Three Stories
Three stories for a Saturday morning, in no particular order. Story #1:
Tunisian electoral officials confirmed the Islamist Ennahda party as winner of the North African country’s election, setting it up to form the first Islamist-led government in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings.
But the election, which has so far confounded predictions it would tip the country into crisis, turned violent when protesters angry their fourth-placed party was eliminated from the poll set fire to the mayor’s office in a provincial town.
Ennahda has tried to reassure secularists nervous about the prospect of Islamist rule in one of the Arab world’s most liberal countries by saying it will respect women’s rights and not try to impose a Muslim moral code on society.
Story #2:
A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.
This week’s edition shows a cartoon of Mohammad and a speech bubble with the words: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter.” It has the headline “Charia Hebdo,” in a reference to Muslim sharia law, and says Mohammad guest-edited the issue.
Charlie Hebdo’s website on Wednesday appeared to have been hacked and briefly showed images of a mosque with the message “no God but Allah,” after which the site was blanked.
Many Muslims object to any representation of Allah or Mohammad, or to irreverent treatment of the Koran, and such incidents have inflamed protests in the past, sometimes violent.
Story #3:
The threat of radical Islamic extremists coming to power in Libya was a spectre repeatedly invoked by Muammar Gaddafi and his supporters in order to delegitimise the Libyan revolution.
It was an argument that largely failed to convince the major international powers, who extended significant military and economic assistance to the Libyan opposition and ultimately helped bring them to power.
But recent statements by National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders on Islam being the principal basis for legislation in the new Libya, coupled with the increased prominence of former jihadist figures, have led some to believe that Libya’s new political reality may be decidedly less liberal and closer to Gaddafi’s scenario than initially anticipated.
It may well be that after decades of dictatorship often backed by Western governments, religious fundamentalists are the only people with enough organizational and moral authority in that part of the world to take up the reins after the dictator’s removal. Decades of lack of investment in education or a middle-class tax base (often not needed due to oil revenue) compound the ease with which theocracy can quickly develop.
And so it may be that in North African and Middle East, theocracy is a necessary historical transition between colonialist or Nasserist dictatorship, and a more vibrant social democracy. Maybe. That would be the experience of Iran to date: after the West instituted a coup against Mossadegh who threatened to use oil revenues for the people of Iran rather than the profit margins of British Petroleum, the people of Iran were burdened with the corrupt and dictatorial Shah. The proud Iranian people quickly removed the Shah–but put a theocratic regime in its place that, while certainly not subservient to Western corporate interests, has made a hellhole of Iran far worse than the Shah ever did. Even so, the internal contradictions of the Iranian Mullahcracy will spell its internal downfall eventually, and a freer Iranian society should be able to form in its place: one that protects Iranian economic interests from global corporate predation, but also respects the social rights of its people, including women and ethnic and religious minorities.
But that’s a long-term gamble. In the short term, the world will become more unstable, more dangerous, less friendly to women, more fundamentalist, and less secular. That’s a bad thing, whether it’s in Egypt or in Mississippi.
Islamist fundamentalists who firebomb French presses for daring to publish a picture won’t be content to keep their theocratic violent dogmas within their own borders any more than the people of Mississippi will settle for making women breeding receptacles within their own borders, or the people of Kansas will shoot abortion doctors only within state lines.
Fundamentalism acts like fundamentalism wherever it rears its ugly head, here or abroad. It expands wherever it can, and it won’t leave free people alone if they leave it alone. The ideological battle against it is a global one among free and secular societies everywhere.
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