What do most Americans think of when they hear the terms “Middle East” or “Arab world”? Perhaps images of angry young men wearing green head bands, marching to their death, in the West Bank, or car bombs in Baghdad. Others might think of imposing sight of Saddam Hussein or Yasser Arafat; the more informed might imagine the image of Muamar al-Qaddafi, decked out in his flamboyant robes. Many might imagine impoverished beduins or angry mobs protesting against the Zionist Enemy as they carry placards as they advance down a beige boulevard in Cairo or Damascus. Few would imagine Rami Khoury, Salama Moussa, Ali Salem, Lafif Lakhdar, Tarek Heggy, or any of the other so-called “Arab liberals” featured in Barry Rubin????????s depressing account of the struggle for democracy in the Arab Middle East, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.

Rubin, a renowned scholar of Middle Eastern politics, has delivered to his readers a masterful account of the political culture in the Arab world.”Arab liberals,” following Rubin????????s definition, are people who support “multiparty parliamentary democracy, human rights, women????????s rights, a more tolerant interpretation of Islam, rapprochement with the West, and peace with Israel.” Rubin????????s book uses the words of such individuals themselves to make the case that an uphill struggle against tyranny is being waged amongst Arab intellectuals and liberal politicians on the one hand, and the Arab regimes on the other, and that only the Arabs themselves can defeat the forces of stagnation and backwardness.

Rubin begins with a typical introduction; establishing purpose, and scope, and defining terms. He then traces the history of Arab liberalism from the middle to late-nineteenth century, when Arab intellectuals praised Western models of development, based mainly on French examples, to the 1950s when a backlash of militant, and often xenophobic, nationalism swept the region. It was at this point in time, Rubin tells his readers, that the closed and violent political culture of the most recent generations was born.

The Long War for Freedom illuminates for the Western audience the Arab tradition of liberalism, beginning with the French invasion of Egypt in 1799 and the rise of Muhammad Ali in the same land of the pyramids in 1805 up through the modern era. Rubin terms the 1920s and 1930s “the liberal age of Arab politics,” as the liberal Egyptian nationalist Wafd Party came to power, promulgating a liberal constitution, and “a number of great Arab intellectuals advocated major reforms through writing and participation in public life.” Qassem Amin, an Egyptian thinker authored The Emancipation of Women which told readers that the way to save Egypt and Islam was through making women “front line warriors in the war against ignorance,” few Arab thinkers in later years would dare make such an argument. Another Egyptian, Salama Moussa, authored in 1927 Freedom of Thought, which was a sort of set of profiles in courage of Arabs who had fought against ignorance and tyranny. This generation of Arab thinkers, in Rubin????????s words, “declared themselves rationalists, patriots of their own countries rather than pan-Arab nationalists, part of a Mediterranean people whose history was rooted in all those who had lived on that soil and not just the Arabs or Muslims among them.” At this stage, Rubin????????s main fault is not widening his scope to include other liberal movements in the Arab world during this period. The Lebanese political tradition, for example, with all its blemishes, leaves the people of Lebanon with perhaps the most fundamentally liberal inheritance of all the Arabs. It would do Rubin well to present the development of the Lebanese state, and its fragmentation; this would most clearly show the scope of Arab liberalism during the epoch in question, and the fate of liberalism in the Arab world more dynamically.

Rubin then takes the reader through the rise of pan-Arab nationalism. The blemishes of the liberal age provided fertile ground for demagogues and militants. The political life of the Arab world was undeniably dominated by the few and the foreign. As a result, the liberal (and often quasi-libertarian) modes of thought promoted by the Arab bourgeoisie became associated with foreign occupation, failure and by mid-century “would be as discredited in the Arab world as any political philosophy could be.” New ideologies, influenced heavily by European linguistic and ethnic nationalism, Marxism and fascism, came to dominate the lands of the Arabs. Arabs were told to place their loyalty in the Arab nation, not a fabricated Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi or Sudanese one. There was a vanguard awaiting them, sometime in the near future, who would unite them; in the mean time, it was the duty of the Arabs to fight any enemies that would impede upon this, both internally and externally. “A complex worldview and system,” as Rubin describes liberalism, with its emphasis on the individual and independent decision making, “had to compete against extremists wielding slogans offering fast, total solutions and who were ready to use violence.” Those who disagreed were disposed of as the nationalists were “quick to resort to violence and suppression of anyone who disagreed, labeling them as spies, traitors, and infidels.” And thus was born the modern Arab political culture; closed, intolerant, radical, and authoritarian, if not totalitarian.

