La teoría del sujeto responsable y las causas de inimputabilidad y exculpación

The Arab World’s central position at the intersection of the three ancient continents, namely Asia, Africa and Europe, has always made it strategically important. Not only has the region witnessed the successive birth, life and death of many of the world’s oldest great civilisations such as the Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Egyptian among others, but it has also been frequently referred to by historians as the ‘cradle of civilisation’. These pre-eminent empires unified the region and left a great historical legacy whose consequences have survived to the present time (Barakat, 1993). Added to that is the region’s reputation for being the birthplace of the world’s three major Abrahamic religions. The prized location, wealth and legacy of the Arab-Islamic civilisation have attracted foreign interests, in the form of occupation first, and ‘meddling’ (Barakat, 1993) in their affairs nowadays; hence, the ongoing conflict and difficult history.

The link to colonial legacy in the Arab Middle East is a prerequisite to the understanding of any modern Arab state (Ayubi, 1995), Arab thought and society. At the outset of the twentieth century, most of the Arab world was under Ottoman rule. The revolts of Arab subjects against the Ottoman Empire/ Muslim Caliph in the nineteenth century could have constructed the roots of twentieth century Pan-Arabism and Arab nationalist ideologies. Initially, these anti-Turkish, nationalist attitudes called for cultural equality, but the Arab revolt of 1916-1918 was more of a political awakening following the disintegration of Ottoman Empire and the impact of British and French hegemony over large parts of the Middle East (Ayubi, 1995).

Abou-El-Haj (1982) reports that scholarly materials on the Ottoman era of Arab history, albeit small in quantity, could be divided into three periods. Arab scholarship up to 1918 is generally positive towards the Ottoman sultanate as it was regarded the heir of the Islamic caliphate. However, during the period of 1918-1950, Arab attitude and scholarship production shifted towards the call for total independence from the state due to Turkification policies introduced by the Young Turks. The last period from 1950 seems to be influenced by Arab nationalism that assumed the unity of Arab history and considered the entire Ottoman era as a time of decay not worthy of serious attention.

Ayubi (1995) laments the practice of disregarding the Ottoman-Arab history, or accusing it of decline, as it has had noticeable impact on the state and political traditions of many Arab countries. This era, he writes, “included some praiseworthy manifestations of a remarkable skill in organisation and administration, and some very interesting innovations in the area of statesmanship that included, among others, the elaboration of a dynamic system of socio-cultural pluralism.” (1995, p. 66). Nevertheless, at the end of his short description of the history of the Arabs, Hitti (1948) does not conceal his surprise that “excessive taxation and oppressive rule” exercised by the Ottomans left the Arabs unable to produce any creative work in art, literature and science. The (Muslim) Arabs, before not too long ago, were exporters of great knowledge in sciences and humanities, but during the long-established Ottoman suzerain, the once glamourous Arab capitals of mighty empires and cultural enlightenment, namely Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus, gradually faded and the whole Arab land was in “a state of eclipse” (Hitti, 1948, p. 196).

Although the British and French encouraged the Arabs to break away from the Ottomans and the British even promised to support the liberation process, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement was concluded to the dismay of the Arab peoples, who regarded it, and still do, as an act of ‘betrayal’ (Fattah & Fierke, 2009). The fragmentation of the vast Ottoman Empire led to the European occupation of most Arab countries. This colonial era literally ‘remade’ the Middle East, as it roughly created the boundaries of the present-time states. British and French colonialism differed in terms of political style; the former emphasising economic concerns and depending on indirect rule while the latter accentuating cultural matters with direct rule. In practice, however, both “were equally interested in maximising economic gain from their administered territories, and they

were both equally proud of their own culture and contemptuous of Arab-Islamic culture” (Ayubi, 1995, p. 89).

In the pursuit of independence, different movements emerged in the region. Pan-Arabism is an example of Arab nationalist ideology, mostly attributed to (Western-educated) Arab intellectuals, developed in the twentieth century and had at its core the objective of unifying the Arabs into a single nation with the Arabic language as its basis. Anti-British and anti-French sentiments were on the rise, and a wave of public revolutions eventually enabled these countries to secure their sovereignty (most of them between the 1920s and 1940s) and to start establishing their state systems. However, the post-colonial period has not paved the way for development programmes, as the two Gulf wars, the destruction of Iraq, and the ongoing turmoil of the recent unprecedented social uprisings have instead prolonged the state of confusion in the Arab world.

Two of the most memorable and humiliating events that had a powerful psychological effect on Arabs are related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first is the “disastrous defeat” (Ayubi, 1995, p. 144) in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, whose end saw the creation of the state of Israel and which is considered by Arabs as ‘an-nakba’ - ‘the disaster’ or ‘the catastrophe’. The second is the humiliating tragedy of the Six-Day war of 1967, labelled by the Arabs as ‘an-naksa’ or the ‘setback’, whose result increased the territory of Israel and whose aftermath continues to be a major point in the ongoing Arab-Israeli dispute. The catastrophic experience of failure in both wars resulted in the failure of the ‘one Arab nation with one language and one culture’ concept and progression. On the one hand, nationalism emerged mainly to gain independence and once achieved, the movement began to die gradually. On the other hand, as Harik (1990, p. 2) states, “Arab nationalism as an ideology, more so than Islam, denies legitimacy to the state system. The true and natural state is considered to be the national state whose authority is coterminous with the nation, the nation being defined as the people of one language and one culture”, but in his opinion the Arab states are so diverse to conceive a true natural nation.