Are Arab people ready for democracy?
Do Arab people deserve democracy in the first place?
Sorry for the strange questions but tonight I entered a discussion about whether the Arab people or to be specifically those people who live in the Middle East “there are other Non-Arab speaking and ethnicity in the region” can or can not live in democratic.
I had it with someone who is younger than me from a complete younger generation “A decade difference”, someone who studied political science unlike me.
The discussion started as we are speaking about what is going in Sudan
He believe that he should be ruled by the iron fist of the military strongmen like Qaddafi, Saddam and El-Bashir, otherwise we will have chaos as we have seen in Libya and Iraq after the fall of both Qaddafi and Saddam’s regimes.
He believes that we “as Arab people” if we want to live a decent life then we have to immigrate to live the West instead of trying to fix our countries because the majority of the people need an iron fist, otherwise chaos will prevail.
He also believes that democracy made it in Europe because they have a better mentality.
He is not alone, there are people in Egypt and other Arab countries believe what once Mubarak’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told Christine Amanpour during the January 25th revolution: The Egyptian people are not ready for democracy.
I believe that the chaos that happened in Iraq and Libya is originally the product of those corrupted dictatorship.
The road of democracy is not an easy one and it does not take a genius to get this.
With the exception of Tunisia , the Arab countries of the so-called Arab Spring including Egypt did not have full or even full democratic experience thanks to several factors like external powers that do not want democracy or want to exploit riches or old regime that won’t give up without a god damn fight or even both like in the case of Yemen and Syria.
One of the major factors that played a role in creating that chaos is the fact all those Arab regimes that were downed like in Libya or Iraq did not give a chance for any leading political civilian alternative or let alone a true civilian state that won’t fall by the fall of the regime or its head.
The Egyptian people stood by hours in front of ballot boxes to choose their political map roadmap referendum in March 2011 regardless of the flaws of the whole process in less than four months from the infamous 2010 parliamentary elections that witnessed empty polls.
In 2017, the people in the island of Warraq which is technically a countryside rural area organized themselves and elected a representative council defending their locals’ rights according to the current Egyptian laws and constitution against the state.
I won’t speak about 2012 and 2013 and the sins that the Muslim Brotherhood and so-called liberal political figures committed then and afterward because they all paid and are still paying despite all the warnings.
I won’t speak about the Egyptian public because going through what happened in the US elections and Brexit, I feel Egypt was ground zero.
But I will say that my people of Egypt did not have a full true democratic experience in the first place to say that they failed miserably or that they are too stupid than their European counterparts.
Europeans are not smarter than Arabs or any other people in the world when it comes to political choices and democracy.
Modern democracy was not reached within a day and night in Europe, take France as an example of chaos and upheaval following the French revolution.
Fascism and Nazism are the product of Europeans’ free political will and the world is still paying because of that choice that were once taken in Germany and Italy in the 1930s.
God knows that the world is still being hunted by the Europeans’ populist political choice supporting fascism.
Brazilian people have elected a man who does not see Hitler as a dictator and the Americans selected Donald Trump as their president, who subsequently is the so-called leader of the free world.
Europe is taken by a populist right-wing storm and yet nobody says that the Europeans are too stupid or too savage to deserve democracy.
Middle Eastern strongmen are actually the chaos makers because they build their regime around themselves, once they are gone it crumbles.
The Middle East is not an exception. We just need time and help to stop external regional and international interventions to let democracy find its way in the region.
Several African countries that witnessed civil wars and military dictatorships are having those political democratic reforms right now and nobody is saying that African do not deserve democracy except racists.
Arab people and Middle Easterners, in general, deserve to leave in democracies where their officials are held accountable for their actions because God knows that they paid more than taxes just to give their children better living nothing more, nothing else.
FYI after two years from now, we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring start and God knows how this makes my heart cringe and sad because my generation has failed because of older generations.
Nevertheless, sometimes I try to hang on small hopes, I see Tunisia “despite some of their political powers kissing El-Assad’s ass for standing against the West”, I see Sudan and I see Warraq island and how they elected their own council but still I am realistic.
“This too shall pass” I remember those words about that ancient Eastern tale of a wise vizier that gave his king a piece of paper that would cheer him up whenever he was blue or would make him sad and back to the ground whenever he was flying from happiness.
The thing is that when it will pass.
Once a nice Egyptian lady who is a liberal activist told me when I was still optimistic that she may not be alive to see something like 25 January 2011 again or true democracy in Egypt. She was 50 years old during that conversation. I am in my mid-30s and I feel the same.
I wish the first true political post in 2019 was more joyful.
Do Arab people deserve democracy in the first place?
Sorry for the strange questions but tonight I entered a discussion about whether the Arab people or to be specifically those people who live in the Middle East “there are other Non-Arab speaking and ethnicity in the region” can or can not live in democratic.
I had it with someone who is younger than me from a complete younger generation “A decade difference”, someone who studied political science unlike me.