This was triggered, as Rubin state, by the failure of the Arab states to smite the newly formed Jewish statelet that would become Israel in 1948. Like Russia and Germany before their respective communist and fascist revolutions, the Arabs had suffered a great calamity and sought retribution in political movements that made claims to “truth” with a capital “T”. Rubin goes on to describe the way in which the nationalists consolidated power in the Arab world; through coopting, locking up, and killing the opposition. As the nationalists???????? policies failed through the 1960s and 1970s, they placed the blame on external factors; Israel, Zionism, the Mossad, the CIA, the United States, Britain, and less radical Arab regimes. This Rubin, is one of the great tragedies in the Arab world; the inability of its leadership to admit to and carefully and thoroughly examine its own failures. The Arabs have done nothing wrong, this line of thinking goes, their efforts have merely been subverted by the Jews, Zionists and colonialists. Arab liberals, now living in exile, in Europe and the United States have called the Arabs on their societal flaws and political blunders, only to be blocked by state censorship authorities or jamming signals. Those liberals who wished to stay in their native lands, like the famed Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, “remained self-consciously apolitical.” Those for whom the repression was too great to endure, followed the path of Abd al-Rahman Badawi, hopping back and forth between European universities and Middle Eastern ones, often finding that it was more wise to bide their time in Paris than Benghazi or Beirut.

Liberal political parties fared no better than dissident intellectuals. Rubin relates the story of the Egyptian Farag Fouda, who “wanted to re-create the pre-Nasser liberal movement” through the Wafd Party. But when Fouda joined the Party in 1978, “he saw, to his horror, the party????????s leadership ally with the Muslim Brotherhood for the 1984 elections.” The contradictions that the Egyptian dictatorship had created had forced political movements that were mutually contradictory and hostile to one another to come together to exploit the little bit of freedom that was left in the country. How could a committed liberal join with the “thinkers of darkness” that made up the radical Islamist and authoritarian Muslim Brotherhood? Fouda attempted to form his own al-Mustaqbal party, but to no avail. “The Islamists???????? numbers and their boldness were rising in Egypt,” Rubin writes, and few Egyptians had time to listen to lonely Farag Fouda and his “reactionary” platform.

Fouda and other liberals would be more effective through the use of the pen than the ballot however. Fouda wrote numerous articles criticizing the Islamists, making him a target of their rage. “Why, he asked, should the Arab model for social and political success be the seventh-century rule of Islam????????s first four caliphs? After all, that was a time of incredible strife, three of those leaders were murdered as a result of conflicts, and the whole system fell apart within twenty-nine years.” Fouda????????s debate with Islamist forces were ended abruptly, when he was gunned down with an AK-47. Liberals as bold as Fouda are present throughout The Long War for Freedom.

Rubin????????s argument that the troubles facing the Arab world are largely self-inflicted is supported by his artful illustration of the way that Arab governments silence dissent and expert economic advice in order to maintain their grip on political power, and the promotion of female subjugation and the rejection of Western style rational education by Islamists. Rubin discusses the political viewpoint of the Tunisian al-Afif al-Akhdar (also spelled Lafif Lakhdar), that the Arabs suffer from a grave inferiority complex, “a sense of failure, self-hatred,” and humiliation that “can be purged only by blood, vengeance, and fire.” At the same time, Rubin quotes Lakhdar as saying, the Arabs hold a self image that is so grand it leads them to have “a sense of superiority at believing they are designated by God to lead humanity.” This leads them to reject the advice of non-Arabs and Arabs who have adopted “foreign” ideas, and causes leaders to regard their people with contempt and condescension (this sentiment is called al-hegreh or al-hogra in Algeria, for example). “BY rejecting the West in general . . . Arab politics lost the chance to adapt such positive Western innovations as pragmatism in setting goals, strategy, and tactics; analyzing the balance of power in a detached manner; managing crises through negotiated compromises; and building a rational decision-making process.”

Far out numbered by Islamist organizations and sympathizers, Arab liberals face incredible odds. Rubin????????s conclusion, that the Arabs must realize their faults and shortcomings, while coming up with solutions to the “thousand and one difficulties” facing the region, is not likely to please ideologues from the nationalist or Islamist camps. The Long War for Freedom answers the oft asked questions of “Why don????????t Arabs and Muslims speak out against terrorism and aggression?” or “Where are the Arab Democrats?” by providing an abundance of clear and unequivocal examples, and presenting the arguments of Arab liberals in their own words. Prospects are bleak, but campaigners are committed and bold. Rubin????????s book offers little hope as to the growth of liberal movements; that isn????????t its point. It rather presents profiles in courage of brave Arabs who are working to put back in place the simplest foundations for democratization and liberalization in the Arab world. Rubin????????s book is a must read for those concerned with or interested in Middle Eastern politics or history.