From a Unifying Civilization to Fragmentation: A Reading of Transformations in the Arab World

Over centuries of history, the Arab and Islamic world, in its periods of flourishing, constituted a model of a far-reaching and dynamic civilization. It extended geographically from al-Andalus in the west to the frontiers of Asia in the east, within a broad political and cultural space that brought diverse peoples together under a single civilizational framework.

During that period, power was not merely military domination or territorial expansion; it expressed an advanced system of knowledge. Baghdad under the Abbasid caliphate was a global center of learning, where the House of Wisdom flourished as an institution of translation and research. The learning of the Greeks, Persians, and Indians was transmitted there, then reworked and developed in medicine, philosophy, and mathematics. At the same time, cities such as Córdoba in al-Andalus rivaled the world's greatest cities, with vast libraries, educational centers, early universities, and an urban environment advanced in its lighting, roads, and architecture.

In the sciences, figures such as Ibn al-Haytham in optics, Ibn Sina in medicine and philosophy, and al-Khwarizmi in mathematics rose to prominence. Their works laid the foundations for moving knowledge from a stage of collection to one of production and development. Hospitals (bimaristans) operated through a quasi-institutional system of treatment and medical education, while translation was an organized scholarly movement connecting multiple languages and cultures.

Economically, trade routes such as the Silk Road and ports extending along the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean coasts formed an active network for exchanging goods and knowledge, linking East and West. Major cities were financial and commercial centers attracting merchants from different regions, creating a diversified economy grounded in exchange rather than isolation.

Culturally, poetry, literature, and language flourished to an unprecedented degree. Arabic served simultaneously as a language of scholarship, thought, and administration, while schools of grammar and rhetoric developed to become part of the structure of knowledge itself, rather than merely instruments of expression.

In this context, the civilizational model rested on a fundamental idea: the unity of the civilizational sphere despite its breadth and diversity. The shared political and cultural framework allowed scholars, books, ideas, and goods to move among different centers without rigid barriers. This created continuous interaction between peripheries and centers, generating a cumulative civilizational dynamic rather than fragmentation and isolation.

From Tribe to Civilization: How Did the Qur’an Bring About the Transformation?

If history attests that the Arab and Islamic world attained an eminent civilizational standing in its periods of flourishing, the fundamental question is: what brought about this transformation?

Before the revelation of the Qur’an, the Arabian Peninsula was marked by tribal disunity, dominated by group partisanship and conflict. It did not constitute a scholarly, political, or economic center comparable to the great civilizations surrounding it. Then came the Qur’an, not merely to change belief, but to reshape human beings’ understanding of themselves, their society, and their role on earth.

Rather than grounding relationships in tribal ties, it called for bonds of faith, justice, and human fraternity:

﴿إِنَّمَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ﴾ (The believers are indeed brothers.) [الحجرات: ١٠]

It also recalled that distinction among people rests not on lineage or power, but on God-consciousness:

﴿إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ﴾ (Indeed, the most honored of you in God’s sight is the most God-conscious of you.) [الحجرات: ١٣]

The Qur’an also made knowledge and reflection the foundation of human renewal. The first word revealed was ﴿اقْرَأْ﴾ (Read.) (العلق: ١). It called for examining the universe and history: ﴿قُلْ سِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَانْظُرُوا﴾ (Say: Travel through the earth and observe.) (العنكبوت: ٢٠). It praised those possessed of knowledge, saying: ﴿قُلْ هَلْ يَسْتَوِي الَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ﴾ (Say: Are those who know equal to those who do not know?) (الزمر: ٩), and: ﴿إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ﴾ (Of His servants, only those possessed of knowledge fear God.) (فاطر: ٢٨).

The Qur’an did not stop at calling for knowledge; it connected knowledge to the human mission of cultivating the earth, saying: ﴿هُوَ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ الْأَرْضِ وَاسْتَعْمَرَكُمْ فِيهَا﴾ (He brought you into being from the earth and charged you with cultivating it.) (هود: ٦١). It appointed the human being a successor upon it: ﴿إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي الْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً﴾ (I am placing a successor on earth.) (البقرة: ٣٠). Thus work, production, and reform became part of the concepts of worship and succession on earth.

In social and economic life, the Qur’an established principles of justice, trustworthiness, consultation, and fulfillment of contracts, saying: ﴿إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ﴾ (Indeed, God commands justice and doing good.) (النحل: ٩٠), and: ﴿وَأَمْرُهُمْ شُورَى بَيْنَهُمْ﴾ (Their affairs are conducted through consultation among them.) (الشورى: ٣٨), and: ﴿أَوْفُوا بِالْعُقُودِ﴾ (Fulfill your contracts.) (المائدة: ١). These principles contributed to building a society characterized by greater stability and trust—essential elements for the flourishing of commerce, scholarship, and institutions.

When the early Muslims carried this system into the world, a broad civilizational space emerged in which centers of learning, translation, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy flourished, and knowledge began to circulate among different regions within a shared civilizational framework.

This transformation cannot be explained by a single factor; multiple historical, political, and economic conditions contributed to it. Yet the Qur’an, with its intellectual and ethical system, was the force that reshaped the Arab human being, effecting a transition from a society dominated by tribal division to a community bearing a civilizational project grounded in divine unity, knowledge, justice, and succession on earth.

The Jar of Ants: How Does an External Threat Become an Internal Conflict?

