications on both the Arab and Lebanese levels… I confirm that the book, in its content and style, is considered one of the most important contemporary renewal books in Arab political thought (and I will explain that in the context of this intervention).
I say this commitment to my critical and realistic approach that I have arrived at after various political and intellectual experiences, extending its scope to myself before extending it to others. Now, after reading Abdul-Halim Khaddam’s book, “The Contemporary Arab System: Reading Reality and Anticipating the Future,” using the same critical and realistic approach, I find in it a renewal of Arab political thought and a reformist and democratic approach. I say this without bias or exaggeration. I have read Khaddam’s book twice, once when it was released several months ago, and again just a few days before this seminar.
It is not within my capacity here, in a few minutes, to discuss the ideas presented by Khaddam in a book spanning 317 pages, written in a specific scientific style, with dense thoughts, analysis, research, and review. The author states in the book’s introduction: “After deep contemplation, I resolved to write about all these issues not within the framework of narrating facts and events but through the study and analysis of the causes, hoping to contribute to defining a vision and choosing a path for the generations of this nation as they navigate their way towards the future.”
Faced with this intellectual and analytical density, all I will do in this short intervention is to unveil what the author brings anew, with the hope that it will be discussed in a broader seminar involving a diverse group of Arab political thinkers from various Arab countries and different political and intellectual experiences. Perhaps, through this, we can contribute to deepening our new ideas for the future and renewing our shared political programs to address internal and external challenges on political, economic, and cultural fronts.
Abdul-Halim Khaddam’s political experience, with its ups and downs, has honed and left its marks (or rather, its lessons and insights) on his book. Far from the nationalist romanticism that we once shared, he defines and analyzes the nationalist problems, disappointments, the reasons for Arab weakness, and the political and opportunistic maladies of the current state that have settled into our backward Arab conditions.
The author frequently repeats four words that encapsulate his approach to analysis: errors, negatives, gaps, and side and futile conflicts. These are not just words; they represent the causes of backwardness, decline, and defeats. He focuses on them in his analysis of the reasons for our current situation, juxtaposing them with other words: supervision and popular participation, democracy and reform, and common Arab interests within the concept of Arab solidarity.
These, too, are not just words but solutions for the Arab reality itself, requiring development and change in the methods of political work in each Arab region and across the Arab system as a whole.
The book is filled with an analytical and critical intellectual discourse that reads the Arab reality as it is, with all its flaws, gaps, and shortcomings. It analyzes, clearly points out the causes, does not articulate ideas detached from reality, and does not skip over problems. Instead, it investigates, analyzes, and extracts suitable solutions for the near future before the distant one. The following paragraph from the book confirms this, focusing on “democracy”: “Some believe in the Arab world that democracy is incompatible with the Arab society governed by its legacies that evolved over centuries in the shadow of injustice and tyranny, resulting in fear, anxiety, and closure.”
Some argue that democracy is not suitable for certain Arab countries due to their social composition, whether tribal, clan-based, ethnic, or sectarian. They believe that democracy exacerbates these issues. They question how an electoral system can function in a society rooted in tribalism. However, upon closer inspection of the Arab reality, democracy appears to be the safest and most secure means of preserving national unity in each Arab state. It allows everyone to participate in public affairs, corrects its mistakes by nature, and provides mechanisms for accountability.
Democracy is simply the framework that allows the people to freely exercise their role in determining their destiny and affairs. It enables the monitoring and accountability of power, allowing individuals to exercise their fundamental freedoms of thought, expression, and participation within boundaries that do not conflict with the security, stability, and national unity of society.
Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all system that can be transferred from one state to another. It is linked to the economic, social, and cultural conditions and the stage of development in each country. Therefore, countries adopting democratic approaches exhibit different forms of implementation, with the fundamental principle remaining the free choice of representatives in parliamentary councils.
However, theoretical democracy is not fully realized in any country, and freedom of choice is not only tied to government pressure, financial influence, or family and tribal or sectarian pressure. The media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion among citizens and remains a powerful influencing force in electoral processes in many countries.
The Arabs’ need for democracy is as great as their need for renaissance, and a nation cannot rise while absent, with its capabilities disabled and its freedom restricted. Freedom is what unleashes the capabilities that, when employed for the benefit of the nation, enable it to achieve its aspirations and those of its sons.
Therefore, this book, unlike the usual political memoirs known for retrospection, is a book about the future that involves much reflection. Through this reflection, it looks forward to the future, and this “looking forward to the future” is among the political terms that deal with constants and principles. These, in their generality, sometimes do not enrich or satisfy hunger in political thought. Constants and principles, while necessitating general adherence, do not imply rigidity, stagnation, or justification. Instead, they signify the utilization of critical review of the experiences we have all been through, connecting daily political practice to them. It involves adopting political rationality and realism, acknowledging existing problems, shortcomings, loopholes, and flaws as methods for effective and productive political action that aligns with the reality itself. It doesn’t just soar above it; rather, it continuously digs into it, building, and there is no building, change, or reform without errors. The key is to always link constants—principles to daily political work or between strategy and tactics.
As tactics represent political realism in its progressive change content, not in its literal surrender to reality, they are the political practice of today based on possibilities, power balances, variables, and global circumstances. (This “realism” may seem contradictory to constants and principles, but it is a superficial contradiction not understood by those with rigid or dogmatic thinking. In essence, it is not a contradiction but a practical and daily application of ideas to reality for its reform and change…) Here lies the arena of renewal in the currently troubled Arab political thought. Here, in this arena and the wide gap between principles and daily practice, lies the needed Arab political intellectual dialogue in this challenging stage the nation is going through.
Abdul Halim Khaddam’s book roams and explores—or more precisely and with extreme accuracy—researches, analyzes, and extracts, according to his expression, what benefits the new generations.
Khaddam says—this is what journalist Jihad Al Khazen conveyed when he recently met him, “The Arab nationalist discourse still lives in the atmosphere of the fifties, and it has not evaluated itself or changed its practice…” And here is Abu Jamal himself presenting his new book to examine and analyze this discourse and determine what is needed to change it…