Book Review | Samir Kassir’s “Being Arab”

On June 2, pilule 2005, just weeks after the Cedar Revolution resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, prominent Al Nahar journalist Samir Kassir started his car at 10:30am and seconds later he was dead. An outspoken critic of the Syrian regime’s political and physical presence within Lebanon, Kassir’s assassination sparked an investigation that seemed to point all the fingers in one direction, yet, till today, it is an assassination that remains unsolved. Today, his office at Al Nahar remains untouched as he had left it, including the newspaper he last read, while behind the publication’s building, lies a square named in his honor, playing host to a single bronze statue of the fallen journalist, perhaps symbolizing his memory as a contemporary figure in Lebanon’s intellectual circles. For by the time Kassir was killed at the age of 45, he had already produced a volume of work to be reckoned with, in both French and Arabic, depicting his views on Lebanese history and politics as well as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; two topics he was well versed in. Indeed, by the time of his death, Kassir had garnered a reputation for holding opinions that not only rubbed many the wrong way, but the vocalization of which would likely cost a man his life. In the end, it probably did.

“So who murdered Samir Kassir?” asks world renowned journalist Robert Fisk in an article published in The Independent the day after Kassir’s death. It is this question that Fisk repeats throughout his analytical, yet angry piece republished in Kassir’s book as a relevant introduction. While Fisk and the rest of the world may have their valid suspicions, who murdered Smair Kassir remains an unanswered question, and more importantly, perhaps an increasingly relevant one in the context of Kassir’s book.

“Being Arab” is a bold and aggressive description of the Arab world’s status quo, or what Kassir attempts to describe as “the Arab malaise”. Offering a brief history of the region, Kassir focuses on the key events that he believes shaped the current malaise permeating through every corner of the Arab world. While many books of a similar nature might be more keen to indulge historical commentaries, Kassir cuts through the unnecessary encyclopedic data to arrive to the present tense, only to offer what is perhaps one of the most scorching self-examinations of what it means to be an Arab today. The picture is obviously not a pretty one. Kassir all but strips away the existence of any hope in a region he sees immersed unboundedly in a never-ending desert sea of religious extremism, pan-Arabism and senseless nationalism, which he sees as a response to western modernity. It is this simple notion that is at the center of Kassir’s thesis, the underlying belief that the Arab people have yet to come to terms with modernity – inherently obsessed with the “other’s gaze” – and have thus sought out other avenues that lead to a preoccupation with a glorified past.

– Originally published in Jordan Business magazine, February 2010 issue.