For once the Saudis fully owned a US President. Now they have realised (with a shudder) he is worth nothing. He will not nuke Iran for them. What were they thinking! Fondling a blue globe and dancing with swords with this guy? Suddenly the Saudis woke up, they need friends in this world.
10
I hope In Islamic world , this short but intense medieval dark age reincarnation come to end.
It started in the wake of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, since then engulfed entire Islamic world with dark , medieval, religious inquisition type of sectarian radicalism. Millions were massacred, many religious political movement are just paid fascists black shirts or SA thugs type nihilistic brutes. They quench their blood thirstiness with innocent people lives and blood. From Iran to Pakistan Turkey to Egypt Algeria to Indonesia Religious sectarian radicalism brought back dark ages in to the 20-21st century junction.
Of course they do not have anything to offer but promise mad max type of world for future. Kill, maim, destroy.
Suffering hopefully ends, responsible people pay the prices for this plague.
2
Don't let Beirut fool you. While Lebanon always bragged about being the "jewel of the Mediterranean," its veneer of religious tolerance and French colonial chic was thin indeed. Whenever life returned to normal, one or another of Lebanon's multiple religious factions would start a civil war and things would go to hell again. I know. I lived there for a few years in the 70s.
4
"People are sick of the sectarian manipulation of politics to mask theft, corruption and state capture by oligarchical elites. They are sick of the manipulation of fear. They are sick of the life being sucked out of them.'
With the exception of evangelical Christians, the above from the piece could be America.
36
Watch closely, while the demonstrations in Iraq and Lebanon are absolutely justified, they are being hijacked by the US and Israel with support and financing from Saudi Arabia, with the intent of bringing down the current governments who support Iran, and installing governments who will help in the goal of isolating Iran.
Just more US regime change supported by the NYT.
A motive for regime change in Iraq:
"The recent decisions of Abdel Mahdi made him extremely unpopular with the US. He has declared Israel responsible for the destruction of the five warehouses of the Iraqi security forces, Hashd al-Shaabi, and the killing of one commander on the Iraqi-Syrian borders. He opened the crossing at al-Qaem between Iraq and Syria to the displeasure of the US embassy in Baghdad, whose officers expressed their discomfort to Iraqi officials. He expressed his willingness to buy the S-400 and other military hardware from Russia. Abdel Mahdi agreed with China to reconstruct essential infrastructure in exchange for oil, and gave a $284 million electricity deal to a German rather than an American company. The Iraqi Prime Minister refused to abide by US sanctions and is still buying electricity from Iran and allowing the exchange of commerce that is bringing large amounts of foreign currency and boosting the Iranian economy."
https://ejmagnier.com/2019/10/05/the-us-iran-silent-war-is-transformed-into-an-iraq-uprising/
How dare the government of Iraq go against US interests...
5
If the Lebanese military's "conduct were exemplary" there would be no Hizbullah running roughshod over the entire country with its sectarian army that outguns the national army by a quantum factor. Until such time as the Lebanese people rise up against Hizbullah, the ONLY winner in that corrupt and decadent country will be Iran. It would behoove Roger Cohen to do his homework and not shoot pollyannaish blanks from the hip.
6
I do blame the Muslim clerics for everything wrong in the Middle East. Nothing else continuously lasted over the last 14 centuries.
In the Quran there are no Sunnis and no Shiites, no hadiths and no Sharia law. The Quran is just the book of eternal principles free of unnecessary and rigid details doomed to be proven anachronous by the passage of time. By definition, God is too smart to make such kind of beginner’s mistakes.
It means all those wrongdoings have been a human creation, thus only the Muslim clerics could be responsible for them. If the students misbehave, blame the teachers!
The leaders of any society cannot be the most faithful individuals because only God is in charge of determining who a believer is. The people can’t do it. We are just too limited and tribal.
It means replacing Mohammed as a societal leader had nothing to do with faith but with the practical organizational skills and managerial abilities.
Only the events over centuries would prove if the ancient tribes correctly implemented God’s words or not.
