Barry Rubin writes about the failure of the Arab/Muslim world to modernize.
This struggle between the old and new societies characterized much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet the trend was steady. Perhaps fascism (arguably Communism) and World War Two were, respectively, the final reactionary movements and last struggle. Yet victory required 500 years of rethinking and education.
There’s no such history in the Middle East and several additional problems block change toward moderation and democracy here. Whatever one thinks of specific Islamic doctrine as generally interpreted the big problem is that it remains so powerful and hegemonic. Arab nationalism is anti-democratic, repressive, and statist. Islamists seek a somewhat revised version of the eighth century, albeit with rockets and mass communication.
It is also worse because Middle East regimes and revolutionaries know Western history. They are aware of the fact that while pious Western philosophers and scientists sincerely believed open inquiry and democracy didn’t threaten traditional religion and the status quo they were wrong. Openness led to revolution and to modern secular-dominated society, a West with all the ills decried by those in religious, ideological and political power in the Middle East. They know what happened to Soviet bloc dictatorships that experimented with more freedom, too. And they know that accepting Western ideas makes people want to change their own societies.
Left unmentioned but also relevant is the degree to which the failure to modernize is tolerated and justified by the West by excusing the the anti-Israel stances of these countries as reasonable reactions to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.
And yet every once in a while there are glimmers of hope.
Deja Vu re-published the thoughts of A Syrian Dreams of a day in Haifa
No doubt, it would be tempting to land in Haifa. Perhaps I would run into one of the 1948 Arabs [i.e. Israeli Arabs] – not in order to ask him whether he would prefer to live in the West Bank or Gaza rather than in the state of the artificial ‘entity,’ but to ask him whether he would prefer living in Mecca or Qom to living in Haifa…
Israel Matzav quotes from a Kuwaiti writer:
Hizbullah and Kuntar’s family should thank their maker for making Israel their neighbors rather than Hussein’s Iraq. Otherwise, Kuntar would not have come back to his homeland on his feet, at a healthy weight of 90 kg, but rather in a little plastic bag containing a few bones, as our Kuwaiti prisoners returned to us.
Elder of Ziyon highlights another Kuwaiti writer who reflects on the extremism he sees in clips from MEMRI and concludes:
When we place our very own miseries in the hands of others, we are externalizing our problems that we are not able to solve, not because we cannot with some will and desire do so. Rather, we put our problems in the hand of foreigners because as such we can allow ourselves to do nothing about it for whatever reason we wish to ascribe to such act.
And Israelly Cool! quotes from the Daily Star of Beirut:
Over the past few days the two Palestinian factions seem to be close to repeated the same disastrous mistakes. We have seen Palestinians denigrating the legitimacy of other Palestinians, Palestinians making war on other Palestinians, and Palestinians arresting other Palestinians, while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those Palestinians who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.
These essays that show a self-awareness absent from much if the thought we in the West read in articles coming from the Arab world. Are they a sign of a new openness? A sign that the governments of the Arab world may start taking responsibility for their own citizenry rather than blaming their failures on Israel?
It’s possible but even Barry Rubin expresses some skepticism.
In comparison, while there are courageous individual liberals, there’s no real liberal party anywhere in the Middle East, no liberal-controlled media or liberal proselytizing university. In Egypt the liberal organization has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.
And Daniel Pipes, reflecting on recent titles that appeared in a Cairo book fair, writes:
While risible to the foreign eye, these books and their covers must be taken seriously, for they define the mental world of monolingual Egyptians.
While there may be some indiviiduals who see the need for the Arab world to progress, there is no sustained movement with that as its goal right now. Modernization, it seems, must wait.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
