NOW LIBYA!

The deep political unrest in the Middle East continues with Gaddafi’s Libya in turmoil, and revolutionary rumblings in Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia. Egypt has gone quiet, not because any real solutions have been found to the future, but simply because the media is more interested in the immediate blood and thunder aspects of news. It remains at a crucial stage.

It is very important to put this extraordinary revolutionary “earthquake” into historical perspective if we are to get any true picture of what the future may hold.

Up until the end of World War l these Arab countries had no individual existence but were part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled from what is now Turkey. It was an empire renowned for its autocratic rule and its utter poverty and backwardness. World War 1 brought about the dismemberment of that Empire and the formation of new Arab “nations” like Iraq, Syria etc under the “Protectorate rule” of the victors of the war, Britain and France. A sense of national identity emerged in these new nations with some slight flavour of western democratic ways. But they remained under strong local central rule.

World War 2 brought about another move forward as the “Protectorate rule” of the shrinking colonial West was thrown off, and strong autocratic princely or kingly rules were established in their own independent right. These were in their turn overthrown by military rule (e.g. General Nasser deposing King Farouk; Gaddafi emerging in Libya). All this century-long process is in reality the painful process of Arab nations emerging from a dark Mediaeval past into the modern world of the West.

We have now come to a third and very critical stage in that process. This stage is a revolt against the tyranny and corruption of hard, autocratic rule. We are truly witnessing history in the making. We are seeing, in fact, these Arab nations going through something akin to what the European nations went through in the nineteenth century, which was a century of continuing political revolt against the ruling despotisms of Europe, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and lasting until World War 1 in 1914.

The same underlying forces that brought about “democracy” in nineteenth century Europe have been in fact at work in the Middle East over the last sixty years. They are primarily an increasingly educated population with access to communication, and an increasingly powerful and vocal professional and business class, both wanting freedom and law. These are now showing themselves strong enough in the Middle East to break through and challenge the narrow, corrupt, elite political rulers.

History shows, however, that the pathway of revolution never provides a “quick fix”! It is always a very dangerous process. The Russian revolution against the despotism of the Tsar in 1917 was an unmitigated disaster. There was not too much difficulty in deposing the Tsar, but the aftermath was actually a descent into the most appalling tyranny under Stalin. The problem was that the revolution was taken over by a virulently violent ideology, Communism. The same has happened in Iran; there was little difficulty in dislodging the Shah, but what emerged was a greater repressive power through the ideology of militant Islam.

The history of revolutions shows us two dangers; first, that reactionary forces do not go away quickly – they tend to lurk in the background and make a come-back at the first opportunity; second, that once dogmatic ideology (religious or secular!) gains control of the revolution there is a regression into a worse scenario. The weak spot of any revolution is that it does not always throw up a cohesive group of able and purposeful leaders that can bring about progressive change, nor does it in itself enable the downtrodden culture of a nation to catch up with the new culture of self governing tolerance that successful revolution demands. Unfortunately religious ideology is much more likely to provide cohesive leadership and general cultural appeal. And such ideology is very much there in the wings in both Egypt and Libya.

All this means that we are in for a long ride! It means a lot of prayer, and much of the grace of God’s sovereign intervention. The media will get tired of the process; we should keep alert.


Bob

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