Arabs and the Mentality of Petty Rivalry

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The mentality of petty rivalry (“munakafat”) prevails across the Arab arena, whether between ruling regimes or between regimes and their domestic opponents who have some opportunity to speak on official policy. In many Arab countries we find mutual rivalries expanding and growing, with the parties involved distracting their peoples from their real causes and destroying the social fabric and moral foundations that bind them.

We find the media a principal partner in feeding these rivalries and hunting for topics for petty score-settling that serve to elevate the side it favors and belittle the side it does not. There are regimes that never stop feuding with other regimes, even though no regime can claim sanctity for itself while declaring others profane. There are ongoing petty rivalries in the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Tunisian arenas, of a kind that weakens everyone and redirects their focus toward a desire for revenge rather than a desire to build.

The word “munakafa” comes from the Arabic root “nakafa,” one of whose meanings is to wipe tears from a cheek; one says a person “nakafa” his tears, meaning he wiped them away with his fingers or removed them, and it likewise means to wipe sweat from a brow. But when we say “ankafahu,” we mean he cleared him of blame, and when we say “nakafahu,” we mean he opposed and belittled him. This is a word the children of the Levant have long used in the rules of their games: when one child “yankuf” another in the course of play, it means he has pushed him out, eliminated him, or defeated him.

The point is that petty rivalry in the Arab arena prevails over the logic of collective action, mutual cooperation, and partnership; it means eliminating or wiping out the other, so that the field is left clear for whichever side has been “nakaf-ed.” This is one of the signs of political failure and folly in Arab countries: no one is actually able to abolish or eliminate the other, because each side expresses a body of people and certain convictions held by that body.

It is possible to silence or suppress the other side, but it cannot be abolished. Nor do Arab rulers seem to possess the kind of political-philosophical capacity that would lead them to the conviction that the other side can only disappear if history itself buries it as conditions change.

They still believe the other side is misguided and lacks understanding, and that harsh measures must be taken against it so that it withers and vanishes — even though repression, oppression, and the confiscation of freedoms reflect back negatively on the rulers themselves, since these only build further determination for the political change that will inevitably emerge in the days to come.

Petty rivalry falls under the heading of achievement-based competition versus destructive competition. Achievement-based competition is where each competing side tries to prove its distinction and good performance by attaining actual achievements. Each side works hard to achieve results in order to convince others that its approach, conduct, and methods are better than what others are doing — and this is the kind of competition that leads to development and progress in the various fields of life.

The parties to achievement-based competition busy themselves with discovery, invention, improvement, and development, whereas destructive competition means belittling the works of others and obstructing them as much as possible, so that the other side fails and is defeated in its own eyes and in the eyes of the public. What the other side does in this kind of competition is ugly and harmful, leads to a deterioration of conditions, and facilitates theft, embezzlement, and every form of corruption.

The other side always works to place obstacles in the competitor’s path so that he cannot achieve something the public will praise and commend him for. The slogan of destructive competition is always that one side’s achievement constitutes a defeat for the other, and the war against achievements in this competitive mode never lets up.

In destructive competition, there is always an effort to portray others as failures; if one side is incapable of achieving anything, it must insist on causing the others to fail. This is, more often than not, the rule in the Arab arena: whoever is failing at destructive competition insists on his own failure and persists in it even if it destroys the country and its people, and whoever is incapable of achievement insists on making his competitor fail as well.

As a result, the Arab arenas have busied themselves with destructive competitions that have brought down states, defeated armies, and enabled enemies to dominate the Arab homeland. Most Arab states are failures, and the Arab peoples are no better off. It is the way of the failure to be arrogant and to falsify facts in order to appear great and full of remarkable achievements.

The greatest evidence of this is that Arabs have declared victory in the wake of their own defeats. They were only defeated in the battles in which they claimed victory because it was their domestic rivals who actually won. This is the sick psychology that denies scientific facts and is dominated by a mentality of glib bravado (“fahlawa”), lying, and deception.

Those who engage in achievement-based competition are psychologically healthy people who hold visions for the advancement of their societies and peoples, and who are prepared to work tirelessly to achieve results whose benefit extends to everyone. They possess a moral strength of the highest order, along with belonging, commitment, psychological cohesion, and a refined, logical, scientific capacity.

Those who engage in destructive competition, on the other hand, are psychologically and mentally afflicted, with very limited moral, logical, and scientific capacities. They are prisoners of their own appetites and their desire to wipe out and eliminate the other side, even if the price is the ruin of the nation. They are blind of insight, narrow of vision and of heart, and see no further than the tips of their own noses.

Let us compare the competitive spirit that prevails within the Zionist entity with the one that prevails in Arab countries. Consider how the Zionists have leapt forward — broadly, rapidly, and to great heights — across the various fields of life, while we have remained begging for mercy from Westerners who have conspired against us continuously. The Zionists have achieved a consciousness of their future, while we still believe there is no future on the horizon.

Destructive competition, or the mentality of petty rivalry, consumes individuals, drains their creative energies, and destroys their mental and logical capacities; the destructive competitor becomes absorbed in scheming, in manufacturing faults, and in betrayal, and thereby develops a degraded psychology that practices deviance and turns him away from the paths of good and of building.

So instead of channeling his energies into addressing shared concerns and achieving accomplishments, aspirations, and dreams, he throws himself into the instinct for fragmentation, tearing apart, and surrender, and turns into a heavy affliction on society and on enlightened public culture. And if petty rivalry comes to prevail in a given society, that society will inevitably fail, and will suffer defeats across the various fields of life.

Is there a solution to this tragedy? There are certainly solutions that I, and others, could describe, but the matter requires the effort of the state itself. Are the political regimes prepared to embrace the scientific capacities needed to devise programs that eliminate the phenomenon of petty rivalry? If they did, they would be threatening their own survival. And so we shall remain caught in this vicious circle until God graces the Arab nation with a leader who understands what he is doing and knows how to carry it out.

Source: Originally published in Al Jazeera on 2018-05-05. Translated from the original Arabic, “العرب وفكر المناكفات”.