The Nation
John Bell
In mid-June, I wrote an article about the attachment to identity in the Middle East and its deadliness in our times. Since then, a caliphate was announced from Aleppo to Tikrit, the situation in Israel and Palestine slid into war, and conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere are inflamed. The article argued that, due to an excessive attachment to identity, pluralism and allegiance to the state receive short shrift in the region.
Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister of Jordan, today Vice President for Studies at Carnegie International Endowment for Peace, recently published a book called The Second Arab Awakening and The Battle for Pluralism, where he puts forward strong suggestions to meet this challenge. Muasher argues that strengthening citizenship in the Arab world and encouraging tolerance, among other steps, are critical in moving towards pluralistic societies, and away from today’s churning chaos.His proposals are on the right track, and their effect will be in the long run - if there is a long run. However, an additional step may also be needed in this pursuit: recognition of a trap that trumps tolerance every time, unless it is recognised.
In 2003, Dr Arthur Deikman, an American psychiatrist, wrote Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat in which he describes ‘cult behaviour’, a way of being that creates group cohesion but at a heavy price. The nature of cult thinking is as follows: compliance with a group; dependence on a leader; avoiding dissent; and devaluing the outsider.
