Arabism is settler colonialism
Executive summary
The claim "Arabism is settler colonialism" compresses multiple historical processes into a single label and cannot be affirmed as a universal truth: some Arab expansions and modern state projects display settler‑colonial logics in particular places and times, while broad historical Arabization and Islamic conquests are debated by historians and political scientists and are not uniformly characterized as settler colonialism [1] [2] [3]. Contemporary scholarship emphasizes context—distinguishing practices, motives and outcomes—so the assertion is true in some cases and misleading as an overarching generalization [4] [5].
1. What settler colonialism means and why it matters
Settler colonialism is a distinct form of domination in which outsiders create a new society on conquered land, often aiming to eliminate or displace indigenous populations rather than merely exploit them, and scholars debate how broadly to apply that concept beyond classic Anglophone cases [1] [4].
2. Where Arab expansion looks like settler colonialism
There are clear historical and contemporary examples where Arab or Arabized actors enacted practices akin to settler colonialism: medieval Arab conquests and subsequent Arabization and Islamization of parts of North Africa and the Middle East have been described by some writers as producing cultural erasure of Amazigh and other communities [6], and modern state projects—such as the replacement policies in Iraq’s Kurdish regions or Turkish plans to resettle Afrin with Syrian Arabs—are analyzed by scholars as settler‑colonial practices rather than simple demographic change [3] [4].
3. Why many scholars and commentators reject a blanket label
Critics argue that labeling all Arabism as settler colonialism flattens diverse histories: defenders note centuries‑long Arab indigeneity in many regions, complex conversions and migrations, and imperial legacies that are not reducible to a single settler model [7] [2]. In debates over Israel/Palestine, some academic centers and commentators contend that Zionism differs from classical settler colonialism because of Jewish claims of indigeneity, patterns of return migration, and mixed institutional interactions with existing populations—positions advanced in scholarly and institutional critiques of the settler‑colonial framing [8] [9].
4. The contested genealogy of the settler‑colonial label in Middle Eastern politics
The application of "settler colonialism" to Zionism and to wider Arab politics has a charged intellectual and political history: some essays trace the modern scholarly framing to Cold War and nationalist debates and even to polemical actors, while other academic work grounds the label in on‑the‑ground practices like "Hebrew labor," land dispossession, and urban erasure of Palestinian presence [10] [5] [4]. This genealogy shows that whether the term is persuasive depends on whether attention is paid to institutional practices and outcomes rather than rhetorical origins [5].
5. A working answer: conditional, evidence‑based, and case‑sensitive
The most defensible position is conditional: Arabism as a diffuse ethno‑linguistic and political identity is not, by itself, settler colonialism, but particular episodes of Arab imperial expansion, demographic engineering, or state‑backed settlement have embodied settler‑colonial logics—and scholars urge using the concept where institutional structures, demographic displacement, and eliminationist practices are demonstrable rather than as a universal label [1] [3] [4]. Existing sources do not support a one‑size‑fits‑all verdict; they instead document a contested scholarly field where evidence, motive and outcome must be assessed case by case [5] [7].