Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?

Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?


An Egyptian demonstrator uses his shoe to hit a picture of President Hosni Mu

The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism
An Egyptian demonstrator uses his shoe to hit a picture of President
Hosni Mubarak during a protest in Cairo. Photograph: Mohammed
Abed/AFP/Getty Images

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is
the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular
democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive
regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic
hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in
Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal
elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious
fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question
is what will happen next? Who will emerge as the political winner?
Simon Jenkins on Egypt

Simon Jenkins

1. 'The west's itch to meddle is no help. Leave Egypt alone'

When a new provisional government was nominated in Tunis, it excluded
Islamists and the more radical left. The reaction of smug liberals was:
good, they are the basically same; two totalitarian extremes – but are
things as simple as that? Is the true long-term antagonism not precisely
between Islamists and the left? Even if they are momentarily united
against the regime, once they approach victory, their unity splits, they
engage in a deadly fight, often more cruel than against the shared
enemy.

Did we not witness precisely such a fight after the last elections in
Iran? What the hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters stood for was
the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini revolution: freedom and
justice. Even if this dream utopian, it did lead to a breathtaking
explosion of political and social creativity, organisational experiments
and debates among students and ordinary people. This genuine opening
that unleashed unheard-of forces for social transformation, a moment in
which everything seemed possible, was then gradually stifled through the
takeover of political control by the Islamist establishment.

Even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be
careful not to miss the social component. The Taliban is regularly
presented as a fundamentalist Islamist group enforcing its rule with
terror. However, when, in the spring of 2009, they took over the Swat
valley in Pakistan, The New York Times reported that they engineered "a
class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of
wealthy landlords and their landless tenants". If, by "taking advantage"
of the farmers' plight, the Taliban are creating, in the words of the
New York Times "alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely
feudal," what prevented liberal democrats in Pakistan and the US
similarly "taking advantage" of this plight and trying to help the
landless farmers? Is it that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the
natural ally of liberal democracy?

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical
Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular
left in Muslim countries. When Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost
Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 40 years ago,
it was a country with a strong secular tradition, including a powerful
communist party that took power there independently of the Soviet Union?
Where did this secular tradition go?

And it is crucial to read the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt (and
Yemen and … maybe, hopefully, even Saudi Arabia) against this
background. If the situation is eventually stabilised so that the old
regime survives but with some liberal cosmetic surgery, this will
generate an insurmountable fundamentalist backlash. In order for the key
liberal legacy to survive, liberals need the fraternal help of the
radical left. Back to Egypt, the most shameful and dangerously
opportunistic reaction was that of Tony Blair as reported on CNN: change
is necessary, but it should be a stable change. Stable change in Egypt
today can mean only a compromise with the Mubarak forces by way of
slightly enlarging the ruling circle. This is why to talk about peaceful
transition now is an obscenity: by squashing the opposition, Mubarak
himself made this impossible. After Mubarak sent the army against the
protesters, the choice became clear: either a cosmetic change in which
something changes so that everything stays the same, or a true break.

Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of
Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals
delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is
that there is no organised political power to take over if Mubarak goes.
Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all
opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title
of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The
argument for Mubarak – it's either him or chaos – is an argument against
him.

The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly
supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants
on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion,
they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is
given a chance? Today, more than ever, Mao Zedong's old motto is
pertinent: "There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is
excellent."

Where, then, should Mubarak go? Here, the answer is also clear: to the
Hague. If there is a leader who deserves to sit there, it is him.