Ever since the outset of the Libyan revolution, and while at the peak of the battles, friends of various nationalities on Facebook could barely contain their laughter over the speeches and surreal appearances of Muammar Gaddafi, although the mocking comments were accompanied by warm expressions of solidarity and honest condemnation of the brutality of the man behind “zanga zanga” and “dirty rats.” This continued until a Libyan friend came out with a shocking comment. The young man did not say anything new, rather stated the obvious which most of us had forgotten, and this may be the reason of our surprise. The young man from Misrata who lives in London – where he has been staying with his family for years to elude the oppression machine – wrote what could be summarized by the following: “You are laughing, and so are we. But, there is nothing prompting tears more than the first reaction of those to whom I say I am Libyan. They laugh as though they had heard a joke and immediately relay the stories of that clown, because of whom no one is taking the Libyans seriously!” An entire people was kidnapped by Gaddafi for more than forty years and imprisoned in his madness box. We were all aware of that “detail” but had almost forgotten its meaning, had it not been for the comment of the young man from Misrata. After the revolution, we started discovering numerous things we did not know about Libya and its people, although some of us knew the country's history and even visited it repeatedly. This recollection featured a meaning exceeding the accomplishments and the current slips of the Libyan revolution, celebrating its first anniversary, as well as those of the Arab spring in general. The Arab revolutions, the accomplished ones as well as those still erupting, are generating enthusiasm, numerous questions and contemplations, and even criticism. What was toppled is massive, but change is not exclusive to political regimes and rulers, and cannot be limited to the awakening of the street or the collapse of the walls of fear. Molds, too, are breaking. And this deserves attention. The stereotyping which prevailed for a long time over the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, Syrian and Yemeni people/individuals is also falling apart. This stereotyping is not only present in the imagination of “The Other” who's not necessarily different or biased – as the victim might also participate in shaping this mold, in living the role in order to keep on living. The below-mentioned, ready-made, human molds are certainly rejected and there is no virtue in recalling them, due to the racism and generalization they feature, and the humiliation they carry for people's very humanity. Yet, unfortunately, these stereotypes have always been popular, and even more so before the revolution season. This is exactly what needs to be tackled. The molds feature the following: the ordinary Egyptians inherently humor the authority (whichever authority, from the employer to the security elements). The rich Egyptians do not care about politics and are likely implicated in the circle of corruption, while the poorest are beggars from tourists and also from the local “Pasha”. They are swindlers, drug addicts, or harassers. The Muslim Brotherhood elements are rowdy, the Salafis are terrorists and the politicized are foolish dreamers. The Egyptian military institution, on the other hand, is an emotional and national red line. What about the Tunisians? They are definitely secular… “Since when are there Islamic Tunisians?” asks a friend who's supposed to be an intellectual. As to the Syrians, beware of them. They are informants for the intelligence apparatuses, until proven otherwise. The Syrians are often criminals or victims. Little do they know, and a few are clever. The elite, maybe. The Yemenis, on the other hand, are the Qat addicts and the friends of their “daggers,” far away from any productivity or civility. Moreover, Yemeni women are voiceless. They could only win the award for the best traditional outfit. Finally, the Libyans have no faces, as though non-existent, even in their own country which is often mentioned as a refuge for workers or wealth-hunters from the neighboring states. This is the cruelest kind of stereotyping. Stereotyping is usually the Other's doing, i.e. the historical arrogant colonialists, met halfway by the colonized and their own myths about them. The African-Americans suffered from stereotyping, as well as the Irish under English rule, the Africans under French rule and certainly the Arabs all through their older and modern history. Then came the Arab spring. It inspired the online pages of "Occupy Wall Street" that featured pictures of Tahrir Squares in Egypt and Tunisia in particular, accompanied by comments evoking this momentum among Americans. Moreover, the media outlets –traditional and alternative – showed new faces, other than those which emerged from the holes of daily culture prior to the revolutions. They showed what will be, i.e. the desired and the goal behind the struggle. The Egyptians thus saw Syrians insulting the intelligence forces (mokhabarat), the one- party-rule, and eradicating the statue of the ruler. The Yemenis saw, among millions of young Egyptian rebels, carriers of iPads, cleaning their Tahrir Square, their poor confronting the Pasha and even the Field Marshal, and the Costa Salafis emerged too. The Syrians discovered Yemenis continuing to stage mostly peaceful demonstrations. On their TVs was a Yemeni woman receiving the Nobel Prize, and another carrying out defiance in her article “First Year of Revolution.” Tunisian Islamists seized the attention, as they won the first free elections, which might not come as a surprise to anyone in Egypt, Libya or Syria, but constitutes breaking news in Bourguiba's Tunisia. Then everyone saw Libyan men and women. It sufficed that they actually saw them. For the first time in ages, the Arab revolutions placed their societies in the face of that methodic stereotyping. Finally, an end to the clichés of “white man” and Imperialistic West. The regimes that took over postcolonial Arab states played a key role in instating these molds which were necessary for those regimes' survival. But they are now collapsing, or faltering, after they had burdened the people for a long time. These are the same regimes whose electoral results never went below 90% and were arrogant enough to claim to be national leaderships governing republics. In that sense, these regimes occupied their countries and consequently secured the dominance of these imposing the stereotypes. Stereotyping is a framework to enhance the safety of meaning, an attempt to instate the pattern in order to understand it in depth, while stressing this understanding above any other as the only truth. Steroetypes reassure the tyrant of his supremacy and authority. However, when the oppressed reflect this vision back in the face of the colonialist, they defuse his weapons and even horrify him. Through Hip Hop for example, the African-Americans used the same decadent patterns attributed to them by white people - i.e. of "naturally" criminal men and women, governed by their instincts, hostility and raggedy - through images, lyrics and video clips, in order to strengthen their protest and refute. Today, the new Arab revolutionaries are turning the term “infiltrator” against the apparatuses produced it, thus rendering it a source of pride. On websites, the word has become a nickname for political activists and a derision material in the context of resistance. For their part, some Islamists might retroactively try to break the pattern from outside the “new democracy”. They, for instance, filed a hilarious lawsuit against Adel Imam to hold him accountable for the movies in which he criticized them. A religious scholar surfaced in Tunisia to call for polygamy and women's circumcision, probably in the hope of making the Tunisian seculars a thing of the past. However, these sideline phenomena, which were opposed in the relative communities, do not negate the healthy nature of it all, because molds are prisons. ___________ * was published in Al-Hayat Sunday 26-02-12, Currents (Tayyarat) Supplement
