Beyond the Mask A Reading of Abu Obaida as a Symbol in Arab and Islamic Consciousness

Yemenat

Abdelhay Korret

Abu Obaida was never, even in his lifetime, merely a military spokesperson or a voice emerging from behind a mask. For this reason, the news of his passing did not mark the end of a story, but rather a transformation in the nature of presence itself.

Some figures are not extinguished by death. Instead, their true symbolic force begins afterward, when the voice is freed from the body and becomes a collective memory, a discourse that lives more powerfully in consciousness than it ever did in time.

The departure of Abu Obaida came at a moment in Arab and Islamic history burdened with disappointment, a moment in which the collective was searching for a fixed meaning amid the collapse of grand narratives.

Thus, his absence was not received as the loss of an individual, but as a test of the very meaning of the symbol itself.

Was the man a fleeting phenomenon bound to its context, or an expression of a deep seated need within the collective consciousness.

The answer came swiftly in the magnitude of the public response and in the way his discourse was reproduced, not as an archive, but as a reference.

While alive, Abu Obaida worked to dismantle the image of the leader in favor of the symbolic function. He never presented himself as an individual hero, but as a voice speaking on behalf of an idea.

When the body disappeared, the idea remained and grew denser. Here lies the paradox. Death, which usually strips away symbolic aura, amplified it in his case because the symbolic structure had already been complete before his departure.

In Arab and Islamic collective discourse, Abu Obaida after his death became a psychological and moral benchmark for resistance.

He was no longer merely a name to be mentioned,