What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East

Brian Whitaker
Saqi, London 2009, £10.99
ISBN: 9780863566240

Reviewed by Issandr El Amrani
Middle East International, 6 November 2009

By choosing the title What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East, Brian Whitaker may have had in mind Bernard Lewis’ What Went Wrong? as well as other, less scholarly, diatribes about a “Middle Eastern question” defined by Western commentators in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. At the centre of such enquiries is the question of why so much of the Muslim world is so dysfunctional, why it produces religious violence, and, perhaps most crucially, whether Islam and the West are destined to clash. Whitaker, formerly The Guardian’s Middle East editor and the author of a book on homosexuality
in the Arab world, does not try to paint with such a broad brush or delve into historical grievances; and he eschews grand civilisational conflicts.

Instead, based on his experience of reporting from the region, and on a wide range of statistical and analytical sources and interviews with young men and women decrying the current state of affairs, Whitaker presents a survey of key social problems common to Arab societies. Indeed, the book should be called What’s Really Wrong with the Arab World, since it excludes Iran, Israel and Turkey from consideration, and largely focuses on the “Arab malaise” debated by many inside and outside the region for several decades. “Put simply, the Arab ‘freedom deficit’ results in a stultifying atmosphere where change, innovation, creativity, critical thinking, questioning, problem-solving, and virtually any kind of non-conformity are discouraged if not necessarily punished,” he argues.

Of course, Arabs have been having this discussion for a long time – at least since the 19th century – and have been particularly despondent about their lot in the past decade, as the often-quoted UNDP Arab Human Development Reports (from which Whitaker liberally draws) made clear. The things that are wrong with the Arab world, then, are well known: poverty, illiteracy, intolerance, corruption, nepotism, authoritarianism, religious obscurantism, etc – as well as, at times, a thin skin when outsiders point out these ills. Although cases differ from country to country (with the most obvious differences being between the populous Arab states and the small, hydrocarbon-rich Gulf monarchies), anyone familiar with countries such as Egypt, Syria, Morocco or Algeria will recognise the ailments. The question explored in What's Really Wrong with the Middle East is why, even while they decry their predicament, Arabs fail to do much about it.

In seeking answers, Whitaker looks beyond the actions of authoritarian regimes at how Arab societies themselves create these problems. "Governments are the product of the societies they govern and in Arab countries it is often society, as much as the government itself, which stands in the way of progress," he writes. Much of his concern is not so much about the injustices (relating to religion, gender, race or sexuality) that abound in the Arab world, but rather the extent to which they are interiorised and justified by ordinary people. 

He makes his case with testimonies from mostly young Arabs sympathetic to his own secular progressive world view, most notably accounts of the archaism that characterises public education, restrictions on political activity, the growing conservatism of many Arabs and the conformism (and at times intolerance) it encourages. Drawing on the Palestinian-American historian Hisham Sharabi's theory of "neo-patriarchy", Whitaker argues that the paternalism of governments is often a reflection of that found at home, or to quote one of his favourite sources, the Belgium-based Egyptian commentator Khaled Diab: "Egypt has a million Mubaraks." It is not just a question of gender inequality or father-knows-best authoritarianism that is at stake here. The wider point is that positive change in the Arab world cannot come from political change alone: societies and the individuals who compose them have their part to play too. 

The author cites current instances where individuals have challenged both government authority and social prejudice. The Egyptian human rights activist Hussam Bahgat, who took on Islamists and conservative theologians by challenging their interpretations of religious texts – an approach so far shunned by Egypt's largely left-wing and secularist human rights community, who have preferred to avoid making arguments on Islamic grounds – is a case in point. 

At other times, however, Whitaker is too ambitious. He is correct to highlight racism in the Arab world and discrimination based on skin colour, as well as a certain obliviousness to the very existence of racism (although Arab scholars such as Moroccan historian Mohammed Ennaji have linked the practice of slavery and its sanction in Islam with authoritarianism). But the author does not make clear what is different about Arab (rather than American or Swedish or Indian) racism. Similarly, while a chapter on globalisation focuses on xenophobia, the anti-globalisation rhetoric cited in it can be found anywhere across the world. The book does not take into account how deeply integrated into (and dependent on) the global economy large parts of the Arab world are. Also absent, aside from a remark at the beginning of the book and a reflection on the "oil curse", are considerations of the region's strategic value and military penetration by outsiders, or indeed the prevalence of war in the recent history of many Arab countries and its dissuasive effect on those who might want to rock the boat. 

These flaws detract little from what is overall a well-informed book that is sympathetic to its subject without being indulgent towards it. At its heart, What's Really Wrong with the Middle East attempts the difficult task of tackling socio-cultural causes of some of the Arab world's problems while skirting the trap of cultural essentialism.