It is generally accepted that the emergence of new nationalisms results from a process of "re-imagination" conditioned by drastic transformations in the conscience and media within a modern framework. The relationship between ancient (imagined) nations, itself a process of re-imagining positioned in the rise of contemporary nationalism based upon philosophies of ethnic solidarity, is a process of imagination framed by radical social changes, which have taken place after the industrial revolution. In the case of the Arab world (which in most parts has undergone an extremely skewed model of development, not resembling the industrial revolution model contexted upon Anglo-European states), the entrance of the Arab transnational media is a strong factor impacting upon the process of re-imagination, built upon histories put forward in the most part by the new Arab historians and intellectuals from the al-Nahda period in the Arab world and among Arabs in diaspora.

The creation of an Arab nationalism such as we have seen under Nasser, with a new version now emerging, requires the development of new space thinking and time understanding among Arabs. After Nasser, Pan-Arabism suffered a series of keeling physical, intellectual and political blows: Camp David (1978), isolating Egypt from the Arab world. The end of the seventeen year Lebanese War through an American-Syrian understanding (1991), the first major invasion (1990) of one Arab country (Kuwait) by another (Iraq), leading to the Gulf War (1991), allowing Iraq to decay under sanctions. The first Intifada (1987), in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which, ironically enough for its appeal to Pan-Arabism, formed a catalyst for the Madrid Peace Conference (another catalyst being the Gulf War and PLO leader Yasser Arafat supporting Iraq) and the Oslo Peace Process (1993) that allowed individual Arab regimes to negotiate with Israel, rather than as a bloc. Each has made their own impact on the ideal and practicality of PanArabism.

In the first stage of a renewal, groups and collectives of human beings must be able to perceive themselves as societies living in parallel to other large groups with whom they share the same language, religion, customs and heritage, even if there is no interaction or contact between them. The Arab transnational media has had the same process in Arab societies in Arab state regimes and also among some Arabs in diaspora.

In 18th century Europe before, the novel and the newspaper were the two basic "imagined forms of activities" which contributed to creation of the imagined community of European nations. In this regard, the mass media plays a central role in the process of creating imagined communities, mediating between members of the same community who in reality enjoy no real interaction. Continuing this approach in our case, it can be argued that the Qur'an initially formed the first unifying text for an imagined community the new converts to Islam and the non-Muslim (often large) minorities under Islamic rule and later the large body of Arab and Islamic literature shared between the Islamic world, with one (and later two and three) unifying languages, Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

With the contemporary formation of the Arab world with relatively stable borders (with the clear exception of Palestine, which remains an imagined community with imagined, as opposed to geo-political boundaries), I suggest that transnational media in the Arab world is the means by which Arab screens are exposed to the same socio-cultural media content. The daily consumption of the media in modem communities in fact resembles the Islamic five prayers a day. In both cases, the ritual-prayers or exposure to media content-is performed daily by members who participate in similar socio-cultural rituals and are aware that others are also participating in the same ritual, providing a sense of belonging to the same community even without personally knowing its members.

Unlike print media that developed in Arab countries, with some exceptions, which worked towards individual state regime building, Arab transnational media weakens nation state orientation and strengthens this new Pan-Arabism, a regional form of localization, however paradoxical this appears at first.

In this context, new media technologies have presented important elements of a televisual environment and a new collective space in the Arab world. This mass media language-the television medium-constructs the basis of a new consciousness in the Arab world, building a unified or common field of communication through images and voices broadcast on television. The use of Modem Standard Arabic, a language understandable to most Arabs, regardless of geographic location, conveying transnational (shared) media content, creates a participatory importance to Arabs. The growth of new media technologies and the capitalist drive to expand its reach into more markets maintain the expansion of a televisual environment. Consequently, the combination of capitalism and media technology have lead to new forms of imagined communities, laying the groundwork for the appearance of new/old collective identities, such as that depicted by the new Pan-Arabism.

Arab past/history is being rehabilitated to be positively perceived by Arabs today; recontextualized for relevancy and reintegrated into a system of perceiving the past, present and future. Arab heritage and Islam are two basic elements in these processes. Other nationalisms also draw upon religion to some extent, such as the Jews and the creation of Israel.

