Archive for May 28th, 2009
How confident are you in the Future?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 28, 2009
Imaginary Certitudes (May 6, 2009)
The US republican notion of capitalism is plainly discredited; communism was discredited since 1989; the doctrine of the Christian religion was discredited since the French Revolution in 1787 and a century before that but religion cannot be eradicated from the spirit of the masses. The power of religion is that you don’t need to apply or fear to be ex-communicated whether you are a believer or not or whether your opinions are not compatible with the predominant ideology. Religion exercises its legitimacy once it combines the doctrines of “communism” for equal opportunities and the aspiration for independence against a usurper. That is what extremist Islam has managed to package its ideology; an ideology targeting the poor and disinherited who were deprived of dignity and were humiliated by the western powers.
Let me resume my previous article on “Misleading Legitimacies“. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt managed to capture legitimacy in the emotions and spirit of the Arab populations as the leader of the Arab World by politically defeating the joint military attack by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956 to recapture the Suez Canal. The Arab populations were satisfied that their crushed dignity for over 5 centuries was re-emerging among the nations (the western nations). Even the crushing military defeat by tiny Zionist Israel in 1967 maintained Gamal Abdel Nasser as the legitimate leader and most of the Arab State leaders converged to him to resolving their conflicts with their neighbors or within their State.
After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser (The Raiyess) in 1970 the goal of Arab leaders was to re-capture Arab legitimacy. The successor of the (Raiyess) in Egypt was Sadate who needed to rely on the legitimacy of the “Moslem Brotherhood” to strengthen his power and thus proclaimed to be “The First of the Believers (among Moslems)”. All the Arab leaders realized that legitimacy reside in convincing victories against common enemies to the “Arabs”, or mainly any western nation and Israel the closest geographically. The initial victory in 1973 on the Sinai front against Israel was cancelled out by bedding with the USA and “My Dear Friend Henry (Kissinger)” Sadate was hated by most Arabs and no one shed a tear when he was assassinated.
Dictator Saddam Hussein enjoyed potentials in literate population, large army, and natural resources; he jumped at the occasion when the USA encouraged him to invade Iran of Khomeini. This time, the enemy was the Persians who had re-captured lands that the Arab and Ottoman Empires had secured centuries ago and called “Arabstan” or Khuzestan. After 8 years of mutual slaughtering in the battle field Saddam Hussein reverted to its neighboring “Arab” State of Kuwait and was vanquished by the USA, the arch enemy of the Arabs. Saddam lost his legitimacy.
Saudi Arabia’s successive monarchs endeavored to gain legitimacy in the Arab World through building thousands of mosques, appointing clerics who favored the Wahhabit sect, and lavishing petro-dollars for settling conflicts among the Arab States. Saudi Arabia has been working for the long term by proselytizing their conservative extremist Wahhabit sect among the Sunni Moslems and gaining legitimacy by proclaiming that they are the “Servitors or Guardians of the Holy Kaaba and Medina (al Haramine)”
The progress in Europe was established indirectly by a centralized Papal spiritual authority. Ironically, this spiritual centralization was acquired when the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity. Christianity could have evolved without any serious centralization if it was not ordered by the Roman ideological system of centralized power. Hundreds of Christian sects existed in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, and throughout the Roman Empire before the year 325; they were persecuted as “heretics” after the conclave of Nicee in 325. Papal Rome hindered progress and change vigorously for long period but once society expressed its willingness for change then it followed suit and even staunchly maintained the changes and supported them against any refracting bishop or religious Christian sects. Centralized Papal Rome was a counterbalance to the tyranny of temporary authorities who had to compromise and rectify policies that challenged the dignity and well being of the poor citizens.
Islam had no such centralized spiritual authority; it viewed with suspicion any kinds of religious centralization; it didn’t appreciate mediators between the believer and his God. Thus, the political sultans and sovereigns dominated the religious spiritual power; in most instances the monarch grabbed the legitimacy of caliph. Thus, the counterbalance to tyranny lacked in the Moslem world and any recognized cleric, ordered by a sultan, could proclaim a “fatwa” or an injunction for the people to obey as a religious obligation. You could have several “fatwas” concurrently injuncting opposing orders.
The problem in Islam is not in the source or the Koran but the free interpretations of any monarch or leader at any period. There are no stable and steady spiritual legitimacy in any interpretations that can be changed or neglected at other periods.
The author Amine Maaluf recounts this story” A Moslem woman applies in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) for a private club that would allow Moslem women to meet and maybe share common hot baths with sauna and Jacuzzi (hammam). A week later the municipality rejected the application on ground that the local Moslem cleric (Imam) had an objection to the club” If the woman was European would the municipality ask the opinion of a Christian cleric? It would certainly not.
