Sunday, November 27, 2011

What is the Link between the Syrian Revolution and the Stance on Political Islam?










Two very significant and implicative events took place in the Arabic Spring’s last couple of weeks. One is related to the revolution in Syria; while the other is linked to the characterizing aftermath of the post-revolution’s political developments in Tunisia and Egypt. The first event is the assault, which the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Transitional Council exerted against the supporters of the Syrian opposition that is represented by the National Coordination Committee in Cairo. Such assault marks deep rifts and serious discrepancies between the various Syrian dissenters’ stances on the revolution’s nature, goals and process; the disconcerting gap, that is, that all of us must probe carefully. The second event, on the other hand, is the American Secretary of Foreign Affairs Hillary Clinton’s declaration, and for the first time in such an explicit manner, that USA does not mind constructing common-interest relationships with the Islamists who are expected to replace the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, if not the Arab world in general.

I have already published four months ago an article in Al-Mustaqbal Newspaper’s cultural Appendix, ‘Nawafiz’, wherein I argued that contrary to its traditional stance, the West is today more reconciled with the possible existence of political Islamist alternatives in the Arab world, even in the Arab countries who are neighbours to Israel. The West would, furthermore, be the primary supporter and ultimate benefactor of aiding political Islam in its authoritarian ambitions in the region. The West, as I argued, would opt for this on the basis of its belief that such a support would tame and belittle the threats of the sociological, cultural and civil ambitions of political Islam in the western societies by shifting its primary track. The western powers hope that by supporting the fulfilment of political Islam’s ambitions in the Arab world they will be able to re-orient the spears of the latter towards its homeland and drive it ultimately to give up its recent focus on the western world. Today with the secretary Clinton’s direct expression of America’s readiness to allying with any Islamist alternative in the Arab world, the western powers declare that they stand behind such an option and they reflect their readiness not only to deal with its inevitable reality, but also to frankly bargain and cut strategic deals with it, conceding all the requirements such an alliance-deal demands: committing to the give-and-take requirement and the ‘embrace-winning-and-accept-losing’ rule.

From the perspective of ‘give-and-take’ deals-cutting, the alphabets of the expected alliance and mutual-interest friendship would be as follows: the west would wait from the Islamists to establish pluralist and deliberative political systems that follow the democratic rules of political activity. By committing themselves to this precondition, the Islamists would help the decision-making centres in the west in their attempt at re-polishing the image of political Islam and justifying their (the western powers) siding with it in front of the secularist, liberal and civil public-square and civil society organizations in the western countries. By the help of the political Islam’s commitment to the democratic ruling-game, the Western decision-making centres would promise to give a deaf ear to the critical appraisals of the national and international civil society institutions, human rights activists and the organizations that defend democracy, plurality and civil society values when these latter raise their voices against these growing Islamist regimes’ expected ambitions at sociologically, culturally and jursdictionally islamizing the Arab societies.

In return of the above mentioned western lenience towards the social, cultural and jurisdictional islamization of Arab societies, these newly-born Islamist regimes are expected to pledge their commitment to the western following threefold agenda: First, they must promise that they will not threaten the existence and the security of the state of Israel, and they will, rather, cooperate in finding a solution to the Israeli-Arab struggle by succumbing to the international endeavour of reducing it into mere Palestinian-Israeli disagreement and by pushing the Palestinians into the table of negotiation, persuading them to compromise their demands and pushing them into accepting a peace-agreement which the West concedes and Israel tailors. Second, these Islamist regimes should pledge to clearly and strictly ally with the western campaign in its clash with the Iranian strategic ambitions, under the name of the Sunnite Arab world’s abhorrence of the Iranians’ Shi’ism and its ideological and dogmatic attempt at shi’izing the Near East. Third, these newly born Islamist regimes must guarantee the continuous flooding of energy to the west and would maintain the Arab countries’ status as the first weapons’ buyer in the world; the thing that would help the west in its strife for financial and economic stabilization in the midst of the recent European and American drastic economic recession, massive national debts and unprecedentedly high rate of unemployment crisis. What we should expect to witness, in other words, is an attempt at cutting geo-strategic deals with the new Islamist regimes that are very much similar in nature and content to the deals the Americans already have with Turkey and the Gulf countries. The spiral-cord of these alliances is: practice sociological, cultural, and jurisdictional islamization in your countries as you like, but stay away from islamizing the internal political situation of the stately system and also elide from any islamist approach to the regional geo-political calculations.

Now with regard to the relation of this equation to the revolution in Syria and the deep rift between the opposition’s spectrums, we have to read the Syrian revolution within the framework of the above mentioned new development in the west’s geo-political calculations and options. I do believe that it is necessary to read the Syrian internal and external opposition-branches’ continuous strategic and tactical mistakes and contradictions – especially the ones that are related to the matters of timing, performance, planning and political interactivity – as strongly demonstrative that all the branches of the Syrian oppositions have lost their chance to play the role of the primary and most influential player in the Syrian scene, let the chance to impact the final destination of the revolution. The implosion of the Syrian regime, though inevitable and impending, is no more in the hands of the National Transitional Council or the National Coordination Committee, and it might even no more be in the hands of the people on the streets either.

I am not here suggesting that the regime would survive and that it will win. The opposite is actually the truth. During the past months, the Syrian regime proved to everybody its conspicuous collapse and its tangible lack of any further control over the daily life and process of the Syrian society, despite the unflinching existence and brutality of its artillery and security forces machine and its cordoning of the people’s affairs on the streets. The head of the regime has totally failed in convincing the world about its ability to deal with the recent crisis on the basis of any political prudency and discretion or the expected wisdom and stances of the statesman. The discourse of reformation, which the president introduced himself to the Syrian public and to the world as its godfather in Syria, has radically failed and proved its falsehood, as it has been immediately displaced by demagogy, violence and coercion. By this, the regime lost the control on its fate and survival, and is destiny has become now conditioned by the general strategic calculations of the presently detectable deal between the west and political Islam in the Arab world, including Syria. Throughout the past ten years, the west has witnessed and verified the Syrian regime’s inability to be the west’s partner in achieving its threefold strategic agenda in the region; the agenda, that is, which the regime would have granted a place for itself in the new equation had it succumbed to. To the contrary, the Islamist alternative seems to be willing to show readiness to commit itself to this preconditioning strategic tripod and to cut a deal with the west on them. Therefore, the Ba’thist regime has undoubtedly lost the reasons of its existence on the futural map of the region.

