L'Islam et le reveil Arabe (Islam and the Arab Awakening)

Citation

Richardson, J. (2013), "L'Islam et le reveil Arabe (Islam and the Arab Awakening)", Foresight, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 152-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636681311321149

[Muslims'] universal principles teach them that wherever the law respects their integrity and their freedom of conscience and worship, they are at home and must consider the attainments of these societies as their own and must involve themselves […] in making [the law] good and better (same author, in Western Muslims and the Future of Islam).

Following what the west dubbed the Arab Spring, polyglot Professor Tariq Ramadan has published his 27th book since the first French edition in 1994 of his Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Ramadan is professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and directs the European Muslim Network, a think tank in Brussels. He is a civilizational interface of stature between the cultures of Islam and the neighboring Judeo‐Christian world and beyond.

At the time Saddam Hussein was resisting foreign encroachment on Iraqi soil, Hosni Mubarak was in full power in Egypt; Ben Ali in Tunisia was securely protected from overthrow; there was limited turmoil inside Algeria and Morocco, but none yet apparent in either Syria or Yemen and certainly not in Libya (or Saudi Arabia). Then, in December 2010, a defiant fruit vendor in provincial Tunisia upset the applecart. By his immolation Mohamed Bouazizi put the flame to much of the Arab world. History was thus in part overturned, the present made dramatically unreal, and the future silhouetted in both wonderment and doubt.

Muslim Turkey, a non‐Arab bystander, was shaken both by earthquakes and by continued political hazing from Europe for the elimination of its Armenian population a century ago and its repression of Kurds today. Non‐Arab Iran, flogging its growing military initiative, hardened its contest with Middle‐East neighbors and with the west over its nuclear debut. In Sudan, Egypt's southern neighbor, its president waged an erosive war with the Darfur region. That was the evolving scene south and east of the Mediterranean Sea in 2011.

Author Ramadan asks his readers to make certain distinctions about this widening scenario. He points out that the Arab street, whether motivated by Islamic tradition or totally different influences, demands changes in the persons of leadership more than in the institutions of governance (Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, even Mauritania). The seriousness of the street is authenticated, furthermore, in:

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  the demand by Egyptian courts for the life of Hosni Mubarak;

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  the fate that befell Libya's Muammar Qaddafi in autumn 2011; and

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  what might be in store for Ben Ali if the Tunisians can lay hands on him.

How did all this happen? “Youth, demonstrators, and regime opponents have chosen new methods to communicate and mobilize” (p. 264), and with extraordinary violence in Libya and Syria. Leaders still clutching power elsewhere react in kind. Ramadan reminds that “in basic psychology, we know that variations in the emotions, and all the more in mass emotions, have their effects […] [T]he media and communication and rejoicing by the crowds amplify this phenomenon with force”. Emotions run high enough to reap further violence, in turn, from both police and the military.

1 The Islamist factor

Writing in a style that he calls one of “prudent optimism”, author Ramadan traces the origins of the Arab Spring back to the turmoil reigning in Serbia at the end of the 1990s. There the US and its NATO partners showed impressive influence via the internet in getting more and more of the civil population in ex‐Yugoslavia to champion freedom and human rights in general for the Catholic/Orthodox/Muslim population of that disintegrating land. The social networks demonstrated their own worth, too, impressing and recruiting many new followers throughout the greater Mediterranean region.

Much of the world interprets the revival of Islam during the past two or three generations as a concerted return to religious interpretation in all spheres of activity, strict political conservatism, and literal interpretation of the Qu'ran. In parallel, when George W. Bush announced his policy advocating a new Greater Middle East in 2003‐2004[1], many in Islam asked if this could signal a liberationist approach to the Arab countries individually, or else a shrouded search for new imperialist control of the region, both economic and military, by the west. Either way, the west contributed significantly, according to author Ramadan, to the “cyberdissidence” that arose among the Arab nations; but the main momentum had sprung from within.

Using a dynamic of argumentation that compares admirably with those of Voltaire and David Hume, Egyptian‐born Tariq Ramadan attests that the “work of the [Arab] bloggers ahead of events was phenomenal […] a seizing of historic opportunity; in effect, they colonized the web, informed, criticized and spread about a message of non‐violent resistance […] In Tunisia as in Egypt, the economic situation was deplorable and repression unendurable […] All that was missing was a triggering event”. And that event was provided by the demoralized fruit‐vendor, Bouazizi, and his suicide in Tunisia (December 2010).

Ramadan condenses his analysis thus: “[T]he Arab world has emerged from its lethargy […] After decades of status quo, apparent resignation and silence, millions of women and men went into the street at the call of a young generation, particularly bloggers and cyberdissidents […]”. Much of the world, he adds, “(and even the dictators) know of the existence of non‐violent mobilizing groups inspired by the experience of the Serb rebel Srdja Popovic and his theory of three key concepts: unity, pacification, and non‐violent discipline […] The United States as well as Europe certainly needed to revise their own strategies in North Africa and the Middle East […]” Yet contemporary theories on the planning of uprisings notwithstanding, “Africans, Arabs and Muslims would have much to gain if they had better knowledge of their own history, traditions and values. They [now] have a historic moment, unique, in which to repossess their very being and reconcile themselves with memory” (p. 230).

2 A concluding perspective

Ramadan is the grandson of one of the two founders of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928), so his knowledge of Islam and its religious philosophy is first‐hand. His latest book available in English is Radical Reform: Islamic Liberation and Ethics, published by Oxford University Press in 2009. The author has enemies, of course, in the west and even within the Arab/Muslim regions. To the former, he equivocates too much on the influence of religious persuasion. To the latter, he equivocates similarly on the sanctity of religious principles.

For the futurist, however, Tariq Ramadan's account offers a few practical lessons.

First, our world is likely to remain an uncertain arena for bringing about major change. Staying non‐violent may inhibit change and innovation, or thwart them outright. Secondly, planning and gradually elaborating a scenario may be affected by the totally unexpected, the famed unintended consequences – in this case the desperately frustrated gesture and aftermath of a fruit vendor trying to make a living in Tunisia and doing it within local laws and regulations. Thirdly, once that change (any change) begins to take effect, it may run into opposition from human institutions, doctrine or even dogma: the inflexibility of cultures already long set in their ways.

Ramadan's opus provides much ethical and behavioral food for thought for strategists and planners.

Notes

The concept remains elastic, geographically. Sometimes included are Turkey, the Caucasus, Pakistan, and the Central Asian states.