Fitness hour of Arab liberalism
Mamari - Middle East Information Center
Under the title "The Arab liberal current and the hour of fitness" Tawfik Abu Bakr, a columnist in the Palestinian Authority daily "Al-Ayam", wrote an article on the merits of the American intervention in Iraq and in particular on the merits of foreign intervention in general in countries where tyrannical regimes rule and there is no possibility of bringing about change from within. Abu Bakr calls for the utilization of the fitness time after the war in Iraq in order to bring about a liberal revolution in Arab countries. Below are the main points of the article:
"I still believe that today there are many dynamic opportunities capable of pushing forward the ideas of liberalism in our country, after the incredible collapse of the other political currents, such as nationalism, socialism and Islam. There is no doubt that these currents will cling to every broken reed before they are raked by the current that opposes them, which is the current of renewal, realism and belief in knowledge, rationality and balanced judgment.
Because of this, the [previous] political currents are coming to the end of their path [while showing] unusual brutality. They accuse... anyone who opposes their position of treason [and describe him] as an agent of imperialism, as an apostate or a deviant [from the religion], according to the Muslim fundamentalist dictionary. Those who read their newspapers, [those who listen] to their means of communication and those who watch and listen to the melody of their voices on the [Arab] satellite channels - notice their incredible breakdown of nerves after the complete collapse of their ideological superstructure.
For many decades, these currents have not been able to fulfill any of their ideas, such as unity, democracy, freedom and social justice. Furthermore, they have proven that when they are in power they become a class of hedonists, with privileged rights who oppress the people in a way that surpasses all imagination. Who would have believed the stories about what took place in Iraq over the decades, about the mass graves, about the cold-blooded slaughter of anyone whose soul led him to criticize the regime or who was late [showing] enthusiastic support at every step of his steps.
When the [Arab] nationalists came on top of the tank chains, in the fifties of the 20th century, the first [radio] announcement [on their behalf] spoke of the liberation of Palestine. During the decades of their rule, the remaining parts of Palestine were lost [under Arab sovereignty between 1948-1967] and Arab lands whose total area is three times the area of Palestine were lost.
In their attempt [of these nationalists] to skip the gradual [development], they inhibited the natural development of their Arab societies. [Today] the public mourns the Houses of Representatives and the parties that were the humble beginnings of the liberalism movement that were buried while still in its cradle in favor of revolutionary ideas that found no way to come to fruition. For more than half a century, they exhorted their people with the well-known slogan "It is forbidden for [any] other voice to rise above the voice of the campaign" waged against Israel and against imperialism, as if a campaign could be decided with a package of explosives, without [having] a democracy that would lead to the release of the capabilities inherent in the hidden human forces [ in the people].
When the countries of the socialist bloc collapsed, and we said that the left parties in our countries had no choice but to learn lessons, the famous Egyptian thinker Dr. Fouad Zakaria told me...: "Don't be optimistic. In our country, nobody learns from each other. They will never learn any lessons...". Indeed, that is what happened.
The intense presence of fundamentalist forces in our countries is not due to any achievements of these forces, as they are not qualified for this. The origin [of this presence] is in the reality of a huge political void that they have begun to fill. This is because the other political currents are no longer active and have stopped renewing their platforms and leaderships and they are feeding on [the greatness of] the "past". There are parties among us that will never change. When the secretary of a ninety-year-old party is still at its head, you are told, with relief of any kind of logic, that his strength is still in his waist. When the national and Islamic conferences began, we saw the same faces without any change and heard the same speeches, and more forcefully, against the change. [However] we need the revival of a new current of liberalism, whose leaders will not be afraid of accusations such as those that are too close to the Western [liberal] experience and who will not be shocked by the screams of the "shouts" addicted to hatred towards the other.
[Recently] my attention was drawn to a poll conducted by Fitzal al-Qassem on his program on the Al-Jazeera channel... when he said that about 80% [of respondents] prefer imperialism to the national Arab regimes. This is a message to the shouters [saying] that the public will no longer be intimidated by hostile slogans towards the other and other slogans that have lost their nerve. I call on these people to go out to the cities of Iraq and talk to the people who are not in the eyes of the cameras. They will tell them that getting rid of a regime that destroyed the country, [ran over] its inhabitants and destroyed the flora and fauna, is a huge achievement, the fulfillment of which was possible only in the way it was done. Even if nobody likes to see foreign soldiers in their country there is a difference between what is bad and what is worse. If what happened had not happened, the sons of Adai or Qusay would have been the rulers of Iraq at the end of this century and the beginning of the next century.
The necessity to develop the idea of "international humanitarian intervention", after an in-depth study of [this idea] and while incorporating strict control mechanisms, with the aim of saving from the clutches of savage rulers peoples who cannot escape their grip on their own. And since these rulers suppress every voice of opposition in a way that is hard to describe, I made this proposal within the framework of the global movement for human rights...
In the past I have heard leaders of tyrannical Arab regimes [at the gatherings of] the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. They all talked about national sovereignty and refusing to accept interference in the national platform of a country, with the aim of remaining the sole rulers of their peoples, and without [any] world supervision. And that is indeed what happened.
If you were stranded on an island where a barbarian savage would take over you, and people would come to your rescue, wouldn't you welcome that? If the United States were to work to force Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories, as it did in Sinai in 1956, would you not welcome it? Who told you that the crimes of Saddam's regime are less serious than the acts committed by the occupation? I lived under the occupation [rule] of 1967 and I also lived under the occupation [rule] in Kuwait in 1991. [In all] my writing I avoided comparing the two occupation regimes because the results were humiliating and embarrassing [to the Arabs].
We [the Arabs] need a revival of enlightenment, away from the revolutionaries... for which our people paid a high price. Many nations, which only a few decades ago we were equal to in the level of human growth, in the achievements of welfare and social justice, have passed us by. We are at the bottom of the [global] scale in our ability to provide aid to our people and at the top of the [global] scale in the violation of human rights, and in all areas, as indicated by the UN reports and the UNDP report regarding human growth [in the countries of] Arabia, which I hope will reach For the information of all people so that we know what these revolutionaries have done to our people...
We are still far from the knowledge revolution and only the liberal current is capable of bringing about such a revolution. The parties of the past fear knowledge because they trade in general slogans and discuss pure theoretical problems. They do not believe in knowledge, numbers and statistics... they are hostile to the knowledge revolution, technology and communication with others... they are hostile to mutual cultural fertilization and refuse to benefit from the enormous technological progress. They refuse to assimilate the lessons from the stunning developments in our world...
Only the liberal current is qualified to fight the idea [that some entity has] a monopoly on the truth, to conduct a revision of the ideas of the past and to move forward safely, step by step and without skipping, the price of which humans pay in barbarism and savagery... We will not enter a stage of "revival and enlightenment" as long as we are not Shocking the conventions and as long as we don't investigate our axioms vigorously. This was the way to a renaissance in Europe and we are not facing a crisis."