To come back to the Syrian opposition’s role, it can no more, in my view, aspire at occupying the role of the main player in the Syrian revolution’s scene. And, it will not be at all the main cause of the regime’s fall-down. The National Transitional Council has failed in presenting itself as the real, let alone the only, power that is capable of toppling the regime and its rulers by means of either sheer public force, political vision, or any futural strategic view, which the Syrian public can rely on in the post-Ba’thi era. On the other hand, the National Coordination Committee, and from the very beginning, did not gain broad and influential public support inside Syria, and it did not gain any serious or reliable attention from the Wets, although its members and followers are the most prominent nationalist, historical dissenting figures inside Syria during the past four decades. In addition to this, there is a deep intellectual and strategic difference between the discourses of these two opposing movements, which fragments their approaches and views and confuses the political performance inside the circles of each; the thing that we started to perpetually witness during the past months, which lately reached its drastic climax in the embarrassing and shameful assault of the National Council’s supporters against the members of the National Coordination Committee that took place in Cairo.

From a realist and pragmatist political point of view, it is easy to expect that the opposition, most probably the National Transitional Council, would be pushed to replace the inevitably and imminently falling regime. It is also foreseeable that the creators of this Council and its supporters (the Turks and Americans, in specific) would press towards introducing this Council as the expected, and maybe unfortunately the ‘only’, political alternative in the new Syria, whether this Council gained the support of the majority of the Syrian population or it drastically did not. Yet, this should not blindfold and prevent us from realizing that the regime’s implosion and the success of the public riot were not primarily in the hands of either the opposition or the Syrian public-square. If the Syrians found themselves before the inescapable requirement of dealing with the National Transitional Council as the conjectured alternative of the falling regime, there would be a noticeable suspicion among them that the new ruling system should be called the ‘winner’, for the complexities of the Syrian scene reveal that this winner can be any side except the Syrian official opposing bodies.

What I want to conclude from the previous argument is that we have to read the scandal of the deep rift (and its ensuing aggressiveness) between the opposition segments in Syria, and the implications of these serious differences, within a broader geo-political framework that is related to the latest western stance on the rising of political Islam in the region and the west’s readiness to cut a new mutual-interest deal with this alternative. If the regime demolished in Syrian, its fall would be the outcome of this new deal, not the result of the oppositions’ or the street’s role (though the heroic Syrian public-square is the main factor and cause behind the beginning of the end of the regime). On the other hand, if a miracle beyond the boundaries of the analytical logic and available data happened to take place, namely if the president remained in rule for a transitional period, this also would not be a sign of the regime’s victory over the rioting street and the opposition. Both the regime and its fate, on one side, and the oppositions and the fate of the street’s demonstration, on another, have become part and parcel of a bigger and more complicated game; just one milestone in a longer and more curvy map-track. The increase of the oppositions’ differences and clashes was not but an outcome of a stance-change in their sponsors’, western and local, regional and international, substantial and constructive approach to political Islam and the attempt of the influential powers in the region to re-order the pawns of the Middle Eastern chess-board.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Reflections on the Revolution’s Implications





- I -

A so-called ‘Syrian National Council’ has been established in Istanbul recently. We have already heard about endeavours to form such a council during the past weeks. These endeavours were accompanied with various quarrels about the nature of the council, suspicions about who stands behind its idea and criticisms against this council’s formation-mechanism and its abidance with democracy. In principle, unifying the dissenting Syrian voices and coordinating their work is commendable, for it serves the good sake of Syria and the real ultimate end of the people’s revolution. One cannot but wish all the best for this council in its attempt at serving Syria. This conceded, laying aside sentimental aspirations would enable us to view this step within a broader contextual perspective. It is obvious that the western world is rushing the change in the Arab World and it wants it to proceed according to a monolithically repeated scenario. It would be easier for the involved and observing powers under such a scenario to interfere in the uprisings and to prepare itself for dealing with its, in this case easily predictable, ramifications. Some sides, whether western or Arab, could persuade the West, so it seems, that Syria is similar to Libya and that its revolution’s story is a copy of Libya’s one. Therefore, and all the questions and reservations of the Syrian people notwithstanding, the Syrian National Council has been established.

One can validly put a big question-mark here, out of sheer logical and rational stance, on the names of the personnel which this council includes: who are they? What is their background? What are their political and intellectual qualifications and calibres? On what criterion were they elected to carry upon their shoulders (as one can anticipate from the story of Libya) the responsibility of rebuilding the futural Syria; keeping in mind all the immense scientific and political abilities and qualifications this task requires? Are these people personally open-minded, dialogical, flexible, tolerant, democratic, civil and believe in the other before they believe in themselves; and are they personally all these things to the sufficient, required extent that meets the demands of the highly sophisticated, versatile and pluralist textile of the Syrian society? What was the criterion of these people’s election: was it their representative status in certain political parties and movements, about which the Syrian public-square hardly know anything? Was it their adoption as individuals by other influential Syrian businessmen and exiled figures, who enjoy an extensive network of international relations and treat Syria as part and parcel of economic deals with the west? Was the criterion their enthusiastic enmity and evident hatred to the regime, their expression of a high level of grudge to al-Assad’s family and their reflection of a readiness to enter into a blood-to-blood and force-to-force war with the president and his supporters and followers? Or, was it their brave participation in the street’s activity and readiness to die for the sake of maintaining the peacefulness of the revolution? Or what, or what? On the other hand, where is Burhan Ghalyoun this time? Why did not we hear his name in the council, though he is a Syrian figure who is venerated by all the Syrians for his personal, intellectual and ethical qualifications; the qualifications, that is, that would have fuelled our hope in the existence of a balancing, civilized, open-minded, rational and inclusivist voice within the group of the council’s members? Why also do not we read on the list of the council’s membership the names of the old, traditional and vastly politically experienced dissenters, who are supported and trusted by the majority of the people inside Syria?

Until this very moment, these remain unanswerable questions, and it seems that no one has real and reliable answers for them. Everybody seems to be enthusiastic about fulfilling the demands of the external powers in order to guarantee the continuation of these latter’s support to the revolution, as well as to guarantee that the uprising proceeds according to a scenario, according to which alone those who are interested in the Syrian issue know how to play the political game (disregarding whether this game per se is relevant to Syria’s needs and context). These are puzzling questions which one must not ignore or undermine, and I believe that many Syrians who support the revolution and oppose the regime ask them like me.


