Ideas And The Arabs

"Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea...."

Thus T.E.Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And the idea he used to get the Arabs to revolt against the Turks was nationalism - which indeed lay in ruins.

Today the same Arab has risen in revolt, mouth hooked on another western idea - democracy. The result will be what Lawrence had foretold - ruin.

Demoncracy

This installation art from the UAE deserves high praise. Firstly, it is from the UAE, where there's no voting and no protests. Secondly, it is an Arab country, and many misguided Arabs have chosen anarchy over stability. Third, it captures essentially the evil of western civilisation as well as the evil that comes to a democratising country like, say, Bangladesh.

The neon artwork is by Kader Attia and is from from the private collection of Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi, a cousin of Sheikha Hoor al-Qassemi, the daughter of Sharjah's ruler.

The N in 'demoncracy' should no longer be silent.

A Disarticulated Body

A disarticulated body was found in Dhaka, Bangladesh. That was nearly two days ago. In a civilised polity, this would have set off a nation-wide alarum. Nothing of this kind has happened. The incident has been quietly ignored.

Why?

Democracy unleashed violence on a massive scale: by now, we have become inured to decapitations and disrticulations. This is what democracy has done for us.

The nation is agog at the spectacle of the opposition laying 'siege' to the capital tomorrow: dismembered bodies? Who cares?

Yesterday, the decomposed body was found in Kushtia, a small city in Bangladesh. It was reported in the inside pages of a daily. It just barely made the news.

We have become desensitised: indifferent to murder, no matter how gruesome. I have lived through autocracy and democracy, and I have seen the change in human nature.

Permanent News (poetry)

Permanent News

(click above for poems)

A great poet described poetry as news that stays news. I hope these 8 poems on political violence in post-democratic Bangladesh - especially the murder of young politicians by themselves - remain permanent memorials.

Last year, around 38 student politicians killed each other. They have been hailed as the champions of democracy when, in fact, they are mere foot-soldiers of the political parties involved in criminal activity. This is the reality of Bangladeshi democracy that's never revealed.

Democracy Shall Not Win

Democracy is a self-supporting system that delegitimizes all criticisms of the system. In Bangladesh, we never had lynchings under military rule: now, around 80 occur every year.

We have hartals where people are burnt to death: we live in terror of the government, the opposition and the mob that might lynch me on a mere suspicion.

But none of this gets blamed on democracy, where two rival parties, headed by two queens their flunkies obey unconditionally, create anarchy and violence.

Anarchy and violence are themselves seen as legitimate aspects of democracy.

For a well-argued case against democracy, read these lines by a Greek 'terror' group.

an invaluable poem

You promised me democracy,

But look what you have done to me.

You robbed my past,

and future stole,

and a present

left to me,

crushed beyond

a mending hope.

Ten years before invading me,

you broke my dams

and bridges bombed,

and power plants,

and sewage lines,

and water mains,

You fed the plants

with pesticide,

The baby food and medicine

you destroyed;

and the silos

of my grain

you set aflame.

So I may not

make good my loss

nor repair

my water mains,

you shackled me

in sanctions,

and a million kids

you starved to death.

I lived Saddam’s

nightmare through.

I knew what I

must watch out for.

But now I don’t know

where to hide

for death has lost

its pattern now.

He used to kill

and bury us,

friendless in

our unmarked graves;

but our names

he kept on files.

And now that you

are killing us,

we do not even

have a grave,

nor a number

nor a name–

thus in your books

we never lived.

He was your friend

who hurried us,

so many to their

early deaths,

with weapons that you

sold to him,

while you looked

the other way.

He was not

a ‘tyrant’ then,

which of late

he has become.

You merely changed

the label,

so you could come

and liberate,

the wealth that we

are sitting on,

and this you call

our liberation!

You promised me

democracy,

but look what you

have done to me.

With bombs you won

my heart over,

with blows you changed

my mind.

You tore into

my home at night,

and pulverized

my only peace.

And shrieking as

my mother watched,

with frightened children

Gathered ‘round,

you floored my father

in a heap,

with kicks and blows

and rifle butts,

and tore my humble

home apart.

Then you led

our men away,

with tied hands

behind their backs,

and with their eyes folded blind,

into the endless prison night.

And there you tore

my father’s robe.

To cover then

his nakedness,

upon his head

you put the hood,

and leashed him like

a dog on show,

and your dogs

unleashed on him.

You promised me

democracy,

but look what you

have done to me.

You took my youth

in prime away–

you shredded wedding

gatherings.

The little joys

that I had left,

merriment in

a broken life,

now in collateral

damage rest,

rising up

in smoke and flame,

of a mindless

bombing run.

‘Tis peel and husk

I have for food,

and water mixed

with sewage now

is all I have

to slake my thirst.

You even took

my sand away,

polluted by

uranium dust,

so when I have

my children they

shall be deformed,

unlovely and

unkissable–

and so unlike

your lovely kids!

My millions homeless

roam the road,

and orphaned children

beg in streets.

My women raised

in sanctity,

are now the stuff

of ravishment.

My men are slaughtered

out of hand,

and widows search

the morgues for them.

My dawn is dull,

and dusk is blood,

and bombs and blasts,

my afternoons.

My night in hopelessness is sunk,

when peace with me

a refuge takes,

and heaps on me

another dawn–

another search

of bodies lost;

another count

of heaped insults;

another day

to death evade,

call it life,

and celebrate.

So now when I

am fighting back,

my fearlessness

is causing awe.

Unequal,

but unafraid,

when I equalize myself,

and blow my only

life away,

you are shocked,

and label me

a terrorist!

I who want

my honor lost

and country back–

–a terrorist?

And you who came here

for my oil,

on crutches of

a shameless lie,

are and always

shall remain,

the humanist!

I know your type.

I see your greed

and hunger know,

but it is those

I want to know,

whose vote does so

empower you.

Do they not see

what they have done?

They promised me

democracy,

but look what they

have done to me!

(c) 2010 by Saeed Malik

A civilisation of monekys

According to a special report on Turkey by The Economist: "Turkey has an especially significant place in the Muslim world. Thanks to the legacy of Ataturk, it is a rare example among Muslim countries of a functioning secular democracy. (23 October 2010)"

Really? A country that is virtually at civil war can hardly be said to be a functioning democracy. Kurds are 14% of the people, and yet Ataturk's continuing legacy of nationalism foments hatred between Turks and Kurds. This was Ataturk's real legacy: a brutish nationalism that denigrated Islam and denied Muslim brotherhood, thus turning Muslim Kurds into pariahs. He may have been a good soldier, but he was a disaster as a statesman.

And look at their funny alphabet: instead of the beautiful cursive Arabic script, they have adopted weird Latin letters with marks above and below that make them incomprehensible. I can read Farsi with relative ease, but Turkish is a different story. By adopting an alien script, Ataturk has completely cut off the Turkish child from his and her cultural roots in the Perso-Arabic world.

The first time I saw a mini-skirt was in Istanbul - on a Turkish woman with, admittedly, good legs. The lower classes wore long skirts concealing their legs. This was in 1970, before I moved on to the real land of mini-skirts and hot pants: England. To monkey England and Europe seems to have been Ataturk's idea of civilisation.

To the best of my knowledge, monkeys don't have a civilisation. But they say six monkeys typing for a million years can produce a play by Shakespeare. I'm sure about that: I am equally sure that no number of monkeys typing away forever will ever produce even a verse by Sheikh Sa'adi.

Collaborators

An empire cannot rule by force alone. A handful of Englishmen could not have ruled India by force. Today, Americans cannot rule over more than a billion Muslims with force alone. They need - and have - collaborators.

Most Muslims are collaborators. That is why the so-called 'terrorists' - in fact, jihadis - are such fresh - and refreshing - newcomers. They are the ones against whom America - and its allies in Europe, Canada and Australia - must use force, with the active connivance of the collaborators.

Naturally, the jihadis then turn against the collaborators, as in the recent shooting episode in Pakistan. War within the umma is to be deplored, but collaborators should be taken out wherever possible.

This raises a difficult question. According to al-Ghazali, a Muslim ruler, so long as he allows prayers and the sharia, must be obeyed no matter what else. That leaves the democracies - since these fall outside the purview of Muslim political philosophy, the jihadis can do their worst in these polities.

But, it would seem, not in an autocracy.

Cowboy Nation

Bin Laden (dead or alive) has effectively - once and for all - exposed the nature of American democracy. It is a brutal system that does not believe in the rule of law, does not care about human life, tears up international treaties when they don't suit, tortures innocent people, kills a man without proving him guilty, is still the nation that killed the Native Americans (they call it Thanksgiving) and imported the black slaves.

