The Devil You Know . . .

How's That "Arab Spring" Working Out

We have published several pieces over the months on the "Arab Spring".  This new season was hailed in the West as the first signs of a burgeoning, grass roots move towards liberal, Western-style democracies.  "Look, they are becoming like us," gushed Secretary of  State, Hillary Clinton and her naive boss, President Obama.  The media chorused their agreement with the sentiment and basked in new found hopes. 

The brouhaha only served to demonstrate how profoundly ignorant the Commentariat is of history and of what actually constitutes nationhood.  Nations cannot rise higher or be anything other than what lies in the hearts and minds of its people.  If the people are dependant and of a slavish mentality, they will accept and even welcome authoritarian government.  If the people are predominantly self-indulgent libertines they will insist upon governments feeding and paying for their lusts and sensual indulgence. 

Forms and structures of government do not make a people. On the contrary, unless the government reflects the dominant world-views of the people, it will fall.  So, the big question that Hillary Clinton and her colleagues, along with the chattering classes, never asked was what was the state of the hearts and minds of the people engaging in the "Arab Spring".  They simply naively and grandly assumed that those folk over there are just like us--self-indulgent libertines.
  Toss out the army's control of government, overthrow the domination of the mullahs, and execute the dictators and hey presto we would see governments emerge which would hold free and fair elections every so often and which would rapidly move to a Western, demand-rights welfare state.  The Arab Spring would blossom into a wonderful summer.

How is the strategy working out?  Iraq lies riven with sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia.  Libya is devolving into tribalism.  Syria is engaged in a civil war with neither side looking anything like Western democrats.  Egypt has come the closest to realising the West's naive hope of an Arab Spring.  It held and election.  See, democracy transforms and saves people.  It makes them new. 

Except that the winner of the election, the Muslim Brotherhood--long cuddled and lionised by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--has proven to be as absolutist as any Caliph in its aspirations and policies.  Enforced Islamisation beckons. 

Now, riven with division and facing collapse, it appears Egypt is coming to long for "the good old days" when the military ruled and elections were a distant memory of an aberrant past.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Egypt's powerful military is showing signs of growing impatience with the country's Islamist leaders, indirectly criticising their policies and issuing thinly veiled threats that it might seize power again.  The tension is raising the specter of another military intervention much like the one in 2011, when generals replaced longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak after they sided with anti-regime protesters in their 18-day popular uprising.

The strains come at a time when many Egyptians are despairing of an imminent end to the crippling political impasse between President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood group on one side, and the mostly secular and liberal opposition on the other.  The tug of war between the two camps is being waged against a grim backdrop of spreading unrest, rising crime and a worsening economy.  . . .

With chaos in the country deepening, chants calling for military intervention during street protests, last heard en masse during the uprising, are making a timid comeback.  "Millions of Egyptians want the army to come back and deliver us from chaos," Ibrahim Issa, host of a political talk show on television, said this week.  "This is the sentiment on the Egyptian street, and ignoring it is stupid," said the popular Issa, a harsh critic of Morsi, the Brotherhood and the military when it was in power.

Since taking office in June 2012, Morsi has made little progress in tackling Egypt's pressing problems - steep price increases, surging crime, deteriorating services and fuel shortages.  The Brotherhood, which dominates parliament and the government after winning every election since Mubarak's ouster, is accused of monopolising power. And Morsi has been criticized for failing to deliver on a promise of an inclusive government representing the Christian minority, liberal and secular political factions, and women.

The highly charged political climate and the collapsing economy could make a military takeover seem like a welcome development in some corners of Egypt - or at least a necessary evil that could salvage the nation.

The more Islamic ideology controls the hearts and minds of a people, the more authoritarian the government will be.  Islam has no concept of the separation of church and state.  Allah's will is univocal and all must submit to it.  Submission is the Islamic concept of peace.  Islam has no concept of the liberty of conscience.  Islam, once in control, demands submission or the sword.   Women must submit to men (who are higher on the chain-of-being) and men must submit to kings.  All must be conformed to the authoritarian domination of Allah. 

Pew Research reports that around eighty percent of people in Egypt believe that if an Egyptian leaves Islam and converts to another religion he should be executed. 

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found relatively widespread popular support for death penalty as a punishment for apostasy in Egypt (84% of respondents in favor of death penalty), Jordan (86% in favor), Indonesia (30% in favor), Pakistan (76% favor) and Nigeria (51% in favor).

Where there is no recognition or belief in the liberty of conscience amongst a people, authoritarian and totalitarian government is the only option.  The Arab Spring is a decidedly false dawn.