On the second day of FIKR10, the fifth session was opened with an essential question: Does Arab Culture have a Spring? In other words, the panel sat and discussed the situation of Arab thinkers through the progression of the past revolutionary months.
Salah Jarrar, the Jordanian minister of culture moderated this talk, and starting by saying that revolutions need a political philosophy behind them, as well as the respect of people’s basic rights. There are many questions about revolutionary thinking and what we have to learn from them, but there is not one answer to these questions.
Abdallah Seyid Ould Bah, University Professor, Mauritania, stated that the Arab Spring surprised everyone, starting with the thinkers. The latter got disconnected with the reality on the ground. The political movements, the Islamists in particular, got all the good outcomes out of the revolutions, putting the actors on the side.
Fatma Al Sayegh, associate professor in history, from the UAE argued that it has become very hard for everyone to expect the future events. Some of the causes for the revolutions are the growing contradictions in the regimes. The most flagrant one is the decaying regimes, with a population that is becoming younger and younger. But if the revolutions changed one thing, it is the mindset of the people: the Arab minds no longer accept things like corruption and all the ills of their society. The revolution also turned gender equality issues into common demands for human rights. There is no difference between the two genders. Both are human beings who have the same needs.
Tahar Labib, a Tunisian University Professor argued that revolutions taught us humility: simple citizens were capable of changing whole regimes by themselves. It is unfair to say that the uprising is just messy in the making and brought only chaos. There has never been any revolution that succeeded just after a few months. We should give things time. France needed decades to become a republic.
It is the revolution of the possible, for the first time, after getting out of history, they discovered that revolution could be started and fulfilled without much resource.
People were just surprised how the Tunisian revolution took place, and how the population was capable of organizing itself on its own. For example they secured neighborhoods and distributed food provisions for those who needed them.
Dhiya Al Musawi, a Bahraini Shuran Council Member explained that the kingdom has had the history of tolerance for all cultures and religions. Bahrain underwent many reforms for the past 10 years, by authorizing the exiled to come back, and freeing some prisoners. Islamism is the only problem they have, because the only solution is a civil state. The Islamist ideology cannot build a whole country from scratch. The separation of state and religion is imperative. The Islamist ideology is not enough to create a strong and stable state: ‘my brother Muslim’ versus ‘my brother citizen’. The religious and civil laws both have different beliefs, so mixing them would lead the country to a dead-end. He believes that thinkers find themselves foreign to the revolutions, since they did not instigate them.
Ziad Aldrees, Saudi Ambassador to the UNESCO spoke last, saying that the thinkers didn’t start the revolutions: the youth did. The democratic thinking comes after the experience, and not the opposite. The cultural exchange happened from the Arab world to the West, like what happened with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. A citizen will vote for the one who will develop his or her country best, no matter what the ideology is. What is important is to accept the outcome of the votes since it is what real democracy is about. People are scared of going backwards by having the Islamists in power. If they can build the whole nation, then fine, and if not, the people will hold them accountable by voting for others in the following elections. They should be given the benefit of the doubt.
So, did the Arab culture undergo its Spring? The best answer to that would be from Al Musawi’s words “We’re just halfway through the Arab Spring: it is not complete as long as the teachings and the ideologies are not yet made”.