Independence with regard to world-view values...

Independence with regard to world-view values, attitudes, ideologies, and frame of reference is hardly, if ever, broached in Arab nationalist circles. These circles that have been created by Western thought even in their way of seeing things cannot be expected to push their cherished slogan to its logical conclusion and to its only meaningful usage.The cause of this muddle is in the "First Contradiction" discussed above.

As doctrinaire secularists, the Arab nationalists have rejected Islam as the only possible content of and justification for the call for independence. They had, or preferred, to fill their ideological vacuum with a Western content, while, at the same time, they had also to maintain the independence' slogan both as raison d'etre and as an element of appeal.

This left them in a position in which they were forced to use only the negative, superficial meaning of the term independence', and to shun its deeper implications, which raise the spectre of Islam as the only independence-content for the Arabs. The Arab nationalist position on this issue is reflected in the practice of those who ruled under the banner of this idea, such as Nasir or the Ba'thists.

Their fervently advocated slogans did not prevent them from losing their independence to certain Western powers---including the Soviet Union---for which, some would say, they were no more than clients. On another level, the nationalist' intellectuals, who call themselves 'Arab', are slavishly dependent on the cultural goods of the West -- including the view and prescriptions of the Westerners about the Arab and Muslim conditions.

Arab nationalism failed miserably both in theory and practice to live up to an idea which constituted its essence. The rejection of Islam and the adoption of secularism have been responsible for this. 2. The Position on Palestine The Arab nationalists have recently coined a phrase which found currency in the Arab media to the effect that Palestine is the central cause of the Arab people'. Their propaganda pictures them as the only defenders of the Palestinian cause.

I do not wish to dwell here on the sad and disastrous record of that 'championship' of their chosen cause.Their intellectual failure implied in this slogan is perhaps more interesting.