DILLON FREED: THE ARAB WINTER CONTINUES
The Arab Winter Continues
by Dillon Freed
June 29, 2011
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1545/the-arab-winter-continues
In 1798, William Wordsworth wrote in “Lines Written in Early Spring,”
“I heard a thousand blended notes,While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.”
And so it was that as I observed the Arab Spring unfold, the initial pleasant thoughts of this phenomena eventually and quickly ran sad. For unhappily, it seems only in nature can things leap from a near barren landscape to an explosion of life and activity. The uprisings in the Arab world are harbingers not of a coming seasonal change, but at best, a slight mitigation of what otherwise is an unending Arab winter.
Why so? Well, consider where the Arab, and the entire Muslim world for that matter, must begin their new nations from, even as the kings and autocrats are forced out. For instance, consider that the United States from 1977 to 2010, filed 2,312,272 patents, compared to less than four thousand patents filed by all of the Muslim nations (fifty-seven in total) combined.
Consider that the small population of Jews is eking near to two hundred Nobel Prize winners; yet, the Muslim world, compromising one-sixth of the global population, is only nearing a dozen.
Further, consider that there are about two hundred scientists per million in the Muslim world, around five thousand in America and Japan.
And also consider that similar statistics are found when one observes GDP, literacy rates, the number of universities, quantity of books published per year, number of books translated from foreign languages into native tongues like Arabic or Farsi, women per thousand in the workforce, standards of living and more.
The two reasons most frequently broached for the cause of the long Arab Winter are (1) political oppression from the top and (2) the often negative influence of foreign powers from without. That is why many of the intelligentsia, viewing reality through a materialistic lens, feel that the removal of dictators and the implementing of democratic governments are the panacea. But another cause, the most influential one in my opinion, is the overlooked (and non-material) philosophical oppression which invisibly permeates and lords over the minds of the Arab and Muslim people. This is the sine qua non that keeps the Arab and Muslim realm perennially in a bleak state. It is also why those who believe the overthrowing of the despots shall create a new world are awry.
What is that philosophy? It is a philosophy that can be arrantly anti-liberal and anti-productive. It is a philosophy that often treats women as inferior and as objects solely for marriage and reproduction. It is a philosophy that frequently disrespects other religions, has intolerance for the slimmest of internal religious differences, and is mostly, boringly dependent upon a single group of holy books for jurisprudence. It is also certainly one which has an animosity towards what has historically worked the best – that is, the Western world, specifically America.
Now, I am well aware that this pernicious philosophy manifests itself in greater or lesser degrees in the many Muslim nations from Indonesia to Morocco; that Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iran are very different countries, that too I am aware of. Some Muslims and Arab nations are indeed much closer to being truly free states than others.
But still, we must admit, there is a reason the statistics mentioned above are what they are, and since there is exists absolutely no physical difference between Western human bodies and Islamic human bodies, then the explanation must be found in the types of thoughts the people in these bodies entertain.
My writings are an attempt to shift the Islamic mind toward, and keep the Western mind on (and free from falling from), the highest ideals of the Renaissance and Enlightenment – that is, the highest philosophies on the need for freedom and beauty ever espoused. The Islamic world has long to go to live up to those ideals.
What’s this you say? I suffer from the bigotry of low expectations? No – you have it wrong. It is very clear if one ponders on it, that those who are willing to claim there can and should be such things as “Islamic Republics” and “modified democracies” are the ones who have low expectations. The high expectation, perhaps the highest, is to demand the Arab and Muslim world to immediately create states in which mosque and nation are completely un-touching, states in which human rights are universal and unqualified, and states in which the people contribute to humanity on a global scale with new inventions and ideas and immense levels of production.
I have recently, in conversation, noticed an insidious hypocrisy in many of my friends who have openly declared in tete-e-tete’s past, that they wished slavery would have ended abruptly, not gradually; but then, these same goodly souls, in this next topic of conversation, are quite alright with a gradual development of human rights in the Muslim World.
Why is that I wonder? Are they afraid to tell other people what is good for them? Well, if they are, I am not, for even an ugly American can sometimes be right, and you know, too much nuance is like foreplay that lasts too long – it (completely) misses the point.
So let me declare, without hesitation, I champion any and all along with each and every person of the Arab and/or Muslim world, dedicated to not only removing dictators, but also, and most importantly, to warring against the philosophical oppression mentioned above. I will have none of this “low expectation” talk. Indeed, for to support such high aiming souls and such noble, universal ideals is the only authentic means to bring a termination to this blasted Arab Winter. And you know, after that winter ends, imagine how good the spring will feel; imagine the rush in saying triumphantly, “Look what man has made of man!”
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