ABSTRACT
In examining sport in the history of the Arab World contradictions often arise, particularly between the question of modernity (progress) and the past (authenticity), which is yet to be resolved there.1 One of the major consequences of the colonial project in de-legitimizing the pre-colonial history (and geography) of colonized societies, including the Arab region, is the establishment of a schizophrenic relation with the past. This has led to the (over) glorification of the (Islamic and pre-colonial) past in claiming an historical legitimacy (as a substitute to political illegitimacy) and in mobilizing national communities around the post-independence project of the party (and monarchy) states. The other consequence is that of denial or trauma.2 The past here, at least in the way it was institutionalized by the formal history (selective memory), is perceived as archaic, traditional, non-secular and even anti-revolutionary, thus an obstacle to the party-state’s (secular) project for development.3 This burden of the (colonial) past in newly independent countries in general is well articulated by Berque:
Having long identified themselves with a world and a tradition appropriated by the west, the colonised had had to battle against the external and psychological worlds that the West had penetrated equally. Hence being curious about himself and about the Other, the colonised found himself in a predicament that posed not only ‘sociological’ questions but also ‘psychoanalytic’ ones (an ontological search for selfhood, the internalised contradictions of identity created the Western Other, the internalised absence of historical time). However, since the Other’s (The European’s) civilisation had so deeply entered the colonised society, this technological civilisation could not be rejected because ‘in refusing the Other, they [were] refusing themselves’.4
Furthermore, in studying the significance of sport (which is yet to be included) in contemporary histories of the Arab World, we are challenged by the imposing debate of (Western) modernity (as a break with past), which claims its uniqueness (as a master signifier) in defining the meaning and, therefore, the history (also territoriality) of modern sport. Here, Venn Couze’s concept of Occidentalism is applicable to the domain of sport, too. In Cuze’s terms:
