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Muslim world reforming - the wrong
way
By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON
- As the administration of US President George W Bush
cheered the start of war on Iraq and confidently talked
about spurring change in the Middle East, unprecedented
events in the Arab and Muslim worlds show that the
region is indeed transforming - but in the opposite
direction to what Washington wants.
Since the
administration and its backers in neo-conservative
circles started talking of invading Iraq as a first step
to reform in the region, new radical groups have
emerged, along with unprecedented popular protests, the
changing of sides by once pro-US intellectuals, and
unparalleled levels of public anger and pressure on
dictatorial regimes.
Hours after Bush said he
gave the go-ahead for an attack on Wednesday night, some
15,000 Egyptians took to the streets and demonstrated in
al-Tahrir Square, the closest thing to New York's Times
Square in the Arab world's largest capital. Dozens of
people were injured.
While this does not seem
surprising in a time of war, it is the first time that
Egyptians have taken to the streets spontaneously since
1977 riots over food shortages. The demonstrators
included at least 1,000 students from the American
University in Cairo, one of the traditionally pro-US
bastions in the region.
Another staunch US ally,
Kuwait, though predominantly pro-American, has also
reportedly witnessed the birth of a radical group that
goes by the name "Kuwaiti Hamas" in emulation of the
Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, which has been
engaged in a painful war of attrition for years with
Israel.
"We cannot let the criminals spill the
blood of Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and today in
Iraq," the group said in its first statement.
The Arab-language al-Jazeera TV network showed
footage last week of "dozens" of Arab volunteers
flocking to Baghdad to fight against the US-led invasion
- a development last seen when the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in the late 1970s.
In other Arab and
Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Indonesia and Malaysia - all US allies - usually docile,
semi-official Islamic scholars have been racing to issue
fatwas, religious rulings, condemning the US
attack and saying it is an individual duty of every
Muslim to fight "the invaders".
Several
newspapers, many of them formerly pro-US, are changing
sides and now label US troops "the new Mongols", and use
such terms as "the American wars" and "the American
occupation".
Pro-American writers and
intellectuals have found themselves at a loss to explain
the US foreign policy that they have been promoting for
years. Many have turned around and taken loud critical
positions of Washington. These include the
editor-in-chief of Egypt's largest daily, al-Ahram,
Galal Dewidar of al-Akhabr newspaper and liberal writer
Hazem al-Biblawi, who founded the New Nedaa Society to
promote an American-style way of life in the region.
"There is an inevitable result for this war,"
Dewidar wrote on Wednesday. "It is the increase of
hatred towards anything American because of the US rush
into war without authorization from the [United Nations]
Security Council. This will push the world into further
chaos."
These developments, though sporadic and
sparse, suggest that the US administration's claims that
its military intervention in Iraq will unleash the
forces of reform and create friendly pro-Western
populations in the region and make it safer for US
citizens at home is optimistic if not ill-informed.
Hussein Abdel Razeq, a columnist with al-Ahali
newspaper in Cairo, said in a telephone interview that
while some Iraqis may indeed welcome US troops as
liberators from a tyrant and that Arabs would greet more
freedoms, they clearly reject a change by force and
perceive the US aggression as the start of an
occupation.
"The tone of shock and anger at US
policies all across the region is growing louder and
louder by the day," he said.
Hossam el-Sayed,
news editor with the popular Islamonline.net, a
bilingual news site that has been monitoring reaction in
the Muslim world to US plans to invade Iraq, says he has
recorded events never before seen in that part of the
world. From activists paging each other on their mobile
phones, to mass electronic messages urging a boycott of
US products, to sit-ins outside British and US embassies
throughout Muslim countries, people in the region are
voting with their feet to resist US policies, he argued.
"I see the Arab regimes' hold on power slowly
weakening," said el-Sayed. "There is a tremendous
popular pressure now and people think of America as
nothing short of an empire that is trying to invade
them."
Most sources interviewed agree that it
seems Arab regimes are indeed yielding to this popular
pressure, which if it grows will bring results
inconsistent with US ambitions for the region. Others
say that a slow, population-driven change could be in
the making.
"People here were hindered and
oppressed by their own leaders as well as angered by
Israel's practices against the Palestinians," said Anas
Fodah, a journalist with bab.com. "Now they have one
more burden to fathom with the American invasion of
Iraq."
Although Fodah said that popular calls
for a reaction to the US invasion could be rolled back
as anger cools, it is equally likely that this anger
could linger and produce unforeseen results. "The
dominant trend is clearly for a change," he added.
"It might be towards democracy or uprisings
against the rulers, or towards radicalism but it
definitely will not be pro-American," said Abdel Razeq.
Observers see US foreign policy backfiring on
other counts. More people are turning to religious
groups that Washington had set to weaken, including the
non-violent Muslim Brotherhood, which favors gradual
moves toward Islamist states in the area.
"If
there are 10 Muslim brothers in my class today, there
will be 100 tomorrow," Walid Kazziha, a professor of
political science at the American University in Cairo,
told the Washington Post on Thursday. "The US government
and its policies are providing the environment which
would allow movements to flourish. They are both trying
to stop the movements and at the same time causing them
to expand."
(Inter Press Service)
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