PINR, The question of ruling legitimacy in the Muslim world is as old as Islam itself, beginning with the initial conflict that was to create the two primary branches of the religion: Sunni and Shi'a. With the death of Mohammad, the Islamic community, or ummah, was thrown into a crisis over who was best suited to rightly guide the followers of the prophet. With the accession of the fifth Caliph, Mu'awiya, the Muslim world became genuinely split along sectarian lines, with the Shi'ites essentially claiming that the successor should be chosen from amongst only the closest followers of Mohammad emphasizing the importance of the continuation of a spiritual connection to the fallen leader. Mu'awiya was basically a corrupt governor who functioned primarily in a political role, while only appeasing Islam and had less legitimacy with the most devout Muslims; however, the majority Sunni's accepted him as their Caliph.
This rift between religious versus secular authority and emphasis still continues today in the Muslim world not only in the two branches of Islam themselves, but more prominently, if not ironically, in the mainstream of popular Muslim political discourse. What role will be played by the religious leadership, which constitutes the political leadership in many instances, as the Arab world is forced to modernize, or more accurately, to integrate itself within the Western-guided, globalized climate in the Middle East? In much of the Muslim world, this is one of the questions of greatest significance as the first few years of the new century have established an explosive atmosphere of radical change in the region.
For many, familial rule, whether in the form of monarchies such as those found in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Oman, or dynastically like in Syria, is becoming an increasingly undesirable form of government as each successive younger generation is exposed to more Western political ideas and as technology such as the Internet proliferates.
The environment created by these ancient tensions is leading to cracks within many Arab regimes in the Middle East today as the region is not only embracing much Western culture but at the same time questioning the liberalness of many Western values, especially those surrounding sexuality and the role of women in society.
Another pressure being exerted from within on the Arab regimes is the friction caused by the support and cooperation with the United States-led “war on terror,” thus creating more domestic problems for Arab regimes throughout much of the Muslim world — though these problems are not entirely new as the issue of U.S. support has always been at least a minor point of contention — as many Arabs are becoming further disillusioned by their respective government's complicity in the United States' actions in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Following September 11, 2001, the United States quickly gathered a largely willing coalition of states and gained permission from the relevant countries to use the necessary military facilities needed to attack Afghanistan. At no other time in recent memory had the world so unanimously condemned an act of aggression and violence. The French daily Le Monde printed the headline on September 12th, “We are all Americans now.”
But this sympathy did not extend as deeply into Arab society. The evening of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, revelers from Egypt to Pakistan were shown celebrating the devastating blow to the country they perceived as responsible for many of their ills and many of the conflicts throughout the Muslim world.
Eighteen months later when the United States invasion of Iraq began there were extensive and violent protests throughout the Middle East. Egypt was home to some of the most extensive rioting. Cars were overturned and set on fire in Cairo and crowds were dispersed with water cannons. Plainclothes police beat protestors with metal and wooden batons. Four people were killed along with dozens injured when protestors clashed with police at the U.S. embassy in San'a, Yemen on March 22, 2003. There were also large gatherings in Oman, Bahrain, and the capital of Jordan, Amman, where tear gas was used against thousands of protestors.
These demonstrating civilians were expressing their anger towards corrupt bureaucracies that they felt were insufficiently critical of the United States' actions in Iraq or for their outright cooperation with Washington. Furthermore, many of these same people had already criticized their leaders' apathy with regard to the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The United States is also pressuring Middle Eastern regimes to speed along this process of political and social reform and to, perhaps, ride the wave of the U.S.' victory in Iraq, which many feel will result in democracy in the beleaguered state. At the recent U.S.-Arab Economic Forum held in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, giving the keynote address, said:
Tonight I have come to enlist your power and your passion in a great cause for our times; a cause that links America and the Arab world. I have come to ask you to help build the new Middle East — a Middle East peaceful, prosperous — a Middle East that is free. We face no task more important. Over the past half-century alone, we, and the peoples of the Middle East have suffered through war, revolution, boycotts and terrorism. The region has seen the development and use of some of the most lethal weapons known to man. It is no exaggeration to say that without a transformation of the Middle East, the region will remain a source of violence and terrorism fueled by poverty, by alienation, and by despair. We must not let that happen. We will not let that happen.
The confluence of this force of discontent in the Muslim world fueled by those who transcend the profile of pigeon-holed extremists and the continued exposure to Western-style government and the boons of capitalism threaten to extinguish the old rule in much of the Middle East and beyond, especially in some of the more famous and entrenched instances such as the House of Saud on the Arabian Peninsula. The addition of continuing U.S. pressure for Arab regimes to reform only adds a sense of urgency to what many now feel is an inevitable process.
