Understanding Arab Protest Movements

The title is an article by Edmund Burke published in “Arab Studies Quarterly”, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Fall 1986), pp. 333-345. The following is the article.

The textual approach to protest movements

The role of Islam in Middle Eastern politics has received a lot of recent scholarly attention. Nevertheless, much remains to be done. In particular, the connections between the social history of the Middle East and its cultural history need to be more fully integrated. The study of social movements is an especially promising area to trace out the connections between economic and political forces and popular culture, because it necessarily involves the study of both. Indeed, I would contend that the study of social movements, because it focuses attention on the historical praxis of protest and not just on its ideology, has the potential radically to subvert the dominant Orientalist interpretative framework of the relationship between politics and religion in the Middle East. This article, which is derived from ongoing research into the comparative history of collective action in the Arab world between 1750 and 1950, outlines an approach to the study of social movements. It makes no claims to being exhaustive in its treatment. While the empirical data upon which this study is based is restricted to the Arab world, its findings may be of interest to students of other parts of the Middle East. Whether inscribed in the fiqh of the 'ulama', or the learned writings of European Orientalists, the dominant views about the role of religion in the politics of the Arab world derive from a profoundly textual approach to culture and human behavior. In both, authoritative texts shape an understanding of how things happen, and ultimately even of how history is written. In both the classical theory of the Islamic state and in European scholarship, the role of religion in politics is held to be primordial. In both, despite certain divergences among individual authors, Islam is presented as the social cement which keeps society together. Moreover, both agree that encoded in Islamic doctrine is the form of the state.

For Muslims this is generally presented as follows. Both Sunnis and Shiites look to the origins of Islam, especially the early Islamic ummah which flourished at Medina in the lifetime of the Prophet and the reign of the first four Rashidun caliphs which followed, as establishing the normative basis of Islamic govern ment. In particular, the Rashidun model of government for Sunnis and the imama te for Shiites took on special status as models for the governance of Muslim societies. This doctrine of the state is enshrined in such classics as al-Mawardi's theory of the caliphate. 1 According to this theory, all Muslim societies require an amir or imam to keep them on the straight path; and it is better that there be an amir, even a corrupt one, than no amir at all. Despite the emergence of minority views (especially after 1500), most scholars continued to hold that rebellion was not sanctioned within the tradition.

Western scholars have tended to echo this consensus. 2 They have tended to see social quietism and the support of existing governments (and more generally of traditional values) as all flowing from this theory. The result, they claim, is a discourse which is impermeable to outside influences, and which drastically restricts the range of potential discussion about politics. The doctrinal basis of "Oriental despotism" is thus well grounded in theories of the Islamic state. The major Westem interpretations of the relations between religion, power, and the state in Islamic societies conceive of Muslim societies as dominated by rulers and bureaucracies that, theoretically at least, deploy power on a vast scale. The followers of both Max Weber (for whom Islamic states are almost pure types of patrimonialism) and Karl Marx (for whom Islamic societies are examples of the Asiatic mode of production) employ essentially this model. Only the segmentation of society into smaller self-contained units (tribes, clans, guilds, turuq for Weberians, villages for Marxists) prevents the domination of the state from being absolute. The image of the mosaic has often been invoked to explain the peculiarities of Middle Eastern societies. Because the theory is an equilibrium model, questions of legitimacy are irrelevant, and real change is impossible. According to this theory, elites in the Middle East are small,3 politics is a game,4 and manipulation and corruption are central features of the political system. In such a social landscape, by definition revolts are infrequent and of little importance. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise, given the theory.

But if this is so, it is difficult to understand why in moments of popular protest in Arab societies over the course of the period 1750 to 1950 so many delegations were dispatched and letters of grievance drafted by protesters, or why rulers took such elaborate measures to disinculpate themselves and to blame their agents. Yet an examination of the historical praxis of protest and resistance in the Arab world over the "long nineteenth century" (1750-1925) reveals that protest was far from insignificant and that the demands of the protesters were often taken seriously by the authorities. Were these states really Oriental despotisms, then according to the theory there would have been no need for delegations or demands, since the ruler would govern by fiat, and all would be required to bow down before his implacable will. In fact, as the existence of these delegations implies, Middle Eastern societies were governed in accordance with tacit moral understandings between rulers and ruled about how much was too much. At the heart of these understandings was the concept of justice as it existed in the Shari 'ah and in the society at large. For Muslims, the search for justice in an unjust world is a central social mission. The struggle for justice is incumbent not only upon individuals, but also upon society at large (which is to say, in the final analysis, the state). This struggle is called jihad. It was actualized through the application of the well-known Quranic injunction Amr bi-al-ma'ruf wa-nahi 'an al-munkar ("Ordain the good, and flee from that which is evil"). The best assurance that this injunction would be carried out was the presence of an amir to guide the community, preventing chaos and regulating the smooth functioning of the society. Without an amir, society would constantly be exposed to danger.