This is American democracy, and no one can ever again look up to it because these events - unlike the other crimes - are recent and still unfolding.

Cowboy nation.

democracy, religion and violence

Holy places: Unholy rows | The Economist: "For all the rhetoric of ancient hatred, religious rows have grown worse in modern times. Across the Ottoman empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia to Palestine, Christians and Muslims mingled peaceably at shared sacred places.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


In Bangladesh, Muslims and Hindus lived peaceably until the election of 2001. The Hindus tend to vote for the Awami League, as Muslims in India tend to vote for the Congress Party. In 2001, the League lost, and a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and an Islamist Party won.

Immediately, an anti-Hindu pogrom swept the land: there was arson, looting, raping...the nation was stunned.

Clearly, religion had nothing to do with it: it was politicians stirring up hatred, and, of course, greed for the spoils of victory, which seems to include women.

Interestingly, the parties went on to persecute a heretical Muslim sect, the Aḥmadīyahs, with almost equal ferocity. Again, secular observers blamed it on religion.

Not so.

Consider the following extract from the Britanica:

"In their theology, the Ismāʿīlīs have absorbed the most extreme elements and heterodox ideas. The universe is viewed as a cyclic process, and the unfolding of each cycle is marked by the advent of seven “speakers”—messengers of God with Scriptures—each of whom is succeeded by seven “silents”—messengers without revealed scriptures; the last speaker (the Prophet Muḥammad) is followed by seven imāms who interpret the Will of God to man and are, in a sense, higher than the Prophet because they draw their knowledge directly from God and not from the Angel of Revelation. During the 10th century, certain Ismāʿīlī intellectuals formed a secret society called the Brethren of Purity, which issued a philosophical encyclopaedia, The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, aiming at the liquidation of positive religions in favour of a universalist spirituality.

The late Aga Khan III (1887–1957) had taken several measures to bring his followers closer to the main body of the Muslims. The Ismāʿīlīs, however, still have not mosques but jamāʿat khānahs (“gathering houses”), and their mode of worship bears little resemblance to that of the Muslims generally."

You can't get more heretical than this! Yet the Aga Khanis - as the Ismailis are known in Bangladesh - are some of the richest people here. Their location is highly conspicuous (many live in flats near Bailey Road, Dhaka across from one of the best schools in Dhaka) and their mode of worship is strikingly different. They have a jamaat khanah, where they gather every evening, and regular Muslims are not allowed in there. Naturally, weird stories proliferate about the goings-on in the jamaat khanah. When I set up a poultry farm, some of my best customers were Aga Khanis: they are extremely rich, as I said.

Their influence is international.

When General Ershad arrested Aziz Mohammed Bhai, probably the richest Aga Khani in Bangladesh, Prince Aga Khan himself came down to secure his release.

All this influence and wealth explain why the pogrom never extended to these people: it wasn't a religious pogrom at all.

The fuse was democracy, and the politicians vented their anger on the weakest members of society: as happens in India during anti-Muslim pogroms.

The spread of democracy throughout the world will bring disaster for religious minorities: in Egypt, Christians are already worried - as they well should be.

Democracy and Faith

Would you mind terribly if an artist in your country drew humorous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)? Or if a writer made fun of him in a novel? or if an artist painted verses from the Qur'an on to a naked female body?

All these things have been done, and Muslims have reacted with swift outrage, sometimes murder (Theo van Gogh, who filmed a naked women with verses from the Qur'an was murdered and beheaded by a Muslim jihadi).

For these are freedoms of expression - a central tenet of democracy. According to democrats, freedom of expression includes the freedom to shock and offend.

Yet Muslim men and women espouse democracy as if it won't hurt the religion - or the sentiment of 1 billion Muslims. In our country (Bangladesh), we have traitors who would love to make fun of the Prophet and Islam. That is one reason they love democracy.

Yet I know a devout Muslim woman who loves democracy - she doesn't realise, the idiot that she is, that democracy means freedom of expression - freedom to make fun of Islam and everything we consider sacred and holy. She is a misguided fool, who wants to appear an 'intellectual'.

Fundamentalists can take an idea to its logical conclusion - unlike the foolish woman mentioned above. They realise that in a democracy, everything will be permitted - from blasphemy to burning holy books (heaven forbid!).

