Arab Spring - The Great Deception

abuayisha wrote: I don't see how a declaration of "Islamic State" will somehow transform the life of everyday Egyptians struggling to feed, clothe, and educate their children.  Muslims, in whatever country they are found today, are more in need of substance, and can do without ceremonial formalities aimed only at pleasing the radical few.

Egypt based on an Islamist, Sharia-inspired constitution will make life of everyday struggling Egyptians even worse. Investors will avoid Egypt even more. And soon tourists will avoid Egypt too, destroying millions of tourist-related jobs. Imagine the first news report about unmarried teenagers being whipped after having sex or unfaithful married women being stoned to death or people getting beheaded for insulting Islam. I also fear for the lives of the millions of Egyptian Copts. We will see more and more destroyed churches, like what is happening in Nigeria or Iraq. More and more Christians are leaving Iraq because of violent followers of the religion of peace. Half the Christian population has fled, with an estimated 330,000 to Syria and smaller numbers to Jordan. Now if Islamists take over in Syria with Assad gone, these Christians have to flee yet again, all in the name of the world's best religion.



Edited by Matt Browne - 16 December 2012 at 8:34am

abuayisha wrote: i.dawa wrote: As for the Arab Spring and the Great Deception to secularise the Ummah it would be nice to hear the comments of Muslim participants!! Surely Islam as evidenced in Spain had little or no problem with pluralism and religious freedom.

Wrong, Abuayisha. We need to depict history accurately. Islam in Spain has little to do with modern democracy. It was an apartheid-type system. There was official discrimination against Christians and Jews (and against Muslim women too). Muslim men were the rulers, like the white men in South Africa till 1993. There was no pluralism and religious freedom in the modern sense. Muslims in Muslim Iberia did not have the freedom to become Christians. They could not disagree with the Sharia and found political parties to change the laws. The Sharia is in large parts a set of barbaric, inhumane laws, created more than 1000 years ago and based on 7th-century Arab tribal culture.

The Arab Spring in Egypt is now headed for barbarism. The new Sharia-inspired Egyptian constitution makes discrimination official: discrimination against women and discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities. The Muslim Brotherhood was the first Islamist terror organization of the 20th century.



Edited by Matt Browne - 16 December 2012 at 8:16am

Mohammad Golem wrote: Muslims don't know anything about peace and liberty to be able to give any dissertations. America should just do the world a big favor and nuke every country that is dominated by Islam.

I can't believe I'm reading such horrible comments. There must be a reason when someone is so full of hatred. Something terrible must have happened in your life, Mohammad Golem. The only other explanation is trolling. In this case we shouldn't feed the troll.

Source: RAND (2004)
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To encourage positive change in the Islamic world toward greater democracy, modernity, and compatibility with the contemporary international world order, the United States and the West need to consider very carefully which elements, trends, and forces within Islam they intend to strengthen; what the goals and values of their various potential allies and prot�g�s really are; and what the broader consequences of advancing their respective agendas are likely to be. A mixed approach composed of the following elements is likely to be the most effective:


� Support the modernists first:

� Publish and distribute their works at subsidized cost.
� Encourage them to write for mass audiences and for youth.
� Introduce their views into the curriculum of Islamic education.
� Give them a public platform.
� Make their opinions and judgments on fundamental questions of religious interpretation available to a mass audience in competition with those of the fundamentalists and traditionalists, who have Web sites, publishing houses, schools, institutes, and many other vehicles for disseminating their views.
� Position secularism and modernism as a �counterculture� option for disaffected Islamic youth.
� Facilitate and encourage an awareness of their pre- and non-Islamic history and culture, in the media and the curricula of relevant countries.
� Assist in the development of independent civic organizations, to promote civic culture and provide a space for ordinary citizens to educate themselves about the political process and to articulate their views.

� Support the traditionalists against the fundamentalists:

� Publicize traditionalist criticism of fundamentalist violence and extremism; encourage disagreements between traditionalists and fundamentalists.
� Discourage alliances between traditionalists and fundamentalists.
� Encourage cooperation between modernists and the traditionalists who are closer to the modernist end of the spectrum.
� Where appropriate, educate the traditionalists to equip them better for debates against fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are often rhetorically superior, while traditionalists practice a politically inarticulate �folk Islam.� In such places as Central Asia, they may need to be educated and trained in orthodox Islam to be able to stand their ground.
� Increase the presence and profile of modernists in traditionalist institutions.
� Discriminate between different sectors of traditionalism. Encourage those with a greater affinity to modernism, such as the Hanafi law school, versus others. Encourage them to issue religious opinions and popularize these to weaken the authority of backward Wahhabi inspired religious rulings. This relates to funding: Wahhabi money goes to the support of the conservative Hanbali school. It also relates to knowledge: More-backward parts of the Muslim world are not aware of advances in the application and interpretation of Islamic law.
� Encourage the popularity and acceptance of Sufism.

� Confront and oppose the fundamentalists:


� Challenge their interpretation of Islam and expose inaccuracies.
� Reveal their linkages to illegal groups and activities.
� Publicize the consequences of their violent acts.
� Demonstrate their inability to rule, to achieve positive development of their countries and communities.
� Address these messages especially to young people, to pious traditionalist populations, to Muslim minorities in the West, and to women.
� Avoid showing respect or admiration for the violent feats of fundamentalist extremists and terrorists. Cast them as disturbed and cowardly, not as evil heroes.
� Encourage journalists to investigate issues of corruption, hypocrisy, and immorality in fundamentalist and terrorist circles.
� Encourage divisions among fundamentalists.

� Selectively support secularists:


� Encourage recognition of fundamentalism as a shared enemy, discourage secularist alliance with anti-U.S. forces on such grounds as nationalism and leftist ideology.

�     Support the idea that religion and the state can be separate in Islam too and that this does not endanger the faith but, in fact, may strengthen it.

Whichever approach or mix of approaches is chosen, we recommend that it be done with careful deliberation, in knowledge of the symbolic weight of certain issues; the meaning likely to be assigned to the alignment of U.S. policymakers with particular positions on these issues; the consequences of these alignments for other Islamic actors, including the risk of endangering or discrediting the very groups and people we are seeking to help; and the opportunity costs and possible unintended consequences of affiliations and postures that may seem appropriate in the short term.