Bliss was it in that spring to be alive, and to be young, on the streets, was very heaven. Or so it seemed to millions of women and men in early 2011, shortly after the first protests in Tunisia rocked the foundations of the whole Arab world. Public ecstasy flourished. Freed from fear, often for the first time, citizens found themselves dancing, singing and kissing strangers in the streets. Dignity and justice, freedom and democracy, was the prevailing talk. Political exiles came home. The first fair and clean elections in living memory happened. Dictators were everywhere forced onto the back foot. Several were toppled; a few went on trial, or fled into exile; others, among them Gaddafi and al-Assad, fought back, like maniacs, using murderous tactics and weapons.
Exactly two years later, all things considered, have the convulsions in the Arab world been a boon for the spirit and institutions of power-sharing democracy? It’s much too early to tell. Revolutions resemble extended earthquakes. They take time. They have their own time. They alter people’s sense of time. Their impact and historical significance are known only well after their onset. As events unfold, the sense of liminality spreads. ‘Revolution fills life with unknowables,’ notes the Chinese writer Yu Hua. He adds that upheavals unpredictably break ‘the social ties that bind one person to another’, so that lives are often changed overnight: ‘some people soar high in the blink of an eye, and others just as quickly stumble into the deepest pit.’
Those words certainly apply to the Arab world. Look carefully at the present moment. Judged in terms of democratic principles, the most striking fact about the region is its utter contradictoriness. The fading imperial democracy, the United States, unconditionally backs Israel, a state that talks constantly about democracy and human rights yet in practice discriminates heavily against its own Arab subjects, builds walls and heaps terrible suffering upon its Palestinian neighbours. The American democracy brought massive violence and suffering to Iraq, which now resembles a comprador state aligned with Iran, which backs the criminal Syrian regime, which the United States wants to axe. In support of ‘democracy’ against ‘terror’, American drones, their use unauthorised by Congress, terrorise from above, kill and disrupt the lives of people down below.
The United States and its Western allies meanwhile back rich little Qatar. Home to al Jazeera, a vital contributor to the spread of democratic values, Qatar helps fund and support Hamas, which in the name of self-determination crushes dissent within its own ranks. The Western-backed Saudi Arabia dictatorship clings on for dear life, fears its own people, whom it plies with lavish handouts, knowing that they’re ultimately the source of its own repressive power.
That’s not the end of Western ‘democratic’ double standards. The United States and its Western allies silently consent to martial law and terror in Bahrain, whose oppressed Shiite majority refuse violence and champion the cause of democracy and human rights against a Sunni monarchy backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The West finds a new ally in the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt. Its democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, declares: ‘I have no rights, only responsibilities….If I do not deliver, do not obey me.’ Before a huge crowd of cheering supporters, he goes on to defend his decision to grant himself near-absolute constitutional powers: ‘My duty is to move forward with the goals of the revolution’, he says, ‘and eliminate all obstacles from the past’.
Throughout the region, political Islamists are on a roll. They’re making history anew, beginning with the rejection of several ‘laws’ of Atlantic-region political science. Hussein Agha, Robert Malley and others are not impressed. They predict that things will turn out badly, but this is to understate the interim achievements of the upheavals in general, and political Islam in particular. It turns out that secularism in the American, French or British sense is not a basic precondition of power-sharing constitutional democracy. In the elegant phrase of Naser Ghobadzadeh, a young Iranian scholar, political Islam is a force for the new democratic virtue of religious secularity, what Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi of Tunisia wisely calls a new compromise (wasatiyyah) between religion and politics.
Political Islamists also challenge the standard political science presumption that democracy requires a binding sense of national identity backed by a sovereign territorial state. They think differently. Whatever might be thought of the Iranian case, political Islamists have no particular love of armies, states, nations and nationalism. Their efforts to break the back of the old military dictatorships by spreading the spirit of democracy across borders therefore shouldn’t be underestimated. Public vows of support for brothers and sisters of the wider ummah are common. Regional political thinking is a felt imperative. How to re-shape the region politically is another matter.
Political Islam has managed to breathe life into the body of ‘post-sovereign’ democratic ideals, yet the whole process is deeply conflicted. It knows that nationalism always greased the wheels of dictatorship and that’s the reason many supporters of political Islam dream of political forms beyond the territorial state. That’s why (for instance) they conclude that Fatah and the PLO have no future, and why they think that the people of Gaza and the West Bank, whose hearts ache for a durable truce with self-governing institutions, may come to realise their dream not through a weakling pseudo- state, but by means of a new regional settlement, of the kind championed by the present Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt. For the moment, of course, that government remains trapped within the contradictory structures of the Egyptian state. Political Islam is forced to perform a delicate balancing act: it needs to satisfy its militant supporters with substantial domestic reforms; neutralise its military opponents; negotiate with the West; forge a different relationship with its neighbour state of Israel; and push towards a new and more dynamic regional settlement that remains undefined.
