The great Hellenist the Apostle Paul

Why Arabs-Muslims can't Handle Liberty

by Lewis Loflin

The article below was published in early 2003 and the question has been answered and the answer is no for May 2015.

Long gone are Saddam along with US troops - sectarian civil war is now growing in Iraq that has never recognized individual rights;

Libya is in chaos without Moammar Khadafy after elections like Tunisia is in chaos after its elections;

Egypt elected the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists who launched a terror campaign on its own citizens - only to be deposed by the military while the nation faces total economic meltdown and mass starvation;

Syria is in a violent civil war between Islamists and Baathist' fascists - threatening to draw in Russia, Turkey and Iran;

Gaza elected the Hamas terrorists another Muslim Brotherhood based group;

Islamists that bought elections in Turkey by a massive borrow and spend campaign whose economy now imploding.

Iran continues its sham elections.

Turkey has been sort of a democracy since around 1921 yet in many ways has little actual liberty swinging from military dictatorship to Islamist' democracy. Even decades hasn't fixed it seems the once again Sick Man of Europe.

Saudi Arabia is still in the middle ages socially - death penalties are handed out for even the slightest show of theological incorrectness. Saudi export of terrorism across the globe is ignored.

Iran is on paper a democracy as is Gaza, Libya, Tunisia, etc. but liberty doesn't exists in any of them. Same problem in Egypt.

All of these increasingly failed states all share a common problem is their cultures are not compatible with individual liberty be they secular or religious fundamentalist. Importing European fascism and socialism totally failed only to trigger the rise of Islamist' parties.

None of these cultures has a cultural foundation for individual liberty and the entire concept is alien to all of them. Without liberty - and it must be individual and be engrained in the culture - democracy will always lead to democratic tyranny or be overthrown.

Liberty in particular must be applicable to religious and ethnic minorities and women - otherwise nothing will ever work. In particular Islam must have a reformation.

The big question: Can Arabs handle liberty?

Zev Chafets

(3-20-03) The fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is going to provide an answer to one of the world's perennial chicken-and-egg questions: What makes the Arab world such a dreadful place?

There can hardly be any doubt that the members of the Arab League comprise the world's worst constellation of nations. There isn't a democracy among them. Even supposedly benign (that is, pro-American) dictatorships are repressive and xenophobic.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf, there isn't a single elected parliament or honest court of law or decent university or independent newspaper.

Arab economies produce virtually nothing. Despite oil, most nations are impoverished. The Arab Middle East's only significant self-made export is terrorism.

Contemporary Iraq may be worse than some other Arab countries, but it is not appreciably different in its basic political, civic and economic values. You'd have a hard time picking Saddam out of a rogues' gallery composed of Syria's Bashar Assad, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Libya's Moammar Khadafy and the princes of the Saudi royal family.

Why are things this way? Have tyrannical governments imposed backwardness, intolerance, violence, poverty and intellectual sterility on captive populations? Or do these regimes simply reflect the values and desires of the people they rule?

President Bush is betting on possibility No. 1. As he portrays it, the Iraqi people are about to be liberated from an unpopular despotism in much the way the Italians were liberated in World War II.

"Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty," Bush said in his address to the world Monday. "The power of human liberty is felt in every life and every land. And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuit of peace."

These are fine words, and perhaps they are true. Maybe the Iraqis and other Arab people are just folks - regular people who want to live in harmony with their neighbors near and far. And maybe not.

Maybe Iraq and the broader Arab world have ancient values and beliefs that are hostile to America's. Maybe Arab men - who still practice honor killings against their wives and daughters, even in "moderate" countries like Jordan - do not want to release the creative gifts of women. Maybe the venerated spiritual leaders of the Arab world regard Western democracy as an offense against the laws of the Koran and "human liberty" as infidel code words for ungodly license.

Maybe the men made rich by their associations with Saddam and other dictators are not interested in creating a free-market economy. Maybe the secular political class of Baghdad - and Damascus and Cairo - regards domestic repression as preferable to American intervention for any reason whatever.

Maybe the mass of uneducated Arabs are profoundly loyal to tribal traditions and uninterested in attaining newfangled liberties. In short, perhaps the Arabs in Iraq and elsewhere have the governments they deserve. The next few months will clarify the issue.

Bringing liberty to the people of Iraq would be a fine thing. Still, it is not the main thing. The goal of this war is to establish and enforce the new Golden Rule of the post-post-Colonial world order inaugurated in September 2002: Sovereignty is not an inalienable right.

From now on, self-determination will belong to those people whose basic ethos and instincts do not pose a mortal threat to the United States, its interests and allies. The Iraqis and the other Arab nations may pass that test, or they may fail it. Once Saddam is gone, we will begin to find out.

Zev Chafets is a columnist for The New York Daily News. 2002, NY Daily News