Islamist "projects" in the "awakening"

"The "Awakening" is taking a turn, very different to the excitement and promise with which it was hailed at the outset. Sired from an initial, broad popular impulse, it is becoming increasingly understood, and feared, as a nascent counter-revolutionary "cultural revolution" - a re-culturation of the region in the direction of a prescriptive canon that is emptying out those early high expectations, and which makes a mockery of the West's continuing characterization of it as somehow a project of reform and democracy. Instead of yielding hope, its subsequent metamorphosis now gives rise to a mood of uncertainty and desperation - particularly among what are increasingly termed "'the minorities" - the non-Sunnis, in other words. This chill of apprehension takes its grip from certain Gulf States' fervor for the restitution of a Sunni regional primacy - even, perhaps, of hegemony - to be attained through fanning rising Sunni militancy [1] and Salafist acculturation." Alastair Crooke

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Yes, indeed. "Mashariya'" would be the word Crooke refers to here. It means "projects" in Arabic.   The Saudis have long nurtured dreams of a renewed Sunni triumphalism in Greater Arabia.  They played out those projects in dreams with their money and their agents (like Rafik Hariri) for many years with mixed results.  Now the opportunity has come with the assistance of naifs in the US who think that Islamism (including that of the MB) is a "cover" for democratic reform.   pl 

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NF13Ak03.html

Comments

[zanzibar]

Since 90+% of those that vote in our elections voting for the political duopoly, who have drunk the neo-Con or neo-Wilsonian "koolaid", what choices does America as a nation have? When would our politics change where national interest is emphasized over ideological boondoggles?

[robt willmann]

Regarding Syria, this explicit video claims to show slain Syrian postal workers being thrown from the roof of a post office. It is part of an article from the Russia RT television website.

http://www.rt.com/news/syria-aleppo-post-video-476/

Realizing that there is media manipulation going on about the Syrian conflict, and who knows what to believe, the article makes the allegation that the "rebels" (often called "activists" in the western media) are out to kill certain Syrian doctors, engineers, scientists, and civil servants. In other words, a much expanded "hit list" in the general vein of Iranian nuclear scientists being killed for their position in the society.

[William R, Cumming]

Question for PL and others!

Given what is now known (open source)does the Arab Spring represent a fundamental change in the polity of MENA today or in the immediate future (next decade)!

And has there been a fundamental and irrevocable shift in attitudes in MENA as to the USA or the reverse?

Has Romney or Ryan ever traveled in MENA outside Israel?

[Charles I]

see this

my Bi-annual touting of a very apt book by French journalist Geneive Abdo wherein she reports on the MB's decades old, decades long strategy in penetrating Egyptian civil society in lieu of pursuing further periodic thrashings from the Egyptian regime in the slums of Cairo:

No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam

Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, No God But God opens up previously inaccessible segments of Egyptian society to illustrate the deep penetration of "Popular Islamic" influence. Geneive Abdo provides a firsthand account of this movement, even more relevant today than ever. Both fascinating and unsettling, Abdo's findings identify a grassroots model for transforming a secular nation-state to an Islamic social order that will likely inspire other Muslim nations.

http://www.geneiveabdo.com/books.html

An on point must read if you're interested in learning about current Egypt IMHO.