Inscribing the Arab Self: Butrus al-Bustani and Paradigms of Subjective Reform (original) (raw)
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Butrus Al-Bust?N?, Arab Consciousness, and Arabic Revival
The Muslim World, 1984
BUTRUS AL-BUSTANI, ARAB CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ARABIC REVIVAL The disruption of traditional society in Ottoman Syria led to the emergence of various intellectual movements during the second half of the nineteenth century. Educated Syrians not only pondered the destiny of their society but also sought to influence that destiny in favor of one o r another set of ideals. Butrus al-Bustgni's intellectual endeavor was one of the earliest of these attempts. His ideas initiated one of the major trends of thought. Social thought in Syria varied in accordance with different reactions to the disruption of traditional society. Syrian Muslims in general were adversely affected by the changed and changing conditions. Through the proclamation of religious equality in the Hatt-1 Hiimiyin (1856) and the gradual implementation of the policy set forth in that edict, the Muslims of Syria were legally and effectively deprived of their privileged position within society. They watched the powers of Europe intervene, both directly and indirectly, on behalf of Syrian Christians in 1860. Afterwards, they remained subject to threats of intervention until foreign occupation became a reality in 1918. Their sense of well-being was further impaired when they saw the once inferior Christians improving their economic status through association with Westerners. The Muslims of Syria had reasons to resent not only their Christian neighbors and the Western powers that patronized them but also the Ottoman government which was either unable o r unwilling to uphold the status of Muslims within the empire. Despite their dislike of certain governmental policies, the majority of Muslims in Syria remained loyal t o the Ottoman regime. There was, however, a small separatist movement among them. The leaders of this movement appealed to Arab consciousness and looked to the Sharif of Mecca a n d / o r the khedival family of Egypt to protect the interests of Arab Islam. They emphasized the association between the Islamic faith and the Arab people and their language as the basis of Arab consciousness. Islam was founded by an Arab prophet, and its holy scripture was written in the Arabic language. It was the Arab nation which originally spread the faith and started the civilization of Islam. The Arabicspeaking Muslims of Syria (and of the Near East in general) traditionally considered themselves to be descendants of these people. Thus, they had a valid claim t o being the preeminent people of Islam. As such, they were obliged to protect the interests of Islam, which the Ottomans had ostensibly abandoned by promoting religious equality. Revival of the Arab caliphate was thought t o be a remedy for the crisis at hand.' This movement lost much of its appeal, however, when Ottoman religious policy became more conservative in the 1880s.
Rebellion in the Public and the Private Sphere: Nādī al-sayyārāt by ʻAlā’ al-Aswānī_ Arablit
Over the past five years, socio-political changes in Egypt have stemmed from and – at the same time – contributed to the emergence of a new sensitivity, which has been expressed in various forms of art such as cinema, graffiti, music and literature. As far as fiction is concerned, various subgenres (diaries, blogs and popular literature) have contributed to a renewal of the genre. This essay looks at ʻAlā' al-Aswānī's Nādī al-sayyārāt (Automobile Club, 2013) as an example of the aforementioned new sensitivity or revolutionary perception in fiction. In this recent novel, the author depicts everyday life and inter-class relations at the Cairo Automobile Club during the 1940s, in order to create an allegory of contemporary Egyptian society. Overtly denouncing social injustice and the network of power is certainly not new in al-Aswānī's oeuvre. However, in Nādī al-sayyārāt, the novelist examines the process of developing a revolutionary spirit and the personal choice of taking action, with all the difficulties that this implies. My analysis focuses on how representations of rebellion in the public and the private spheres are intertwined in the novel. This aspect will be seen especially through two male characters (father and son) and two female ones. The use of time and space as meaningful narrative strategies will also be taken into consideration. Finally, Nādī al-sayyārāt will be compared to al-Aswānī's earlier production and related to his activity as social commentator, in an attempt to identify any innovations in content and form. I would like to thank the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, where I conducted part of the research for this article during my stay as guest researcher, Fall 2014. PhD candidate in Linguistic, Literary and Intercultural Studies in European and Extra-European Perspectives, Department of Studies in Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication, Università degli Studi di Milano.
In the hall of mirrors : the Arab Nahda, nationalism, and the question of language
2012
The dissertation examines the foundations of modern Arab national thought in nineteenth-century works of Butrus al Bustani (1819-1883) and Ahmad Faris al Shidyaq (1804-1887) in which occurred an intersection of language-making practices and a national pedagogic project. It interrogates the centrality of language for Arab identity formation by deconstructing the metaphor "language is the mirror of the nation," an overarching slogan of the nineteenth century, as well as engaging with twentieth-century discussions of the Arab nation and its Nahda. The study seeks to challenge the conventional historiography of Arab thought by proposing a re-theorisation of the Arab Nahda as an Enlightenment-Modernity construct that constitutes the problematic of the Arab nation. The study investigates through literature and literary tropes the makings and interstices of the historical Arab Nation: the topography of its making. It covers a series of primary understudied sources: Bustani's ...
Reflectionson Arab Nationalism
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Codrul Cosminului, 2020
The Arab world continues to show new social, cultural, and political dynamics. Post the Arab Spring era, Arab countries with a republican system and having a historical memory of pan-Arab nationalism, are still faced with crucial national issues such as political injustice, social welfare, religious conflict, and other critical matters. From the perspective of the Arab intellectuals, the following severe question arises: why the Arab thought since the modern to the contemporary period does not have any significant effects on the progress of the Arab world. Internal and external problems constantly plague the Arab world. One of the crucial causes is the lack of a clear direction for the future projection of the Arab world indicated by the ideological divisions. The non-success of Arab thought since the Nahda era, which culminated in a painful defeat in the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967, followed by another Arab crisis such as the Arab Spring, all shows the inflexibility of the Arab intellectual elite. It seems there is no relation between idea and reality. On that basis, Syauqī Jalāl, an Egyptian thinker, tried to reflect and to call into question why did the Arab thought face a dead end. What is the leading cause, and can the Arab thought provide a real solution to the Arab crisis? The paper seeks to answer these questions by exploring the perspectives of Syauqī Jalāl on the Arab thought by taking the leftist Arab wing movement as his analysis. Rezumat: Sociologia eșecului în gândirea arabă contemporană (citind lucrările lui Syauqī Jalāl despre stânga arabă). Lumea arabă continuă să prezinte noi dinamici sociale, culturale și politice. După epoca Primăverii Arabe, țările arabe cu un sistem republican și având o memorie istorică a naționalismului pan-arab, se confruntă încă cu probleme naționale cruciale precum nedreptatea politică, bunăstarea socială, conflictul religios și alte chestiuni critice. Din perspectiva intelectualilor arabi se ridică următoarea întrebare serioa-să: de ce gândirea arabă, din perioada modernă până în cea contemporană, nu are urmări semnificative asupra progresului lumii arabe. Problemele interne și externe îmbolnăvesc
Historein, 14(2), 112-123, 2014