Worldwide Java Jag: 2009-06-28

Monday, June 29, 2009

ALLAHU AKBAR

God is great (Allahu Akbar) is an Islamic shout out to god. It was used as a revolutionary cry against the late Shah Pahlavi thirty years ago in Tehran. It is once again being heard from the roofs of those same houses. This time it is an anti Khomani, anti Ahmadinejad populous that has been forced from the ballot box and the streets and can only find their voice in individual protest from the safety of their homes. Unfortunately, the Iranians against clerical oppression need to call out for divine intervention because it is clear that an earthly reprieve from a religious totalitarian coup is going to be hard.

 "Palestine, but could be Tehran"

However, there is another mid-east city whose citizens too should be heading up to the roof to call out thanks to God, and that would be Tel-Aviv. What has happened in Iran has strengthened the state of Israel more than any political or military event in a long time. The Iranian election fraud, the clerical civil war, the goon squad Basij militia smashing and shooting fellow Muslims seeking justice and the globally witnessed death of Nadia has shaken the youthful Islamic world to its core… forever. The SMS YouTube released genie of justice may be temporally beaten to the ground, but it will not be denied.

   The Muslim and Arab world like much of the third world is very youthful. Seventy five percent of Iranians are under 25. They are undergoing something like a Woodstock moment in their history. The simplest freedoms we take for granted; reading a book, talking to a girl, asking a question about sex, viewing a rock band and wearing a t-shirt with a cool graphic is a revolutionary act in a society dominated by turbaned fanatics, obsessed with theocratic issues from fourteen centuries ago. The search for modernity, the awareness of a larger more free world by the youth from Rabat to Islamabad, is a deeply powerful force lurking behind the veil of Islamic rule. Yes, there are numerous counter trends; well-financed Whabbi madrassas brainwashing whole towns of nine year olds in Pakistan, Al Quida inspired Imams spewing hate on Friday night in Gaza and Riyadh.  However, the search for a secular life of progress and improvement is strong, and the forces of repression know this better than anyone.

   The most potent enabler of Muslim on Muslim repression has been since 1948, the call of anti Zionism and anti Semitism. The Muslim world listened and was lulled into torpor for the last sixty years, a torpor that precluded real economic development or political progress and cultural change. The number one issue on the mind of a taxi driver in Tabriz or Meknes was the plight of the Palestinians. Their fate and the loss of Palestine to the Jews was a kind of mass Muslim mourning that denied them a normal life. For decades this phenomena benefited both the politically repressive Arab governments and the Ulma anticipating clerical establishment. It is no accident that the ultra repressive fanatical Iranian regime, which combines both government and clerical worlds uses the “death to Israel” chant to open and close all its gatherings.

"Can these stones reach Iraq?"

   Recently however, the synergy of youthful demographics and Internet based technology has put the Palestinians on the very back burner. Neda Soltani didn’t die for the fourth generation of Palestinians right of return. Thousands of girls whose schools were burnt down in the Swat valley don’t know where Hebron is. The forty percent unemployment rate for Moroccan college graduates will not be alleviated if a Palestinian gets back his family home in Jaffa.  The wholesale failure to modernize, the utter injustice felt by everyone in dealing with life’s big and little issues in the Muslim world has reached it’s boiling point in Tehran. The enemy is close by and it is killing, maiming, beating and jailing it’s own. This in your face repression against youthful progress has nothing to do with the Jews and Muslims now know this.

    To be clear, the cry “Islam is the solution” was aimed at the street that felt repressed, harassed and tyrannized. Now fundamentalist Islam has become the new tyranny, the new torturer, the new jailer. The new youthful street intuits this.

   Some say this vote for modernity happened in Lebanon too. Unfortunately that was probably more of a head count phenomena. For the moment there aren’t enough Shia to overwhelm the Sunni and Christian population.

    Look carefully, the Iranian youth have become like Palestinians. Neda is the new Mohammed al-Dura whose disputed image ignited the whole world against Israel.

     It would be a huge mistake not to realize today’s Islamic youth want to approach the rest of their lives with more than what their parents had. They want the freedom to pick and choose information inputs and more economic progress. Unlike their parents they have stopped throwing their lives away on the pyre of Palestine. Eventually this reassessment of who is the real enemy will filter down to the Palestinian street and they will shudder at the indifference their struggle now faces.

   This is huge, and perhaps with this wind at their backs Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and Netanyahu can use this sea change to build some piers to the sane Palestinians who want a better life for themselves the compromised world of today, and not in some absolutist dreamland future.