Fifty years ago, Socialist ideas have inspired many intellectuals and students in the Arab world. Today, socialist movements are meaningless, religious movements have taken over.
In 1976, the Palestinian journalist and leftist activist, Hasan M. Dudin, has written this analysis about political developments in the Arab world. It is an analysis which remains highly topical even 40 years later.
Dudin describes why religious tendencies in Egypt have always been strong, how the racism of the Baath party in Iraq – especially against the Kurds – tore the country apart, and how a minority came into power in Syria.