What this story proves is that, under the good intentions of respecting ethnic minorities, the European are exercising covert apartheid; they are sending the message that minority rights are not covered by the UN declarations which are supposed to be valid for all human kinds. The human rights approved by all States within the UN convention are applicable to all regardless of color, religion, sex, or origin. What is fundamentally needed is that all States feel that the United Nation is a credible institution that is not dominated by veto power super nations and that it has effective executive power to enforce its human rights proclamations to all world citizens and political concepts.
Note: The theme was extracted from Amine Maalouf’s book “Le Dereglement du Monde”
Misleading Legitimacy: Is your Government Legitimate? (part one)
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 28, 2009
Misleading Legitimacy: Is your Government Legitimate? (May 4, 2009)
Note: This essay on misleading legitimacy is a worldwide problem that is spreading chaos and instability. Thus, this essay can sustain more than one chapter. The first part will focus on the Arab and Islamic legitimacy in the Arab World.
Absence of legitimacy in any society creates a sense of weightlessness in the emotions and orientations of citizens that may spread havoc. The lack of credibility in authority, institutions, and even an eminent personality in matter of moral standing can subject society to be doomed to the rule of the jungle: those perceived to be the strongest in military forces or in organizational stability feel legitimate as tyrants to exercise their violent tendencies and commit massacres and drive society into chaos.
I like to start with two examples, not directly related to the Arab World. We have the case of Indonesia in the 1960’s. As Sukarno secured the Independence of Indonesia, the most populous of the Moslem world, Islam was oriented toward a secular State and was the most tolerant. The colonial mines of raw materials were nationalized and Sukarno was a pillar of the non-aliened States. Normal relations with the Soviet Union and China were progressing without any serious popular opposition.
Sukarno was endowed with popular legitimacy because he satisfied the sense of dignity to his people. In fact, Sukarno had the foresight to combine the doctrines of nationalism, Islam, and communism under the acronym NASACOM but it did not gel well in the short time of his legitimate authority.
As the USA was bracing for a long protracted war in Vietnam, the US Administration decided to secure the total adhesion of the neighboring States with Vietnam to its ideology; the same bipolar pronouncement “You are either with us or against us”. Thus, Suharto, a general, was propelled by a military coup to power. From October 1965 to the summer of 1966, over 600,000 of the Indonesian intelligentsia were executed in universities, the administrations, in the Capital Jakarta, and even in remote villages. By the end of this dictatorship that lasted over 20 years, Islam re-emerged with a different sense of urgencies, more radical, and more zealot.
Let us consider the case of legitimacy in Iran. Mossadegh PM tried in 1951 to have a deal with British Petroleum (BP) for half its profit on its exploitation of Iran’s oil. BP refused and Mossadegh nationalized this oil company by a vote in the parliament. Britain encouraged the US Administration to lead a military coup that brought back the young Shah to power in 1953 for 25 years of tyranny. The Shah perpetrated security harassment, lavish expenditures on personal aggrandizement, purchasing the largest military hardware in the region, and fighting off the powerful Mullahs. The Shah succumbed to Khomeini as President Carter refused to support the Shah’s “precarious” legitimacy. Iran reverted to an extremist conservative Shiaa Islam.
The concept of Arab nationalism is at least two century old and its resurgence was based on two critical factors. First, as the Ottoman Empire waned in culture and civilization by the 18th century, the cultured intelligentsia in Syria and Lebanon immigrated to Egypt for an environment more suited to their literary creativity and publishing.
The climate of openness to various civilizations in Egypt sent a choc wave to the Ottoman Empire that was reverting to Turk nationalism. The successive political turbulence in Turkey considered the nations outside the boundaries of Turkey as nominal dominions that were not worth the investment in time or money. The parties and free minded people who proclaimed the need to revert to Arab culture and Arab language were persecuted and hanged.
Second, Iran of the 18th century has consolidated the power base of its Empire on the Shiaa sect that attacked the Caliphate legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan. Many non-Sunni sects proselytized a return to conservative fundamentals of Islam (for example, the Wahhabit of Najd in the Arab Peninsula and the Yazd in Yemen) were censuring the dominant concept of Caliphate.
This second chock wave in religious fundamentals of governing focused the attention of the Sunni Moslem toward Mecca and the Hashemi dynasty, supposedly descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. During the First World War, the British colonial power exploited this spiritual revolt into convincing the Arab Moslems into revolting and fighting the Ottoman Empire with lavish promises that it had no intention of keeping.