Re-imagination is facilitated, or spontaneously drawn upon through an Arab history of cultural hegemony (as opposed to cultural monopoly) from Andalusian Spain to Iraq. Notions of the Arab-Islamic world as participating in a shared culture, language, religions and even economy draw upon ayyam al- 'Arab, the pinnacle of Arab intellectual and cultural achievement (Hourani 1979).

Islamism is today strongest in those Arab state regimes where the contemporary ethnic does not enjoy a credible historical re-imagining. Similarly, Islamism in the Arab world is more easily accommodated and integrated into those Arab state regimes where there is a historical notion of an ethnic community such as Egypt and Morocco, as opposed to for instance, Syria and Algeria.

Just as importantly, Islamism (itself contemporary re-imaginings of Islam) is an important factor in strengthening the new Pan-Arabism as an imagined community in the Arab world. Although Islam emphasizes the relevancy of an Islamic community over the ethnic, state regimes tend to allow two contradictory factors to merge, whereby Islam as a unifying bond within the state (or more appropriately, state regime), but is however limited to contemporary state boundaries. Nevertheless, state regimes also pay service to Islam as forming a sense of solidarity with non-Arab, Muslim countries and hence, the fluctuating importance of the Organization of Islamic Conferences.

Arab-Islamic movements have been, and continue to be, the strongest articulators of this new vision, particularly Hizbollah, which has worked towards cognizing to Arab publics a vision of Arabism and Islam together. AI-Manar, the Lebanese Shiite terrestrial/transnational television station has had the strongest influence in this regard, consistently emphasizing the indivisibility of Islam and Arabism (whether in secular or religious articulations). Every address and debate has emphasized Islam and Arabism together, addressing Arab Christians and Muslims. Meanwhile, Hamas draws upon secular notions of nationhood (Palestine as a state, Palestinians with their own ethnic identity) to justify its activities.

This emergence of a new Pan-Arabism started in 1990 with the satellite broadcasting in the Arab region, and the multilateral response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. To a great extent, the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm and the events that preceded it in 1990-1991 made for extremely attractive television programming. As gripping as CNN was to watch, during the war, it was not available in most Arab homes. The requisite antennas were large and expensive and distribution was oriented to commercial establishments rather than to the home market. In addition, CNN's English-language broadcasts proved a barrier to easy comprehension by many Arabs. Nevertheless, CNN's presence helped forge a market for a new kind of Arabic broadcasting.

Another development was the emergence of a substantial class of Arab professionals who studied and in some cases worked in Anglo-European countries before returning to their countries of origin. The growing numbers of Arabs who lived overseas were more consumer-oriented than their parents and their wealth gave them many more options for consumption.

Thus on December 12, 1990, when the Egyptian Satellite Channel started transmission. In the final buildup to the war that began on 15 January 1991, the state owned Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) arranged to lease an Arabsat transponder to broadcast television programs across the Arab world all day, every day, for the next three years (Sakr 2001). Within days the ERTU was using the facility to send news and entertainment programs to the Gulf, for the benefit of Egyptian soldiers and local viewers with the necessary receiving equipment. The series became known as the Egyptian Space Channel (ESC).

The second was MBC. In September of 1991, Saudi Arabia launched the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), a privately owned network (Ghareeb & Mansour 2000). Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Islamic world and therefore religious programming has a special importance in official Saudi television programming and dominates a good part of the schedule on the national television channels. This station, which is owned by Saudi royal family members, has been revolutionary not only in its technology and use of satellite facilities, but also in regard to content. Unlike the content broadcast by state terrestrial television stations, which emphasize local news and entertainment and serve as an organ of the state, MBC broadcasts content aimed at all Arab countries, covering panArab issues in all spheres of life such as news, entertainment and sport.

Nile TV International was the second Egyptian satellite channel and began experimental broadcasting in October 1993 in English and French. The main objective of this network is to promote the image of Egypt in Europe and to attract tourism (Amin 2000). In the years after the Gulf War, satellite dish ownership was stimulated by the growth of available international programming, increase in satellite power and transmission range, decline in cost of satellite dishes and an increase in the number of companies that marketed, serviced and manufactured satellite dishes.