- II -

Frankly speaking, I am not sorry for arresting the army Lt. Col. Husain Harmouch (with my whole sincere humanitarian sympathy and solidarity with him against the torture and violent abuse he must be suffering from in the security forces’ prison at the moment), and I am not one of the fans of the idea of establishing a parallel, dissident army to fight the official Syrian one. Such attempts, which some dissenters supported and fostered under the name of protecting the Syrian people from persecution and violence, have damaged seriously the peaceful identity of the revolution and its realistic, non-violent nature, emptying it in fact from its essential power. This dissident army and the Lt. Col. Harmouch’s move were both orchestrated by those among the external Syrian oppositions and their non-Syrian supporters, who attempt at replicating and imposing the Libyan scenario on the Syrian soil, despite the fact that Syria is different from Libya, and regardless to the other fact that the realistic components of the Syrian uprising negates any need for such a dissenting army and recants from offering any justification to its creation.

The role of this claimed dissenting army is not in fact protecting the people in the streets or standing in-between the innocents and the regime’s forces, who kill and intimidate people excessively. Such a protection role did not actually occur, as the daily episode of killing, this dissenting army notwithstanding, continues and escalates. The real mission of this alleged ‘dissenting army’ is to control a geographical spot, any geographical spot, within the Syrian boarders, turns it into the military operations’ headquarter and kick off from it the military war that would lead eventually to the regime’s defeat and collapse. In other words, the goal is creating another Banighazi inside Syria. Such a Banighazi seems to have become the primary ambition of some external and opposing sides, who believe in counter-violence and would rejoice in proving the falsehood of the Syrian majority’s conventional belief in their nation’s unity, harmony and immunity against civil war (i.e. there is a zeal about proving that the Syrian people are as diseased with sectarianism as other Arabs). So, they support the creation of another Banighazi in Syria by all means possible.

Against this lethal ambition, I and many other Syrians have often yelled: Syria is not Libya and it must not at all become so. The Syrians inside the country, and who make the uprising a reality on the streets, do not want Banighazi, and they do not try to earn the ‘honour’ (I mean the curse and shame) of imitating Libya. Be that as it may, I personally say that the arrest of Lt. Col. Harmouch would serve the good purpose of the revolution inside the country. It will restore and preserve before the world the passive and peaceful image of the revolution. It will emphasize its heroic icon of unarmed people facing a lethal arsenal with bare chests and unrivalled bravery, of innocent and young citizens calling with an unflinching determination for freedom and change. Such a courage in front of death succeeded so far in attracting the attention of all the societies and nations around the world and in gaining the support and approval of the Arabic and western public-opinion. One can even say here that by arresting Lt-Col. Harmouch, the regime is unintentionally serving the revolution and its bright, honourable, peaceful and heroic image, let alone using its killing- machine in burying in the bud the project of ‘libyanizing’ (from Libya) Syria and ‘Banighazying’ (from Banighazi) one of its cities.



- III -

Yes, Syria is not Libya, neither sociologically, politically, demographically or even circumstantially. The similarity between the tyranny and corruption of the two ruling dictatorial regimes in them does not entail an equal similarity and affinity between the two states and their people. Tyranny has always one identity. Yet, those who suffer from tyranny are always versatile and different and distinguishable, the things that stands in stark contrast with and at the first-front against the monistic and collectivist hegemony of tyranny. I can to a certain extent understand, though never justify, that the West is a hostage of a sweeping, over-generalizing and simplistic view, which squeezes all the Arab peoples within one and the same categorical basket. But, if the West turns an ideological blind eye to the versatility and variety in the sociological, political, anthropological and cultural life-settings of the Arabs, the Syrian dissenters are not allowed or by any means expected to view or treat themselves according to the same collectivist and simplistically sweeping mentality, and they should not allow any one to decided their fate on the basis of it.

Syria is not a gathering of tribes, and its culture is not nomadic, even if it contains nomads within some spots of its territories. On the other hand, the future Syria is not allowed to be a state of Sharīʽa, a ‘state of turbans’ or a monistic hegemonic state by any means. The Libyan Transitional Council can declare that it attempts at building the state in Libya upon Islamic Sharīʽa, because the country’s societal and cultural context is dominantly Islamic in nature and it identifies itself naturally with the jurisdictional premises of this religion. Such a decision, however, is untenable and unlikely in Syria. For, Syria, like the rest of the Near Eastern Arabic countries, has a different structure and nature, and it is about time to affirm this structure and nature and to establish the futural states in the region on its basis. If the Arabs criticize harshly and object bluntly to the Israelis’ attempt at Jewdiyzing their state, it is the more demanded and expected from them to reject and stand against every attempt at Islamizing, ‘sunnitizing’ (from Sunna) or ‘shiʼitizing’ (from shiʼite) Syria or any other country in the Near East. They should do this at least for the sake of maintaining, before their own nations and the world, self-harmony image, avoiding unethical double-standard mentality and remain innocent from political and patriotic hypocrisy.


- IV -

The Syrian revolution is not mere political and popular movement. It is also an ethical example, upon which we will one day form the morals of the state. The dream is that the Syrian revolution would triumph in its children’s peacefulness and courage; according, that is, to an original scenario that stems from the heart of the Syrian public-square, and not by means of an imported irrelevant one. There might be some who dream of a Jamal conquest war in Syria that will destroy the regime and hangs the heads of its members on the swards’ tips of Muslim soldiers, who would be veil the eye of the sun with their enemies’ skulls while screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Allah is almighty). However, I do believe that the vast majority of the Syrian people, including many rational and wise dissenters, do not concur with this vision and do not adopt the sentiments of vengeance and grudge that drive some sides and blindfold their civil, nationalist and rational sense.

