As the Zionist, European, and American war of annihilation intensified against the valiant Gaza, aiming to uproot and eradicate the free Palestinian resistance in the last quarter of 2023, I penned a reminder of the poem "Palestine" by the poet and engineer Ali Mahmoud Taha (1901-1949). I referred to the composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab (1902-1991), who set the poem to music and sang it, quoting its opening lines:
"My brother, the oppressors have exceeded the limits … so, jihad is due, and so is sacrifice,
Shall we let them usurp our Arabism … the glory of paternity and pride?
They respond not but to the clashing of swords … answer us with a voice or an echo,
Unsheathe your sword from its scabbard … for it should no longer lay encased."
The poet wrote it, the composer set it to music and sang it, finding resonance with Arabs wherever an Arab lived, in every corner of the world, during the first nakba in 1948. Then, in 1953, President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) ordered the establishment of Radio Voice of the Arabs, launching it as a concise radio program, no longer than thirty minutes.
The Voice of the Arabs aired the song in its inaugural episode, accompanied by an interview with the composer Mohamed Abdel Wahab, while the lyricist Ali Mahmoud Taha had died four years prior; one year after writing the poem in 1948. A cultured friend then commented on my writings, stating: "If such a poem were to be written, composed, sung, broadcast, and listened to in our days, everyone involved in its creation, performance, broadcasting, publishing, and listening would be arrested, tried for promoting terrorism and inciting it, and then sentenced to years of imprisonment."
Culture of Normalization
In response to my friend's comment, I agreed, affirming that his observation is entirely correct. What consecutive generations recognized as noble resistance is now labeled as terrorism. The culture of resistance, which took root over two centuries beginning with the European colonial invasions at the end of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, has gradually vanished from official lexicons, becoming an abandoned language. In its place—forcibly and coercively—emerges a culture of normalization with the epitome of European colonization, its ultimate manifestation: Israel.
From Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and the Levant in 1798 to the establishment of Israel in 1948, to the Zionist war of annihilation against Gaza in 2023, culture has been—and remains—the foremost bastion of resistance, before and after weaponry. A vital distinction: culture is ours, within our conscience, deep in our souls, intertwined in our civilization, woven into the fabric of our taste and sentiment, not imported—like weapons—from our adversaries with their conditions, measures, and prices. While the enemy controls the arms market, they cannot dominate our culture unless we detach ourselves from our civilizational commitment, and our confidence in our existence falters.
Luring into Traps
Two men, one an illiterate who could neither read nor write, Mohamed Ali Pasha (1805-1848), and Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-1970), were both fully aware that our primary existential dilemma lies in the West's aggression and its aspirations to control us. They both comprehensively grasped that the West's advantage, bolstered by its aggression, posed a significant threat. However, their recognition alone was not enough to shield them from the encroaching Western danger.
Russia, France, and Britain set aside their enmity to defeat Pasha's fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, then lured him to his ultimate demise. Britain enticed him into invading the Levant, while France attempted to lure him into invading Algeria. He fell for the British trap, escaped the French one, conquered the Levant and nearly established a nascent empire. However, the entire West, without exception, united against him, broke his power, and forced him back to the banks of the Nile in 1841, where he spent the remainder of his life until his death in 1848.
A Window to the West
This illiterate man managed European powers throughout his life, especially Britain and France, while correctly believing their ultimate goal was to seize his seat of authority. In the upcoming year of 2025, it will have been two hundred years since his first scientific missions were sent to Europe. After twenty years of experiencing power and governance, his innate intelligence and sharp political instincts led him to understand that he had to start where the West had finished, with no other choice, yet he did not assimilate into the West, nor succumb or lose his immunity; he merely opened a window to let some of the ascending Western civilization's light in.
Pasha delayed Egypt's fall under direct Western rule, but that beam of light from Western civilization was the prelude, then the smoothed path for Western influence, and civilian authority, economic dominance, followed by military occupation, in little over twenty years after his death.
The Lesson Summarized: You may possess weapons, produce or import them, establish armies, plan wars, wage and win them, and create an empire in less than two decades, but without a cultural, intellectual, value-based, indigenous base that is superior, advanced, and strong, none of that will be retained, and all will be lost.
The defeat of Pasha's project was a cultural one, as his army succeeded, but his culture failed. Europe did not win the final battle against Pasha with armies—at least beyond the Battle of Navarino—but prevailed due to its progress, long-term patience, accumulated wisdom, and colonial cunning.
Pasha imported certain aspects of modern Western culture but neglected to foster a new culture within Egyptian soil. Culturally, Pasha was the last of the Mamluks and the first of the new Pharaohs, as described by Dr. Jamal Hamdan in his book, "The Personality of Egypt." Pasha's culture was a mix of degenerated late Mamluk and the new Pharaonic traits, which he founded—the authoritarian state culture that borrowed from the West everything that increased its repressive capacities.
Enduring Symbolism
When Israel was established in 1948, Abdel Nasser was in his thirties, while Mohamed Ali Pasha had been dead for approximately a hundred years. Just as Pasha arrived as an officer in an Ottoman division, intending to fight and expel the French from Egypt, Abdel Nasser served as an infantry officer in the first Arab-Zionist war of 1948. Pasha's war against the French formed his understanding of Europe. Abdel Nasser's war against Zionism shaped his perception of the entire Western configuration: old European colonialism, new American colonialism, Zionism, and what Abdel Nasser called the forces of Arab reactionism, referring to the forces of moderation, whether inside Egypt or across the Arab world.
If Pasha was culturally viewed as the last of the Mamluks and the first of the new Pharaohs, then Abdel Nasser, as rightly described in the referenced source, was the last of the great Pharaohs and the first of the new Mamluks. The Aswan High Dam alone suffices to make him a great Pharaoh, but his political tactics link him to the political heritage of the late Mamluks.
While Pasha's armies triumphed and his culture failed, the reverse is true for Abdel Nasser—his armies were defeated, but his culture triumphed. Abdel Nasser remains a symbol of resistance, with enduring symbolic significance in Arab consciousness, as in the culture of the Third World and the legacy of national liberation movements. His opponents attribute this to his media sway and influence, but that is a very limited part of the truth. The reality is that Abdel Nasser, despite having overpowered his predecessors and competitors, encapsulated all the national virtues within his persona.
Abdel Nasser was the essence and distillation of Egyptian nationalism across all eras. Like Pasha, he maneuvered against Europeans to not be broken, yet eventually, they broke him. Similarly, Abdel Nasser maneuvered against the British and Americans, quickly gaining total control of Egypt without any competitors or challengers, then revealing to them his authentic national revolutionary nature. The difference between Pasha and Abdel Nasser is that Pasha was lured and then broken, while Abdel Nasser set his own traps, willingly entered the quagmire of Yemen, and walked into the trap of the Six-Day War with full mental faculties.
The similarity between the two men—beyond the failure of their respective projects—is their culture of independence, which explains the living, and perhaps vociferous, presence of both to this moment.
The culture of independence here refers to the direction of history, questioning which direction we choose, which path we follow, what price we pay, which battles we engage in, and what identity we forge.
This article comes in anticipation of next Thursday's discussion, God willing.