In practice, justice in society was assured through the existence of the office of the muhtasib. This was an official appointed by the government to oversee the marketplace (especially prices, weights and measures) and more generally to safeguard public morals. It was he who was responsible for keeping close watch on the price of grain in the marketplace, and for preventing hoarding. s Given the opportunities for peculation and the weaknesses of human nature, the muhtasib did not always perform his duties to the fullest; indeed there was often complaint about his behavior. My point, however, is not whether or not the muhtasib actually carried out his duties; we may even assume that he often did not. Rather, it is that the mere existence of such a position was in effect a public trust. It constituted an implicit social compact according to which the amir, through his agents, guaran teed that justice would be carried out and the Islamic lifestyle safe-guarded. The burden of the foregoing is that there was indeed an Islamic analogue to the West European Christian notion of moral economy, and that it centered upon the application of the Shari' ah by a vigilant Muslim ruler. In particular, according to the Shari'ah, the government was obligated to enforce a series of measures of direct economic relevance to the inhabitants. These included the prohibition on usury and the insistence that only Quranically sanctioned taxes be imposed, that only Quranically approved coinage be permitted to circulate officially, and that non-Muslim minorities and foreigners accept their subordinate positions in society. In addition, there was the further general understanding that it was the duty of governments to ensure the supply of grain to the market at reasonable prices. Taken together these obligations amounted to an Islamic social compact which provided the moral basis of society. The patrimonial nature of these obligations will not have escaped the careful reader. They were recognized by the ruler in conformity to the dictates of the Shari'ah rather than imposed by the people. The eighteenth-century English crowds who rioted similarly invoked their religiously sanctioned right to rebel when economic justice was flagrantly violated. 7 Like their Muslim cousins, they were upheld in this action by higher authorities. As Edward Thompson has shown in the case of the eighteenth-century English crowds, this paternalistic ideology was manipulated both by the rioters and by those in command for their own interests. It was, in short, a bundle of symbols to be struggled over, not a set of principles to be applied. As we shall see, much the same was true of the way in which Arab rebels sought to manipulate the symbols of what I would call the "Islamic moral economy. Edward Thompson argues that conservative English historians give us rebels without ideas, only empty stomachs that automatically propel them to violence. Western Orientalists, by contrast, where they deal with protest movements at all, have given us rebels with ideas but no material needs; with full heads, but no stomachs at all. In neither case are the contents ofboth heads and stomachs taken seriously enough to be subjected to analysis. What kind of ideas, we might ask, led people to risk their lives in challenging the authorities? How hungry did people have to be, before they were willing to rebel? These questions frame a basic difference of approach in the study of social movements in the Middle East. I have traced their intellectual origins elsewhere."

Patterns of Arab protest, 1750-1925

The period under study can be called the long nineteenth century. 9 For purposes of analysis it breaks into three segments of unequal length: (1) 1750-1839, the period of economic incorporation and political conflict between regional political leaders, the central state apparatus, and the urban crowd; (2) 1840-1880, marked by major governmental reform efforts (the Tanzimat reforms) and the economic incorporation of the countryside into the world market, with the numerous adjustments which these changes necessitated between the state, landlords, and peasants; and (3) 1880-1925, the "liberal age," which was characterized by the consolidation of the state, the establishment of European dominance, and the emergence of a broadly based resistance effort.

