Observations

Religion…Again

The traditional Arab Muslim world continues to struggle not because the people are determined to win democracy from the dictators, but of the argument between piety and conservatism against modernisation and liberalism within Islam itself. It would appear that in order for a Muslim state to be modern a strong dictator is required to maintain it. However, it also appears that for a Muslim state to be pious another strong dictatorship is required. In both cases liberty, freedom and democracy are long in the shadow of the dictatorial techniques needed to keep either regime in power. And it must be noted that this struggle exists mainly in the Arab branch of Islam. Different approaches to religion and politics in Asian states requires a completely different assessment and so this current discussion must be limited to the Arab states.

Education, female emancipation from male rule and high unemployment rates among these people, as well as the desire for a modern lifestyle, are the current factors in the rise of the Arabic Islamic Spring of 2011. The old regimes have not been flexible enough to accommodate technological change and the more liberal values needed to operate within them. Instant communication with its ability to organize and rally people together and access to multitudinous points of view are holes in the dictatorial boat that have become nearly impossible to plug. Indeed, these holes are growing to the point that a dictatorship cannot possibly maintain itself any longer in our modern world. Arabic dictatorial Titanics are going down one after another. A major re-think is needed for dictatorships to maintain themselves, but it is doubtful they will last. In the new regimes certain to come into being, lessons could be taken from the Neo-Cons of the so called democratic world on how to manipulate communication to suit the needs of the state. But it is already too late for classical military/political dictatorships that remain in the Arab Islamic world. And for the Arab states that remain as traditional monarchies their days are numbered as well and for the same reasons.

The Arab Muslim world is not really in a struggle with the modern, democratic, free and therefore corrupt west, it is instead locked in a struggle with itself. Islam is no more a unified religion than Christianity is, nor Judaism for that matter. And it is this battleground the rest of the world must endure.

Being able to ‘agree to disagree’ without retribution has yet to surface in the Islamic faith as it nominally has within Christianity. The linch pin in the Christian case was the formal separation of direct Church authority from State authority and a couple of hundred years of costly warfare to finally figure that out. Arab Islam is venturing forward on an old well used road. This road is dangerous and deadly as the signposts show and sadly it appears it remains the only road to the future for the Arab Muslim world.

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