Arab cultural security: challenges and future prospects

Abstract

Cultural security is considered as one of the aspects of national security, which also includes social, military, political and economical security. Perhaps the cultural security is one of the most important aspects of national security, because it represents the preservation of identity in the face of the attempts to containment and control the national character, and no doubt that the defense of identity comes before the defense of borders. This book highlights the subject of cultural security on various aspects. It begins with discussing the colonial onslaught against the Arab in the modern age and its cultural dimensions, where the book explains the mechanisms of cultural imperialism of missionaries and Orientalists, and indicates the activity of Jewish culture in Egypt as an example, where Jews monopolized the paper trade and controlled the press, cultural associations, cinemas, and have tried to control senior writers and educated people. The book then discusses the current Arab cultural status, and addresses in some detail the following issues: the crises of Arab culture, the new cultural imperialism, the American cultural war, the infiltration of Jews in the Arab society, the characteristics of current Arab cultural state, the reality of the Arab publishing industry movement and the role of alienation in the formation of cultural reality. In conclusion, the discussion emphasizes the need to develop a draft of an Arab cultural project that puts action plans and determines the framework of implementation in order to handle the weaknesses in the cultural infrastructure through a comprehensive plan of cultural development, and identifies recommendations to ensure secure culture against external threats and overcomes all obstacles posed by the reality of political fragmentation.