The movements of the first wave of protest, which continued until the 1820s, were predominantly urban. They were centered primarily in Egypt and Syria. These movements represented a change from the older style of grain riots (about which Lapidus has written)'° to more politically focused challenges to the Mamluk system.' After the landing of the Napoleonic expeditionary force in 1798, these protests evolved in the direction of a patriotic resistance movement to French dominance, before culminating in the intense popular struggle which preceded the rise to power of Muhammad 'Ali in 1805. It is no accident that these outbreaks were most important in Egypt, where the oppressiveness of the Mamluk regime and the openness of Egypt to the world economy were particularly marked.Although less well known, similar urban rebellions occurred in Syria in this period, particularly at Aleppo and Damascus. There were important revolts in Damascus in 1725, 1730, 1738, 1743, 1757, 1771, and 1831, and in Aleppo in 1730, 1750, 1814, and 1815. These urban popular movements have been studied extensively.3

The second sequence of rebellions occurred about mid-century. These were great peasantjacqueries, and were directed primarily against the remnants of the old agrarian regime, but also against the increasing fiscal pressures of reformminded governments. These include the great Kisrawan peasant rebellion in Lebanon (1858-61), the Tunisian revolution of 1864, and the Muqrani rebellion in Algeria of 1871. Other, lesser outbreaks occurred in Palestine ( 1852 and 1854), Syria (1852, 1854, 1862-64, 1865-66), Algeria (1864-67), and Morocco. These rebellions can be seen as responses to the gradual commercialization of agriculture and the increasingly effective extension of government power into the countryside. In Lebanon, where the grievances were most intense and the weaknesses of the old system most evident, the resulting upheaval culminated in the end of feudalism and the beginnings of modern Lebanese history.' In Tunisia, the 1864 revolt of b. Ghadhihim represented a response to the brutal fiscal impositions of the reform-minded government and the opening of the Tunisian economy. After its defeat the reforming beylical government was able to compel the acceptance of the new taxes.15 In Algeria, following the suppression of the Muqrani rebellion in 1871, the French settlers were able to destroy the remnants of the Muslim rural elite in eastern Algeria, and to impose the oppressive fiscal and legal system know collectively as the Code de l'indig~nat." The principal result of these rebellions was to consolidate in power a new coalition of forces in the countryside, in which urban-based landowning interests and moneylenders in collaboration with local wielders of power assumed local dominance, and old agrarian and tribal forces were suppressed. The crushing of the mid-century rebellions permitted the rapid extension of new legal arrangements into the countryside.'

The social movements of our third period, 1880-1925, were of a more varied character, and reflect the tightening grip of state authorities, the heightened pace of economic change, and the looming shadow of the West. The construction of railroads and telegraph lines into distant provinces, the spread of commercial agriculture, and the general speeding up of social change gave rise to social movements throughout the Arab world. One of their chief features was the experimentation with new forms and ideologies of protest, as increasingly the old society was by-passed by the emergence of new social groups with distinctively different economic bases, social experiences, and cultural reference points. In the countryside, peasantjacqueries had begun by 1914 to give way to strikes and attacks upon local estate agents and usurers. In the cities, as the old social forms and economic structures came to be supplemented by new ones, the old styles of urban protests, which had been linked to the mosque as a gathering point and the 'ulama' as key spokesmen and intermediaries, gave way to forms of collective action linked to the European working class movement: strikes, boycotts, and other forms of worker militancy. Most importantly, as portions of the Arab world came under European domination, experiments with new forms of social identity and political cohesion, notably secular nationalism, began to develop.' The end of World War I, and with it of the Ottoman Empire, marked the beginning of a new style of politics and new forms of popular movements. The old political framework, based upon Muslim supremacy in the Ottoman Empire under the Sultan-Padishah, whose existence had helped to channel the forces of change, was definitely shattered. Old assumptions about politics and identity no longer pertained. The mass anti-colonial risings which immediately followed the war signaled at once the end of an era and the start of something new. These included the 1919 thawrah in Egypt, the Iraqi uprisings of 1920, the Druze rebellion in Syria (1925-27), the resistance of 'Umar Mukhtar in Libya, the 'Abd al-Krim rebellion in Morocco (1921-25), and the Palestinian general strike and uprising of 1936-39. Distinguishing features of these movements were that they involved not regions but entire countries, not just rural or urban groups but coalitions of elite and popular forces, and that they embodied new organizational and ideological methods. While their suppression led to the strengthening of colonial rule in the short run, they pointed toward the new constellations of political forces which were to emerge in post-war nationalism.

From this rapid review, three main points should be noted. First, contrary to the vulgate image of Arab society, with its all-powerful rulers and submissive fellahin, there was no shortage of popular protest and resistance in the Arab world. Throughout the period we find social movements, although the patterns into which these movements fall are discontinuous over time and space. While the study of Arab social movements is just beginning, it is already clear that old notions of the passivity and resignation of the Arab masses are due for re-examination.

