US and Arab regimes proposing their own visions of 'change' to counter Islamic movements
AJ
Islamic movements
By Mohamed Yehia
Since the war on Iraq ardent calls for "change" have become fashionable in
Arab countries. These appeals come from various quarters. However, the
variety of the demands for change betray the nature and the extent of the
power-war currently unfolding in the region. While "change" apparently means
all things to all people, three broad stages have emerged: the popular
arena, the regimes, and the Americans and their European allies.
For Muslim peoples the events in Iraq and the ongoing struggle in Palestine
call for change towards a true and extensive commitment to Islam,
highlighted by simultaneous action against the tyrannical, secular regimes
and their imperialist American masters who are advancing steadily on the
heartland of the Muslim ummah. The Islamic and nationalist movements hoped
that the violence of the American onslaught, moving as it does from
Afghanistan to Iraq and threatening to invade Iran and other Muslim
countries, would jolt the stiflingly static conditions in the Arab
dictatorships into movement toward freedom from internal tyranny, external
domination, and hegemony by the domestic secular cliques who are eroding the
Islamic identity of the peoples, thus facilitating the grip on power by a
bunch of corrupt rulers.
Nevertheless those high hopes were not matched by any real power or
effectiveness on the ground, as the sad condition of the Muslim peoples of
the region after decades of suppression and propaganda left them the weakest
link in the chain of the body politic. The popular hopes for change remained
wishful thinking that could not survive in the face of the brute reality of
power at the disposal of local tyrants and their foreign masters. This fact
by itself, coupled with the seeming relentlessness of the Americans'
insatiable lust for domination, should have put an end to any calls for
change. Yet these calls continue to be made from other quarters, and here
lies the real drama of the matter.
American mouthpieces in the administration and the media, along with the
inevitable "think-tanks" and "foundations", were the loudest to call for
sweeping changes in the Middle East. As usual for the new "right-wing"
America there are two facets to these demands. There is a rosy facade and
there is a hidden agenda. On the bright side, America claims to be
championing change toward democracy, freedom, economic development, regional
cooperation, the achievement of human and minority rights, social
advancement, the "emancipation" of women and, of course, "peace" and
"stability". The Americans' newly-boosted propaganda machine is continuously
blaring out these promises of change and many initiatives are already in
place, ostensibly to work for their fulfillment.
In reality, however, these claims and policies amount to nothing less than a
massive and profound redrawing of the political, social, economic and
cultural map of the region in the image that American think-tanks ordain;
think-tanks that serve the goals and interests of the broad coalition of
rightist- fundamentalist Christian-Zionist-militarist-imperialistic forces
that presently rule America. Islam is the central target and focus of this
hidden, "engineering" agenda, because it is the key and substratum to all
the areas that the Americans wish to "change" to make them conform to their
vision of a US-Israel-dominated Muslim region. Thus, when the Americans
nowadays speak of "change" in the"middle east" this should be taken to mean
a process of re-forming, reshaping, remaking, or remoulding of the
conditions of Islam in the region, to result in a thoroughly secularized and
westernized "Islam" that is totally acquiescent in American and Israeli
hegemony disguised as "globalisation" or "regional peace and co-operation".
It should come as no surprise, this being the case, that the plethora of
specific American plans and demands touch upon every conceivable facet of
Islam. Marriage laws must conform to western norms; religious education
should be abolished; the shari'ah should be "developed" or amended to
accommodate every sort of "modern" practice; "sex education" must be
introduced at all levels and "gay and lesbian" tendencies tolerated and
given free rein; politics, and particularly the idea of a distinct Muslim
polity, must be removed from the body of Islam, and so forth; the list is
almost interminable.
The Americans are also using the idea of change as a stick with which to
belabour their agents. By making these repeated demands for change the US
spurs its client-regimes to greater diligence in the service of Uncle Sam,
on pain of losing their power and being replaced by younger, hungrier and
more energetic ruling cliques. The Americans are also floating the idea of
political change with an eye to getting rid of some decrepit and senile
oligarchies, such as those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for instance, that
have become an embarrassment to Washington, because they tend to justify
their repressive policies by their "special relationship" with the US.
The most unlikely source for the call for change at present are the
propaganda machines of the Arab regimes. It would have been logical to
expect the entrenched regimes to be the last quarter to call for change
because, unlike the peoples or the Americans, they have everything to lose
and nothing to gain. The secret lies in the type of "change" the regimes
have in mind, which is naturally diametrically opposed to what the Islamists
(or even the Americans) want. To put it in a nutshell, the dictatorships
have hit upon a magic formula. To weather the storm of demand for change
from their American masters (for rulers seldom heed any plea from their
peoples) the rulers not only refrain from rejecting the demands but put
themselves forward as ardent advocates of a "change" that is of a special
character and enables them to survive. The change that some Arab rulers are
now enthusiastically, almost desperately, seeking is change toward the
further consolidation of their power, the refinement of their instruments of
repression and control, the transformation of the trappings of hegemony from
the crude to the subtle, the disguise of dictatorship, and the elaborate
creation of a veneer of democracy and plurality in the political arena.
The change that the regimes in several Arab states are now in the process of
implementing is geared only to these goals. Old rulers have suddenly
discovered that it is necessary to inject new blood in the veins of the
government, but (surprise, surprise) the "new blood" means only that their
sons or wives take power after they are gone, accompanied by new cliques
comprised of the relatives and friends of the present ruler and his present
henchmen. The result is perpetuation of the hated regime behind a new face.
This sort of change also means that the existing political movements,
notably the Islamic movements, should give way to new forms of political
organisation and action. The result is a ban on all meaningful political
activity and the creation of artificial, bland, apolitical bodies of
businessmen, technocrats, bureaucrats and professionals attached to the
ruler or to his son ( the heir apparent of the current ruler). Thus national
political action and opposition are abolished, to be replaced by
organisations that profess no ideology, which means that they adhere
surreptitiously to the American "ideology" of pragmatism, secularism and
globalisation, in the sense of the imposition of the American and Western
"way of life"; political action becomes only the management of the
day-to-day running of the economy and of some services within the framework
of a secular and Westernized system.
So change means a convenient guise or smokescreen for doing away with all
vestiges of Islamic identity, shari'ah, ethics and practices. These elements
are being demonised and stigmatised as "outmoded" and "irrelevant"; then
"change" is hailed as an effective panacea against such backward-looking
remnants of an old culture, and for introducing "modernism" and "progress".
Many observers and Islamic activists fear that the regimes' concept of
change will carry the day. The peoples and their Islamist and nationalist
movements are too weak to impose their own vision of change, and the
Americans tire too quickly and may be drawn to other preoccupations. The
regimes, however, are waging a life-and-death struggle not only against
their peoples but probably also against the Americans. They know that the
survival of their "republican dynasties" depends on their winning the war
over the concept and content of "change". At present they are placing their
bets on the weakness of the Muslim peoples after long years of suppression,
and also on the fickleness and shortsightedness, as well as impatience, of
American politicians and policies.