The discussion started as we are speaking about what is going in Sudan
He believe that he should be ruled by the iron fist of the military strongmen like Qaddafi, Saddam and El-Bashir, otherwise we will have chaos as we have seen in Libya and Iraq after the fall of both Qaddafi and Saddam’s regimes.
 |
| From Tahrir square on 1 February 2011 |
He also believes that democracy made it in Europe because they have a better mentality.
He is not alone, there are people in Egypt and other Arab countries believe what once Mubarak’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told Christine Amanpour during the January 25th revolution: The Egyptian people are not ready for democracy.
I believe that the chaos that happened in Iraq and Libya is originally the product of those corrupted dictatorship.
The road of democracy is not an easy one and it does not take a genius to get this.
With the exception of Tunisia , the Arab countries of the so-called Arab Spring including Egypt did not have full or even full democratic experience thanks to several factors like external powers that do not want democracy or want to exploit riches or old regime that won’t give up without a god damn fight or even both like in the case of Yemen and Syria.
One of the major factors that played a role in creating that chaos is the fact all those Arab regimes that were downed like in Libya or Iraq did not give a chance for any leading political civilian alternative or let alone a true civilian state that won’t fall by the fall of the regime or its head.
The Egyptian people stood by hours in front of ballot boxes to choose their political map roadmap referendum in March 2011 regardless of the flaws of the whole process in less than four months from the infamous 2010 parliamentary elections that witnessed empty polls.
In 2017, the people in the island of Warraq which is technically a countryside rural area organized themselves and elected a representative council defending their locals’ rights according to the current Egyptian laws and constitution against the state.
I won’t speak about 2012 and 2013 and the sins that the Muslim Brotherhood and so-called liberal political figures committed then and afterward because they all paid and are still paying despite all the warnings.
I won’t speak about the Egyptian public because going through what happened in the US elections and Brexit, I feel Egypt was ground zero.
But I will say that my people of Egypt did not have a full true democratic experience in the first place to say that they failed miserably or that they are too stupid than their European counterparts.
Europeans are not smarter than Arabs or any other people in the world when it comes to political choices and democracy.
Modern democracy was not reached within a day and night in Europe, take France as an example of chaos and upheaval following the French revolution.
Fascism and Nazism are the product of Europeans’ free political will and the world is still paying because of that choice that were once taken in Germany and Italy in the 1930s.
God knows that the world is still being hunted by the Europeans’ populist political choice supporting fascism.
Brazilian people have elected a man who does not see Hitler as a dictator and the Americans selected Donald Trump as their president, who subsequently is the so-called leader of the free world.
Europe is taken by a populist right-wing storm and yet nobody says that the Europeans are too stupid or too savage to deserve democracy.
Middle Eastern strongmen are actually the chaos makers because they build their regime around themselves, once they are gone it crumbles.
The Middle East is not an exception. We just need time and help to stop external regional and international interventions to let democracy find its way in the region.
Several African countries that witnessed civil wars and military dictatorships are having those political democratic reforms right now and nobody is saying that African do not deserve democracy except racists.
Arab people and Middle Easterners, in general, deserve to leave in democracies where their officials are held accountable for their actions because God knows that they paid more than taxes just to give their children better living nothing more, nothing else.
FYI after two years from now, we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring start and God knows how this makes my heart cringe and sad because my generation has failed because of older generations.
Nevertheless, sometimes I try to hang on small hopes, I see Tunisia “despite some of their political powers kissing El-Assad’s ass for standing against the West”, I see Sudan and I see Warraq island and how they elected their own council but still I am realistic.
“This too shall pass” I remember those words about that ancient Eastern tale of a wise vizier that gave his king a piece of paper that would cheer him up whenever he was blue or would make him sad and back to the ground whenever he was flying from happiness.
The thing is that when it will pass.
Once a nice Egyptian lady who is a liberal activist told me when I was still optimistic that she may not be alive to see something like 25 January 2011 again or true democracy in Egypt. She was 50 years old during that conversation. I am in my mid-30s and I feel the same.
I wish the first true political post in 2019 was more joyful.
Why we search for Democracy (like in Europe or America) as
ReplyDeleteA model political system.
We are lucky to have our Quran.
God (our creator) give us the best direction for everything, including government and political and economical systems.
Look to Abu Baker and sonar how they ruled when they followed the teaching of the Holy Quran and the example of
The Profit.
We should look to Islam and adapt our way of life in instead of look to the unbelievers and try to follow the wrong people.
The present problems in the Arab world are inheridet from the time of the European occupation (the English, French and Italian occupation) did not build Schools, hospitals and factories. But I forced ignorance, illness and poverty by stealing our resources.
It is still taking time to be liberated from the foriegn occupations and their clients in the Arab world.
>>"Why we search for Democracy (like in Europe or America) as
ReplyDeleteA model political system.
We are lucky to have our Quran."
Hahahahahaaa! America and Western Europe didn't used to have schools, hospitals and factories. They built them from scratch. Take responsibility! The Quran is irrelevant and infantilizing. It will not build a factory for you.