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On Theory and Practice Among Arabs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Clement Henry Moore
Clement Henry Moore
Affiliation:
American UniversityCairo
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Extract

The fact that most Arab countries recently celebrated the centenary of Lenin's birth with varying degree of fanfare only underlines their relative impermeability to his teachings. The fanfare was not in all cases inversely proportional to the country's implementation of practical ideology, but the latter is in scarce evidence. Few of the leadership groups have assimilated the Leninist prescription to unite practice with theory, much less devised or adapted an ideology which is “practical” in the sense of legitimating particular political strategies or tactics in a logical and systematic way. Nor have they, except possibly in Tunisia, developed the necessary concomitant of practical ideology, namely a durable political organization which articulates and implements it.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , October 1971 , pp. 106 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1971

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References

1 Pfaff, Richard H., “The Function of Arab Nationalism,” Comparative Politics, ii (January 1970), 158Google Scholar.

2 Moore, Clement H., “The Single Party as Source of Legitimacy,” in Huntington, Samuel P. and Moore, Clement H., eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society (New York 1970), 53–56Google Scholar.

3 Thus, predictions about the imminent rise of mass political parties in the Arab world would seem premature, but see Polk, William, The United States and the Arab World (Cambridge, Mass. 1969), 228Google Scholar.

4 Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order (Chicago 1966Google Scholar), 65; emphasis added. See Geertz, Clifford, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in Apter, David E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York 1964), 46–76Google Scholar. Cf. Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (New York 1961Google Scholar), 125 and note 10.

5 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton 1963), 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar–22, cited by Ashford on page 8.

6 For suggestive evidence to the contrary for transitional, rather mobile Moroccans, see Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi, A Life Full of Holes, recorded, translated (or possibly imagined) by Paul Bowles (New York 1964). Even if the book is a fake, Bowles has lived many years in Morocco and is in closer touch with the type of person who ostensibly wrote it than most Westerners or educated Moroccans.

7 Thus Diggins, John P., in “Ideology and Pragmatism: Philosophy or Passion?” American Political Science Review, LXIV (September 1970), 899–906CrossRefGoogle Scholar, rightly criticizes on historical and philosophical grounds the distinction made by Sartori, Giovanni in “Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems,” APSR, LXIII (June 1969), 399Google Scholar, between “ideological” and “pragmatic” politics. Sartori is only one of many who ignore the distinction we are making between practical, or “pragmatic,” and expressive ideologies. For another recent example, see Gregor, A. James, Contemporary Radical Ideologies (New York 1968Google Scholar).

8 On page 377, Ashford cites Ulf Himmelstrand for support, apparently without realizing that the latter's work is elaborating the precise distinction at issue here between expressive and “instrumental” or practical ideology. See his Social Pressures, Attitudes, and Democratic Process (Stockholm 1960Google Scholar), and also his article, “A Theoretical and Empirical Approach to Depolitisation and Political Involvement,” Acta Sociologica, vi (1–2, 1962), 83–110Google Scholar.

9 Gibb, Hamilton A. R., Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago 1947), 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Gardet, Louis, La Cité Musulmane (Paris 1961), 226Google Scholar.

11 Kerr, Malcolm H., Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1966Google Scholar).

12 See Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, Mass. 1965Google Scholar), and also, concerning political parties, Koenigsberger, H. G., “The Organization of Revolutionary Parties in France and the Netherlands during the Sixteenth Century,” The Journal of Modern History, xxvii (December 1955), especially 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar–36.

13 See his article, “A Pendulum Swing Theory of Islam,” Annales de Sociologie, 1968, 5–14Google Scholar; reprinted in Robertson, Roland, ed., Sociology of Religion (Harmonds-worth, England 1969), 127Google Scholar–38.

14 See el Sayed, Afaf Loutfi, “The Role of the Ulama in Egypt during the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Holt, P. M., ed., Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London 1968), 266Google Scholar–70.

15 Though the issue has become academic, Samuel P. Huntington would have been better advised to place his bets on Nasser than the Ba'ath for this very reason. See his “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, XVII (April 1965), 429Google Scholar.

16 Rodinson, Maxime, “The Political System,” in Vatikiotis, P. J., ed., Egypt Since the Revolution (London 1968), 87–113Google Scholar. Rodinson refers to the concepts developed by Binder in Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1962), 37–45Google Scholar. I would agree with George Lenczowski, however, that “Egypt's National Charter of 1962 impresses one as a coherent document rather remarkable for its consistency.” (See his “Radical Regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq,” Journal of Politics, xxviii [February 1966], 56Google Scholar.)

17 Nadav Safran, Egypt in Search of Political Community (Cambridge, Mass. 1961), 231. Mitchell, it is true, reiterates this rather commonplace view of the Brothers on page 324: the Society was “ill-informed about the dynamics, both of its own Muslim society and of that of the West.” But his descriptions of their ideas and activities are sound and dispassionate. He avoids pulling their writings out of context and twisting their meaning as Safran does on page 241, for instance, interpreting Muhammad al-Ghazzali as recommending that “power and the sword decide what is right,” when he was in fact criticizing morally indecisive Muslims. See Ghazzali, al, Our Beginning in Wisdom (Washington, D.C. 1953), 20Google Scholar.

18 Halpern, Manfred, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton 1963), 136Google Scholar. Cohn's book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, discusses these Utopian movements to which the Puritans were a startling contrast.

19 Safran (fn. 17), 239.

20 Walzer (fn. 12), 309.

21 Halpern (fn. 18), 149.

22 Puzo, Mario, The Godfather (London and New York 1969Google Scholar).

23 See Gellner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas (London 1969Google Scholar), and also Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (London 1949Google Scholar).

24 David, and Ottaway, Marina, Algeria: The Politics of a Socialist Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1970Google Scholar), gives a first-rate account of Algeria since 1962.

25 Frey, Frederick W., The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge, Mass. 1965Google Scholar), 400 ff.

26 For further treatment of colonial dialectic, see my Politics in North Africa (Boston 1970), 34–90Google Scholar.