The second khutbah of the Friday prayers forbid us to criticise our rulers - democracy means criticism of rulers. Surely, democracy was forbidden by our ancestors!

Curse democracy as you would curse the plague or snakes - for it pits brother against brothers, and leaves nothing sacred. Let democracy be preached only by the enemies of Islam and Muslim civilisation. They are friends of the Great Satan.

The Last Virus

The first western virus to penetrate the Muslim world was nationalism Imagine! Seven hundred years of Ottoman civilisation was permeated by nationalism. Where once, different nationals coexisted cheek by jowl under one government - the Sultan's - now Turkish nationalism reared its ugly head. Today, we have Muslims fighting Muslims, Turks fighting Kurds....What could be sadder?

Then came the second virus, Marxism. Leaders like Nasser ousted their kings and proclaimed Arab nationalism....This didn't work. They married nationalism with another western ideology, Marxism, and even that didn't work. The Arab-Israeli war of 1967 discredited both ideologies, paving the road for Islamic fundamentalism.

Today, the third virus has been taken up by the Arabs: the virus of democracy. How will this end? No doubt in some terrible upheaval.

Why does the Muslim world have to borrow from the west? We have our own political philosophy: the zel Allah, the shadow of Allah. The ruler is the shadow of Allah, but, thanks to western ideology, we demand democracy. That is not our heritage. The khutbah of the mosque prayer prohibits us from criticizing our rulers. How dare we do that?

Surely the Middle East is destined to wickedness...it has sold out to the west, the Great Satan. In a year's time, we shall see chaos in the Maghreb, for these people have disobeyed.

Democracy and Violence

I remember the electoral fight between my uncle, Major General (retd.) M. Khalilur Rahman and the president's man in their constituency of Jamalpur.

The general was winning, when suddenly the counting was stopped on state television. When it was resumed, we found that the general was losing. General Ershad, the president, had rigged the polls.

And what a wonderful thing that was: it meant that my uncle, no matter what he did, could not win. That meant that even if he had employed thugs he would still have lost. So, naturally, neither side employed thugs. This was the benign aspect of 'democracy' under dictatorship: the absence of goons.

When Ershad fell from power, of course, thugs and murderers and rapists became the norm. Without these criminals, you couldn't win an election.

This is what 'free and fair' have meant for Bangladesh: rule by criminals.

Peace Corps Rape Victim Jess Smochek Honored By Congress - ABC News

Peace Corps Rape Victim Jess Smochek Honored By Congress - ABC News: "Smochek was attacked while serving as a volunteer in Bangladesh in 2004. She says that a group of men began to stalk her from the very first day she arrived in the city where she was assigned. The men tried to kiss her and touch her, and ultimately gang raped her.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


Jess Smochek had repeatedly reported that she felt threatened, but the Peace Corps didn't relocate her.

Bangladesh used to be a very safe country. I remember when my cousin's American girlfriend came over in the '80s, she was comparing Dhaka with cities in Latin America. She said that she would never think of going out casually in those cities, whereas she felt perfectly safe in Dhaka.

This was before our, and after Latin America's, democratic transition.

Violence was very low in Latin America under military rule; when we reverted to democracy, rapes rose from 250 in the '80s to over 900 in 1992, and soon reached four digits. I'll never understand why the Peace Corps didn't relocate Smochek. They must have known that Bangladesh was a dangerous country. Adding insult to injury, during counseling she was made to write out all the things she had done to create the rape situation - meaning, it was her fault.

Corrupting the Youth of the Middle East

freedomhouse.org: Program Detail: "A new generation of young Egyptian citizens is dedicated to expanding political and civil rights in their country. Referred to as the 'YouTube Generation,' many of these courageous men and women are supported by Freedom House to enhance their outreach, advocacy and effectiveness. The New Generation project helps to reinforce the values of free expression, human rights, women's rights, and rule of law.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

In a previous blog, I described how software has been used to spread the idea of democracy. Freedom House (financed mostly by the US government) has been training and indoctrinating young Egyptians. It would seem safe to assume that the germ of democracy around the Middle East has been cleverly spread by the US government, and was not a sudden expression of 'people power'. However, my theory was the 'mad crowd' theory, so beloved of Gustave Le Bon. The method-in-madness hypothesis has been well-argued by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulirich, a close watcher of the Middle East (she herself is Iranian).

