KnightersRevenge said:
I wonder if our bent for commentary on everything in "the West" distorts our idea of how change happens? We look for the narrative (forgive me just finished reading "
The Black Swan") and fill the vacuum of information with talk and speculation. Would you say that the nature of politics and the way it interracts with the citizenry in the Middle East is far too dynamical for a white anglo-celt to really get his head around?
I think so.
Political commentary from European news services have likened the recent Arab revolutions to those of the broader 19th century revolutions (1789-1917) that swept across Europe, expecting European-like democracies to spring out of these.
In many ways, on a micro level, these revolutions have paralleled, in that middle class revolution has been immediately followed by the 'sans-culotte' and terrors have followed, before reactionary counter-revolutions overcome, then after many years democracy may follow. Although, with many European revolutions, liberal democracy was not the always the end result.
Europeans might have expected liberal democratic ideas to come out of the universities that many of the Arab middle class have sprung from.
However, the actual case appears that middle class students, especially those that have graduated from the Alexandria universities over the last decade, have been instilled with something quite different.
This based on the recent Egyptian election, where the Shariah oriented Salafist Al-Nour Party secured 27% of the vote and 111 of the 127 Islamist Bloc seats. The Al-Nour Party emanated from the Alexandria universities.
It would be a generalisation to infer that all university students are middle class. Many at the Alexandria universities would be from the poor too, especially where religious based scholarships are provided.
This is not unlike the same in Israel, where it would be an equally poor generalisation to say that all Israeli university students are middle class. Many, from poor backgrounds, are provided religious scholarship too religious universities or colleges and merely learn fundamentalist Judaism, to most secular Jewish chagrin.
The Israeli government, too, cowers to its Jewish fundamentalist electorate.
Yes, sorry about the Gaddafi & Mubarak throw away line.
It is from a European perspective.
And, let us remember, that Israel is a European creation, both from a British perspective, and that the original Israelis were refugee Europeans given a new homeland by other Europeans and, of course, the U.N.
