Arabs need to leave the past behind to make their future more promising

What the Arabic-language media has to say about the future of Arabs

Arab regimes spend billions of dollars every year on weapons that gather dust, as well as on luxuries and amusement. But they skimp on such things as education, health care, culture, creativity and social welfare, observed Ali Fakhrou in the UAE-based newspaper Al Khaleej.

To guard themselves against enemies, the Chinese built the Great Wall that was meant to be an impenetrable line of defence. However, in the 100 years that followed the construction of the wall, China was invaded three times. Rather than climbing or penetrating the wall, the invaders bribed the guards to open the gates, the writer noted.

Arab problems will be solved only through building an “Arab guard” rather than building the “walls” of armies, signing protectorate agreements with their foreign powers and coordinating with intelligence agencies, he said.

Forming Arab guards requires qualified people. In households, wives need to be well-educated and have equal rights to men. At schools, dedicated teachers are needed to educate children. In society, there is a need for intellectuals committed to noble causes and impervious to the sticks and carrots offered by tyrannies.

Women, teachers and intellectuals are all needed to protect the Arab public from the legacy of stagnation and narrow-mindedness that have lain heavily on them for so long, the writer said. The region needs large-scale transformation in order to form this honourable Arab guard. Otherwise, invasions will not stop.

Writing for the Abu-Dhabi based Al Ittihad newspaper, El Sayed Yassin argued that from an analysis of modern Arab history, it appears that the Arab world has failed in establishing modern democratic countries along the lines of those in Europe.

Many countries replaced democracy with what has been termed as “legitimacy of modernisation”, which involves attempts to renew institutional frameworks of traditional Arab communities to allow them to become more or less modern.

Modern European nations became successful as they gave priority to reason and opened their doors to scientific research and technology, thus fulfilling the basic needs of millions of people. A political system that guarantees freedom of expression and pluralism is another key element in European modernity.

Yet this example of power-sharing did not sit well with traditional Arab authorities who could not imagine willingly giving up power and all the privileges that come with it.

Even Arab states that gained independence from foreign occupation and rose to power in the 1950s were not willing to accommodate democratic principles and instead clung to power based on the “revolutionary legitimacy”.

Religious organisations, on the other hand, have refused the West’s notion of supremacy of reason on the ground that it runs counter to their belief in the supremacy of the religious text.

Thus two trends emerged in the modern Arab state: authoritarian governments founded on doctrines of the “inspired leader” or single-party state on the one hand, and Salafist movements seeking to topple regimes and establishing what they see as divine law.

Traditional religious authorities had to take a back seat under the weight of oppressive regimes. But when they were ousted, weakened or simply failed, the genie was out of the bottle to fight modernity and democracy as foundations for Arab political life.

Writing for the London-based online publication Rai Al Youm, Fawzi Mehanna mentioned the saying that what men can learn in 10 days of pain outnumbers what they can learn in 10 years of joy. It was to make the point that Arabs have endured many tragedies and defeats but have failed to learn any lessons from them.

A few Arab thinkers had wished a major defeat would befall Arabs, one that would cause so much pain that it would prompt them to get back on their feet. That happened. They have faced a series of big defeats and failures, but none of them galvanised Arabs into action.

Arabs have not managed to learn from their agonies and from history, the writer said. Palestine is occupied, many Arab countries are colonised, fragmented, ruled by dictators or beset by sectarianism. Yet, there seems to be no zeal to change these situations.

Amal Moussa argued in the London-based Al Sharq Al Awsat that the woes of the Arab public can be ascribed to their troubled relationship with the concept of time. She said that Arabs are preoccupied with the past. That’s why they give little attention to the present or future. One proof of this is the so-called Salafist and fundamentalist movements that have dominated today’s cultural rhetoric. Absolute glorification of the past is another clear manifestation of the problem.

Arabs need to understand that the future is a driving force for life, and they should dream for a better world, the writer said.

Translated by Abdelhafed Ezzouitni