The Arab Order: An Undefined Concept

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The term “Arab order” recurs frequently in Arab visual, print, and audio media, but I have never once heard any media outlet explain the meaning of this term or define it. It seems the concept of the Arab order remains mercurial and unclear to the ordinary public and to academics alike, just like many other concepts and terms we use without grasping their meanings and implications, such as “Arab solidarity,” “joint Arab action,” “democracy,” or “Islamic order.”

I have researched the matter of the Arab order extensively and found no principles or foundations that distinguish the concept, and found no political, economic, or moral boundaries for it, and I did not even find an institutional structure that could be called one of the Arab order’s instruments. I found no goals attributed to this order, no means and methods that could be followed to preserve its continuity or push it forward. I found no shared moral value system Arabs agree upon, and I found no specific states that constitute the members of this order.

I did not find a single charter called the “Charter of the Arab Order,” no constitution, not even written instructions concerning the Arab relations that are supposed to prevail within this order. I found some agreements between Arab states, some issued collectively by the Arab League, others bilateral or trilateral. There is the Joint Arab Defense Agreement, and there are economic agreements and security agreements, and so on, but I found that the Arab regimes have not adhered to these agreements, with the exception of the security agreements designed to pursue and track the Arab individual. Likewise, I found no rights or duties for members. There are no texts on what responsibilities fall on a member of the Arab order, and no texts on the various methods and means that can be followed in bearing and carrying out these responsibilities.

So what is this “Arab order” the media speaks of? Perhaps they are speaking of an order characterized by the following:

1. Arab regimes that pursue the Arab citizen and employ vast sums of money for security apparatuses, intelligence services especially, to track the details of the behavior of Arab citizens, individuals and groups alike.

2. Corruption that pervades the Arab homeland, which includes the monopolization of power, the plunder and squandering of money, the entrenchment of nepotism and favoritism, and the persecution of dissenters no matter how eminent their scholarly standing.

3. Prostration before foreign policies, the United States especially, and the implementation of its schemes at the Arabs’ expense.

4. Ignoring the central Arab causes that matter for the Arab future.

5. Despotism in governance, which recognizes neither the other nor citizens’ right to freely express themselves and participate.

6. The Arab regimes’ inability to defend the states and peoples they govern, and the ease with which Arabs capitulate before enemies.

7. The spread of ignorance, illiteracy, and enslavement across the length and breadth of the Arab homeland.

8. Backwardness in various social, economic, and political fields, except in the field of consumption.

9. The scramble to win the favor of Zionists and Freemasons.

The Arab regimes have never concluded agreements among themselves regulating backwardness, despotism, enslavement, the plunder of peoples’ money, and conspiring against them with enemies. There are no charters obligating Arab countries to follow foundations, methods, and principles of decline and collapse, and this is perhaps because every Arab regime knows its own path toward backwardness and corruption very well, and has no need for joint efforts to determine the foundations, principles, and methods of sabotaging societies and subjecting them to humiliation, disgrace, and the enslavement of others. And if we are to speak of an “Arab order,” we are not speaking within this framework that is lethal to the citizen and reckless with homelands and their futures. Arabs come together around numerous traits classified among the traits of vice — an implicit gathering, unannounced and undocumented by agreement, yet accepted and satisfying to everyone. Unfortunately, it seems we come together instinctively around what harms the nation, while virtue refuses to bring us together.

Since our earliest childhood, we have watched Arab regimes engage in bloody conflict among themselves, yet these mutual relations improve whenever citizens threaten the existing regime. On this basis, a clear definition of the Arab order can be formulated: that order which is unorganized, not deliberately but spontaneously, arising from lustful policies focused on prolonging the rule of the prevailing, existing regime in service of gangs stripped of human, national, and religious values, who wreak corruption across the land of the Arabs.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “النظام العربي مفهوم غير معرف” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.