My mother sent me an email the other day, worried about how the events in Tunisia and Egypt might be affecting me here.
Believe me, everyone here is watching the news from North Africa very carefully. I highly recommend Al Jazeera English. They are nowhere near the impartial observers that some claim them to be--the royal family in Qatar funds them and I can guarantee you that every Middle Eastern royal family has some axe or another to grind and nasty bits to cover up--but Al Jazeera has reporters on the ground all over the world who are posting reports in real time.
Where did the Tunisian president run to? Saudi Arabia. Where did Mubarak's cronies and their families slink off to? Dubai. Every single Islamic ruler, whether he is king or president or prime minister, has dirty hands. Every single Islamic country has problems with deep and widespread poverty and unemployment, the latter a particular problem among males in their 20s and 30s. It is certainly easy to lay the blame for all of this on the British and Americans (and other western European powers) who happily carved up the Islamic world in the 20th century. Not only is that finger-pointing too easy, it obscures more important relationships.
There are many other factors that come into play in this part of the world: Sunni versus Shia, water versus oil. I have learned that one of the most important factors is tribe versus...well, versus everything else. In most of the Islamic cultures (Arabic and Central Asian for the most part), tribe trumps all other associations. Inexplicable decisions and behaviors almost always come back to enriching the finances or power of the tribe or protecting it. Islam is a cloak on top of it but the tribal culture was in place long before Islam was "revealed" to Mohammed 1400 years ago.
The wealthy, oil-rich nations such as Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, and Saudi are run by hereditary monarchies, all Sunni. Their hold on power is precarious, dependent on them using their countries' oil wealth to placate the uneducated, unemployed masses (there's quite often a large number of Shias in the masses). They don't do a very good job of placating but these countries do lack the millions of people that live in dire poverty in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza/West Bank, Central Asia, and elsewhere.
Is democracy really the answer? I would suggest that it is a poor fit to the tribal culture, which by definition is an extremely vertical hierarchy. People in power in a democracy will still make the same tribally-driven decisions that they would make in any other form of government, thus degrading the ability of the democracy to function.
Democracy depends strongly on an educated populace. You wouldn't have to argue long to convince me that the populace in the US is more uneducated and ignorant of science, math, geopolitics, even basic civility than ever before in its history, and that as a result our democracy isn't working all that well either. Still, even the uneducated and ignorant in the US more or less embrace the concept of one man, one vote.
Those two concepts, education and one man, one vote, are alien to the tribal cultures. They threaten the tribal culture. Islam only makes things worse by removing all personal responsibility and introducing a bizarre fatalism into its adherents. I've had educated Muslims say to me, in all seriousness, "Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Who knows if the sun will rise?" They even toss these types of comments out when told of a friend's death in a car accident, caused by that friend's own irresponsible actions: God meant for him to die that day. It wouldn't have mattered if he was driving the speed limit or not. So they all drive like maniacs--because in their view, it doesn't matter. God has it all worked out.
Islam is a theoretically a received religion. It does not include the concept of free will or personal revelations from God. From birth, Muslims are indoctrinated to do what they are told and to expect severe punishment if they don't obey (this is not often discussed but most of these tribal cultures are founded on fear; people don't behave because they choose to but because they fear the consequences if they don't). This is the fundamental basis of tribe. If the authority of the tribe was questioned, it would fall because it has no authority other than claiming itself to be the authority. This is in stark contract to democracy. You may not like what others say, but the political system itself does not fail because it is criticized or questioned.
Those in power at the pinnacles of the tribe structure like things just the way they are, thank you very much. Some of them are aware of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies but most truly believe that how things are is exactly how God has determined that they should be.
So the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are surprising. They represent tribal people fighting the tribal structure, Muslims saying, things should be better (implying that God perhaps had it wrong the day before...?). Could such events happen in Bahrain? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Iran? Well, the Iranians have tried a couple of times before and not had much success. And the oil-rich Gulf nations keep a tight lid on their people by dribbling out some bread now and then (no circuses here) and keeping a highly visible police and military. (Examples of "bread" would include massive fuel subsidies and large public works projects.) There is always a tipping point in a complex system at which that system will undergo a radical reorganization. But the Gulf nations aren't anywhere close to that point.
Saudi Arabia is the most repressive of the tribal Muslim countries. No "mixing of the sexes" so no public gathering places, libraries, sports facilities, movie theaters. They import a vast army of expats, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Philippinos, numbering in the millions, to do their dirty work: construction, sanitation, gardening, driving, cleaning, raising children. There is a huge number of Saudi men and women who are idle--no job, no opportunities, no future. Saudi Arabia has the same elements that led to the riots and changes in Tunisia and Egypt. Except that all of those idle Saudis are not wanting for food, water, gas, appliances, new cars, houses, electricity...the muttering is present here but it is barely a whisper. The imported labor may be unhappy but they are hardly the ones who will effect change in these countries.
