24 September 2012

Arab Autumn?



The Arab Spring, eighteen months on.  Has a passion for freedom of speech, separation of religion and State, and the 'free marketplace of ideas' seized the Arab world?  Two weeks ago a Coptic Christian living in California,  in no way affiliated with any U.S. government entity, published a comically low-quality 13-minute film trailer ridiculing Mohammed and Islam.  The Arab world's reaction?

In Egypt:


In Lebanon:



In Kuwait:

In Palestine:



In Tunisia:



In Yemen:




What about the Muslim world generally?



In Malaysia:


In Indonesia:



In Iran:


In Thailand:


In the Philippines:


In Sri Lanka:



In Bangladesh:



In India:


For sheer territorial coverage, no one can beat Pakistanis. They expressed themselves in Karachi,


in Islamabad,



in Rawalpindi,


in Quetta,



in Peshawar,


and in Lahore:



Phew.

We mustn't forget Sudan:


Or our old friend Afghanistan:



Nor can we leave out those Muslims having taken up residence chez nous:


In London:


In Vienna:




In Amsterdam:



In Oslo:



In Sydney:



In Athens:





It is a precarious exercise to try to crawl into the mind of another. In all likelihood, no one has asked you how you feel about millions of your tax dollars being spent turning the people pictured above into 'democrats':

In his annual budget meeting with Congress, President Barack Obama expressed his desire to establish an $800 million support fund for democracies emerging from the Arab Spring. [...] $770 million of the Arab Spring fund would go towards establishing a “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund” that would “provide incentives for long-term economic, political and trade reforms to countries in transition,” provided that countries wish to actively make reforms.

The Arab Spring Fund would be implemented in conjunction with up to $1 billion in debt swaps for Egypt; $2 billion in regional Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) financing; and billions of dollars in renewed military and development aid to the region.


But if you were asked, you might respond, 'What are the chances that spending my tax dollars in this way would bear fruit?'  Hillary Clinton and her Foggy Bottom footsoldiers would assure you, 'Failure is inconceivable.' Would they be right?

We have considered the question before, having looked at Arabs through many lenses: the anecdotes of observers, democracy and freedom indices, as well as their peculiar marriage practices.

Samuel Huntington warned twenty years ago:

    'Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in other cultures.  Efforts to propagate such ideas produce instead a reaction against "human rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of indigenous values.'

Because of its origins in the Arabian Peninsula and its claim to Arabic as divine language, 'Islam' is easy to confound with 'Arab.'  In fact, Arabs are a minority of the world's Muslims. A reminder as to the members (in green) of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC):







With or without Arabs, many have looked at world index rankings and concluded, 'Islam and democracy don't mix.' 

(Muslim in yellow, Arab Muslim in red)



But as Razib Khan reminds us here, all 'Islamists' are not created equal:

Rather, it may be that Turkey is a particularly tolerant society in the Muslim Middle East when it comes to religious freedom, and so not a good model for what might play out in Egypt (and has played out in Iraq). This matters because people regularly speak of “secular Egyptians,” “secular Turks,” “Turkish Islamists,” and “Egyptian Islamists,” as if there’s a common currency in the modifiers.


So how can we know which, if any, Arab Muslim peoples have the right value systems to become little 'Norways on the Nile'?  One way is to ask them. From the 2010 Pew survey:





Many, but by no means all, are sold on the idea of 'democracy.'



When the question is asked only of those who believe that 'Islam's role in politics is large':



Those who insist that Arab democracy be as secular as its European model risk serious disappointment.



Some believe democracy is a choice between a modern, humanistic outlook and a fundamentalist one.  Where do Arab Muslims stand on the question?




But 'fundamentalism,' as Razib points out, is contextual. An American Christian 'fundamentalist' might prefer to see abortion outlawed or sex ed removed from the classroom.  What might a Muslim 'fundamentalist' prefer?




In the U.S. we're probably not that close to a referendum on whether or not to stone adulterers.  The U.K., however, may be farther down this road than we:

A poll of more than 1,000 British Muslims, conducted by the Policy Exchange think-tank this year, found that 36 per cent of Muslims aged between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.

And that's the 'young, tolerant' generation talking.

Dispatches obtained Islamic texts sold in Britain that say the punishment for apostasy is death - according to all four schools of Islamic jurisprudence. One text called for Muslims to cut off the head of those who reject Islam.

... In 2004, Prince Charles asked British Muslim leaders to renounce laws of apostasy and the death sentence for converts in Islamic countries, but no public statement was ever made.




On the subject of Muslims and the West,



One final point which the current Western democratic model takes for granted is equal rights for women.  Muslims speak:



We are struck by two Middle Eastern countries which seem to depart from the norm, one of which is not Arab (Turkey), and one of which was the only Arab country to be majority-Christian at independence (Lebanon).  Whether it be the World Democracy Index, the Freedom House Index, the Human Development Index, or others, these two states seem to stand out in a region that is a sea of authoritarianism, familism, and religionism.  What are the X factors here? Ethnicity? Culture? Prosperity?  Our State Dept. democracy rain-makers would do well to delve into the question of what sets these two apart.