The time has come to declare clear ethical standards for the Syrian revolution and for our view of the future Syria. The revolutions that lack ethical standards turn into ferocious power-struggle arenas, wherein the allies of yesterday become the enemies of toady and try to exterminate each other by the name of the very same revolution they conducted together. Such unfortunate results happened during the French and the Russian revolutions, and this is exactly what is now happening in Egypt. In Egypt, we have a revolution that was unleashed by what it looked then as one-front opposition. This oneness was ignited then by the general and mass enmity against the regime. Yet, when the regime toppled down, the dissenting sides realized that they did not spend time to think together about what makes the Egyptians one state and nation, and upon which ethical and principal standards would they re-establish the hoped for inclusivist and pluralist state. What they realized is that in relation to some of the foundational political, jurisdictional and civil issue, the gap between each other is much wider and serious than the gap they once had with the past regime. This is why we still receive from Egypt saddening news about clashes and confrontations based on ideological, dogmatic and pragmatic narrow interests, as well as we still witness sectarian and religious persecution, as if what the falling regime took along with it is the veil but not the shortcomings and substantial rifts this veil used to conceal.

Egypt is a live and up-to-date Arabic example about the ramifications of lacking an ethical standard for the political change. The Syrian revolution needs very high ethical standards that will prevent its transformation into what it should not be. Ethical standards that can protect it from backwardly mentalities and ambitions, like the ones that aspire at turning the country back into an age of ignorance (jahiliyyah) and religiously hegemonic and ideologically discriminative ruling eras. We want Syria to entre history, not to retreat to pre-history. Without such an ethical standard, it is impossible to build a futural Syria, for no such a future is then possible. The Ethical standard alone unifies the various branches of opposition, and without it no Syrian council or representational body can in the first place work for all the Syrian population.



- V -

I was and still an ethical, humanitarian, intellectual and even theological dissenter to every monistic, hegemonic, tyrannical, discriminative, exclusivist, religionist or ideological regime. Therefore, I want with all the Syrian people democratic change and natural freedom to build the civil, democratic, pluralist, secular and human rights-based Syria. Having said that, as time proceeds I feel that the gap between me and many of the spokesmen of the Syrian opposition is growing wider. And the more I identify with the Syrian streets’ pains and with the daily, priceless sacrifices of the innocent and peaceful people, I see myself parting ways ethically, principally and conceptually with those dissenters who work around the world to ‘aid’, as they allege, the Syrian noble and brave people and to ‘protect’ the country and to defeat the regime (despite my serious reservations, I truly hope for some individuals among them all the best in their balanced and sincere and reasonable endeavours). I feel that a wide ethical, intellectual and political gap is rapidly growing between these dissenters and many Syrians like me.

I know that the regime is no less remote from the reality of Syria and the needs and the dreams of the people, and I affirm with the strongest words I can find that this regime has turned into the sole source of destruction, death and termination of the country. Yet, I feel as if the Syrian people occupy alone the streets, while both the regime and the opposition alike desert the streets’ arena, resorted to a secluded, remote corner and launched a feast-wrestling dual; one, that is, only they care about, understand and most probably they alone look forward for its results. The people, on the other hand, are left there on the streets under the mercy of death, violence and unknown fate, only allowed to wait for the result of the regime-opposition dual and to walk in the stream of the winner between them (which is not going to be the regime this time) at the end.

Do these oppositions truly represent the stance of the people? Is the troubling and disappointing condition of the opposition useful for what the youths of Syria rioted against the regime for and decided to marsh to death and freedom for the sake of? Who will answer these questions? Or even, who wants to carry the responsibility of answering them?

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The ‘Quiescent Majority’ is the Rest of the People in Syria

[the Arabic version of this essay was published in; http://o2publishing.com/_new1.php?FileName=20110501021040]






The latest bloody, catastrophic turn in Syria started to reveal that the Syrian people are seemingly divided into three segments: one segment is blindly supportive and ferociously defensive of the regime. It even wishes the regime to continue using an iron, terminating fist against the rioters and it lays its whole existence per se to the regime’s salvation from its plight. This segment represents a minority. On the other hand, there is another segment that is absolutely, unconditionally and unreservedly supportive of the street’s uprising. It defends this uprising in whatever form it may take at any cost the people may pay. The followers of this group appeal to the people on the streets to maintain their rebellion and they call for its raving, despite all the possible vagueness and mistakes that may stem out of such a rough and non-calculated escalation. These mobilizers opt for this counter-violent and counter-aggressive reaction because they also lay their fate on the final victory of the street’s uprising in overthrowing the regime. This segment also represents a minority that is equal in size to the size of the previous one.

The past few days, nevertheless, have unearthed the real existence of yet a third segment, which comprises in my opinion the majority of the Syrian population comparing to the other abovementioned two. I will not call this group ‘silent’, for it is not silent, though its voice is not loud or strong and its accent is not simmering or agitating in style. I will not also call it ‘neutral’, for no one can remain neutral in Syria today, and no one wants to be so, I believe. Add to this, this is not a neutral majority, but one that takes a real and sober position that lies in refusing to be partial to one of the other two sides because it believes that none of them echoes its own voice. On the other hand, this majority is not also to be construed the segment of the ‘fearful’. For, fear among the members of this group is neither different in nature nor is it more ( or less) in degree than the fear of the regime’s supporters, who are very apprehensive from the possible success of the street’s uprising and the substantial change the overthrowing of the regime would bring about, nor is it different from or lesser than the fear of the rioters and their mobilizers from the regime’s retaliation and counter-crackdown in case they decided to empty the public-squares, retreat to their houses and concede to negotiation with the regime.

The third segment, then, is not silent, or neutral or exclusively fearful. It is a group I prefer to call the ‘quiescent majority’. It is a majority that is utterly dissatisfied with the regime’s perpetual reliance on its usual tyrannical, oppressive and bloody aggressive method, its lofty and condescending attitude towards the people as well as its systematic undermining people’s rights and underestimating the ramifications and consequences of their suffering, bad conditions and tiredness from the recent ruling order. Yet, this is a majority that is equally saddened by and disappointed with the exclusivist and discriminative, simmering and agitating discourse that entices the public-square’s uprising and calls people to remain at all costs on the streets and welcome death as the passage to final victory. This is specially the case in the light of the recently growing power of the instigation and spur that is becoming more noticeably Islamist, anathematizing, condemnatory, tribalistic, sectarian and vengeful in nature. This majority is uncomfortable also with the fact that the uprising people’s vision is vague and imprecise and that those mobilizers, who ride the wave of the public-square’s opposition, are either in shortage of precise and reliable alternatives, or loaded with dangerous, disunifying and publically rejected agendas. This majority takes seriously its realization that the uprising on the street has no evidently reliable or tangible ‘alternative’ at hand, notwithstanding its equal perception and affirmation that the peoples have basic, essential and undeniable ‘demands’, which all the Syrian population aspire at and seek, and the country cannot be truly a ‘state’ without. Yet, this majority believes that these are still at the level of ‘demands’ and have not become yet tangible, complete and coherent ‘alternative’ for constructing a new republic, civil statehood that can preserve co-existence, plurality and unity in the country.