A second point to be emphasized is that not only were there traditions of protest and resistance in the Arab world, but also it seems increasingly clear that protest could and often did play a significant role in the trans formation of the old agrarian structures in the area. The outcomes of these conflicts were of differing character and results, leadin g to the strengthening of the old system in some places, and its weakening elsewhere. Nowhere did the rebels achieve the unequivocal dismantling of the old system, but this does not diminish the importance of their role.

Finally, it is important to stress that significant changes occurred in the ideology, organization, and strategy of protest and resistance in the Middle East over the course of the period under study. Moreover, the changing patterns of protest were connected to the transformation of Arab society itself: the incorporation of the Middle East into the world economy, the transformation of the agrarian structures of the Ottoman empire, and the onset of European hegemony. The collision of interests produced by these changes set in motion far-reaching movements of protest and resistance which have still not run their course.

The actions of the Arab crowd, 1750-1925

In this section, I shall examine the changing patterns of protest, paying particular attention to the actions of the crowd. As we shall see, what the rebels did and what their actions signified changed over the course of the period.

For our purposes, attention will be focused upon a few movements: the several Cairo and Damascus urban protest movements of the period 1750-1830, the Tunisian uprising of 1864, the Moroccan rebellions of 1907-12, and finally, more generally, the rebellions of the post-World War I period. In each instance, what concerns us is what the crowd did. In the interests of space, it will not be possible to provide the sort of fine-grained detail that alone would be fully convincing. Nonetheless, it is hoped that the approach outlined here will at least prove suggestive.

The social movements that rocked the cities of Egypt and Syria in the second half of the eighteenth century (and to a degree other parts of the region) appear to have differed but little in their morphology and symbolic language from those that occurred several centuries earlier. However, unlike the earlier movements, which had their roots in subsistence crises in the society, the post-1750 urban riots were directed against janissary/Mamluk fiscal abuses. Thereafter, as the following review of social movements will show, there was a gr#al shift over time in both the targets of the crowd's wrath, and the forms its anger assumed. The subtle changes in the cultural forms in which protest was expressed in the Arab world as well as the causal agents which prompted its appearance seem tied to the slow transformation of Arab society itself. In order accurately to understand the nature of the changing patterns of protest, it is necessary to have a firm idea of the genre and repertoire of crowd actions. For this reason the following detailed discussion of the riots which shook Cairo at the end of the eighteenth century is offered.

Andre Raymond describes a typical scenario:

The crowd rushes to the Grand Mosque, occupies the minarets from which inflamatory appeals to resistance are heard, to the rhythm of the beating of drums, forces the souqs and shops to close, gathers in the great court and in front of the gates, calls forth the shaykhs and vigorously demands that they intervene with the authorities so that the wrongs of which they complain are redressed; a procession is formed; the ulama are placed at its head often more dead than alive, and it heads for the Citadel to present the situation to the authorities. If a favorable response is given, the shaykhs are made its guarantors, and it is upon them that the task, sometimes delicate, of calming the demonstrators and getting them to disperse falls. Difficult moments for the ulama , who risk being blamed by the population for betraying its interests, and of being suspected by the emirs of exciting the fever of the people secretly."

Like Paris, Cairo had a well established insurrectionary tradition. In such moments, the large stone benches that stood in front of the shops were overturned and placed in the narrow streets of the market as barricades. To the Frenchmen who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition, the popular disturbances that rocked Cairo in 1798, 1800, and 1805 recalled the great journ~es of the French Revolution and the actions of the Paris mob. "One sees the same enthusiasm reign as in France in the first moments of the Revolution.' '20 If we approach the Egyptian and Syrian protest movements from this angle, a symbolic world opens up. The least gestures are heavily freighted with meaning. We can see the moral frame of reference in terms of which the Egyptian and Syrian demonstrators acted. The theater in which this ritual drama unfolded was the principal mosque. The long brass horns used in summoning the crowd were utilized otherwise chiefly at Ramadan, while the drums were used in religious processions. Significantly, the crowd assembled and sought first to convince members of the higher 'ulama' of the justice of their claims. The bargaining session which ensued was often a lengthy one, and could lead to violence as Raymond's scenario suggests. Eventually a list of grievances was drawn up. It was couched in religious language, and represented the consensus of the different groups which composed the crowd. The lesser 'ulama' - Quran school teachers, students, and petty mosque officials often played a determining role in this phase.' Gabriel Baer is correct in insisting on the distinction between the higher 'ulama', whose interests often intersected with those of the wealthy merchants and janissary /Mamluk establishments, and the lesser 'ulama', the muta'mimi n (the turban ed ones), whose interests tended to coincide more with those of the popular classes. Only once this was accomplished did the crowd move in solemn procession through the narrow streets to the Citadel (or the local seat of power). The drums and banners of the Sufi turuq were much in evidence. Accounts of the Egyptian disturbances suggest that the crowd was drawn from the neighborhoods and was composed chiefly of artisans , craftsmen, and other groups. 22 Their grievances were then presented to the authorities by the members of the 'ulama' who accompanied the procession.