Political Islamists are also learning that democracy can be a wild horse. They hunger for state power; after a long history of underground resistance and suffering, they understandably don’t want to squander their deserved gains. Yet in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the engine rooms of last year’s upheavals, political Islamists are discovering that electoral victory and governing often require give-and-take pragmatism. As they set their sights on state power, they’re discovering as well that throughout the region, thanks to colonialism, state structures, where they exist, have been twice cursed: their efficiency and effectiveness are limited and, in the eyes of many people, they’re simply not legitimate. That’s why those who occupy the levers of state power in the name of ‘the people’ quickly find themselves opposed by long queues of real people – Arab nationalists, old-fashioned secularists, trade unionists, liberal minorities, Salafists hostile to women, atheism and ecumenicism.
Unfamiliar dynamics result. Protests against the injustice of unemployment, government corruption and state violence erupt; as recent disturbances in the Tunisian city of Siliana show, Islamist governments committed to ‘justice’ are easily accused of propping up systems of injustice. Another example: buoyed by the shift towards political Islam throughout the region, Salafists fancy themselves as the new opposition. That’s why they’re tempted to contest elections, which they otherwise denounce as an insult to God’s sovereignty.
The new regional power, Turkey, itself caught up in an unprecedented democratic transition that defies most textbook descriptions, indulges the contradictions. Committed to destroying the al-Assad regime in Syria, sensing that the terrible violence in that country is a proxy regional war, the Turkish government finds itself in the company of a strange assortment of political animals, including militant Kurds, whose cause at home it does everything to crush. The ramshackle democracy called Lebanon, governed by a fragile coalition of parties backed by Hezbollah, helps forces hostile to democracy to flourish. Throughout the region, the rule is clear: without a vibrant civil society backed by respect for local versions of human rights and the rule of law, the push for democracy hands opportunities to militias, shadowy armed networks, criminal gangs, kidnappers, assassins. Strange but true: as in Yemen and Libya, the fight for justice through new forms of democracy breeds new patterns of violent death and destruction.
And so the contraries multiply. Two years after the first breakthroughs, democratic principles are everywhere contradicted by struggles for power that bear little or no resemblance to professed intentions, or defined strategies. Where will all this end? What will historians say in fifty years from now when they look back on the region? Everybody wants to be on the winning side of history, yet nobody knows which side is right, or what winning might mean, or how to get there. Only one thing is certain: the present trends, suffused with contradiction, are not sustainable.
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John Phillip
John Phillip is a Friend of The Conversation.
Grumpy Old Man
Your bucketing of the west and Israel was a bit rough, John. Surely the middle eastern states - particularly those rich from their oil dollars - have some responsibility for their own behaviour? It cant all be down to the evil west and those inconvenient zionists? I have trouble separating Islam into political and, by implication, religious or spiritual entities. The whole point of that religion is that there is no separation of religion and state. As Islam rises, violence will surely follow.
Linus Bowden
management consultant
Democracy rests on widespread land ownership, and trust that contracts and property rights will be defended. Everything else is gravy. The Arabs have a way to goes yet.
Baz M
Law graduate & politics/markets analyst
The whole point of that religion? Yes sure Islam is a religion that in its ideal is governed by principles of that religion. But why single out Islam? Do you really think priests and kings in medieval Europe and before hand had dreams of the compatibility of Christianity and democracy and specially secularism? Good luck telling a high ranking priest during the crusades that principles of secularism ought to prevail over principles of e Bible. Democracy is a fairly new phenomena in the scope of history. It largely came about as a result of the renaissance, which ironically came about largely to curb the further rise of Islam. And keep in mind that one of the perhaps undesired consequences of western "democracy" which is staunch nationalism was the cause of ww1 and 2. And on another note the least Democratic states in the Islamic world, ie Saudia Arabia, Qatar etc are the ones most staunchly supported by west and specially US. The marketed "democratic states"
A Ahmed
Student
The real revolution / battle is that of the Islamic state vs Secular thinkers.
The Islamic movement is in battle for the new Islamic Caliphe and the sharia state.. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is a excellent example of this..
There is however a growing internal counter movement of people that foremost want peace and hence are rejecting the violent Jihad movement.. We are witnessing a secular movement, like in egypt, who just want a democratic state and have the courage to face off the muslim brotherhood who are highly organized and violent.
FYI.. the following site offers translations of arabic media so that you can witness direct, unfiltered dialog that is happening internally.
http://www.memrijttm.org/content/
and interesting dialog like :
http://www.memrijttm.org/content/en/blog_personal.htm?id=5196¶m=AJT
Linus Bowden
management consultant
Less Muhammad and more Milton Friedman is what they need. But now that Bush jnr has set the whole thing off, prospects are reasonable, so long as they realise the whole oil shangr-la is over.
