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The Arab University: Nationalist Caldron or Center of Scholarship?
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16195 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
4,912 Words |
| Author
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Don Peretz
Don Peretz is professor of political science at the State
University of New York at Binghamton and visiting fellow at
the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C. His
most recent books is Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising
(Westview Press, 1990). |
Arab secular universities, like those in many other Third World countries, have been traditional seedbeds of national consciousness. Islamic theological institutes, like the thousand-year-old al-Azhar in Cairo, have existed since the Middle Ages, but were never centers of modern nationalist sentiment. Long before the first Arab secular universities were established early in this century, there were foreign establishments, most notably the American University of Beirut, found in 1866. In his classic history The Arab Awakening, George Antonius gives major credit to AUB, then called the Syrian Protestant College, for its pioneering role as one of the first centers of the Arab national movement. More recently, institutions of higher education in the West Bank and Gaza have been setting the pace for Palestinian nationalism; as a result, they are prime targets of the Israeli occupation forces' efforts to put down the Intifada (uprising) that began in December 1987.
Antonius credits AUB with an influence "greater than that of any other institution" on the revival of Arab consciousness during the late nineteenth century. The first organized effort of Arab nationalism, he states, can be traced back to a secret organization established by five AUB graduates in 1875. They, like many leaders of the contemporary Palestinian movement, were Christians. Today, many leaders of the Intifada, although a minority, are Christian graduates or students at West Bank universities such as Birzeit, the first Palestinian four-year college. Birzeit was affiliated with and had strong ties with AUB in the years before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Establishing national universities and higher education systems has been prime goal of Arab independence movements. During the British mandate era in Palestine, the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, aimed at creating a university in Jerusalem with financial support from the Muslim world as the nucleus of his pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movement. The mufti perceived his proposed university as the Palestinian Arab equivalent of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which was opened in 1925 as a centerpiece of the Jewish national home. His emissary, sent to Iraq and India to raise funds, found that willingness to contribute did not match Muslim enthusiasm for the project; therefore, the project was abandoned.
As Arab countries attained independence after World War I, higher educational institutions have proliferated and university graduates often have become exceedingly numerous. Egypt's first secular university was established in 1908; by now there are a dozen, and more than twenty higher
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