Fouad Ajami wrote "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" a couple of years back. Bernard Lewis is the author of "What went Wrong."
The central thesis of both books is the same. This is the notion that Muslims generally and Arabs in particular suffer from a collective belief that the material and financial superiority of the West is unnatural, ungodly and fated to disappear with the emergence of a world wide human condition that represents the will of God.
This viewpoint is often crudely represented by the endless power point presentations sold by contracters to governments on the subject of the jihadi obsession with the establishment of a world-wide "caliphate."
The events of the past week, events stimulated by the TV trailer disgrace, tend to support Lewis and Ajami in their view.
The reaction of the mobs across the world, even unto the Antipodes, is grossly exagerated, disproportionate and obviously fueled by a boundless hatred for America that makes a mockery of all the social science gibberish about deprivation, oppression, etc.
Last year it was generally assumed in the West that removal of authoritarian governments in the Arab World would result in accession to power of westernized elites who hold dear the political philosophy of the post Enlightenment West.
That has not happened. In the last century (20th) the liberals failed miserably at the polls in Iraq. In Egypt the liberals are a political joke and not enough of a factor to be worth discussing. In Tunisia, possibly the most Westernised of all Arab countries, it is necessary to withdraw most of our diplomatic mission from fear of their safety.
Nevertheless, the Washington Post persists in the jacobin doctrine of the neocon "freedom agenda." According to the Post all we have to do is "stick with" the westernized liberals and all will be well. This is the triumph of theory over experience.
The Arab Spring has revealed that the Arab masses have a substantial inclination toward political Islamism in government. Western media and governments, and particularly the USA helped and continue to help in the release of forces in the Arab World that consider the West to be "the other," the enemies of God, this god being the very special god of their dreams.
Is Mubarak still alive? Did the inquisitors ever find the vast sums that the Mubaraks supposedy stole from the people with rocks in their hands outside the US Embassy in Cairo. Perhaps we will remember the Mubaraks et al fondly in the depths of the Arab Winter. pl
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/16/us-withdraws-diplomats-tunisia-sudan?newsfeed=true
