ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that these statements still remain largely true, though not altogether so. It is true that no Arab has yet analysed the meaning of Arab culture to Arabs themselves, and that a balance between Arab emotional purposiveness and a sufficient respect for the facts is yet far to seek. Yet the student of Arab culture today cannot help being impressed by a new phenomenon. For to the contemporary Arab intellectual, Arab culture has become epitomized in one comprehensive concept-that of Arab nationalism. And within the limits of that notion there are fairly sincere attempts to pay attention to facts. No Arab today gives a thought to defining the meaning or analysing the content of Arab culture because he sees no reason for doing so. The unity of Arab culture, its content and principles, are taken for granted. The controversies which raged, only a decade ago, about what constitutes Arab culture, whether the Arabs
have a uniform and comprehensive cultural heritage, or what constitutes an Arab nation, have suddenly dropped out of fashion and seem even irrelevant. No Arab intellectual now finds it necessary to talk about the Arabs’ common historical background, their consciousness of race, their common environment, language, folk-lore, traditions, or their common interests. All that is taken as read. Even such a difficult question as the compatibility of Arab nationalism with Islam and their mutual relations is left aside. Arab nationalism has become a living force, not to be justified theoretically by marshalling historical or sociological facts, but to be embodied in an allembracing creed. This creed does not consist of any analytic findings about Arab nationality; it is presented as a philosophy of life as well as an ideal of government, a credo as well as a manifesto. It sets out, in fact, to be a complete ideology to match the rival world-ideologies of Communism and Democratic Capitalism. Arab though it is, in the sense that it is formulated by Arabs for their own nation, this new ideology professes to be open to all, and to offer a way of life for humanity as a whole, when the two world giants shall have finished their fight and cancelled each other out.
