Against US Intervention and Saddam Hussein

The Lebanese professor Ridwan as-Sayyid is one of the foremost intellectuals in the Arab world. In this interview with Nelly Yussef, he talks about Arab intellectuals, the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and US hegemony

Dr. as-Sayyid, since the collapse of Saddam's regime, we have noticed that the reactions of Arab intellectuals to the current political and social situation in Iraq have been very reserved. Why, for example, do you think the intellectuals have not made any categorical statements about the recently discovered mass graves?

Ridwan as-Sayyid: On the contrary, I think that the Arab intellectuals' response to the events in Iraq and Palestine have been so intense that they are preventing an objective view and hampering the search for alternatives. In other words, Arab intellectuals can at present think of nothing other than the fight against the Americans and Israelis; and that they must be expelled from Arab land and that all means are justified in reaching this goal, even suicide bombers.

Armed resistance has become the preferred method of 80 per cent of Arab intellectuals. Therefore, their reaction is quite simply violent and promotes blind hatred. This in turn obscures their view of another, no less important task that should be assumed by intellectuals, namely the observance of the status quo and the attempt to come up with alternatives that bring us closer to achieving the aims of this struggle and, in this way, differ from current methods.

In my opinion, my Arab colleagues are demonstrating almost too much enthusiasm. It is incorrect to say that they have closed their eyes to the mass graves. Most Arab intellectuals – let's say about 70 per cent – did not back Saddam Hussein. We knew about the mass graves and we condemned them. We have been highlighting them since 1981, since the Iran-Iraq war. We also raised the issue of the atrocities of the Iraqi regime and the catastrophic state into which it plunged the nation. What's more, we should not forget that there are other Arab governments that are no less criminal.

When it comes to the occupation of the country by the Americans, the intellectual who calls for resistance against this occupation has no chance of drawing attention to the butchery and the mass graves because the resistance to the American occupying forces currently has priority.

How do you explain many Arab intellectuals' solidarity with the symbols of the old regime? Some of them speak with pride of the 'Iraqi resistance!' Are these the first signs of a total Arab intellectual bankruptcy?

as-Sayyid: As a matter of fact, I too look with pride on the Iraqi resistance. However, I believe that one of the tasks of this resistance is now to seek out and kill Saddam Hussein and his thugs to ensure that the resistance is not stigmatised and to refute the American claim that this resistance is being put up by Saddam's cronies, the remnants of his following – a claim that is, of course, pure nonsense.

If Saddam and his supporters had really wanted to put up resistance, they would have defended Iraq against the American attack. Instead, the army collapsed, the administration collapsed, the Baathists fled – and so did Saddam – without offering the slightest resistance. We ourselves must kill him because if the Americans do it, he will be declared a martyr. That cannot be allowed to happen; someone like Saddam must not be allowed to be honoured as a martyr.

The intellectual bankruptcy to which you referred and from which we are suffering is closely linked to the weakness of our structure because we are still a young group in society; we are not yet well rooted in society. If we disappeared from the Arab world and the universities with us, no-one would shed a tear for us because the wealthy send their sons abroad to study and no-one cares about the poorer levels of society anyway.

Through my work at the Lebanese University, which has 70,000 students, I learned that none of them are getting a decent education. The situation is the same at universities in other Arab countries. Our structural weakness comes from the fact that we have no fundamental task in society. We are not succeeding in making ourselves indispensable to society.

Another weakness is the lack of interest in developing both ourselves and our knowledge. We have to be open and educated because we do not produce with our bellies but with our brains. And these brains need knowledge.

One of the main reasons for the backwardness of the Arab world is the 'rentier system'. Does this economic factor provide an adequate explanation of the backwardness at political level and the lack of democracy?

as-Sayyid: The idea of the so-called 'reindeer system', a phrase that was coined by Rashid al-Barawi quite some time ago, was backed by other, non-Arab economists. I don't like this idea at all because its proponents say that Arab countries cannot grow because they rely on their raw materials, which are imported by foreign countries and processed there at a profit while we live with these raw materials, make no progress and post no growth. This view of things is incorrect especially when we look at where we were in the early 20th century and where we are now.

The fact of the matter is that our entire socio-economic structure has gone through many changes, some of which have been very positive indeed. However, today's political systems - and those of the past thirty years - have increasingly grown to be an obstacle to the economic and social development of Arabs.

As far as our state is concerned, on the other hand, it impedes growth even in the private sector. This is compounded by rampant corruption in the public sector. Even functioning and transparent state systems with limited corruption grow. But here, leaders stay in power for fifty years, supported domestically by their security forces and the alarming extent of corruption, and supported abroad by America or other nations that seek to stabilise the power relations in a particular area. This is why we say that our societies are backward and unable to develop.

What do you think of the conclusion of the Cairo conference entitled 'For a new cultural discourse: from the challenges of the present to future horizons'. In this discussion, all the blame was heaped on the current religious discourse.

as-Sayyid: For the most part, I agree that the current religious discourse has its faults. However, I distance myself from the idea that a renewal of the religious discourse should be our top priority. Of course, religious discourse and religious thinking as a whole must change. However, the tools and methods that we need to make this change are different from those that are needed for cultural, political and other social changes.

Religious reform can at best take place in the long term and must not distract us from the primary problem: the fact that the situation has got into a political rut, dictatorships, terrorism and the lack of growth. None of these problems has anything to do with religion or Islamists. Radical Islam was born of the failure of dictatorships and those in power and is anything but the root of the problem.

Since September 11, the attempts to promote dialogue between the Islamic world and Europe have been steadily increasing. Which dialogue could help bring both cultures closer together?

as-Sayyid: There is no struggle or dialogue between the cultures because cultures are not political structures. I reject such ideas. In my opinion there are political, economic and cultural problems between us and the Americans and Europeans. We should discuss these problems with one another and not turn this discussion into a general discussion between the Islamic and western worlds.

Interview: Nelly Youssef

Ridwan as-Sayyid was born in the Lebanon in 1949. He studied at the Al-Azhar University and was awarded his doctorate from the University of Tübingen in Germany. He is professor of Islamic Studies at the Lebanese University in Beirut.