After a minority of the persecuted Europeans fled the Old Continent at the end of the WWII, the locals in the Middle East were obliged to welcome them and provide with shelter and security.
God’s orders, not mine!
If they did it, maybe those strangers would have been able to recognize how, why and where the locals wrongly implement the Quran verses.
Only the true believers are capable of recognizing when God is sending them the help.
I am almost sixty.
I grew up in a communist Yugoslavia, worked in Saddam’s Iraq when it was the staunch US ally in the midst of Iraq-Iran War, witnessed the birth of “democracy” in the Balkans (frankly, that was just a fancy name for the awakening of the fascistic nationalism) and resettled to America to experience the sectarianizing of this country, reckless spending of the taxpayer money by the drunken sailors and export of the US industrial base to China.
Frankly, in my personal opinion, the person that most faithfully implemented the Quranic verse was the communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito.
I still vividly remember how they taught us in the schools to love everybody regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or nationality.
No wonder Tito was the founding father of the non-aligned movement during which there was no Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflicts.
The stunning fact is that Tito was able to unite the Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Bosniaks, Montenegrins and Macedonians into an unified society capable of kicking the Nazis and fascist out of country during the WWI, then expelling the Red Army in 1948, and staying independent all the time somewhere between the West and the East.
When I read now about the colossal hatred and animosity ravaging both the Balkans and the Middle East, there is no doubt in my mind that Tito was implementing the pure faith without any help from clergy.
4
Old saying "you can always hire half of the poor to kill the other half"
Works perfectly as a metaphor for the oligrachs in stifling revolution/democracy.
By the time the middle-east is a region of predominately representative government:
It will be snowing in the desert!
1
The problem is that, where Islam is dominant in the Middle East, it operates as an all-encompassing ‘socio-political-economic’ system....whereby powerful clans and clerics accommodate one another. They are deeply entrenched and unlikely to relinquish their ruling control for the sake of freedom and democracy.
24
The USA stands with the worst of the Middle East nations. Saudi Arabia! It appears that the USA is feared, not respected and the policy of holding Syria oil will not play out well across the region.
2
It is difficult to argue with Roger Cohen’s conclusions about the present and future of the Middle East, even though the analysis is based largely on anecdotal observation.
The Lebanese demonstrators are young and attractive and decent citizens of what they wish were a real country. The world should wish for the same thing, but the leaders and current decision makers in Lebanon are the parents of the demonstrators’ parents.
Mr. Cohen’s assessment is that, just as the demonstrators in Beirut and Tripoli demand, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, must leave Lebanon and western Syria and the Damascus leader Bashar al-Assad must also go.
Mr. Cohen writes: “Nation creation also involves pushing back the power that has benefited most from American war, followed by American retreat, followed by American incoherence: Iran.” He is right, but it is very troubling that in the case of Iran, Mr. Cohen does not speak of the corrupt and aggressive leadership there.
Instead, Roger Cohen follows the example of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu by blaming the Iranian nation of over 80 million people, as though there is something inherently wrong with those people.
Mr. Cohen knows that the citizens of Iran are under the cruel boots of dictators who are religious extremists. It does not serve the goal of a just peace in the Middle East to blur that fact.
2
Post-sectarian is a dream, not only for the countries of the Middle East (including Israel), but also for the United States of America.
4
Post-sectarian Middle East? Perhaps, for those groups whose populations are sizable enough to survive. But Mr. Cohen fails to describe the slow wave ethnic cleansing that started with Dubya's dismantling of Iraq, and then spread to Syria and elsewhere in the region.
I'm talking about groups of peoples indigenous to this region, for millenia - the Assyrians and Chaldeans. They are an ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural minority throughout the Middle East. They numbered some two and one half million in Iraq, before Dubya's disastrous foray, and now, after ISIS decimated even more of these communities, fewer than 250,000 remain in the countries of their birth.
And I find all the outpouring of sympathy for the Kurds simply appalling. Everyone in Iraq and Syria knows that they have refused to return properties rightfully owned by the Assyrian people. They have refused to permit many of these people to return to their villages, and handed their properties over to other Kurds.
