Constantin Zureiq

Constantin Zurayk (قنسطنطين زريق; 18 April 1909 – 11 August 2000) was a prominent and influential Syrian Arab intellectual who was one of the first to pioneer and express the importance of Arab nationalism.

He stressed the urgent need to transform stagnant Arab society by means of rational thought and radical modification of the methods of thinking and acting.

He developed some ideas, such as the "Arab mission" and "national philosophy", which were to become key concepts for Arab nationalist thinkers, and in more recent years was a strong proponent of an intellectual reformation of Arab society, emphasizing the need for rationalism and an ethical revolution.

Constantine Zurayk was born in Damascus, Syria Vilayet on April 18, 1909, during the waning years of the ruling Ottoman Empire, to a Greek Orthodox Christian family.

He received his primary and secondary education in the Orthodox school systems and had an Obsession with acquiring knowledge.

He continued his education at the American University of Beirut, and eventually received his PhD at Princeton University all by the age of twenty-one.

He immediately turned to teaching and became a professor of history at the American University of Beirut.

After receiving his PhD, Zurayk focused his aims in teaching and politics.

Alongside his work as a tenured professor, Zurayk experimented as the 1st Counselor to the Syrian Legation of the United States in 1945, and acted as the delegate to the UN Security Council and to the UN General Assembly in 1946.

He is credited with coining the term Nakba to refer to the flight and expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands in 1948 and the Palestinian catastrophe in his 1948 book Maʿna an-Nakba.

Hussein was the Minister of Education at Cairo University in 1950 and was eventually able to provide free education for all Egyptians.

Both intellectuals sought to help Arab people uncover their hidden gems that would lead to a more advanced Arab society.

Zurayk focused on encouraging the Arab people to access their hidden human powers which would enable them to work toward a just and moral society.

He introduced what he called the "revolution of reason," where he called for a national Arab unity based on a "secular democracy in which diverse individuals and communities can fulfill themselves in a framework of tolerance and mutual respect".

For Zurayk, Arab nationalism was a "civilizational project rather than a defensive Obsession with identity boundaries in need of protection".

For the project to become successful, the responsibilities of the Arab people were great.

Zurayk emphasized that Arab culture must be "earned and created by human effort".

Zurayk later took an offer to become the vice president of the American University of Beirut in 1952, and completed his education by receiving his doctorate in literature at the University of Michigan in 1967.

He died 11 August 2000 in Beirut.

During the last fifty years of his life, Zurayk dedicated himself in attempting to solve the various issues revolving around Arab society.

His goal was to discover a means of radically and expeditiously transforming Arab society into a practical, rational, and scientific society.

Zurayk focused his attention on contemporary Arab society and the current crisis of Arab civilization.

He blamed the change in Arab personality as the reason for the weakened Arab civilization.

Zurayk noted that the turning away from the "ideas of unity, loyalty, and the universal outlook led to the replacement of the spiritual motivations with material ones".

Although this process of decline was an internal cause, Zurayk attributed the cause of the Nahda, or modern Arab renaissance, to external factors.

One of the external contributors, which Zurayk believed played a significant role in demanding change in Arab society, was "Western" or modern civilization.

Because the West would continue to impose itself on Arab society, it was imperative that the Arabs work to understand and comprehend it in order to confront it.

Zurayk urged the Arab society to keep up with modern civilization and accept, rather than disregard, the scientific and technological influences of modern civilization.

In order to revitalize the Arab society, Zurayk demanded that there must be a radical change in Arab life.

He called "for science and productivity," and warned that the advancement of Arab society is dependent on whether that notion became a part of Arab's "feelings and thoughts and a source of their will".

Although science and technology were of utmost importance, Zurayk considered ideals of citizenship, nationalism, and unity as additional, necessary requirements for the modernization of Arab society.

Zurayk insisted that the combination of rational powers and ethical powers would lead to a successful future.

Zurayk delved deeper to describe the primary challenge of Arab civilization.

He believed rationalism was the "prerequisite that encompassed all other prerequisites" for a future, modern Arab society.

The cultural backwardness remained the most dangerous battle in the fight for a modern Arab society, and only through rational thinking would the Arab society look towards the future, realize their human potentials, and build a higher civilization.

Zurayk made it clear that Arab society must join the modern world, and to do this, they must change their previous ways.

Zurayk even left a list of changes that must be made in order for a revolution to succeed: there must be use of the machine on a wide scale, the state and religion must be separated, the scientific spirit of each individual and the society as a whole must be invigorated, and Arab society must be open toward the rational and spiritual values of other human civilizations.

For Zurayk, the human powers that make culture are the civilizational powers of human reason in its critical and creative functions.

Zurayk focused on the values of honesty, hard work, perseverance, seriousness, commitment, responsibility, and freedom as the values that allow humans to acquire scientific knowledge and to develop a sense of beauty and justice.

In this regard, Zurayk was inspired by the prominent Egyptian intellectual, Taha Hussein, who sternly believed that the advancement of Arab society was dependent on the education of every individual.