The two hypotheses may not be contradictory. After priming the pump for democracy, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy and others must have been pleasantly surprised to give 'crowd control' a whole new meaning.

Socrates was tried for corrupting the youth of Athens. Freedom House, et al, have been corrupting the youth of the world in general, and those of the Middle East in particular. Their corruption will no doubt pay off when these kids start realising the value of money. Until then, it must be people like El Baradei who will need to be bought.

Democracy in the Middle East: Did the US do it?

Mining social networks: Untangling the social web | The Economist: "Once these societal networks of influence can be accurately mapped, they can be used to promote the spread of particular ideas—those that support stability and democracy, for example. Last year America’s army, which jointly funds SOMA with the air force, began disbursing about $80m in five-year research grants for network analysis to promote democracy and national security. An authoritarian government, for instance, may have difficulties slowing the spread of a new idea in a certain medium—say, internet chatter about a book that explains how corruption undermines job creation. Diplomatic services can use this information to help ideas spread. Brian Uzzi of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who advises intelligence agencies on democracy-promotion analytics, says diplomatic services are mapping the “tipping point” when ideas go mainstream in spite of government repression.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


Did the US military start off the revolutions in the Middle East?

It seems that there is software that can spread an idea like a virus. Of courses, the US Congress claims to have been on the back foot, but the military and the secret services could have been working with the president and his staff to spread democracy in the Middle East. The reason? How to replace ageing autocrats.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the question of succession was acute as both countries' rulers were long in the tooth. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was known to be terminally ill nearly a year ago. But who would succeed him? Besides, these rulers had no popular mandate, and that was stymying efforts to block the peace process, with Israel looking increasingly bad.

A democratic mandate for Israel from surrounding countries was thereby needed: hence the bottom-up democratic transitions.

But the question arises: won't a democracy be harder to control? The answer is, No.

Look at Bangladesh: a democratic Muslim country of 150 million is a docile poodle of the United States. That's because the article points to another influence on public opinion: the 'influencers'.

These are people who direct social thinking: advertisers have long known that people follow certain role-models: hence the promotion of watches and shoes by popular stars. The same thing is at work when selling an idea. If a sufficient number of influencers can be corrupted by America into praising democracy and keeping mum about Israel, then the rest of the population will follow. In Bangladesh, two such influencers are Dr. Mozaffer Ahmed (PhD from University of Chicago) and Dr. Kamal Hossain (PhD from the University of Notre Dame). There are countless other PhDs - who are a dime a dozen in Bangladesh - from western universities who have been co-opted by the west, particularly America.

El-Baradei, et al, will no doubt serve a similar purpose in Egypt.

People underestimate how easy it is to corrupt a democracy. As a Greek dramatist observed:

"...Our wise
Democratic allies
Are ruled by our state democratic."

OCHLOCRACY (article)

OCHLOCRACY

(click above for article)

Events in the Middle East and elsewhere are being increasingly shaped by the crowd. Since the French Revolution, the crowd has emerged as a legitimate force, not always with happy consequences.

Prometheus Unleashed

"Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:"

I once used to thrill to these lines; indeed, I was once awe-struck by Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound', from which these lines have been quoted.

Notice the use of the past tense: man is no longer a dupe and a deceiver: he has achieved moral perfection by means of Prometheus.

The moral is that man, suitably emancipated from the tyranny of religion and custom, will one day arrive at perfection. This was a dangerous doctrine whose danger became manifest only in the twentieth century.

Even today, while the pursuit of The New Man has largely been abandoned outside Cuba and North Korea, the Perfect Institution is still reverentially sought. Man (and woman) this time will achieve perfection in the Perfectly Democratic Society. Indeed, such Societies already exist; it is not mere Utopianism.

It has been only sixty-five years since the most terrible war in history was fought (one in which religion as Shelley knew it played no role), and only twenty since the end of the quest for the New Man with all its attendant horrors on all sides.

Can anybody really believe that western civilisation has achieved Shelley's vision of a sanitized human nature? No more repugnant a spectacle than the west has ever presented itself to the human gaze.

"...Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends." Thus we see Shelley celebrate his ideal in the introduction. This gives me the shivers: here we have a portrait of a semi-divine character filled with limitless energy working towards man's salvation.

Doesn't that accurately describe those westerners who would 'make the world a better place'?