How do I know this? I have family in the region. One of my Assyrian grandmothers survived the Armenian Genocide (that saw the slaughter of Assyrians and Pontic Greeks, as well). And my family has seen this century's version of what happened in the last.
Once the smallest ethnic groups are slaughtered, it's easy to proclaim that you're non-sectarian. But some of us understand exactly what was done to our people.
8
For now, power is shifting from the palace to the streets.
What is also interesting if not ironic is how far these movements for democracy are away from all that putative nation building undertaken by American foreign policy and national security elites. The whole American designed structure is failing across the region.
The entire David Petraeus-written counterinsurgency doctrine of the American elite is heading into the ashcan of history next to the "hearts and minds" doctrine of the Vietnam war.
It was a clash of civilizations, and the other civilization turns out to be winning on its home ground. Surprise! Who would have thought? Is it possible Mao had it right in his book on guerrilla war?
Maybe democracy comes out of revolution and not a military assistance program?
The Middle East has defined itself by ethnicities and religions for centuries. When I was in Turkey, Syria and Jordan I amazed how many times individuals told me in a low voice or in secret, or here in the USA that they were fed up with being defined this way primarily. They want to belong to a nation as citizens. It's fallacy to believe all Muslims are religious any more than all Christians or members of other religions are. People find ways of getting out of religious obligations even when there is familial and social pressure to conform. I recall reading a study perhaps by PEW that suggested only 20% of human beings are really religious. 40% are so-so and 40% not interested. Remember: when a religion runs a country it makes a mess of i: the best of religion seeks to promote justice and peace, healthy moral individuals and societies, openness, tolerance and acceptance, oppose oppression, predatory behavior and keep government, social institutions and individuals accountable.
3
Ok, but I remember the "Arab Spring" in Egypt. How did that work out?
3
@Lucretius
There is a learning curve for everything...
1
We in America have much to learn from these brave souls in Iraq, Lebanon, Chile, and elsewhere who are fighting for human rights
beyond sectarian strangleholds and politicians embracing corporate greed. Imagine that, America has something to learn from beyond her borders, no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. Trump is "out" of the middle east--may he soon be "out" here at home, too, and those in his party who so willingly swallowed his kool aid, may they somehow come to their senses as they are voted out of office, and lie in their own home states and find the strength to study, let's say, the life of Saint Francis.
2
Thanks for your columns from Beirut. It's refreshing to hear from the citizens of Lebanon and about what's going on there. It's also refreshing to hear about the events around the world that get buried in the back pages of the NYT and other media sources so long as they focus on POTUS and his every breath.
2
"the power that has benefited most from American war, followed by American retreat, followed by American incoherence: Iran."
No Roger, the power that benefits most from an American retreat is the power of the indigenous peoples; Iraqis, Iranians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Afghans, and Syrians, Without imposed American culture and American plunder the indigenous peoples will figure things out and the Middle East will find self-determination.
1
As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should remember that dramatic change seems impossible until it happens.
4
"Sectarianism sucks!" is, to my way of thinking, a welcome sign of political maturity in an area long wracked by centuries of religious "certainty" that one's own faith is the only "one, true" faith and everyone else is a heretic. I think that many if not most students of comparative religion learn that God (however one chooses to define this term) is not a sectarian and that sincere seekers of truth understand, that although truth may be one (or at least thought to be one), individual perceptions of that truth vary with the truth-seeker. You respect my "truth" and I'll respect your "truth" is the only sensible solution to this question. In the mean time treat others as you would want others to treat you. This is simply common sense and doesn't need any sort of religious sanction to make it so.
3
Turmoil and violence will continue in the Middle-East as long as people continue to identify themselves with their religions, as Sunnis or Shiites rather than Lebanese or Iraqis. But the change from one identification to another is not easily done because, as the article states, the countries are disconnected from the historical reality of their people. Europeans killed themselves by the thousands during the Renaissance, thinking themselves Catholic and Protestants, until they viewed themselves as part of a political entity.