Believe me, everyone here is watching the news from North Africa very carefully. I highly recommend Al Jazeera English. They are nowhere near the impartial observers that some claim them to be--the royal family in Qatar funds them and I can guarantee you that every Middle Eastern royal family has some axe or another to grind and nasty bits to cover up--but Al Jazeera has reporters on the ground all over the world who are posting reports in real time.
Where did the Tunisian president run to? Saudi Arabia. Where did Mubarak's cronies and their families slink off to? Dubai. Every single Islamic ruler, whether he is king or president or prime minister, has dirty hands. Every single Islamic country has problems with deep and widespread poverty and unemployment, the latter a particular problem among males in their 20s and 30s. It is certainly easy to lay the blame for all of this on the British and Americans (and other western European powers) who happily carved up the Islamic world in the 20th century. Not only is that finger-pointing too easy, it obscures more important relationships.
There are many other factors that come into play in this part of the world: Sunni versus Shia, water versus oil. I have learned that one of the most important factors is tribe versus...well, versus everything else. In most of the Islamic cultures (Arabic and Central Asian for the most part), tribe trumps all other associations. Inexplicable decisions and behaviors almost always come back to enriching the finances or power of the tribe or protecting it. Islam is a cloak on top of it but the tribal culture was in place long before Islam was "revealed" to Mohammed 1400 years ago.
The wealthy, oil-rich nations such as Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, and Saudi are run by hereditary monarchies, all Sunni. Their hold on power is precarious, dependent on them using their countries' oil wealth to placate the uneducated, unemployed masses (there's quite often a large number of Shias in the masses). They don't do a very good job of placating but these countries do lack the millions of people that live in dire poverty in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Gaza/West Bank, Central Asia, and elsewhere.
Is democracy really the answer? I would suggest that it is a poor fit to the tribal culture, which by definition is an extremely vertical hierarchy. People in power in a democracy will still make the same tribally-driven decisions that they would make in any other form of government, thus degrading the ability of the democracy to function.
Democracy depends strongly on an educated populace. You wouldn't have to argue long to convince me that the populace in the US is more uneducated and ignorant of science, math, geopolitics, even basic civility than ever before in its history, and that as a result our democracy isn't working all that well either. Still, even the uneducated and ignorant in the US more or less embrace the concept of one man, one vote.
Those two concepts, education and one man, one vote, are alien to the tribal cultures. They threaten the tribal culture. Islam only makes things worse by removing all personal responsibility and introducing a bizarre fatalism into its adherents. I've had educated Muslims say to me, in all seriousness, "Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Who knows if the sun will rise?" They even toss these types of comments out when told of a friend's death in a car accident, caused by that friend's own irresponsible actions: God meant for him to die that day. It wouldn't have mattered if he was driving the speed limit or not. So they all drive like maniacs--because in their view, it doesn't matter. God has it all worked out.
Islam is a theoretically a received religion. It does not include the concept of free will or personal revelations from God. From birth, Muslims are indoctrinated to do what they are told and to expect severe punishment if they don't obey (this is not often discussed but most of these tribal cultures are founded on fear; people don't behave because they choose to but because they fear the consequences if they don't). This is the fundamental basis of tribe. If the authority of the tribe was questioned, it would fall because it has no authority other than claiming itself to be the authority. This is in stark contract to democracy. You may not like what others say, but the political system itself does not fail because it is criticized or questioned.
Those in power at the pinnacles of the tribe structure like things just the way they are, thank you very much. Some of them are aware of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies but most truly believe that how things are is exactly how God has determined that they should be.
So the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are surprising. They represent tribal people fighting the tribal structure, Muslims saying, things should be better (implying that God perhaps had it wrong the day before...?). Could such events happen in Bahrain? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Iran? Well, the Iranians have tried a couple of times before and not had much success. And the oil-rich Gulf nations keep a tight lid on their people by dribbling out some bread now and then (no circuses here) and keeping a highly visible police and military. (Examples of "bread" would include massive fuel subsidies and large public works projects.) There is always a tipping point in a complex system at which that system will undergo a radical reorganization. But the Gulf nations aren't anywhere close to that point.
Saudi Arabia is the most repressive of the tribal Muslim countries. No "mixing of the sexes" so no public gathering places, libraries, sports facilities, movie theaters. They import a vast army of expats, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Philippinos, numbering in the millions, to do their dirty work: construction, sanitation, gardening, driving, cleaning, raising children. There is a huge number of Saudi men and women who are idle--no job, no opportunities, no future. Saudi Arabia has the same elements that led to the riots and changes in Tunisia and Egypt. Except that all of those idle Saudis are not wanting for food, water, gas, appliances, new cars, houses, electricity...the muttering is present here but it is barely a whisper. The imported labor may be unhappy but they are hardly the ones who will effect change in these countries.
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