MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M VOLUME 63, NO. 2, SPRING 2009 DOI: 10.3751.63.2.11 Border Guards of the “Imagined” Watan: Arab Journalists and the New Arab Consciousness Lawrence Pintak Media plays a fundamental role in the formation of national identity, most fa- mously detailed in Benedict Anderson’s theory of the imagined community. In the Arab world, a media revolution is contributing to the emergence of a reawakened regional Arab consciousness. A comparison of data from the first major regional survey of Arab journalists and the results of various public opinion polls in the region indicate that Arab journalists stand on the borderlands of Arab identity, shaping an emerging “imagined” watan [nation] that, in some ways, transcends the traditional lines in the sand that define the nation-state. For seasoned observers of the Middle East, the scene was surreal: Cheering crowds in downtown Cairo made up of secular liberals and members of the conservative Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, waving — side-by-side — photographs of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Shi‘ite Islamist movement Hizbullah, and Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, the icon of secular pan-Arabism. It is conventional wisdom in some circles in the West that Arab nationalism and Islamism are warring ideologies, fundamentally incompatible. 1 The celebrations on the streets of the Egyptian capital in late summer 2006 were a reminder that such views are too often based on black-and-white perceptions, which fail to take into account the complex realpolitik of the modern Arab world, the shifting cross-currents of Arab his- tory and, more recently, the impact of Arab satellite television. 2 “Awake, O Arabs, and turn on your television sets.” So might Ibrahim al- Yaziji have begun his famous 1868 ode to Arab nationalism had he written it today. The pervasive influence of Arab satellite television, which exploded on the scene in the 1990s and has had a revolutionizing effect on Arab media across the region, bolstered by the Internet and other forms of digital communication, is fueling the rise of a new common Arab consciousness every bit as salient as the “imagined communities” that Benedict Anderson tells us are at the core of the concept of na- Lawrence Pintak is director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo. His most recent book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. He is a former CBS News Middle East correspondent and holds a PhD in Islamic Stud- ies. 1. Anatol Lieven, “Liberal Hawk Down,” The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041025/ lieven; Sylvia G. Hiam, “Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism,” Die Welt des Islam, Vol. 4, No. 2/3 (1955). 2. These are approximately 377 free-to-air satellite channels in the Arab world. The two main news channels are Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which claims an audience of 50 million for its most popular programs, and Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, which estimates its average monthly regional audience at 42 million. There is a glaring absence of accurate newspaper circulation figures in the region and reader- ship varies dramatically by country. Daily circulation in Egypt is approximately one million copies/ five million readers, while in Algeria, one newspaper alone sells 600,000 copies. © Middle East Institute. This article is for personal research only and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the permission of The Middle East Journal.