Being Arab

November 1, 2006
Until his untimely death by a car bomb in Beirut on June 2, 2005, Kassir was one of Lebanon's best-known journalists and political commentators. His columns in the Lebanese daily "An-Nahar" were especially irksome to the Syrian authorities, who were the target of Kassir's trenchant commentaries on the state of affairs in Syrian-influenced Lebanon. This book is a long introspective essay that offers a devastating criticism of what the author refers to as "the Arab malaise," i.e., the Arab world's political paralysis and intellectual decay. This malaise is described in terms of growing disparities between the haves and have-nots, unruly urbanization, unacceptable rates of illiteracy, gender discrimination, and, most important, the democratic deficit that engulfs the Arab world today. Looking at the modern history of the Arabs, Kassir argues that some of the reforms undertaken by figures like Muhammad Ali (d. 1849), the Ottoman pasha of Egypt, were more profound than anything that has transpired in the 20th-century Arab world. He also contends that a major cause of the malaise is the Arab world's elusive search for a panacea that has ranged from secular pan-Arabism to religious fundamentalism. Recommended for public and academic libraries.Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile

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