Page 1 of
2 Towards
a new Arab cultural
revolution By Alastair Crooke
The "Awakening" is taking a turn, very
different to the excitement and promise with which
it was hailed at the outset. Sired from an
initial, broad popular impulse, it is becoming
increasingly understood, and feared, as a nascent
counter-revolutionary "cultural revolution" - a
re-culturation of the region in the direction of a
prescriptive canon that is emptying out those
early high expectations, and which makes a mockery
of the West's continuing characterization of it as
somehow a project of reform and democracy.
Instead of yielding hope, its subsequent
metamorphosis now gives rise to a mood of
uncertainty and desperation - particularly among
what are increasingly termed "'the minorities" -
the non-Sunnis, in other words. This chill of
apprehension takes its grip from certain Gulf
States' fervor for the restitution of a Sunni
regional primacy - even,
perhaps, of hegemony - to be attained through
fanning rising Sunni militancy [1] and Salafist
acculturation.
At least seven Middle
Eastern states are now beset by bitter, and
increasingly violent, power struggles; states such
as Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen are
dismantling. Western states no longer trouble to
conceal their aim of regime change in Syria,
following Libya and the "non-regime-change" change
in Yemen.
The region already exists in a
state of low intensity war: Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, bolstered by Turkey and the West, seem
ready to stop at nothing to violently overthrow a
fellow Arab head of state, President Bashar
al-Assad - and to do whatever they can to hurt
Iran.
Iranians increasingly interpret
Saudi Arabia's mood as a hungering for war; and
Gulf statements do often have that edge of
hysteria and aggression: a recent editorial in the
Saudi-owned al-Hayat stated: "The climate in the
GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] indicates that
matters are heading towards a GCC-Iranian-Russian
confrontation on Syrian soil, similar to what took
place in Afghanistan during the Cold War. To be
sure, the decision has been taken to overthrow the
Syrian regime, seeing as it is vital to the
regional influence and hegemony of the Islamic
Republic of Iran." [2]
What genuine
popular impulse there was at the outset of the
"Awakening" has now been subsumed and absorbed
into three major political projects associated
with this push to reassert primacy: a Muslim
Brotherhood project, a Saudi-Qatari-Salafist
project, and a militant Salafist project. No one
really knows the nature of the Brotherhood
project, whether it is that of a sect, or if it is
truly mainstream [3]; and this opacity is giving
rise to real fears.
At times, the
Brotherhood presents a pragmatic, even an
uncomfortably accomodationist, face to the world,
but other voices from the movement, more
discretely evoke the air of something akin to the
rhetoric of literal, intolerant and hegemonic
Salafism. What is clear however is that the
Brotherhood tone everywhere is increasingly one of
militant sectarian grievance. And the shrill of
this is heard plainly from Syria.
The
joint Saudi-Salafist project was conceived as a
direct counter to the Brotherhood project: the
Saudi aim in liberally funding and supporting
Saudi-orientated Salafists throughout the region
has been precisely to contain and counter the
influence of the Brotherhood [4] (eg in Egypt) and
to undermine this strand of reformist Islamism,
which is seen to constitute an existential threat
to Gulf state autocracy: a reformism that
precisely threatens the authority of those
absolute monarchs.
Qatar pursues a
somewhat different line to Saudi Arabia. Whilst it
too is firing-up, arming and funding militant
Sunni movements [5], it is not so much attempting
to contain and circumscribe the Brotherhood,
Saudi-style, but rather to co-opt it with money;
and to align it into the Saudi-Qatari aspiration
for a Sunni power block that can contain Iran.
Plainly the Brotherhood needs Gulf funding
to pursue its aim of acquiring the prime seat at
the region's table of power; and therefore the
more explicitly sectarian, aggrieved discourse
from the Brotherhood perhaps is a case of "he who
pays the piper" ... Qatar and Saudi Arabia are
both Wahhabi Salafist states.
The third
"project", also highly funded and armed by Saudi
Arabia and Qatar - uncompromising Sunni radicalism
- forms the vanguard of this new "Cultural
Revolution": It aims however not to contain, but
simply to displace traditional Sunnism with the
culture of Salafism. Unlike the Brotherhood, this
element, whose influence is growing exponentially
- thanks to a flood of Gulf dollars - has no
political ambitions within the nation-state, per
se.
It abhors conventional politics, but
it is nonetheless radically political: Its aim, no
less, is to displace traditional Sunnism, with the
narrow, black and white, right and wrong,
certitude embedded in Wahhabi Salafism - including
its particular emphasis on fealty to established
authority and Sharia. More radical elements go
further, and envision a subsequent stage of
seizing and holding of territory for the
establishment of true Islamic Emirates [6] and
ultimately a Kalifa.
A huge
cultural and political shift is underway: the
"Salafisation" of traditional Sunni Islam: the
sheering-away of traditional Islam from
heterogeneity, and its old established
co-habitation with other sects and ethnicities. It
is a narrowing-down, an introversion into a more
rigid clutching to the certainties of right and
wrong, and to the imposition of these "truths" on
society: it is no coincidence that those movements
which do seek political office, at this time, are
demanding the culture and education portfolios,
rather than those of justice or security. [7]
These Gulf States' motives are plain:
Qatari and Saudi dollars, coupled with the Saudi
claim to be the legitimate successors to the
Quraiysh (the Prophet's tribe), is intended to
steer the Sunni "stirrings" in such a way that the
absolute monarchies of the Gulf acquire their
"re-legitimisation"' and can reassert a leadership
through the spread of Salafist culture - with its
obeisance towards established authority:
specifically the Saudi king.
Historically
some of the radical Sunni recipients of Saudi
financial largesse however have also proved to be
some of the most violent, literalist, intolerant
and dangerous groups - both to other Muslims, as
well as to all those who do not hold to their
particular 'truth'. The last such substantive
firing-up of such auxiliaries occurred at the time
of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan - the
consequences of which are still with us decades
later today.
But all these projects,
whilst they may overlap in some parts, are in a
fundamental way, competitors with each other. And
they are all essentially "power" projects -
projects intended to take power. Ultimately they
will clash: Sunni on Sunni. This has already begun
in the Levant - violently.
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