Opinion surveys are one source of information on Arab Muslim thought. A second source is the self-reported values survey, such as the excellent mid-1990s GLOBE project study led by Robert House at the U. of Pennsylvania.  Here are some values that may affect democracy's functioning in a given society:

'In-group collectivism' measures the degree of collectivist feeling directed at one's own group (family, clan, tribe).

'Societal collectivism' measures the degree of collectivist feeling directed at the larger society.



'Uncertainty avoidance' measures how highly one values an orderly, predictable, and rules-based society.

'Performance orientation' measures how much we believe rewards should come to us based on merit vs. other reasons (nepotism, etc).




'Future orientation' measures our desire and ability to plan for the future.

'Gender egalitarianism' measures our perception of women's rights in our society.



What are Muslims telling us?  On our long journey through the world of Arab Muslims here at Those Who Can See, we have been reminded again and again of Huntington's 'civilisational fault lines':




We are unable to say if the current batch of dollars will go further in 'Arab democracy promotion' than any of the millions spent thus far.  We don't know how loudly Defense is crying and how broadly State is smiling at the current situation on the ground in North Africa.

We can only advise the many pundits who preach to us daily from the editorial pages that their blank-slatist dreams are just that.  Here on planet Earth, four young men by the names of Jon, Genaro, Josh, and Sapuro came home last week in body bags trying to square the circle of Afghan 'democracy.' 

It is easy to dispense blood and treasure on unattainable goals when that blood and treasure are not your own.  Our policy request to the Department of State is to turn away from the Francis Fukuyamas of the world; listen to the Samuel Huntingtons.  Our ideological seed will take root where the ground is fertile. But it would be fatal to underestimate the vast stretches of ground which are anything but.



14 comments:

redzengenoist said...

The future time orientation results are most interesting at the high end - Singapore stands out so much from those close around it, and from the country (China) from which many of its inhabitants are supposed to hail.

I wonder if the Marhmallow test has ever been applied to East Asians?

Anonymous said...

destroyed consulate where three Americans were killed

The attack on the U.S consulate in Libya in all likelihood had nothing to do with the YouTube movie.

B.B.

M.G. said...

B.B.--
Good point, thank you. It's easy to forget that, just like the revolution that preceded it, the events in Libya and the western narrative about the events do not match up.

I've replaced Libya with our Tunisian friends storming the consulate on September 14. Mea culpa.

redzengenoist--
That's a good question about Singapore. The only gratification-delay studies I've seen on children, Mischel and Walter, Pryce-Williams and Ramirez, and Castillo et al., all dealt with black, white, or hispanic kids.

The best future-orientation study I've seen is from Wang et al., who ran a simultaneous lab experiment in 45 countries on economics students. Singapore wasn't tested, but you can see the results on page 17 of the PDF if you're interested. Hong Kong scores highest of the East Asians, then Japan and South Korea.

Oddly (to me), New Zealand scored really low on the Wang study, but I see that they also did so on the GLOBE study I posted above. I know ethnic Anglos were tested in both cases--seems a bit of an anomaly.

Dewey said...

The Prophet speaketh!
"Our ideological seed will take root where the ground is fertile. But it would be fatal to underestimate the vast stretches of ground which are anything but."
!!!!!

M.G., do you have contacts with the State Department?
I sincerely hope there are government workers and movers using proxies to read your blog, and that someone, somewhere, is bringing this "ideological seed" into productive fruition.

This ideological seed of "the people make the place" must mean the following: 1. Pulling all of the troops out of Afghanistan, except as a defensive perimeter 2. Supporting strong Arab rulers, who repress the tendencies to religious fanaticism of their people .

M.G. said...

Dewey--
I wonder if State and Defense are constantly butting heads. 'Soft power' can work, but if the ground isn't fertile, it just becomes soft-headed power. There can't be a clearer example of that today than Afghanistan. We are being made fools of there just as every invader has for the last 2000 years.

I can't believe that even sixty years ago American diplomacy was this fuzzy-headed and feminized. The 'humanitarian intervention' and 'nation building' will be two of the curiosities of our age for future generations to puzzle over.

Dewey said...

M.G.,

With regard to this:
"I can't believe that even sixty years ago American diplomacy was this fuzzy-headed and feminized. The 'humanitarian intervention' and 'nation building' will be two of the curiosities of our age for future generations to puzzle over."

Possibly the key difference between then and now, was that of "realpolitik". Then, these notions of "humanitarian intervention" and "nation building" were understood to be exercises in the USA acting in its own benefit. This was alright.
Now, in our fuzzy world, everything seems to need to be "for the common good", but "humanity and progress" (Yes, I am channeling Ayn Rand here from "Atlas Shrugged" )

In the past, more people understood that such notions of "democracy spreading" and "humanitarian intervention" were hogwash laid over realpolitik to please the irascible commongooders. Nowadays, the USA, Defense Department, State Department, and the whole executive right up to the president has begun to believe their own bullshit, the "humanitarian hogwash".

