The Arab Left

The Arab Left

Tareq Y. Ismael

Syracuse University

Arab Nationalism has been termed the principal force shaping the lives of the Arab people in the twentieth century. But Arab nationalism is not a stable, constant influence upon the Arab environment. Rather, it is a multi-dimensional dynamic process that interacts with the Arab environment —local, regional, and international. In the interaction, Arab nationalism has itself been transformed from the relatively conservative, tradition-based impulse to sovereignty and unity of the early twentieth-century Arab nationalists to the complex leftist ideologies of contemporary Arab nationalists. How is one to account for this markedly leftist orientation of contemporary Arab nationalists? In particular, what is the origin of the radical trend in Arab politics known as the New Left? These are the key questions that this book addresses.

Tareq Y. Ismael is Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the author or editor of many books on the Middle East, including The Middle East in World Politics, published by Syracuse University Press in 1974.