3Reviewing BeginningsArab writers are disentangling language, blood, ethnicity,religion, and gender, and they are demonstrating that theapparently natural connections between them are in factconstructed and contingent. There is no fixed, essentialcenter that would mark the core of a single, foundationalidentity. Throughout the twentieth century there hasbeen much talk of identity: losing identity to imposedcultures and their values; uncovering lost identity;regainingauthenticidentity;asserting identityasmember of a disadvantaged group; identity politics. Ineach case, identity is tied to birth, to place, to language,to community, to religion, and to gender. Identityconfers rights. Identity takes rights away. But what is thissingular, unified identity? If identity is the recognition ofsameness with some and difference from others, then wehave many identities. To retain a sense of wholeness, weusually assert only one of many possible identities, theone that gives authority at the moment of its assertion.This speaking position is not an identity, but rather anascribed or chosen identification.Most recently, religious identification has taken onpolitical significance in postcolonial Arab countries.Social, economic, military, and political failures havegalvanized reactionary, religious responses to Westerndomination, globalization, and the corrupt values theyare thought to be spreading. Islamist groups fromMorocco to Bahrain are calling for an Islamic state,