What I like so much about your blog, is that you bringing 'realpolitik' back to interethnic and international politics. I especially appreciated your blog entry on: "Building a More Perfect Currency Union"

The problem, is that the popular platitudes of "human equality", "democracy for all", and "racial oppression", once understood to be demagoguery, and not acted on, have actually begun to be acted on with policy decisions.

Due to this, were are now in multiple emergency situations ALL OVER THE GLOBE. Every single economic and geopolitical boondoggle right now (subprime loan nightmare, Euro disaster, "democracy" for primitive mountain tribes and cousin-marrying Islamic fundamentalists, "No Child Left Behing")can be connected to the once common sense lore of HBD, "human-biological diversity". How ironic, that in our Orwellian Ministerium, "diversity" came to imply human homogeneity as "homo economicus."


JayMan said...

Excellent round the region summation of the situation, just like all your posts! ;)

I've wondered about Turkey. They seem to practice the FBD marriage common to the rest of the Muslim world (if at somewhat lower rates), yet, as Muslim nations go, it is pretty progressive. I wonder what's the deal?

I've Tweeted this and your previous post.

M.G. said...

Dewey--
Point well taken. Our Cold War enemy pushed us into hard-core realpolitik couched in 'make-the-world-safe-for-democracy' rhetoric. Today, the rhetoric's stayed, but there's a new generation who actually believe English-style democracy can be put in place anywhere on Earth. It's like the old hard-headed pragmatism's utterly given way to naive idealism.

At some level I feel it's part of the intense feminization of Western culture since the 1960s, but I can't put my finger on it. Putting women in charge of foreign affairs, where they have no place, is just one of the many symptoms.

M.G. said...

JayMan--
Thank you kindly. I'm very curious about Turkey, which seems to be the exception that proves the rule in the Muslim Middle East. I've heard that the East is more rural and fundamentalist than the West. Looking at the consang.net numbers, I see they give 17% for Istanbul but up to 39% in the South-East.

I've heard that ethnically, modern-day Turkey is not very Turkic at all. I thought I'd read that western Turks were somewhat genetically similar to modern Greeks in fact. I wonder what combination of ethnie/culture/history/family-structure/geography makes them stand out so much in the Muslim Middle East. I bet Razib's posted something interesting on this before.

Anonymous said...

First off, great article!

As far as Turkey goes, I would surmise the European influence on the former Ottoman empire would soften any radical Muslim stance. Along with the rise of the Young Turks from Greece and the secularization of Attaturk, this would further erode a militant stance.

When it comes to American "exceptionalism", is it not an outgrowth of the Puritan mindset? The idea America was destined to create God's Kingdom on Earth? Insane, but true.

Add to that the Jacobin revolution of liberte, equalite and fraternite and Wilson's failed League of Nations and you have a world run on false premises. A falsified Christianity is to blame.

Wasn't it Washington who said no foreign entanglements? Whatever happened to that maxim? Oh, that's right, it went out the window along with Charles Lindbergh's baby when this country sided with Stalin.

America first or bust!

M.A.A.

J said...

When are you going to wake up to the fact that there is jihad (holy war) against the West?

M.G. said...

M.A.A.--
Along with the rise of the Young Turks from Greece and the secularization of Attaturk, this would further erode a militant stance.

Good point, but again, I still wonder why Attaturk's reforms in Turkey seemed to 'take' so well, while secularizing efforts in so many Muslim countries didn't 'take' the same way (Egypt, Iran, Iraq...)

Add to that the Jacobin revolution of liberte, equalite and fraternite and Wilson's failed League of Nations and you have a world run on false premises.

Yes, the internationalist strains go back very far, all the way to Erasmus and no doubt further. I have to wonder about 18th century universalism though, how much of it was ethno-centric and how much of it was truly a belief that 'us and Australian Aborigines and Sub-Saharan Africans, we're all in this together'....

Wasn't it Washington who said no foreign entanglements?

If we followed even one-fiftieth of the sage advice left for us by the men who founded this country, we would be very, very far from the mess we're in today.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 30/9/12 4:51 PM said...

As far as Turkey goes, I would surmise the European influence on the former Ottoman empire would soften any radical Muslim stance. Along with the rise of the Young Turks from Greece and the secularization of Attaturk, this would further erode a militant stance.

M.G. said...
I still wonder why Attaturk's reforms in Turkey seemed to 'take' so well, while secularizing efforts in so many Muslim countries didn't 'take' the same way (Egypt, Iran, Iraq...)

Is that really what you're wishing for?

Armenian Genocide
Greek genocide
Assyrian Genocide

Toad

M.G. said...

Toad--
Is that really what you're wishing for?

Armenian Genocide
Greek genocide
Assyrian Genocide


I don't quite follow your argument. Are you suggesting that a necessary condition for the success of Mustafa Kemal's modernist reforms was the Ottoman ethnic cleansing of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians? Could you lay out the causal chain?