I have concentrated on this incident at some length because it provides a particularly detailed example of the forms of urban protest at the beginning of our period. As will be seen, many of the patterns visible in these Egyptian and Syrian social movements occurred again and again, though often in somewhat altered forms, in other movements throughout our period.

In 1864, following the doubling and redoubling of the chiefland tax, the mejba, a major rebellion broke out in central Tunisia.Known locally after its leader as the revolt of b. Ghadhihim , it came as the culmina tion of a half century of governmental reforms, increased European interventionism, and the commercialization of agriculture. The rebellion originated among the pastoralists of the interior steppes, but within a few months it had spread to include most of the cities and towns of the Sahel and the Medjerda valley, including Kairouan and Sfax. The rural rebels made common cause with the urban populations as the movement spread. Popular insurrections occurred in the cities, and the authorities were unable to maintain control. The insurrection lasted for nine months and was put down only after a European show of force and brutal repression.

The demands and actions of the rebels were similar to those of the Cairo and Damascus crowds. In each city, the rebellion appears to have been precipitated by the arrival of bands of pastoralists and nearby villagers at the city walls. They called for the town to join forces with them, and a large and unruly crowd gathered at the chief mosque to decide on what to do. At this meeting, the religious authorities, and in some instances the civil ones as well, were compelled by the crowd to reject the authority of the Bey, and to establish an interim governing committee. Symbolically signifying this, the keys to the city were presented to the committee for safekeeping. The committee was composed of leading members of the 'ulama' and turuq, together with several of the leading insurgents. Their mandate was to maintain order and to serve as the spokesmen of the rebels.

Initially the demands of the insurgents focused upon ending the hated new taxes, including the mejba, maks, and other impositions, and abolishing the constitution and the mixed courts. But within a few months they had escalated to include the Thirteen Demands, which in addition to the above included amnesty, the abolition of foreign extraterritorial rights, the application of the Shari'ah, and the return of various taxes to their former levels and administrative practices to their former state.

These demands bear witness to the increasing threat posed to both urban and rural ways of life by governmental reform programs, as well as the looming European menace. Other rural rebellions in greater Syria, Egypt, and North Africa in the mid-century period which cannot be discussed in this essay were also prompted by government reform policies. In them as well, blatant European involvement begins to appear as a persistent grievance. For the most part the ideology of the mid-century rebels appears not to have changed much, although the increasing ability of rebels to forge larger and larger coalitions beyond the limits of kin, clients, and confederates testifies to important advances in organizational abilities.

The formation of insurgent counter-governments can also be found in Morocco, as can the presentation of formal lists of grievances by the rebels. In both respects, it resembles the Tunisian case.The crowds who gathered in Fez in December 1907 were motivated less by the price of bread than by the weight of fiscal exactions and the usurious business dealings of certain merchants over the preceding decade. They were also alarmed by the apparent complicity of many wealthy officials and merchants with French efforts to secure a protectorate over Morocco. Thus they pillaged the government post at the entrance of the city where the hated maks (market tax) was assessed and burned it to the ground. They also attacked the shops of merchants in the qissaria part of the suq who were European prot~g~s, and the office of the French telegraph company. We have similar evidence of the selective and ritual violence of Arab crowds from other cities. No more than for European crowds, therefore, was the behavior of Arab crowds random aimless violence. By their actions, at least implicitly, it is possible to derive their grievances, their social program.

