Muslim dictatorships

From what I can gather from the American propaganda machine the Arab spring is being hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists; which appears to have my fellow Americans all in a twitter. That seems a little odd to me. America's staunchest ally in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, the definition of a Muslim fundamentalist state. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, as was the not so long gone and justly reviled Osama bin Laden. The suspicion still lingers that much of the financing for the 9/11 operation came from Saudi Arabian oil money. Iraq is now a fundamentalist Muslim state, as is Afghanistan, and Pakistan is certainly leaning that way. These are all ally nations. (Or maybe occupied nations, which is probably not the same thing.) Iran is, of course, a fundamentalist Muslim state that the US counts as an enemy; clearly being an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship doesn't upset the American population a majority of the time.

Egypt seems to be the focus of this panic over Islamic fundamentalists taking over once secular Dictators are toppled and something resembling elections are held. We Americans seem very unhappy with free elections unless the elected happen to agree with us. At least we are fair in this regard; mostly feeling the same way about elections in our own country. The American media trashes Obama with complete abandon and without the slightest hesitation, forgetting (apparently) that he basically crushed McCain in a free election. (Elections in the US are of little value - but Americans are still free to choose between two equally ugly and unsavory candidates.) If Egyptians elect a Muslim fundamentalist government wouldn't that put them ahead of Saudi Arabia in the "democracy" department? Throwing off a dictator and electing people to represent a constituency sounds like something we Americans might boast of doing. We don't do it very well, gerrymandering our "constituencies" to make sure that a minority can outvote a majority; but we like to boast about it. Voting Egyptians would seem closer to the dream than non-voting Saudies.

I find it amusing (in a sad kind of, WTF? way) that those who howl the loudest at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in place of once secular dictatorships are mostly the Christian fundamentalists of the American right wing. Apparently religious oppression of a free society is only acceptable when it is Christian or Jewish oppression of a free society. Islamic oppression of a free society being the worst, and secular oppression being okay so long as they will sell us oil or make our kid's toys and sneakers cheap. Somehow that is supposed to make sense? (Okay, I'll admit that it isn't just Christian fundamentalists who give a pass to tyrants who sell us oil and make cheap toys and sneakers. A lot of us secular Americans will give a pass to oppression so long as doing so helps our wallet.)

People who support democracy and personal liberty first, over and above religion, find it easy to criticize both secular and religious tyranny. I would hope that the people of Egypt, who found the courage to overthrow a secular dictator, can find a way to build a secular society that allows people to worship (or not) with a degree of personal freedom that seems beyond the grasp of most of the Arab world. If they can't then they will have failed to catch the flow of human history...at least for now.

But they are not the only peoples to so fail. Americans are failing in much the same way though, fortunately, on a much smaller scale. It would be impossible to argue that civil rights and individual liberty are on the march in America still; rather they are increasingly under assault and in retreat. Mostly they are trampled under the feet of American Christian fundamentalists and their political allies in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and hopefully we will not retreat too far before we remember what it means to claim the title of "The land of the free."

Islamic dictatorships are a blight on the world, new ones no less than old ones. Then again any dictatorship is a blight on the world, in any guise, in any place, on any scale. It can only be hoped that the current unrest growing across the planet is the result of more and more people demanding liberty in the face of any oppression, anywhere, at the hands of anyone.