submitted on 2024-10-28, 09:39 and posted on 2024-10-30, 12:03authored byMoza Fahad Al-Thani
No movement has swept the Arab world in modern history as much as Arab nationalism. With the ideology reaching its heyday under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-1970), Arabs felt that they were reborn, as they were empowered with the feeling of dignity after centuries of being subjugated to colonialism. The impact it had on the formation of the Gulf countries should not go unnoticed. Since the rise of its early features in the late 19th century, Arab nationalism had a legal identity that was reflected in its advocacy for multiple legal principles such as the end of colonialism, achieving self-determination and sovereignty. The people in the Gulf espoused Arab nationalism and its legal values. Bringing the two aspects together, Arab nationalism and law, this LLM thesis analyzes the impact of the movement on the legal development of the Gulf countries. Using a comparative approach, it demonstrates that Arab nationalism had a bigger impact on the legal progress of Bahrain and Kuwait because of the distinct economic and social structures of these countries that allowed them to modernize at an earlier stage relative to their Gulf neighbors. The concomitants that came with modernization, such as quality education and the rise of civil society created greater political opposition. This thesis argues that these factors eventually made the Arab nationalist organizations during Nasser’s tenure in Bahrain and Kuwait more robust, and in turn, the governments’ repressions to these organizations less severe. This feature of Arab nationalism has an anecdotal significance that suggests a theoretical importance regarding the deep relationship between the fields of legal history and socio-legal studies. The historical reconstruction of Arab nationalism’s role in the legal progress of the Gulf assimilates legal history into the socio-legal canon, ultimately creating a rapprochement between the two fields.