The quiescent majority stands astride two equally hard choices in Syria: either the regime’s opting for violence and political and national blindness and suicidal acrimony,on one side, or the street mobilizers’ sentimental and over-reactive, religiously- and sectarianly- energizing agitation of the population, on another. Against opting for one of them, it pleads for Syria’s release from the mercy of the mistakes of either option. It hopes that a wise, reasonable and patriotic third voice may find a chance to invite the whole population to rise above any demagogic logic and to break the three vicious circles of the physical-violence and its verbal counter-violence, the vengeful fear and its suicidal counter-fear and hatred and treason and its emotional and condemnatory counter-agitation. The quiescent majority is failed by the regime when it sees that within the ruling circle the voice of force and the logic of oppression prevail over the voice of reformation, the readiness to admit the mistakes and the intention of change. It seriously questions the conspicuous contradiction which one can spot between the president’s promises, decisions and decrees and the conducts of the governmental media and security forces and their persisting in all the procedures that defy and militate clearly against the declared reformation-decision. This majority asks in a clam yet rational voice: who rules Syria now and who decides its fate, and which clumsy game the whole country is pulled into by these authority-holders? On the other hand, the quiescent majority affirms that the rebellions’ intentions and motives are reliable and trustworthy in their nature and goal. It knows that those who occupy the public-squares in Syria’s cities are innocent and sincere, normal citizens, whose scream stems from the heart of the people’s thirst for justice, freedom, human rights, decent life, prosperity and dignity. However, this majority worries when it hears the discourse of those who ignite the population and try to dictate and orchestrate the mass’ movement, especially when they continue pressing the people to remain on the streets endlessly, despite the shed blood and the increasing amount of casualties, and prevent them from giving the regime’s reformation promises’ any trail-time, during which the people can examine and discover the sincerity or deception of the regime. The quiescent majority hears the discourse of the street’s extremist mobilizers and tremble from and abhor its exclusivist, tribalistic, divisive, vengeful and inflaming approaches that manipulate people’s sentiments and implement the noble sacrifices of their casualties and martyrs in its verbal violence and hatred.

Yes, Syria has not en masse strolled down to the streets. And yes, the majority of the Syrian population is definitely not standing beside the regime and it does not want it to remain statically the same. The majority of this country, to the contrary, is still standing in the shadow of its deep concern and sadness, resorting to its inactive position. More importantly still, many Syrian intellectuals stand within this majority’s circle because they read between the latest events’ and radical developments’ lines nothing but a vain and void struggle that does not promise any alternative and does not feature any foreseen hope. If we look to the position of Syria’s intellectuals from beyond the framework of the governmental media’s treason-mentality and the people’s arousers’ inflaming discourse, we would realize that the Syrian intellectuals were not at all silent or neutral. They just evaded both the involvement in the regime’s justification of its violence and brutality, and the endorsement of any fanatic and confrontational exploitation of the rioters’ blood and martyrdom. Many of the Syrian intellectuals, who have always been known as the first opposing-front against the regime’s corruption and hegemony, stand with the quiescent majority and stretch their hands toward the rational, objective and dialogical members among the two clashing sides. And, let every one knows, that they pay for this position a very high price, as they simultaneously suffer from the regime security forces’ intimidation and persecution, as well as face the accusations, blames and attacks of the extremist mobilizers of the riots.

Whither Syria in this situation? This is the most difficult question. Unfortunately, the events of the public-squares will alone decide the answer, despite the fact that neither the peoples on the streets nor the regime’s members can actually either tell us how these events will end, or can decide such end by themselves. The only remaining hope is to enable the public-squares to listen to a voice different from the voices of both the regime’s hard-core members and the streets’ confrontational mobilizers. This different voice is today the voice of the quiescent majority and the intellectual opposition group within it; the group. This voice, nevertheless, needs the aid of the media-centres, the thinkers and authors and the decision-making circles in the Arabic and international societies in digging its way to the ears and minds of the rioters. This voice needs a pulpit, wherefrom it can address and build mediation-bridges between the reasonable and wise people of the regime and the rioters. The noble and innocent heroes who went down to the streets need before any one else a parallel dialogical and political interaction to accompany the peaceful, patriotic and honest movement of the common citizens. Every one believes in change and freedom and future in Syria should support the voice of the quiescent majority and help the intellectuals therein to make contact with the wise and reasonable in the two other groups, so that Syria can truly step away from an impending black hole that is about to swallow the whole republic

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Same Wet Eyes, the Same Salty Air







The researchers of World Christianity and its intercultural, global relationships tend recently to point in an emphatic accent to the fact of the geographical shift of Christianity’s graphite centre from Europe and the north-western half of the globe into its east-southern half, as well as to the rapidly escalating spread of Christian belief through Africa, Latin America, Middle-Asia and the Far-east. Yet, these scholars hardly talk about a similar Christian demographic development in the Near-East or the Arab world. Contrary to Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Christians’ number in this part of the world has drastically decreased due to the high immigration rate among the region’s eastern and Arab Christians during the past century. The scale of the Christians’ decrease was on the demographic, sociological and cultural scales indelibly radical; so much so that one can say that while the world still speaks about eastern Christianity and its historical presence in the Arab world, most of the eastern Christians, who represent it and carry it in their narratives, memories, convictions, values and even genes, live outside the eastern Christianity’s homeland.

The Christians’ immigration from the Near East is also a challenge in the life of the Christians in contemporary Syria. Syria also suffers from the Christians departure from the country and the Syrian society witnesses the same challenges and questions, which the immigration of the Christians puts before the governing regimes of the neighbour countries, like Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon. Syria is also losing a substantial component of its society, despite the fact that the Christian Syrians, the residents and the immigrants alike, have never quit declaring Syria the most secure Arabic and Islamic sphere for the Christians of the region. What makes, nevertheless, the Christians’ situation in the Arab world those days a worth pondering case-study more than ever before are the recent uprisings that beamed almost all-over the Arab world and shocked radically its long unchanged, static foundations from east to west and from north to south. There is, in my view, a necessary need for listening to the voice of the Christian minority – whose version of the region’s story is enchanted often law and rarely listened to – in the context of the events that strike Syria and challenge its regime these days.

