Every night has an end… even if it starts without one!

The night here cannot be read as a poetic metaphor or an emotional description of a passing phase, but rather as a political structure in its own right. The night is the result of long accumulations of failure, mismanagement, and the collapse of the social contract between the state and society. It is the state in which politics transforms from a tool for organizing difference and managing interests into a means to perpetuate incapacity, reproduce fear, and manufacture impossibility. In this sense, the night is not an incidental event, but an extended course, and not a temporary circumstance, but a logical outcome of a flawed political trajectory.
In the Arab context, politics is no longer a public matter managed in the public sphere, but has turned into an individual fate that pursues individuals even in the finest details of their lives. It is the force that determines a person's destiny before they make their decisions, imposing on them limited choices between remaining on the margins of the homeland or migrating to another margin that is less harsh but more complex. Therefore, when the Arab chooses exile, it is often not a free decision, but a response to a long-term political compulsion, coercive social conditions, or something resembling an inevitable fatal choice that made staying an expensive act and migration an existential necessity.
However, exile, contrary to what is politically and media marketed, is not the end of the crisis nor an overcoming of it, but an extension of it in a different context. The conflicts generated by the Arab nation-state – marginalization, polarization, exclusion, and monopoly of legitimacy – do not stop at geographic borders but move with individuals to their places of refuge, albeit with new tools and softer, less blatant forms. Thus, the crisis transforms from a conflict with a central authority into horizontal conflicts within the communities and groups themselves.
In exile, the Arab enters a new political space governed by different criteria, but does not start from zero. He carries with him a political memory burdened with fear, distrust, divisions, and misunderstanding of public action. Therefore, it is not surprising that Arab communities often turn into spaces of sharp competition, where narrow lobbies are established, and the same power relations that people failed to liberate themselves from in their original homelands are reproduced.
Here, the conflict is no longer about principles as much as it becomes a struggle over limited resources: money, recognition, platforms, and symbolic representation. In light of this reality, the major questions about justice and freedom recede in favor of more pragmatic and utilitarian questions: Who has the loudest voice? Who controls the discourse? Who determines who is “politically acceptable” and who is “excessive”? Thus, politics as a collective practice is replaced by individual or factional maneuvers, often justified under the slogan of “survival.”
The most dangerous political problem in exile manifests at the limits of the relationship between ends and means. Many, driven by self-assertion or escaping the margins, accept fundamental concessions that affect the core of the discourse they claim to defend. Some completely dissolve into the new political systems, abandoning any real criticism in exchange for acceptance and integration. Others choose a confrontational, high-toned discourse that lacks depth and vision, turning into a moral display without actual political impact. In both cases, politics as a project disappears, replaced by short-term survival strategies.
This crisis also extends to the symbolic structures that historically played a guiding and moral role in society. For example, the religious figure no longer retains his prestige or status as he did in his original homeland. In the exile context, role models have fallen, and some have turned into seekers of image, rivalry, and chasing “prestige” and enrichment at the expense of moral role and public responsibility. With the decline of this reference, influence has weakened, and society often becomes without a solid guiding umbrella or a model to emulate, deepening the state of both moral and political disorientation.
This dynamic raises a central political question: Is it possible to build an ethical political action in a fragile context based on sharp competition and scarcity of opportunities? Or does exile, by its nature, push individuals and groups to adopt the logic of “the end justifies the means”? The answer is not simple, but it reveals a deeper structural imbalance represented by the absence of a collective vision for political action and the lack of belief in the possibility of long-term cumulative work.
Politics, when emptied of its value dimension, turns into mere management of interests. When it fails to produce justice, it leaves an ethical vacuum that does not remain neutral. This vacuum is usually filled with individual ambitions, small domination projects, and forms of micro-despotism within groups that are supposed to have originally fled despotism. Here lies the paradox: many Arab immigrants unknowingly reproduce the same authoritarian patterns they rejected in their countries.
Nevertheless, reducing exile to merely a space for reproducing political failure remains an injustice to reality. In this complex night, serious attempts appear to redefine politics outside traditional frameworks. There are individuals and groups who have chosen quiet work, away from media noise, seeking to build real discussion spaces and produce a critical discourse not based on exclusion or exploiting suffering. These attempts, although seemingly limited in impact, represent a possible nucleus for a more mature political action.
Politics, in its deep meaning, is not reduced to state institutions nor elite conflicts, but is embodied in the daily choices individuals make when pushed to the margins. From this perspective, exile becomes a harsh laboratory for rethinking concepts of belonging, legitimacy, and representation. Self-assertion should not come at the expense of others, and seeking a place in the public sphere does not justify monopolizing truth or excluding dissenting voices.
Every night has another dawn, not because history follows the logic of justice, but because continuing in darkness indefinitely contradicts the logic of change itself. The night may be long and may renew itself in different forms, but its cracking is inevitable as long as the real political questions remain open. Exile, with all its contradictions, is not the end of Arab political action but one of its most complex chapters, as it places the individual face to face with their individual and collective responsibility simultaneously.
In the end, the dilemma is not in ambition nor in the desire for success, but in the price paid to achieve it. Politics that loses its ethical meaning turns into a technique of power, and self-assertion based on destroying others always ends in a void. When politics is restored as a pursuit of meaning before influence, and dignity before gains, the night – no matter how long – becomes a phase that can be overcome, and the other becomes possible… even if it begins with a different other.