"We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored.*"


Good God! If only he could have foreseen the horrors that were to come from these 'institutions and opinions'. Recently, more than a million people have been wiped off the face of this earth by a benign force determined to improve a Middle Eastern society. And we have neocons like Amartya Sen, recently seen in Bangladesh hobnobbing with an indicted murderess, proclaiming that we are all ready and willing and waiting to embrace democracy: through suffering and mistakes (like those million deaths) we shall aspire towards a higher order, the Perfect Man.


*Indeed, Milton was probably the first neocon, the first proponent of the universality of democracy. He said: "Surrounded by congregated multitudes, I now imagine that . . . I behold the nations of the earth recovering that liberty which they so long had lost; and that the people of this island are . . . disseminating the blessings of civilization and freedom among cities, kingdoms and nations."

Democracies are just as biddable

Bangladesh is a prime exhibit of how a democracy can be run from Washington and Brussels through the corruption of the intelligentsia.

These poor Tunisians and Egyptians actually believe they will have democracy and self-rule! The democracy will be bought almost overnight; the only thing that will change is that, instead of a secure society, they will have a violent one, riven by factions like dogs, just like Bangladesh.

Better Sixty Years Of Tyranny

Tunisia | Riots | Middle East | US | Democracy: "But one thing is clear from the “Tunisian example”: People in the Middle East have given up any hope that the United States can be a force for democratic change. As the uprising spread in Tunisia, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama stayed largely silent until the day Ben Ali fled. That was when Obama issued a statement condemning the use of violence against peaceful protesters and applauding “the courage and dignity” of Tunisians. By then, it was too late: The U.S.-backed dictator was gone, and the Arab world chalked up another example of how Washington favors stability over democracy.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


This analysis is flawed.

It is not only the US government that prefers stability over democracy: so do the Arabs, and other non-western people. Democracy is a (western) historical accident. "The forum polity – democracies and republics – owes its origin to two major accidents in human history: accidents that were unique to the western world, and which, indeed, created western civilisation in contrast to the others, which were all palace polities." These are my words, and the two unique events were the two Dark Ages: the one in Greece around 1100 BC to 750 BC, and the one in Western Europe. These events removed government for prolonged periods of time, ensuring a love of 'freedom', or suspicion and questioning of government.

The Tunisians revolted because they had been infected by ideas coming from the West. Otherwise, they would have endured their lot, and, therefore, no repression would have been necessary. It is interesting and important to note that during the long military rule of General Ershad there was no desire except among a handful of westernised Bangladeshi intellectuals to remove the dictator, and finally it was the donors that removed him. He did not need to repress at all because there was no one to repress: there was no opposition to his rule.

Even Imam Khomeini had to face criticism from the clergy during the height of his struggle against the Shah. "A certain akhund wrote to me a few years ago to ask me: "Why do you oppose the government? Do you not know that God gives authority to whomever He wishes?" writes the great Imam. Plainly the akhund was echoing Al-Ghazzali's dictum that one must never overthrow a ruler 'no matter how mad or bad'. "Sixty years of tyranny are better than an hour of civil strife,"maintained al-Ghazzali.


In the Introduction to Sa'adi's Golestan, we find the poet referring to the king as "zel Allah tala fe arze": the shadow of Allah on earth". This implies complete obedience, and remember, Sa'adi had just lived through the Mongol onslaught and chaos. Imam Khomenie says, "Yes, the Islamic ruler is the shadow of God, but...."


"But now we find one of the `ulama (may God grant him mercy) saying: "If the Imam of the Age (pbuh) considers it to be the appropriate time then he will come. I cannot claim to be more concerned for Islam than he is and he is well aware of the present situation. Thus, he is the one who must make the first move to remedy our affairs and not I!" This is plainly a reference to the Shia belief in the return of the Mahdi. Not until he returns, bringing peace and justice, should one rise up against the authorities. "There are people among us who tell us we must swallow whatever poison the "holders of authority" wish to force down our throats, simply because they are the "authorities". We mustn't say a word against these tyrannical "authorities"".

He rebuts these arguments with his own, and I leave it to the reader to judge their effectiveness. All I am pointing out right now is that there is a considerable consensus among Muslim scholars that we should not rise against our rulers. Indeed, we must not even speak out against them: this leaves democracy out completely as a possibility.