“Darkness descends upon the Arab world. Waste, death, and destruction attend a fight for a better life. Outsiders compete for influence and settle accounts. The peaceful demonstrations with which this began, the lofty values that inspired them, become distant memories. Elections are festive occasions where political visions are an afterthought. The only consistent program is religious and is stirred by the past. A scramble for power is unleashed, without clear rules, values, or endpoint. It will not stop with regime change or survival. History does not move forward. It slips sideways." The above is not my words, but the first paragraph of an article entitled “This is not a revolution," by Hussein Agha (from St. Anthony's college in Oxford) and Robert Malley (the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group). The two men played an important role in the peace process in the 1990s, and their article appears in the 8 November issue of The New York Review of Books. It is a long article, and I agree with about 90 percent of the ideas that are put forward; in this column I will discuss some of these ideas. The Muslim Brotherhood used to be considered dangerous extremists by the west; today, the west is welcoming them, and calling them logical and practical. The traditional-minded Salafists, who used to have problems dealing with all types of politics, are today competing in elections. The alliances are fragile, and religious regimes support secularists, while repressive regimes promote democracy. The United States is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the US wants help in toppling... even though this regime represses Islamists. Iran opposed the Arab regimes and grew closer to the Islamists, in the hope that it could find common ground with them. However, as soon as the Islamists took power, they began to reassure their former enemies and move away from Iran (I know from those involved that there was cooperation between armed elements of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Iran after the Islamic Revolution there in 1979). In a game of musical chairs, the Salafists in Egypt have assumed the former role of the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Brotherhood is playing the role once played by the Mubarak regime. In Palestine, Islamic Jihad is the new Hamas, launching rockets to embarrass the rulers of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is the new Fatah and claims that it is a resistance movement, clamping down on those who dare to engage in resistance. In Syria, the war is taking on the features of an ugly sectarian struggle, day by day; the country has become an arena for the wars of others. The opposition is a mix of the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, peaceful opponents, armed extremists, Kurds, and defected soldiers. The regime and the opposition never cease to do anything in their desperate attempt to achieve victory. The battle in Syria is the battle of Iraq. Sunni Arab countries did not accept losing Baghdad to the Shiites and the Iranian Safavids, and seeing the Sunnis take power in Syria will improve the chances of Sunnis in Iraq. If Syria falls, it will be followed by Jordan and the weak regimes, like Lebanon, will be next. The Islamists and Salafists there support the Syrian opposition, and they are closer to it than they are to Lebanese Christians and Shiites. The Muslim Brotherhood are in control. One of them was elected president of Egypt. They control Gaza and rule in Tunisia. They have made gains in Morocco, and their turn has come in Syria. World War I launched European colonialism and halted four centuries of Ottoman Islam. The last century saw the rise of secular Arab nationalism, which some saw as alien to the region, and imported from the west. The Islamists today believe that they have corrected history and revived the era of "Muslims without borders." The Islamic era is picking up where Ottoman imperialism left off. Was the past a departure from the Arab Islamic orientation? Or is the Islamic awakening a passing trend? I will stop here, and say that the article deserves to be translated into Arabic in its entirety, and published in our countries. Its authors are true experts in the topic and combine academic knowledge and direct, practical experience, while the publication is one of the most credible and objective in the field of its interest, namely political books and articles. [email protected]