Consequently, the spirit of Arab nationalism started in earnest during the First World War when the colonial powers tried to ally the “Arab” Moslems against their coreligionist Moslems in Turkey. The colonial powers had no intentions of permitting the “Arabs” to instituting any sustainable State economically, politically, or strategically.
King Faissal of Mecca was promised Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan but the French mandate chased him out. The British mandate allocated Faissal the “throne” of Iraq, but Faissal was overturned and died at the age of 50.
The Syrian Nation spirit spread in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. First, the Syrian could not conceive why the urban societies in Syria should succumb to nomadic sovereigns selected in Mecca; second, as the Arabic civilization has died 5 centuries ago, even before the advent of the Ottoman Empire, it was necessary to dust off the previous civilizations to Islam and re-invent a national culture and civilization that reflected the urban spirit of fertile Syria. The Arabic formal language was fundamental to maintain, encourage, and solidify as the motherland language while maintaining the ethnic languages.
In 1936, the Syria National Social Party was founded by a Christian Orthodox Antoun Saadeh from Mount Lebanon. This political and ideological party focused on regional unities by adding Iraq to the Syrian Nation and uniting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The other nations would include the Arab Peninsula, the Nile nations, and then the northern Arab nations in Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
Antoun Saadeh recognized that this region is Moslem by a large margin and wrote a well researched book “Islam (submission to One God): One message Christ and Muhammad” The mandated powers of France and Britain were highly worried of this wild fire being disseminated in the Middle East. Thus, the mandated powers did the utmost to discredit this new ideology by rekindling confessional emotions and sectarian communities and spreading false information on the affiliations of its founders. The founding leader Antoun Saadeh was to be executed without trial by a military court in 1949.
In 1945, the Baath political party was founded by Michel Aflak, another Christian Orthodox from Syria. This new party excited the Arabic nomadic romantic spirit. By 1946, half a dozen States in the Arab World were recognized by the UN such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia of the Saud dynasty. The Baath party took roots in Syria and Iraq and was ruled by Sunnis; this party was swept away as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came to power and galvanized the Arab populations into the feeling of a new identity and recapturing its dignity.
The Baath Party was ready to include any new State recognizing Arabic as the State language into the Arab Nation. As one Arab State after another were recognized independent by the UN then, Sunnis tried to galvanize the populations into uniting under a vast nation, from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq, all in all 21 States reunited under the Arab League.
The Sunnis were enthusiastic for any Arab unity since they form the vast majority in this region; they ultimately contemplated to re-institute the Caliphate.
When the military coup of Gamal Abdel Nasser recaptured power in Egypt it dethroned King Farouk. Many Egyptians believed that “The Moslem Brotherhood” was behind this coup: the “Moslem Brotherhood” had legitimacy among the Egyptian population and had infiltrated the army. Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1955, which was run by Britain and France.
It happened that in the same period, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to crush a revolt again communism. The US Administration was in a serious predicament; if it allowed France and Britain to capture Egypt by a military alternative then what message it would be sending to the under developed States? That the ideologies of capitalism and communism are the same enemies to the new recognized States? President Eisenhower pressured France and Britain to withdraw and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged politically the victor and the symbol of Arab regained pride and dignity.
The first move of the newly established “legitimate leader” was to crush his serious challenger to legitimacy, mainly the “Moslem Brotherhood” party.
Many political parties in the Arab World sensed the pulse of the emotional feeling of the masses; a few fought back this unpractical nation with the lame tool of rationality and others countered with the logic that nationality and religion were outmoded by the advent of communism. In fact, every military coup that was supported by communists turned against the communists in no time.
Gamal Abdel Nasser set the tune and the tone; the Arab masses listened to their legitimate leader regardless of his setbacks, pitfalls, critical errors, and his one party dictatorship ruling. The legitimate leader could be forgiven for crushing liberties, freedom of opinions, and sending thousands in prison and hundreds dieing under torture.
In 1965, the Palestinian Resistance under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) started re-taking its destiny and responsibility for the forgotten Palestinian aspiration to a motherland. Gamal Abdel Nasser understood that his legitimacy is being challenged for failing to deal with the Palestinians rights of return to their lands. This feeling of challenge to legitimacy was one of the main implicit factors that pressured Gamal Abdel Nasser to ask the UN peacekeeping forces to vacate Sinai in 1967 and the follow up crushing military defeat by the tiny Zionist State of Israel. (To be continued in Part 2).
Note: The theme was extracted from Amine Maalouf’s book “Le Dereglement du Monde”
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