Barakat, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and a novelist in Arabic, propounds both a diagnosis and cure in The Arab World. "Externally, Arabs suffer from Western-Zionist hegemony. Internally they suffer from lack of freedom and dignity. These humiliating conditions in themselves constitute a great impetus for a general Arab intifada to regain control over their destiny and to remake society."
Unfortunately, diagnosis and cure are some thirty years out of date. Barakat simply asserts-as though Gamal Abdel Nasser were still holding sway-a vision of the Arab world as "a single overarching society." (He dismisses dissenting views as "Zionist scholarship.") His time-warped world has no place for fundamentalist Islam; Khomeini's name does not even appear in the index. Nor for that matter does Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi's or Saddam Husayn's (but Nasser's appears repeatedly). Instead, Barakat refights the Left's tired old battles against neo-imperialism. The only thing up-to-date about The Arab World is the author's self-absorption. He variously describes his own views, quotes himself, refers to earlier works, and, in a remarkable two-page sequence, interprets his own novels.
Barakat sees The Arab World as a call to action for the Arab left. But why then did he write the book in English and publish it in Berkeley? Perhaps he realizes that Western academics, not Middle Eastern politicians or masses, make up his only audience.
