COMMENT
By Tony Sayegh
Go ahead and accuse me of being an orientalist, anti-Arab, etc. But I have to say the following.
Enough blaming others, including the dictatorial regimes, the West, Israel, etc for the absolute disaster engulfing the Arab world. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the average Arab and of Arab society at large.
Other countries and societies also faced regimes just as bloody and brutal and they also suffered from outside interference from the West. Yet those other countries and societies did not disintegrate and fall apart as we see today in the Arab world. They did not experience the total destruction of major cities and major populations were not turned into refugees by the millions!
I can give two examples for comparison: Latin America and Eastern Europe. In both areas, relatively free and democratic governments came into being after some struggle to be sure. The struggle in Latin America was bloodier and longer than in Eastern Europe, but it was nothing compared to what we see in the Arab world. Yet, the Arabs have nothing to show for all this lost blood and treasure.
The question is why?
In my opinion when Arab society, with its tribal nature and its religious fanaticism, was put to the test it fell apart and failed miserably. The same goes for the individual Arab.
You say it is the fault of the dictators who controlled everything for so long. But the former Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, were governed by the most brutal of regimes. In fact Hafez Assad relied on the former Romanian secret service to organize the Syrian secret service. Yet when the final collapse of the Soviet Union and all the dictatorial regimes of Eastern Europe came, there was hardly any bloodshed. The military which was trained and indoctrinated to defend the regimes, instead stood with the millions of protesters in the streets. The Romanian military instead of firing on the population, arrested the dictator and later executed him. Compare this with what you see in Syria today, where the military is destroying the entire country, city by city.
I would say that the Arabs have failed miserably in forming the very basis of nationhood, where an Arab does not look at his neighbor as being Sunni, Shia, Druze, or whatever. As a result tribalism and religious fanaticism took hold. How can a Syrian pilot bomb a Syrian city day in and day out?
Beside tribalism, Islamic fanaticism is the other major culprit.
Eastern Europe and Latin America were lucky not to have these two major faults.
If you disagree, please write a comment and explain why you disagree.
3 comments:
Look at Yugoslavia it disintegrated and had bloody civil war due to existence of different ethnicities and religions and different sects within each religion. Homogenous societies or societies where overwhelming majority are from one ethnic group or sect are better designed to not disintegrate. Syria , Iraq ,Lebanon , Yemen, have very serious sectarian and ethnic dynamics. Tunis does not and look at the difference. Arabs are still in Jahaliah even the non muslim sects are just as backward and fucked up as the muslim one.
Zarathustra,
You bring up a good point, but it alone does not explain the terrible mess in the Arab world.
Take Egypt for example. It does not suffer from the ethnic problems of the Arab east and yet look at what is happening. The main strife is not between Copts and Muslims; it is between the dictator and the bulk of the population.
You offer Tunisia as a good example. In addition to a more homogeneous society, the key positive elements are: a more advanced stage of state building, a more developed civil society and the neutrality of the army.
In Eastern Europe you have Russia where ethnic Russians constitute only 81% of the population.
The Average Arab is a Muslim, who has absolved himself from the responsibility to Build A Civil nation, because he thinks he has a seat in heaven. It is very simple, but when said out loud it sounds so obscene, so indecent so insulting, so shameful, that we revert to the truth as hate, and thus continue to embolden falsehood.
Post a Comment