A member of Syria's so-called 'security forces' deploys in an area near the Syrian capital Damascus on April 30, 2025, amid deadly massacres and clashes with/of the local Druze community. Photo: Bakr Alkasem/AFP.
By Moussa Al-Sadah  –  May 5, 2025
We must never underestimate how significantly terminology shapes political praxis, ours and that of others. One glaring example is the concept of the state; a term that has misleadingly attributed legitimacy and modernity to Arab political entities that emerged following post-colonial partitions. Even groups outside formal governance, from cultural elites to grassroots activists, have fallen victim to this illusion. Intellectuals analyze and judge Arab states through Western political philosophy—from the monopoly on violence to the analysis of its class structure.
The political activities of marginalized and peripheral groups within these states—marginalized by class, geography, or identity—typically focus on either securing an equitable share of power or completely replacing the dominant group controlling the state’s core. This approach is evident in their rhetoric, which accuses the ruling class of failing to embody the true ideals of statehood, such as sovereignty, citizenship, and national security. These opposition groups suggest that, once in power, they will unlock the true potential of the state.
Here lies the critical importance of independent Arab intellectual theorizing—developing terms that challenge and ultimately dismantle the cultural dominance inherited from colonialism, epitomized by the Sykes-Picot project and the artificial states it created. A friend humorously summarized this legacy: “A century ago, two drunks, a Frenchman and an Englishman, drew borders and called them states, and we believed them.” Arabs have attempted to expose this illusion through alternative terminology such as “country” or “country-like” (qutriyya). Although overburdened by ideological misuse under Ba’athist regimes, this term remains a valuable analytical tool, transcending partisan ideologies.
Important contributions to this conceptual breakthrough include Hisham al-Bustani’s (Dys)functional entities, articulated in his book of the same name. Al-Bustani critically analyzes post-Sykes-Picot Arab political structures, identifying them explicitly as functional entities rather than genuine nation-states. He elucidates how these entities and their ruling elites are structurally and intrinsically tied to foreign interests, particularly western hegemony.
Al-Bustani undermines the application of traditional political theory to our historical state model. Colonial dominance, evident in military presence and interference, renders absurd the notion of an Arab entity having a true monopoly on violence—an attribute effectively held by western forces operating freely across our territories. Thus, the state itself becomes a flawed premise, upon which Arab intellectual discourse on democracy, economics, legitimacy, and even resistance has mistakenly relied. Complementing this critique, Adham Saouli’s concept of social fields offers a nuanced alternative, describing the internal dynamics and unique historical evolution within the Arab world.
At this critical juncture, events such as the Al-Aqsa Flood have starkly exposed the limited legitimacy and the fragile practical boundaries of these entities amid the ongoing bloodshed in Palestine. Two decades of disintegration, civil war, and collapse of Arab “nationalist states” have renewed the urgency of confronting and dismantling the colonial concept of the state embedded in the Arab political consciousness. This dismantling is not a descent into chaos or anarchy, but a conceptual act of replacing today’s functional entities with a new, visionary construction of statehood rooted in Arab political thought, one that transcends colonial borders.
This leads us to a theoretical articulation of revolution in the Arab context, defined here strictly conceptually rather than ideologically or politically. Revolution, or transformative change in the Arab world, involves fundamentally redrawing the Arab political map and constructing an authentic Arab state, shaping its imagination and ideological narrative anew. This offers a decisive break with the production of artificial Arab states over the past century, reversing their functions and relationships of dependence on the West, the US, and Israel. Thus, competition among groups for power within the current state framework is not revolutionary, but merely perpetuates existing dynamics and legitimization mechanisms.
Imagine if Gaza Was Jewish and the People Bombing It Were Muslims
The Palestinian cause vividly illustrates this dynamic. Functional entities inherently cannot—regardless of their will—resist Israel. This is because of their political, economic and social design and purpose, making them subservient to external powers. Consequently, genuine resistance against zionism must logically become resistance against the Arab state itself, in both form and concept. Independence and liberation cannot realistically arise within a framework explicitly designed to undermine them.
Therefore, the question of liberation and resistance transforms into one of political praxis for marginalized actors beyond traditional centers of power. How can we prevent their co-optation into ethnic, sectarian, or territorial identities? Historical patterns emerge, with figures like Ahmed al-Sharaa (al-Julani) exemplifying one such trajectory. Al-Julani’s evolution from extremist Islamic factions and ISIS councils to diplomatic seats in Brussels and New York illustrates not revolutionary change, but adaptation within the established functional framework. His political rehabilitation hinged explicitly on normalizing relations with Israel and respecting the imposed limits of Syria’s (dys)functional form isolationist identity.
Another pattern emerges among marginalized groups who find themselves caught between revolutionary aspirations and political impotence, unable, due to structural or identitarian limitations, to fully replace existing ruling groups. Their political discourse remains confined to superficial debates over the ideal form of the state and appropriate reactions to zionist and American aggression. Lebanon illustrates this predicament clearly: its political structure perpetuates continuous internal competition confined to a limited arena of Lebanese identity—an endless discussion of the state in a context where no such formation exists. The futility of this situation is evident in rhetoric that reduces resistance merely to a defense of national security, falsely implying that a (dys)functional entity can somehow transform itself into a legitimate resistance state.
We must finally acknowledge a historical truth: given their origins, Arab client states can only ensure their survival by normalizing relations with western powers and Israel. Such normalization safeguards the ruling elites whose legitimacy depends on external backing, from the regimes of Camp David and Wadi Araba to the Abraham Accords. Genuine resistance, however, inevitably dismantles these entities. Resistance does not preserve the artificial divisions that maintain Syria as Syria, Egypt as Egypt, or Palestine as Palestine. Instead, authentic Arab resistance inherently transcends these borders, defending a transnational Arab populace unified through shared oppression, struggle, and sacrifice, from the Levant to Yemen.
Consequently, a key theoretical and historical task for the Arab resistance movement is proposing an alternative: a unified Arab geopolitical entity, with a cohesive political and economic model distinct from existing artificial states. Denying the legitimacy of these states can prevent marginalized political actors from simply cycling back into the center of power. The Yemeni revolution, with its military, political, and media practices, represents a basic example of how a broader Arab approach could be enacted.
Today, we’re in a dire need to understand the nature, limits, and potential of our political practices. If we were to move beyond futile exchanges amid ongoing massacres, we must embrace the essential realization prompted by the recent flood: political and revolutionary action must transcend existing borders and adopt violence and resistance under one unified Arab sky. For those seeking to build an authentic Arab state capable of monopolizing its own violence and securing genuine sovereignty, such a state lies not within these imposed borders, but beyond them, in a vision yet to be realized.
