A GOOD ARTICLE
By Gilbert Achcar
"......
A most striking paradox characterizes the “Arab Spring”, however. Whereas it has largely been determined by the above described cultural revolution, it is similarly removing the lids that have been containing the expression and action of religious fundamentalist forces—the forces that have been the overwhelmingly dominant organized currents of opposition and the major available vehicles for expressions of protest in the region for the last three decades. Hence, the paradoxical result of a gigantic movement of emancipation giving way to electoral victories won by forces of social and cultural — if not political (experience will tell us soon) — repression. This paradox is but the natural outcome of the fact that the pressure cooker lids imposed by the Arab world's existing despotic and corrupt regimes had created an environment particularly suitable for the growth of this form of opposition and cultural retrenchment. Religion and religious forces have been extensively used by most regimes in the region to quell the remnants of the old nationalist and communist lefts, and to prevent the rise of new leftist forces in the post-1967 era. At a time when progressive political forces had gradually lost all their sources of state support and funding, religious fundamentalist forces were being funded and sustained throughout the region by three regional oil-rich states, which competed in pouring money into them: the Saudi kingdom, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the emirate of Qatar.
For this paradoxical state of things to change, it will require that the Arab world to go through a new historical experience, during which two simultaneous processes must unfold. On the one hand, regional populations will have to give religious forces a chance at power and thus witness their obvious limitations, especially the fact that they lack any programmatic responses to the deep social and economic problems that lie beneath the entire Arab uprising. On the other hand, new forces of social, political, and cultural emancipation that have risen powerfully during the upheaval—after taking the lead in igniting and conducting it—will need to build organizational networks of political struggle capable of constituting a credible alternative to the current religious backlash. For this, they will need to be bold enough to fight the cultural obscurantism of religious fundamentalist forces, instead of accommodating them, in the futile belief that they could thus gain access to their constituencies. "
By Gilbert Achcar
"......
A most striking paradox characterizes the “Arab Spring”, however. Whereas it has largely been determined by the above described cultural revolution, it is similarly removing the lids that have been containing the expression and action of religious fundamentalist forces—the forces that have been the overwhelmingly dominant organized currents of opposition and the major available vehicles for expressions of protest in the region for the last three decades. Hence, the paradoxical result of a gigantic movement of emancipation giving way to electoral victories won by forces of social and cultural — if not political (experience will tell us soon) — repression. This paradox is but the natural outcome of the fact that the pressure cooker lids imposed by the Arab world's existing despotic and corrupt regimes had created an environment particularly suitable for the growth of this form of opposition and cultural retrenchment. Religion and religious forces have been extensively used by most regimes in the region to quell the remnants of the old nationalist and communist lefts, and to prevent the rise of new leftist forces in the post-1967 era. At a time when progressive political forces had gradually lost all their sources of state support and funding, religious fundamentalist forces were being funded and sustained throughout the region by three regional oil-rich states, which competed in pouring money into them: the Saudi kingdom, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the emirate of Qatar.
For this paradoxical state of things to change, it will require that the Arab world to go through a new historical experience, during which two simultaneous processes must unfold. On the one hand, regional populations will have to give religious forces a chance at power and thus witness their obvious limitations, especially the fact that they lack any programmatic responses to the deep social and economic problems that lie beneath the entire Arab uprising. On the other hand, new forces of social, political, and cultural emancipation that have risen powerfully during the upheaval—after taking the lead in igniting and conducting it—will need to build organizational networks of political struggle capable of constituting a credible alternative to the current religious backlash. For this, they will need to be bold enough to fight the cultural obscurantism of religious fundamentalist forces, instead of accommodating them, in the futile belief that they could thus gain access to their constituencies. "
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