The Christian people need to speak about their presence in Syria, and the relation of the conditions of the country to their life’s various political, economic, cultural and sectarian dimensions, within the framework of their identity as a group of people who belongs to a non-Christian-majority (Muslim) society. The Christians need also to discern this presence in its spatio-geographical nature, which in turn underpins the Christians’ escape and immigration from the Arab world. The Christians opt for departure not because they do not feel affiliated to this land and its pain, but actually because they cannot ripe off their imagination the image of an open, pluralist and biocenotic Syria, which they believe in and had grew up in. And, when the Christians sense any threat or decay to this image, they, obligatorily not voluntarily, rapidly seek refuge in another land.

I write on my homeland, Syria, and the living experience in it while I personally reside abroad as an immigrant. I left my costal hometown, Lattakia, when I was nineteen years old, to find myself in the following two decades moving between Lebanon, England, America and finally Germany. Despite my physical remoteness, and like other Syrian immigrants, I have never stopped visiting my hometown, and, more importantly, I have never quit tracing the news of its sociological sphere’s developments and changes. In every visit I made, I wish to witness new changes that testify to Syria’s procession within the international track of progress and demonstrate clearly that my country is dynamically moving toward the future with other nations on the globe. Yet, and with slight greed, I also hope that one and only thing would never change in Syria, but would remain one of its clearest, everlasting features: the pluralist Syria; the beautiful mosaic which contains therein all the religious, sectarian, ethnic, gender and cultural affiliations. Every time I visit Syria, this wish not only make me keen on meeting up with my friends, but also building up new friendships with people from the different societal segments, which Lattakia beams with: Muslims, Christians, Orthodox, Catholics, Armenian, Sunnite, Alawait, religious and atheists, indifferent and agnostics, secular and cultured people. Very recently, I was overwhelmed with pride and pleasure when one of my Muslim friends said that ‘all the inhabitants of Al-Saliyybah neighbourhood knows you’ (Al-Slaiyybah neighbourhood is a sunnite-majority zone in the city of Lattakia. Its inhabitants have always lived in it without its name, which is derived from the Arabic word for the cross ‘Saleeb’, causes them any religious irritation). I have also always been happy to hear the Alawite (the followers of Ali, the prophet Muhammad’s cousin) and Murshedite (a special esoteric group from the Alwaite sect originally) friends of the extended Awads family saying that the Awads are their siblings and cousins, who lived with them for decades in Lattakia’s country-side. I have also always smiled, being a theologian who teaches Christian faith and previously served the church in the past, when my dear friend, the Muslim poet Monzer Masri, introduced me to other Muslims saying ‘my friend, Reverend Najeeb’ before he laughs and continues ‘our father the poet’.

This is Syria which I left once and I still visit and fear for from our ungratefulness, greed and evil. I worry if Syria lost its pluralist, non-exclusivist and biocenotic sphere because of any hegemony, corruption, intolerance and suppression created by narrow political and privative interests. This is also the same Syria, wherefrom thousands of Christians immigrated escaping from life difficulties, rulers’ suppression, corruption and public demagogy. This is Syria in the eyes of its Christians, even those among them who immigrated out of fear for their religious affiliation. This image has not merely originated in the Christians’ minds since the past forty years, as if it is an achievement of the recent ruling political system in the country. It is rather a genuine expression of a mosaic life sphere, which Syria has always enjoyed and whose presence has even been clearer and more constitutive of the Syrian Society than it is during the Ba’athist regime’s era. The credits of this pluralist sphere’s existence in Syria are to be ascribed to the Syrian people and no one else.

The shores of the Syrian above mentioned mosaic sphere is stricken those days by the tsunami of the Arab uprisings and public riots against the ruling regime’s tyranny, corruption, oppression, and its catastrophic outcome of humiliation, poverty and dictatorship that were exerted over the people for more than four decades. I look at the latest public uprisings in Syria vigilantly and anxiously, holding on to my belief that the beautiful Syrian mosaic will pass this storm without damage, but will rather emerge out of it brighter and stronger. Syria, which has always been the mother of all its children, will remain so in the coming years too. I can sense the pulse of the Christian public-square in Syria during the latest challenging events in the country. I know that the Christians will not roll down to the streets as one public mass, and none of their representatives, laity or clerics, would participate in the uprisings and speaks in it on behalf of them. I do also know, however, that the Christians of Syria believe in the longevity of Syria’s mosaic and they do not envision any secure or possible existence in the country apart from it. They, like other citizens in this country, are eager for change and reformation; for building a free and civil society; for decent and dignified life; for national reconciliation and for a country that respects and preserves the dignity and integrity of its inhabitants.

The Christians’ participation in the political and demanding movement of the Syrian public-square is in general privative and individual in nature, with a genuine and honest, yet also low criticising or opposing tune. In their standing in the midst of Syria’s complex political and societal developments and stormy events – and in the light of their minority situation and their resentment from any power-gaining ambition (contrary to the Lebanese Christians, for instance) – the Christians are divided in their political position in the country into two groups:

the first is a group that is occupied with a serious fear from the jurisdictional and political outcomes of the recent uprisings. More specifically, they reflect deep intimidation from the prevalence of an Islamist ruling, political and constitutional, alternative and its possible endeavour to re-treat the Christians with an implicit, yet real and influential, dhimmitud treatment. Driven by this fear, the members of this group tend to express support and allegiance to the recent ruling power. Not because they support the regime, but because they cannot whatsoever stand with any alternative that, in their view, will opt for suppressing the Christians be means of their minority status.

The second group, on the other side, shares principally with the first group the fear from dhimmitud and the islamization of the state or the constitution. Yet, its main concern and occupation is the daily-life situation and the stability of living status resources. It is a group that is generally indifferent to politics and power-games. It is not involved in any clash that may take place between the regime and any form of opposition. It rather does not pay attention to the subject of political reformation per se, because it primarily hold no conviction that such a reform would make a real difference and a true pivotal change on the public level of societal living. This group is pragmatist in nature, busy with the daily goodwill of the family and its survival.