Baz M
Law graduate & politics/markets analyst
Prof Keanne, I'd like to thank you very much for a sensational article which gives a summarised yet thorough scope of the hypocrisies, aspirations and power brokers of the Middle East and its Western "allies" for lack of better term.
Read moreI find it laughable, in order to not use a more crude term, every time I see articles declaring the desired freedom of rebels whom fight against Arab dictators ie Libya, Syria, but for some reason their not dictators if we're talking about Saudia Arabia or…
Mofareh Alkubayshi
LLB& currently doing my LLM
Hi everyone,
The current situation in the Arab world can be simply described as people want freedom at any cost. But the freedom which they are fighting for is different to the one desired by the West.
Secondly, I always feel unjust when some writers keep using the word "violence". In my view, there is a valid justification to use some form of self- defense. It is even justified under customary International Law. For example, we can describe what brave Syrian free armies are doing as violent…
Read moreMofareh Alkubayshi
LLB& currently doing my LLM
Just minor correction. I mean we can not describe what the brave Syrian Armies as violence.
A Ahmed
Student
Islam literally means submission to Mohammad's teachings and we now witness what that means arround the world by the actions of those that wish to impose sharia law.
It is clear that the western concept of democracy where state and religion are seperated are totally imcompatable with sharia law which claims to be the world of God and above all other law.. So what hapens to all other beliefs?
We all should look after our own house and make sure that sharia law is totally banned from wester countries.. Look at britainstan for example where there are two laws now operating!
Syria is being invaded by foriegn entities it seems and is hardly a civil war
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
I woul;dn't worry too much about "A Ahmed" Mofareh... very hard to have intelligent and informed discussion with a fella whose only knowledge of Islam comes from various English language anti-islamic hate sites. I've tried to engage "A Ahmed" on several issues here regarding Islam without any luck other than his posting a splattering of links to anti-islamic, anti-immigration European haters. He's a phoney.
Incidentally can't agree with you re Sharia Law... bit more complex this law business…
Read moreMofareh Alkubayshi
LLB& currently doing my LLM
Dear Ahmed,
I hope that we can engage in a very civil and intellectual discussion.
First, I do not think that there is any Muslims who wants to impose Shariah Law.
Second, I do see that there is an ongoing yet groundless accusation that Prophet Mohamed has restored to war to impose Shariah Law. "I am more than happy to provide numerous evidence to prove that this claim is misleading.
Third, with respect to the Western democracy, I would like to alert you that I have done my Law degree here in Australia and now I am doing my Master of Law. My point is that Democracy is something that we hear but we do not see. In other words, it sounds exciting to talk about democracy but do we actually have democracy?
A Ahmed
Student
Dear Mofareh
Please, lets have a truthful discussion with an aim to achieving a better outcome.. whatever that maybe.
first. "i do not think there are any Muslims who want to impose Sharia law" ?
Sorry but do we live on the same planet.. Egpyt is in turmoil at this very moment with violence erupting on the streets because Morsi and the muslim brother hood want to introduce sharia law.. The Taliban want to sharia law and kill for it, there are hundreds of sharia law courts in Britain…
Read moreMofareh Alkubayshi
LLB& currently doing my LLM
Dear Ahmed,
I am eager to engage in meaningful and useful discussions in honest efforts to build up a better understanding of each other.
With respect to Shariah law... this is a very complex topic which requires a lot of times and efforts so that Shariah Law can be fully understood. Add to that, there are many experts, largely non Muslims,who claim to have sufficient knowledge of Shariah Law yet they are providing very disastrous studies of it. I could provide many examples of these experts…
Read morePeter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Great overview John. Pity the landscape is so murky.
Must admit to having some sympathy for Morsi. If I was going to tackle the Egyptian military and the courts they appointed I'd be looking around for some serious clout. It's not like the Egyptian legal system has proven a bastion of democracy and fairness. In short, we'll see - but while the military controls some 70% of the economy and presents the real power in the country, Morsi's capacity to introduce significant economic reform - the critical issue - is extremely limited and fragile.
Nothing is resolved and the Arab spring will take several years to show what changes are possible.
A Ahmed
Student
Dear Mofareh
Read moreThank you for your thoughts and questions. The very least we can do is be honest as ultimately these issues directly affect the lives of people and their families.
With respect with Sharia, yes it is complex and yet there are some very clear tenants.. Like sharia is based on the quran which is set in stone and never to change and as a muslim, you will argue, it is the word of God. So that means there is no evolution, the words are what they are.. And this means forever…
Baz M
Law graduate & politics/markets analyst
Dear readers of this piece, with reagrd to certain comments made on here, I feel obliged to correct some of the claims about Islam as nor are they true and nor should they be solely looked at with the view of current times as this does a disservice to history in all its contexts.
1.) Claim: Apostates will face the death penalty - No this is not per se true and should be further analysed. The prophet Mohammad under the security of his people allowed many non muslims to live and conduct their…
Read more