Future of the Arab World
Future of the Arab World
By Daniel G. Jennings
The major conflict in the world today is the battle between certain radical elements in the Arab World and the modern world as embodied by the United States of America. This is the conflict that led to the Sept. 11 atrocity and the war in Iraq. So it is important to ask: what will the future of the Arab World and its conflict with the United States be?
Now my guess is the next development in the Arab world will be a sort of radical secularism that is secularism forced on the people by the government. This is what happened in the West: the religious fanaticism of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Wars of religion in the 16th Century were followed by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The French Revolution saw an attempt to abolish the Church and to impose a religion of reason on France.
Younger people in the Islamic World fed up with the intolerant religious fanaticism that characterizes today's Islam could very well turn to a rigid government imposed secularism. Polls indicate that these people prefer modern concepts of human rights to the Koran. There is already popular anger at traditionalists among young Muslims on the Internet and elsewhere. We have already seen vicious and violent government crackdowns on Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt and Algeria. We've also seen militaries in Algeria and Turkey force Islamic parties from power in the name of Secularism.
If such radical secularism breaks out in the Arab world, the effect on the rest of the world could be catastrophic. Al Qaeda started as Islamic Jihad, an Egyptian radical group dedicated to Islamic revolution. Islamic Jihad failed in its efforts to overthrow Egypt's secular government fled to Afghanistan and morphed into Al Qaeda. Then at the urging of its new leader and financier the Saudi millionaire Bin Laden redirected its attacks at America.
Al Qaeda's campaign against the West is not the result of the popularity of Islamic radicalism in the Arab World. It is the result of the failure of the Islamic revolutionaries to impose their will on their societies. Unable to win their war at home they exported it abroad.
This means that any future civil war between Arab secularists and Islamists would spill over into the rest of the world. Especially if America and other non-Islamic nations are seen as taking sides in such a war.
One thing is certain the Arab world will remain a source of strife and turmoil for decades to come. The challenge will be finding means of preventing that strife and turmoil from degenerating into all out warfare. Warfare that could destroy the Arab World and the non-Arab World alike.