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Glasnost in Old Araby? Don't hold your breath...
Paul sends me this one, from Sydney Morning Herald's on-going series on Old Araby. The whole article's worth reading, but this bit about Khashoggi's interesting because he's produced an occasional intelligent piece for Arab News...In the middle of all of this you find the likes of Jamal Khashoggi, a senior editor at the daily Arab News. Desperate for the oxygen of greater freedom, he says: "Maybe we need a glasnost, so that ideas for change can float in open, healthy discussion. But I don't see that happening. There is no initiative; things are taken for granted. We have no experience of democracy - we still debate what modernisation is and we still fear globalisation. The biggest obstacle is the religious establishment, a monster that we have allowed to grow." Statement of the obvious, isn't it? Unless you're a wahhabi... "No-one is asking the question 'why?' Why did hundreds of our sons go to fight in Afghanistan when they knew it was a civil war, with Muslims killing Muslims? The reason is because these questions go to the role of the religious establishment and its narrow, rigid understanding of Islam. We are confused - we say that September 11 should not have happened, but at the same time, we say that the US got what it deserved." If you define anyone who doesn't agree with you as not a Muslim, then there's no contradition there. But that's the only way there's no contradiction... Khashoggi dreams of democracy and he believes in the US notion of a country such as a liberated Iraq becoming an example in the region. But he seemed to be hosing himself down as he concluded: "My friends say I'm too wishful, too optimistic. Here people don't trust any wind that blows from the US. I don't blame them, because that's the wind that comes from Israel." So now we're back to democracy being a Jewish plot. But he's still missing the real point: it's not so much democracy that's needed, as personal liberty coupled with personal responsibility. Soddy Arabia's one of the most antilibertarian areas in the world. Until they change that, they'll remain the heartland of a terrorist philosophy that's based on forcing the entire world to adhere to their own provincial mores. Araby will be "cured" of its disease when its inhabitants can look at Jews and not care, look at nekkid wimmin and not feel indignant, and watch someone go for a beer without feeling the desire to bomb the beer joint. They have a very long way to go â but they're never going to get there if they don't start. We're not making war on Islam; we don't care if they're Muslims. We're just denying them the privilege of forcing other people to behave the way they demand. That's the heart of the entire conflict: liberty versus wahhabism. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-10-06 |
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