Imperfectly symmetrical: a discussion of Gilbert Achcar’s The Arabs and the Holocaust

This review provides a summary and evaluation of Gilbert Achcar’s history of Arab attitudes to the Holocaust (and related matters, such as fascism) from the early 1930s until the present. The author’s ability to integrate a story of Arab intellectual and political diversity with the story of how thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Race & Class 2012-04, Vol.53 (4), p.87-94
Main Author: Coury, Ralph M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression
Anti-Semitism
Arab people
Attitudes
Conflict
Cultural Pluralism
Fascism
Holocaust
Imperialism
Intellectuals
Islam
Islamism
Jews
Narratives
Palestinian people
Pan-Arabism
Prejudice
Zionism
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Summary:This review provides a summary and evaluation of Gilbert Achcar’s history of Arab attitudes to the Holocaust (and related matters, such as fascism) from the early 1930s until the present. The author’s ability to integrate a story of Arab intellectual and political diversity with the story of how this diversity has often been reduced to a monolithic caricature is found to be magisterial. The review ends with the kind of critical interrogation that so formidable a work deserves: has Achcar exaggerated the role that ‘narrative’ might have in resolving political conflicts? Has he exaggerated the degree to which reactionary and/or fundamentalist Islamism has influenced modern Arab and Islamic thought? To what extent has he neglected to discuss the Jewish fundamentalist ideas that provide a religious basis for prejudice and aggression towards Palestinians and Arabs? Does he adequately address the relationship between Zionism/Israel and imperialism?
ISSN:0306-3968
1741-3125
DOI:10.1177/0306396811433116