Pan-arabism and Pan-islamism - Essay Example

Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism Pan-Arabism is a political theory of adopting unity of the North Africa and West Asia countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Ocean. This portion is known as the Arab World. Pan-Islamism on the other hand is a political movement recommending the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state, command, or leadership that is similar to International Organization. One common factor between Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism is the fact that Islam as a religion is founded on Arabic as a language.

Most of the Pan-Arabic countries have Muslims as their occupant and they uphold the religion’s doctrines as part of the constitution of the countries. Arabic language is also the national language in the Pan-Arabic countries. However, there are some countries, which have Muslims but do not uphold Arabic as a national language. The two ideologies are completely different. Pan-Arabism has belief that there should be one nation in the Arabic world; similar to Umayyad Caliphate as in was in 750 C. E. when it had no Persia or Southern Spain. (Schmid) They believed that Turks, Europeans, and greedy rulers artificially drew Arab borders from Arab and that Arab people had a nature of being in a large nation like the United States.

Pan-Arabists have always discussed using Islam framework generally for the laws of the Pan Arabic State. However, most of them believe in a secular government and only use Islam as a culture marker rather than religious. Pan-Islamism is a form of Islamism that uses political ideology with the main objective of bringing religious Islamic tenets into the daily government operations and its legal ways. It is a modern movement, whose root began with the rise of Salafism in the late 1800s and early 1990s in Egypt.

Pan-Islamism is not violent naturally nor expansive. Several movements have concrete goals like Islamist power in Turkey. Pan-Islamism do not believe in one unified state for all Muslims but in making each state act in line with Islamic principles. They also do not have an ethical component hence they can be exported outside Arab world. Pan-Arabism has resulted to the growth of Arab nationalism since the Ottoman Empire to date. A number of leaders like Nasser and Muammar Gaddafi have promoted pan-Arab ideology and made Arab States Unions in during the Arab spring.

This has made it possible for Pan-Arabism ideology to achieve its unity in the near future for the Arab people that will be similar to EU model. Pan-Islamism has resulted to revolution in governments through Islamic groups into political parties and contesting electoral offices in many countries. This has been caused because of relative deprivation, especially political oppression and social inequality. The struggle is often done within the confines of religion and powerful evacuative potential of religious symbolism.

As a social movement, presently it has been identified as a threat to the western monopoly due to its resurgence. It has been attributed to the crushing of military defeats of Arabic countries at the hands of Israel forces. End of Pan-Arabism brought to the start of Pan-Islamism. Works Cited Schmid, Michael. Did Desert Shield Lead to Desert Hate? A Case Study of Anti-Americanism in Saudi Arabia. Hamburg: Anchor Academic Publishing, 2013.