Tunisian Islamists Step Up
Peter Bergen writes that the jihadists Osama bin Laden left behind must be mindful that "their world has passed them by." Al Qaeda "played no role" in the Arab Spring and the revolutions "were not the kind" they envisioned. They're "on the wrong side of history":
Protesters in the streets of Tunis and Cairo didn't carry placards with pictures of bin Laden's face, and the Facebook revolutionaries who launched the uprisings represent everything al-Qaeda hates: they are secular, liberal and anti-authoritarian, and their ranks include women. The eventual outcome of these revolts will not be to al-Qaeda's satisfaction either, because almost no one in the streets of Egypt, Libya or Yemen is clamoring for the imposition of a Taliban-style theocracy, al-Qaeda's preferred end for the states in the region.
But you don't have to clamor for the Taliban to support Islamism, as this New York Times story reports about the rise of one political party in Tunisia:
Tunisia Is Uneasy Over Party of Islamists
The once-banned Ennahda Party has emerged from obscurity, returned from abroad and established themselves as perhaps the most powerful political force in post-revolution Tunisia.
The concerns are over rumors of "attacks on unveiled women and artists, of bars and brothels sacked by party goons, of plots to turn the country into a caliphate."
It would be sad if the Arab Spring only enabled greater repression instead of more freedom for the citizens of these countries.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Tunisian Islamists Step Up
Politics, as nature, abhors a vacuum. Since all those Muslim moderates we keep hearing about seem never to engage in any sort of political organizing, the radicals step in to fill the gap left by the departure of the despots.
Oct '10
Re: Tunisian Islamists Step Up
will we see an islamist revolution under obama's watch? oh, obama's going to do a speech this week addressing the Muslim world again.