WE DESERVE THE BLAME FOR ANTI-ARABISM

If you want to read the most articulate, most long-awaited reality column about democracy in the Middle East, I recommend that you access the New York Times of February 27th for the column by Nicholas Kristoff. He was on the ground in Egypt and he saw first-hand what the word democracy means to these people, and how wrong we have all been with our “idees fixes” about the Arab/Muslim world. In fact, we have been very wrong and it is time to make amends.

Kristoff cites British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is no screaming radical: “he forthrightly acknowledged that for too long Britain had backed authoritarian regimes to achieve stability. He acknowledged that his country had bought into the bigoted notion “that Arabs or Muslims can’t do democracy.” And he added: “For me, that’s a prejudice that borders on racism. It’s offensive and wrong, and it’s simply not true.” The light has finally shone.

I have been trying myself to square my notions of Arab intellectual poverty and backwardness and radical Islamism, with the faces of thousands of young Tunisians, then Egyptians, then Bahrainis, who are the farthest thing from rabid jihadists. It seems to suit our personal purposes to label them all as suicide bombers, Islamist militants and America-haters. Far too easy because it gets us off the hook. We have always known and have been complicit in maintaining all of it, that there is literally no democracy anywhere in the Arab world. From Morocco to Yemen, from Syria to Saudi Arabia, despotic rule is the norm. Kings and Emirs and Ayatollahs, and in the case of Iran, the despotism of the Revolutionary Guard, abetted by the Ayatollahs... There is enough blame to go around, with oil-needy first world countries so perilously in need that they want only one thing: stability.

But one man’s stability is another man’s tyranny. We must not continue to believe that everyone in the Arab world is a compliant, willing servant of his non-elected masters. To believe that there are great masses of illiterates who are easily governed by dictators is to ignore the reality that has been exposed by these utterly spontaneous revolutions. Maybe the arrival of Facebook and Twitter has demonstrated to all of us that these people are aware and ready for change.

Obama seems to have decided in favour of the new realism. He trod carefully with Mubarak until that man relieved himself of the presidency. Now he is openly calling for the removal of Khaddaffi. Will there be more? Can the Saudis possibly maintain their feudal hold on their 15th century Wahabbi country? They are already dishing out goodies to their people and hinting at reform. Until the rest of the Western World says publicly what David Cameron has said, there will be tension. Worse, without western support the tide of the new Arab democracy could turn in a hostile direction.

I do not believe that the radicals will benefit from democracy. Hamas and Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood will be dispatched to the trash bin of obsolescence, because these new revolutionaries know the old ways are self-destructive. We worry too, and I wrote about it several weeks ago, that a power vacuum would leave these countries vulnerable to even more authoritarian government. Maybe I was too quick to judge. They seem ready and able and are forming their own provisional councils and are starting to construct the kind of democracy they believe they deserve.

I am cautioning myself not to let my hopes rise too high. Revolution can beget many sinister children. But if you read back into Kristoff’s insightful peace you will see that he invokes history, reminding readers that it took more than six years from the end of the American Revolution to establish a stable government.

What is needed most is encouragement. A new day is dawning and the oil moguls had better reconsider their strategy. Reconsider or get done like dinner.