One can see almost equal followers to the above mentioned positions among the Christians of Syria, those who still reside in the country and those who immigrated from it alike. However, this fact does not stand against emphasising the existence of lively and patriotic intellectual interactions between the Christians in the country and that the outcomes of such interaction are versatile and multi-faceted in nature and extent. In the midst of this intellectual variety, numerous are also the Christians who believe that what threatens the pluralist and tolerant structure of Syria and equally stands against its freedom, change and progress influences negatively all the Syrian people indistinguishably. Every diseased that infects the internal situation of the country will deplete all the society’s civil body and will not distinguish between the ruler and the ruled, the strong and the weak, the majority and the minority. It will permeate, instead, through all the religions, the ethnicities, the sects and the sexes. Every corruption, fragmentation and corruption infects the country’s body will leave negative and demolishing impacts on all the citizens, the immigrants included.

Discerning the aforementioned danger is what makes many Syrian immigrants, the Christians included, believe that they have to serve Syria despite their residence abroad. The western public, scientific and intellectual circles often reveal their interest in conversing with the Syrian and the Arab Christians about the Christians’ situation in the Arab world and their position towards the latest events against the ruling regimes in that region. In the past few weeks, I was asked by many friends and academic colleagues, German and westerners, about the public Arabic uprisings and the Christians role in them. Some of them recited before me the popular claim that the Syrian Christians are not exposed to religious persecution like their brothers and sisters in Egypt and Iraq, for example. Therefore, as this opinion proceeds, the Syrian Christians uniquely enjoy a secure, prosperous and ideal life among the Muslims and they must support the Syrian regime and be grateful to it because of this. I often comment on this claim by stressing that the absence of any religious persecution in Syria against the Christians is correct. However, the credits of this religious security are not to be primarily attributed to the ruling political system. It is rather the fruit of the pluralist and mosaic inheritance which is inherent to Syria’s social history and the tolerant and moderate Islam that is deeply characteristic of the Syrian people. The absence of religious persecution is to be attributed to the positively open, horizontal co-existence between all the segments of Syrian society in the past and the present, and not during a specific ruling era. On the other side, I also try to stipulate that even if the Syrian Christians pride about the absence of religious persecution in Syria, they know clearly that there are other dimensions of oppression and pressurization which do not differ in features and ramification from those of persecution. They actually invite us to broaden the spectrum of our understanding of ‘persecution’ as a practice and to perceive the negative influential presence of such a broad phenomenon of persecution in Syria. There is in Syria a political, economic, cultural, and civil suppression that bewilders the country and lays unexceptionally its destructive influence and results not only on the Muslims, but also on the Christians and all the country’s other inhabitants. I always affirm that this fourfold persecution needs to be addressed seriously and its dangers need to be dealt with.

The Christians dream that tomorrow’s Syria would remain the beautiful mosaic that they know. They yearn for the remaining of Syria an oasis of moderation, pluralism, co-existence and other-accepting. Therefore, they wish to see Syria emancipated in all its components from every kind of vertical oppression and tyranny by means of upholding to its mosaic that is reach with many forms of positive, horizontal interaction. Therefore, and along their belief in change, freedom, justice and truth, the Arab Christians in general and the Syrians in specific remain alarmed, lest any public uprising for the sake of obtaining these rights may convert into an oasis of violence, vengeance, anger and hatred, or just an endeavour to snatch the stick of hegemony and domination from its recent holder, instead of breaking the stick and erasing its marks altogether. From their long and complicated historical experience of living in a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian world, the Christians have already learned that what starts with blood and fire ends with similar blood and fire, and that the vicious circle of death is a bottomless whole, and that what was built upon hatred and grudge does not vanish, but lurks buried as charcoal under ash waiting for the right time to burn everything up.

The Christians dream of a civil, pluralist, democratic and secular state that treats people on the basis of citizenship and qualifications, under the rule of civil law and the principle of human rights, not on the basis of religion and religious or non-civil jurisdiction (be it even Christian jurisdiction). Thus, the Christians of Syria are hesitant to adopt positively and enact factually the idea of supporting any rebellion attempt that is energized by any tribalist, nomadic, exclusivist, fundamentalist, judgmental, condemnative, retaliatory, religionist, backwardly or discriminative discourse or ‘number one declaration’. They believe that such discourse or agenda would steel from Syria its mosaic identity and drowns the nation’s fate in an oppression and counter-oppression whirlpool. Let us always recall, in addition, that the late devastating experiences of the Iraqi and Egyptian Christians, despite the collapse of the dictatorial regimes in these two countries, still gnaws the Christians in Syria and make them count to thousand before saying: ‘this uprising represents the Syria we belong to’.

I lie on my immigration shore. My body is remote, yet my heart, soul and mind are day and night occupied with Syria and its latest events. I invoke with deep belief the beautiful, rich and versatile mosaic of my country, the womb I was born from and the lap I grew up onto. I long to be in Lattakia, sitting with my sunnite, alwaite and christian friends, converse and differing in opinions, visions and convictions. And, when we totally disagree and our views contrast, we remember that at the end we hold the same eyes that are wet with wishing the good, the best and the most sublime to this country, and that we breathe the same salty air of the Lattakian sea, from the free blowing of which we learn the meaning of freedom and experience the marks of its powerful hand, saying eventually in the same language, though in different ways and terms: God protects you, Syria. We miss the ‘spring’.
__________________________________________________________________________
The Arabic version of this article was published in http://o2publishing.com/_new1.php?FileName=20110331223607.

Monday, February 28, 2011

When the Arab Public Square Confused the West and Challenged the Arab Regimes and their Opponents alike




Neither the political, ruling systems in the Arab world nor its western supporting powers are used to take the Arabic public square seriously into consideration. Undeniable is the attention of the international research centres of political and civil studies to the conditions of human rights, democracy and freedom in the Arab world, as well as the NGOs’ general call for respecting the public’s rights in the Arab world and serving the purpose of its progress, leave alone the typical slogans on justice, freedom, truth and prosperity, which every Arab keeps hearing from the local rulers and oppositions alike. However, none of the international sides, the Arab rulers or their opponents have taken the public’s point of view of their own condition seriously, listened to its real voice or took the people’s ability to make the change they aspire at into reliable consideration. These people’s ability has, rather, been often undermined upon the presumption that the Arab public are either merely herds of humans that are dictated by the hegemonic regimes, or merely fragmented, able-less societal segments that desperately need the established opposition movements to unite them in one front, to mobilize their activities and pall them out of their miserable passivity. Until very recently, the Arabic public square’s image in the mind of the international society was just a fake, substance-less scene, an ‘echo’ of the discourse of either the regimes or their foes.