With the major transformations of the modern centuries, the Arab region entered a radically different trajectory, moving gradually from broad political unity to fragmentation, then to a redrawing of the maps of regional influence, followed by a phase of direct colonial rule, and ultimately to the emergence of modern nation-states. Their borders were often drawn from outside rather than resulting from internal integration among the region’s constituent parts.

This transformation can be likened to the image of a “jar of ants”: white and black ants live in harmony inside a stable container, until someone begins shaking the jar violently. At the moment of shaking, the ants lose the ability to distinguish the source of danger. They no longer see whoever is shaking the jar, but only those around them. The disturbance then shifts from an external threat into an internal conflict, and the ants begin fighting one another, believing that the enemy is the one nearby rather than the hand moving the jar.

In this symbolic sense, a condition of historical and political confusion took shape, in which external factors intersected with internal divisions until the picture became too complex to be reduced to a single party. The challenges shifted from a unified confrontation to fragmentation in perceptions, relationships, and alignments within the region itself.

From Sykes–Picot to a Tension-Laden Regional Structure

From the First World War onward, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab region entered a phase of profound geopolitical reconfiguration. This began with the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which once again broke up the Arab sphere into political entities with externally drawn borders. This trajectory was then reinforced by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which opened the way for a new political trajectory in Palestine, eventually culminating in the establishment of Israel at the heart of Arab geography.

From that moment, this trajectory became an enduring axis for reshaping the region. The conflict was no longer merely a conventional military confrontation; it became a permanent element in the architecture of security, politics, and alliances, and one of the factors that reordered states’ priorities, placing security and military considerations ahead of projects for development and long-term economic integration.

The historical accumulation since the early twentieth century thus produced not merely a new political order, but a regional structure charged with a persistent central conflict. This affected internal and external balances and pushed the region into a prolonged condition of political and economic depletion, until, from the perspective of this reading, it appeared to be experiencing one of the most severe phases of fragmentation and decline in its modern history.

Israel’s positioning within this geopolitical landscape, and the protracted conflicts and alliances that followed, contributed to strengthening its regional and international standing. This contrasted with a gradual erosion in the capacity of a number of Arab states to make independent decisions or build a unified project of integration, amid sustained pressure on their resources and internal stability.

Regional alliances over recent decades were likewise not fixed, but subject to continuous reconfiguration in accordance with great-power balances. This made the survival of some regimes dependent on a degree of adaptation to these balances, while other regimes entered into acute confrontations with them that ended in complete political collapse or violent transformations in the structure of the state.

Examples include Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s rule ended following the 2003 invasion, which radically altered the structure of the state and entirely recast the political system under the influence of complex international and regional balances. In Libya, the period of Gaddafi’s rule ended after direct international intervention in 2011, opening the way to state collapse and a prolonged phase of fragmentation and conflict. In Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed within a context of multifaceted internal conflict, in which local loyalties were intertwined with regional balances and shifting alliances. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad remained at the center of a protracted war that began in 2011, during which the country became an arena of direct interaction among regional and international powers, radically redrawing internal balances.

Over time, this trajectory intersected with a set of accumulated internal factors within the region: political conflicts among Arab states, protracted civil wars, repeated coups, weak state institutions, and clear disparities in economic and development models. In light of these facts, this intersection was not merely a series of separate events; it constituted a condition of sustained structural depletion, reflected in declining productive capacity, shrinking scope for economic cooperation, and eroding levels of political trust between regimes and societies.

From Knowledge Production to a Consumption Economy

This conception rests on observing the difference between two historical phases: a period in which the Arab region, during its flourishing, possessed the capacity to produce knowledge, organize commerce, and build extensive civilizational networks, and a later reality in which many Arab economies became heavily dependent on consumption and imports rather than production and industry, while continuing to rely on raw resources without converting them into industrial and knowledge-based added value.

For example, industrial development indicators point to a relatively weak contribution by advanced manufacturing and technology to the domestic product of a number of Arab states, compared with countries possessing fewer resources but achieving a higher degree of industrial integration into the global economy. Levels of intra-Arab trade also remain limited relative to their theoretical potential, despite geographical proximity and a shared linguistic and cultural framework.

By contrast, the Arab region possesses exceptional sources of strategic strength: it holds vast energy reserves and controls maritime passages that rank among the world’s most important, such as the Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, and the Suez Canal. These assets are joined by a geographical position connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe, a civilizational heritage extending over thousands of years, and a large, young population.

A Hypothetical Question: What If Israel Had Not Been Established?

No definitive answer is possible, but the region might have followed different trajectories. A larger share of resources might have been allocated to investment in development, education, and economic integration, rather than directing a substantial portion toward conflicts and armaments. Projects for trade connectivity, infrastructure, and regional integration might have been more feasible, benefiting from the location linking East and West and from the historical legacy that made the region, over the centuries, a center of commerce, culture, and the exchange of knowledge.

Accordingly, it can be said that the establishment of Israel was one of the most prominent principal factors that reshaped the Middle East’s priorities and affected the course of its development. The question remains open as a historical exercise that helps illuminate the scale of the opportunities the region may have lost, and the extent of the potential it still possesses if it succeeds in transforming its resources, location, and heritage into an integrated civilizational and developmental project.

The real question is not: What if Israel had not existed? Rather, it is: Can the region today, despite everything it has endured, recover the foundations of its renewal that it forged in the past?

And can a civilizational project grounded in knowledge, justice, and economic integration be rebuilt, rather than perpetuating the spiral of conflict and depletion?

And can human beings preserve the sanctity of the text, then turn their human interpretation of it into an authority that rivals the text?