12 January 2012

Shalom, January 2012


2011 wasn't an ordinary year. It was the year of the Arab revolutions, indeed of one of the several historical Arab revolutions: this one has long been celebrated before we understood its nature of a volcano spewing lava ready to burn everything in its wake, including the Arab world itself. The Islamic world - as rightly written by Brett Stephens in the Wall Street Journal - has repeatedly turned against unpopular regimes that stayed in power for too long. It turned against the Ottoman Empire during World War I: then it toppled the British in the 20,s and 30,s: it ousted its weak monarchies, Faruk in Egypt, Faisal in Iraq, Idris in Libya. This time, the revolt against impossible semi-lay autocrats has taken place on the stage of globalization dominated by twitter. And we've given it a lot of meanings that have nothing to do with what we have been witnessing.

Egypt had remained blocked for half a century, with an eighty-two year-old dictator in power for twenty-nine years poised to be elected with a landslide support for the sixth time, while he was preparing the succession for his son. Tunisia had not budged for fifty years, Libya for forty. In judging the revolts, Western commentators have erased most historical, social and psychological criteria related to these revolts as if in a trance. We've excitedly welcomed the prospect of freedom, a value best understood and cherished by Western citizens, the heirs of the Judaic-Christian culture. And the social revolt against hunger, well known to us for centuries in Europe because of many different events. And so we've seen what is familiar to us.

And we haven't even cared to ask "freedom from what?". If we had, we would have immediately recognized that - apart from bloggers (not many in the the end and immediately persecuted by the new powers) who were sending intelligible signals for our culture - a great role was played by a feeling that is deeply rooted in Eastern masses, honor. Their honor wounded and trampled by insolent and violent dictators, unaware of the fundamental rule that even the Ottoman Empire was able to enforce: consultation, kindness and the recognition that society is made of several gilds, interest, competencies, of many families, of several ethnic and religious traditions. The dictators of the Arab world have instead treated their subjects like rags, they showed them disrespect while they were starving them. They didn't even pretend to maintain a cultural and social decency. In addition to hunger, the honor of these people was wounded. And this was clearly seen in the way Mubarak has been humiliated and Kadafi has been linched.

The wrath has nothing to do with modernization, and vengeance that is often blind. But not only: the element that was grossly underestimated was the hidden and yet so well organized religious presence, prohibited but pervasive in any ganglion of arab societies as an indispensible tool for poor people and as a hope of redemption in a world otherwise without dawn. This presence immediately resulted in the most important novelty brought about by the Arab world at this historical turning point.: the Egyptian elections and other signs showing the Muslim Brothers and the Salaphites are about to lead these societies we would have liked to see modernized, maybe even democratic according to the meaning we attach to this notion.

It wasn't too difficult to see this trend in the early stages of these "spring" revolutions. In fact history shows that the Muslim world was for too long and too deeply tormented and misled by dictators with consistent, unbearable pervasive messages of hatred against Christians and Jews, with repeated damnation of the Western society, with despise for our culture of equality, human rights, non discrimination of gender and opinion.. so today it's not difficult to predict that it wont' be easy, it won't be possible, I dare say, for new governments to be free, lay and respectful of their citizens.

The Arab world needs to stage not so much a revolution in the streets but to conduct a deep and well thought cultural revolution. For the time being, there's no sign of it. The only appreciable and sometimes wonderful sign is the physical courage of the masses determined to conquer a future, some future. The bloggers who asked for freedom are heroic figures, the Syrian rebels have an immense and unmistakable right to have the international support that is today denied with horrible cynism. But democracy is not only born out of cries and unfortunately not even out of blood.

In a paper financed also by the Unesco for Palestenian kids from 8 to 15 ("Zayafuna"), a young girl lists her "role models" and imagines talking to them. There's the poet Najib Mahfouz, there's the Persian scientist of the ninth century Al Kwarizmi, but here knocks on the door another role model: "Hitler, is it you who have killed the Jews?". "Yes I killed them so that you know that it's a nation that spread bringing destruction around the world. What I ask you today is to be resilient and patient and to bear in mind the suffering they inflict on Palestinians". "Thanks for the advice" says the girl. And the paper features other pages for kids where they are invited to martyrdom, to be shahid for Allah and to destroy Israel. These texts are found throughout the Arab world, and this is just the example of a kind of education reaching 350 million people, together with the vertical growth of islamization. Where is there room for criticism, thinking, history and finally democracy and freedom? 2011 didn't put it before our eyes. Let's hope for next year.