Arab leaders grew candid about national goals while ideology lagged behind.

Evidence

For a while Arab leaders continued to pay lip service to pan-Arabism while pursuing sectional-national objectives. In recent years even this has ceased, and some Arab leaders have begun to speak openly of their real purposes. The new frankness has not however as yet penetrated to the ideological literature, in which pan-Arabism remains the sole orthodoxy. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 935

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Echoes the pattern in The Namesake and many postcolonial texts where official ideology lags lived practice.

Related

• Pan-Arabism survives as public orthodoxy long after leaders abandoned it (similarity 0.92)
• Arabs understood the Palestine conflict as territorial, not ideological (similarity 0.83)
• By the 1970s Arab states were politically diverging despite cultural affinity (similarity 0.83)
• Early Arab political groups sought autonomy within the Ottoman state, not independence (similarity 0.83)
• Pan-Arab passion and anti-Western hatred have never translated into unified political action (similarity 0.82)
• Communal and religious loyalties regained ground after pan-Arabism waned. (similarity 0.81)
• Egypt’s centrality and preponderance made it the natural Arab leader. (similarity 0.81)
• The Arab democratic movement cannot yet be dismissed as a sham or failure (similarity 0.80)
• Pan-Arabism’s own logic undercut the moral force of Arab claims against Israel. (similarity 0.80)
• Arabs accepted Ottoman dominance as legitimate Islamic leadership before nationalism (similarity 0.80)
• The Arab revolt was dynastic and religious, not nationalist. (similarity 0.80)
• Post-1967 Egyptians debated Egyptian versus Arab national identity (similarity 0.79)
• Pan-Arab political solidarity is a myth; shared culture produces no political force (similarity 0.79)
• Palestinian elites abandoned pan-Arabism after experiencing exclusion from power. (similarity 0.79)
• Earlier anti-Western revolutionary movements lacked bin Laden’s popular reach (similarity 0.79)