This aspect of Arab popular movements has yet to be well studied. There is no doubt that in the future it will be possible to recover much more of the history of the actions of Arab crowds. Symbolic acts, which were often recorded because they made a vivid impression on contemporary observers, can help us to decode the protesters' behavior. One way of telling that a popular revolt in eighteenthcentury Damascus or Cairo was of particular importance was whether or not the crowd created a counter-divan to the official governing divan of the pasha. If it did, the insurrection had widespread support, and required serious attention. A similar institution existed in Moroccan cities, where during times of major popular unrest a kind of revolutionary government, the shwyukh al-rabi'a, was named by the crowd to govern the city. A similar pattern can be detected in rural popular movements, which could throw up a kind of counter-government drawn not from the government-sanctioned leadership of the village or tribe, but from more popular elements. Known by a variety of names -jawqah, shartiyah, mi 'ad, or the mashayikh al-shabab of the Lebanese rebellion of 1858-61, these were not only ritually important, but effective revolutionary governments. Fortunately we do not have to content ourselves with a study of the acts of Arab rebels alone. The sources contain, at least for the more important popular movements, records of their demands, statements of their grievances, their social programs. The Lebanese rebellion has left the greatest number of such documents, which make it possible to trace in detail the insurrection's phases.° As we get closer to the twentieth century we often find proclamations, handbills, and brochures in European diplomatic and colonial archives which make the task of following their course an easier one. The investiture document (or bay 'ah of Mawlay 'Abd al-Hafiz signed by the notables and a'yan of Fez in January 1908, the culminating phase of the Fez insurrection which began with the riots just mentioned) amounts to a virtual cahier de dol~ances. Its provisions include the conditions set by the crowd for their support. 26 The more we study documents like this and others emanating from Arab popular movements, the clearer it becomes that there was at least an implicit moral economy underlying the actions of Arab crowds. This moral economy generally expressed itself in Islamic language, although especially in rural areas (and among non-Muslim populations, it goes without saying) it could also take on other colorations. It was particularly connected to the popular enactment of Islamic notions of justice according to the classic doctrine of hisba: the commanding of good and the forbidding of evil.

The evolution of Arab protest over the course of the long nineteenth century is one of the most striking features of investigation. During our first two periods (1750-1839 and 1840-1880), the behavior and ideology of Arab protesters were clearly linked to earlier social movement patterns and ideologies. By the 1880s, however, things had begun to change as Arab societies themselves responded to the unprecedented changes with which they were confronted. Given the often sharp local and regional variations in development throughout the region, this timetable was of course not hard and fast. Perhaps not surprisingly, the changes in style and ideology of protest occurred first in Egypt, where by the 1880s Egyptian peasants had abandoned the tactics of their fathers for those of the rent strike and the land invasion. By World War I, which appears to have been a major watershed, important changes could be observed everywhere. Thus by the 1920s the Moroccan peasants who supported 'Abd al-Krim employed the tactics of the European battlefront (in contrast to the millenarian resistance of Ahma d al-Hayba in 1912, which was easily crushed by the French). They did so, moreover, with a skill much remarked by European military experts. The Syrian and Druze rebels of 1925 fought in the name not of Islam, but of secular nationalism, and according to modem tactics.28 The Palestinian peasants who joined Shaykh 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam may have been inspired by an Islamic critique of their society, but how much distance separates them from the Algerians who were drawn by the millenarian ideology of Amir 'Abd al-Qadir!29 In sum, the world had revolved in the interim.

All of this is to say that over the course of the last two centuries major changes have occurred in the organization, strategy and ideology of protest and resistance in the Arab world. An examination of the language of protest and of the actions of insurgents shows clearly the extent of these changes. The foregoing analysis suggests that if there was a moral economy of protest in the Arab world, then it was expressed not only in the language of the 'ulama' and works offiqh, but also in the language of Islamic notions ofjustice freely available to all, and extraIslamic forms of legitimation drawn from customary practice. Although subject to co-optation by the authorities, what the rebels did and said expressed a populist defense of age-old liberties threatened by the twin forces of government centralization and incorporation in the world market: the rights of the quarter, the tribe, and other social groups against encroachment on their subsistence: Within each movement the struggle for control over the symbols of legitimacy was waged fiercely. We are presented then with not just one, but a variety of symbols of legitimacy which were constantly the subject of competition among different groups in the society. Finally, the modernization of protest in the Arab world cannot be separated from the modernization of the Middle East. The changing forms of protest must therefore be seen in the context of the changing social structures of the area. In tum, the study of Arab protest and resistance cannot be separated from the study of social movements elsewhere. What such a study might yield in practice is something I have tried to suggest here.

References

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