THE “Arab Spring” has now embodied the spirit of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). In her book, Carson suggested that a more proper term to describe the destruction of the environment was “biocide”. She devoted her argument to the effects of pesticides on natural ecosystems, pesticide poisoning and other illnesses attributed to pesticides.
It could, perhaps, be inappropriate to compare the book to events currently unfolding in the Arab world. But then, the cover on the weekly The Economist (issue July 5-11) painted a destructive and bleak image of the future of the Arabs, with the cover line: “The tragedy of the Arabs: A poisoned history”.
The visuals on its cover evoked Carson’s “biocidal” environment — “poisoned”, arid and lifeless, except for some leafless and dying trees, and an Arab soldier carrying a rifle on his shoulder, with a dagger worn on the belt, casting a long shadow over the desert sand.
The weekly’s Leader described a civilisation that used to lead the world as being “...in ruins — only the locals can rebuild it”. It recalled that great cities, the likes of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo a thousand years ago, “took turns to race ahead of the Western world. Islam and innovation were twins”.
The various Arab caliphates that we learnt about in our history textbooks, and through the various sermons in the media common to Malays and Muslims in Malaysia, were dynamic powers — beacons of learning, tolerance and trade. Today, we are told that the Arabs are in a wretched state.
Why have Arab countries miserably failed in creating an ordered, stable society and good governance? Why is there no happiness (aside from the windfall of oil) or wealth for their 350 million people? Why has this happened?
Apart from wealthy Arab tourists in the Bukit Bintang area or news of Arabs on shopping sprees in Europe, we are engaged with the image of unspeakable suffering; not to speak of the genocide happening in Gaza and the stark colonisation of the Palestinians, then and now.
The impending redrawing of the borders of Iraq, Syria and the rest of the region raises concerns over global security and stability.
The Economist offered reasons worth revisiting, if only to relate Western, Arab and Islamic civilisations in some perspective.
The periodical began its editorialising that the problem in Arab countries was numerous. It cited “a brutal band of jihadists” declaring the boundaries of Syria and Iraq as void. There was much concern over “the new Islamic caliphate” to embrace Iraq and Greater Syria, which it said included Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and bits of Turkey, and “in due course — the whole world”.
The band sought to kill non-Muslims not just in the Middle East but also in the streets of New York, London and Paris. Egypt, once the darling of the Arab world, and historically and intellectually linked to the Malay world, through which ideas on modernisation were brought to the Malays in Malaya, was back under military rule. Cairo was once the centre of ideas for reform-minded Malays in the late 1800s and early decades of the last century.
Post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya and Yemen were now at the mercy of militias. Saudi Arabia and Algeria were described as fragile. Only Tunisia, the Leader noted, which opened the Arab’s bid for freedom three years ago, had the makings of a “real democracy”.
According to The Economist, “Islam, or at least the modern reinterpretations of it, is at the core of some of the Arab’s deep troubles”.
It asserted that Islam, in harmonising, describing it as combining “spiritual and earthly authority, with no separation of mosque and state”, had stunted the development of independent political institutions.
It argued that “religious extremism” — evoked by militia violence and civil wars — was a conduit for misery, not its fundamental cause. While “Islamic democracies” in Indonesia are doing fine, in the Arab world, the very fabric of the state is weak.
In much of the Arab world, colonial powers continue to influence and control through the present day. How do we describe the condition of the Palestinians under the Israelis, if not colonialism?
The Economist further argued that the absence of a liberal state had been matched by the absence of a liberal economy. And so, the Leader attributed this to economic stagnation, breeding dissatisfaction, asking why the restless youth in the “Arab Spring” had not taken to the streets much sooner.
But the Arabs, as The Economist suggested, could reverse their civilisation’s decline, but “right now, there is little hope of that happening”. Repression and stagnation were not the solution, saying these did work before, diagnosing that they were the root of the problem.
The Economist, since it first appeared in September 1843, continues to be the bearer of the former Empire’s tidings. It remembers that education, trade and pluralism were once Arab values, making it a superior civilisation. Surely, it should also remember historical and political forces external to the Arab world that have poisoned Arab history itself.