The spread of satellites has also been dramatically accelerated by the creation of other two privately owned Arab satellite television broadcasting systems, which are both owned by Saudi business interests with links to members of the Saudi royal family. The first was in October 1993 with ART and the following year with Orbit television's two stations broadcasting from Italy: ART from Avezzano and Orbit from Rome. Both are privately owned by Saudi businessmen. These stations differ from MBC in two aspects: First, each station has more than one channel and second, unlike MBC, which is FT A, these two stations are pay-TV and require subscription fees from viewers. By the end of 1994, some 21 pan-Arab satellite television channels were launched other than MBC: Orbit (a bouquet with 16 of its own channels and other Anglo-European channels such as CNN) and ART (with four channels). Gulf states were among the first to utilize satellite broadcasting as they faced little problem financing these projects.

Following the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait found it essential to start its own network and the Kuwaiti Space Network began on December 8, 1991. Star TV from Hong Kong started on Asiasat in October 1991, reaching audiences in Kuwait and other Gulf countries. One of the network's new digital pay-TV platforms comes from Gulf DTH, which was made available by the Showtime Company and has the support of English-language programming provided by Viacom Inc. The new offering is co-financed by Kuwait Investment Projects Co. (KIPCO) and is now operating on Nilesat (Amin 2000).

 

 

This rise of regional information entities has reinvigorated a sense of common destiny among many in the Arab world. The rise of transnational Arab satellite broadcasting has been the largest and most pervasive media challenge in contemporary history to state regime dominance. Thus channels, like ANN, Abu Dhabi TV, al-Jazeera, and an already existing background of Arab identity, have coalasced on varying levels towards a new regional identity: a new Pan-Arabism.

With conspiracy theories and all, for example in the case of AI-Jazeera, for example:

1. Is funded by Zionists

The legitimacy for this conspiracy theory emerges from the fact that one of the investors in al-Jazeera is Jewish. One repeatedly asked question is why would a Jewish man have an interest in investing in al-Jazeera, when it clearly is such a bad investment option, attracting little revenue?

2. Somebody is funding al-Jazeera to allow Israeli normalization in the Arab world

It is no secret that Qatar is one of the most pro-American states in the Arab world, It is moreover the most pro-Israel. AI-Jazeera may be seen as a step to introduce Israeli normalization into the Arab world, While it may first begin with critical reporting of the Occupation, it indeed treats Israel's existence as something normal. Al-Jazeera, much like the Qatari government, does not boycott Israel. It has offices in Ramallah, hires Palestinian citizens of Israel to be reporters and regularly interviews Israeli figures on the channel.

3. AI-Jazeera is supported by the u.s. to further its own geo-political ends

It is not a point of contention that the U,S, strongly influences the Arab world through its resources, being a major purchaser of Arab oil and also a major donor to Arab countries, The Arab world is indeed perhaps the worst example of a region, which regardless of the system used to control the state (monarchy, democracy, etc), mediocracy could best term most states in the region, which systemically practice some of the worst cases of human rights abuses,. In the post-Cold War arena, it is not enough to control Arab states through their regimes, which the US, has done consistently through its role as a world superpower. Arab people have increasingly little to lose and perhaps the U,S, is beginning to question whether the regimes in place will be able to control the Arab street forever.

A new map of the Arab world may be indeed called for, something akin to Afghanistanization or Eastern Europeanization; whereby relatively more tolerant and democratic states exist-however, still under the firm thumb of the US, to ensure resource control. Al-Jazeera emerges into this picture, as a channel created by a pro-Israel and pro-American regime, The US, is not funding al-Jazeera and had no role to play in its inception.Indeed, the U,S, is known for being a poor government sponsored propagandist. Its only real move to create something akin to a pro-American Arab media influence has been Radio Sawa, al-Hurra, a news station created on the al-Jazeera model, but alas, with little of its credibility or sleek formatting, Both were established after September 11, not before. In this regard, the U,S, has supported al-Jazeera by not destroying it. The US, once sent al-Jazeera a warning by bombing its offices in Afghanistanapparently by mistake, as it once bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslaviaapparently by mistake, It is fully within the US,' power to urge Arab governments to close down al-Jazeera offices in each respective country--end of story.

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