What, nevertheless, recently confuses all of the western powers, the national oppositions and the local hegemonic regimes in the Arab world is that this Arabic public square has in the past weeks proven to the whole world that it is not a stagnant oasis nor is it an unreliable herd that serves the will of its tenders.

The western world witnesses with clear ambivalence the Arabic young public confronting stubbornly and straightforwardly the brutal and criminal security forces of the Arab tyrannical and corrupted dictatorships with open, unarmed hands and fearless determination, loaded only with voices and convictions free from any affiliation to the old-fashioned and classical sectarian and dogmatic ideologies; such ideologies, that is, which these youth believe they would eventually make them bend their heads down and compromise their revolt. The Western powers observe this phenomenon with unconcealed confusion as they see their media broadcasts to them an Arabic public square that is not only new and unprecedented in terms of its members’ young age, their mainly economically driven motif and multifarious sociological identity, but also in terms of this square’s non-conventional worldview, genuinely uncontrolled thought form and non-premeditated freedom. For the first time the western world notices that the recent Arabic society is made of a young generation that stands in the present historical era and belongs to a postmodernist intellectual sphere, emancipated from all forms of monolithic, absolutist and collectivist referentialism that was characteristic of the past Arabic context. It is a postmodernist generation par-excellence, shaped after the values of pluralism, relativity and heterogeneity. It does not only deem these values power-gaining instruments or expression means, but more importantly constructive notions inherent to human being and existence. The west’s caution and a noticeable degree of suspicion indicates that the West does not yet know how it should approach this rising generation and how it aught to deal with such a factual, influential public existence that seems to be exceeding all the preconditions and calculations that have always been taken-for-granted in reading the sociological context of the region.

On the other hand, the present ruling regimes are the first victims of these uprisings in the Arabic public squares. The first lesson one wish these rulers to learn from this situation is the total failure and ineffectiveness of their ruling strategies and the impossibility of ignoring or undermining anymore the capabilities of peoples’ anger, frustration and despair. What energizes such influence is the fact that this new Arab youth do not abide with the traditional culture of ‘obeying the leaders’ and, contrary to previous Arab generations, it is not ready to marsh behind any allegedly ‘saving leader’, ‘patriotic liberator’, ‘freeing sect’ or even to concede an idealist ‘truth-possessing ideology’. Such traditional notions and slogans were once the energizing engines of the Arabic political train that brought the recent Arabic hegemonic systems into rule. These regimes can no more rely on these principles to remain in power, because, like other parts of the contemporary world, the shores of the Arab world has also been bathed with the high waves of postmodernity that started to crack from-within all the foundations of the conventional forms of authoritarianism, collectivism, oneness and referentiality. The old-fashioned Arab regimes can no more assume that the populations are ready to burry their criticism and rejection against all forms of political, economic and social corruption and suppression. For the present public square, such forms or leadership represent a fossilized, aggressive and irrelevant statehood inheritance, their parents and grandparents once were obliged to belonged to and live with, while this generation neither know nor identify itself with.

Moreover, one has also to realize that even the political opponents in every Arabic country cannot also overshadow the fact that the new Arabic public square attributes no representational role to the traditional, national opposition and no more really believe that this opposition either speaks on its behalf or fits as a possible alternative to the present rotten regimes they revolt against. The youth who lately jammed the cities and froze daily life in many Arabic countries are not tools in the hands of their countries’ known oppositions. They do not reflect in their movement and their understanding of such movement alike an uprising form that can by any means be similar to the sectarian and ideological revolutions the Arab world experienced and the Arabic political literature preached about during the last four decades of the past century. Therefore, no conventional liberal, leftist, communist, nationalist or Islamist opposition movement in the Arab world has the right to attribute these youth’s uprising to its public work, intellectual discourse or private agenda. Mistaken is the one who reads the latest events in the Arabic public squares as a political transference of the public from the campaign of fear, obedience and subordination to the hegemonic, dictatorial regimes towards the campaign of these regimes’ opposing powers. For the new generation of Arabs, these oppositions themselves are the production of the very same outdated and equally abandoned conventional mentality and thought form, to which these postmodernist Arab youth do not belong. As the principles and premises of the tyrannical regimes are alien to them and their webs of meaning, the oppositions’ understanding and implementation of the values of freedom, democracy, justice etc, leave alone these latter’s antagonism with the regimes in relation to such values, are as alien, meaningless and useless in the eyes of those who strolled the streets and called for changing the regimes. Be that as it may, one can validly say that the Arabic public square’s movement, which started in Tunisia and Egypt and is rapidly permeating the Arab world, does not only challenge the shaky structure and legibility of the Arabic tyrannical regimes. It is also, and undoubtedly, a real challenge to the traditional image of the Arabic public square in the mind of the western powers, on one side, and to the local expectations and appraisal of this square in the eyes of the various trends of the Arab traditional oppositions, on another.

The Arabic public squares witness this time the evident birth of an unprecedented historical, constructive and unstoppable public, sociological and political transformation. We have in the region the glorious genesis of a new form of political orientation, a longed-for formation of a new identity for the Arabic states that exceed the region’s ruling systems and opposition trends alike. The most significant alternative phenomenon that will stem out of these pivotal uprisings will not primarily be the new ruling orders that will rise up from the ashes of the previous ones, but more substantially the new ever-active role of an Arabic, broadly spreading public square, emancipated from old confessional, sectarian, ideological, social, ethnic and even religious labels and divisions; a square, that is, whose members will not go home and re-hibernate for many other decades to come, but will inhibit the streets over and over again and will unflinchingly re-raise their rejecting voice whenever they believe it necessary to do so, unhindered by fear and uninfluenced by any obedience demand or controlling side.

Just few weeks earlier, none in the Arab or the western world could have imagined that such a new public square can be a reality in our region. Yet, the new generations of the Arab people are shaping their own destiny today and declaring to the whole world that they have not left the track of history and they will not allow any one to derail them from it.