Religion as a unifying force is no longer feasible in a modern state where the rights of disparate individuals must be protected. Too short a time has passed since their invented countries were created by foreigners for them to resolve their differences.
32
@Frank Casa
Is that good or bad? If there is no emotional connection to the current dwarf ststes, then they could create a big one, something like the US of the ME
2
@Frank Casa
These demonstrations have nothing to do with religion.
The demonstrations, justified by government corruption and poverty have been hijacked by the US, Israel, and supported and funded by Saudi Arabia who intend to install governments who will not support Iran, as Iraq and Lebanon now do.
informative reading w/links to sources:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
a blog that is wonderful counterpoint to the NYT!
Roger Cohen. Do not underestimate the ability of the old guards in the ME to ruthlessly crush these movements, if indeed that is even what they are, rather than simply mere incoherent, unorganized youthful rebellions.
The old guards have all the hard power and they have never shied away from using it.
69
@Jeremy Kaplan: The claim to know what God thinks is the fakest resort to authority in the world. Our souls are the software we develop from the experience of living.
1
@Jeremy Kaplan
I wish writers would stop assuming everyone knows what they're talking about when they initialize important words in their sentences, especially if they want the reader to hear what they are saying.
What is ME?
2
@Brooks
Uh, Middle East?
A bit like using US, er, the United States.
4
being a bit harsh on trump.
the saudis were nice to him.
he had no choice.
americans should be grateful.
and, don't forget, only 15 of 19 hijackers on 9/11--if memory serves--were from the kingdom of saud.
plus one butchered wapo columnist.
4
All the more reason then to praise, honor and protect the vibrancy and adherence to democratic values of Israel where free elections occur with amazing frequency.
6
King Abdullah of Jordan "broods"? I doubt it.
A New York Times columnist writing a pro-nationalist and anti-identity politics piece. I guess what’s good for the Middle East is bad for the United States. We’re devolving to a group of separate tribes inhabiting the same land mass while they’re striving for a cohesion.
3
@Mandrake
Yup, amazing that the irony was lost on Cohen and his editors.
On which of these fine Muslim nations should Palestine and Gaza base a model?
5
The Czar Putin, must be happier than ever in his life too have all this chaos around the world. Plus his useful idiot and republican
party taking down and destroying America. It won’t and can’t get any better for him.
1
Much to my delight, faced with the continuing predations of their overlords, people all over the world are coming to their collective senses and proclaiming as one,
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."
All power to my sisters and brothers around the world. For the many, not the few. Not me, us. We need a revolution, and it's coming around the world.
Sanders 2020
2
The world is rising to the occasion, the urgent need to oust demagogues and opportunists from power, however awful their 'marriage' to religion, crookery and cruelty in the name of an all-loving God (Ugh!). Thanks to the Internet, people are waking up to their inalienable rights to have a voice, and human rights demanding satisfaction. It's about time. And it seems universal. In Bolivia, for instance, Evo is trying to perpetuate himself so he can escape what's coming, the long arm of justice for the ongoing corruption and incompetence. Just look at Venezuela's dictatorship, a sore eye towards a badly understood socialism. And Chile, with such wide inequalities, an insult to the least among them, now resolved to go out in the streets, to change things for the better. Even in the USA we have a proto-fascist charlatan in-chief, finally being taken to account for his criminality. In the Middle East, Theocracies have their days counted, as a healthy separation of religion from state is overdue. Let's hope that Iran, Russia, Turkey, Syria's autocracies are ousted as well, once the people become aware that Unity makes Strength.
1
One can ask about American youth, well educated, well fed and well privileged by overly protective and tolerant parents, sitting at home glued to their computer friends while their government rejects progress and lets the world burn, seas rise and air become poisoned with the residue of carbon based fuels.
Are they paralyzed by a democracy drowning under the influence of money and distortion of an electoral system which allows the losers to win? Their parents and grandparents filled the streets with protests advocating peace, civil rights and tolerance. They changed the culture of a nation.
Today, Trump and his right wing Republican enablers trample on law, the constitution and basic decency. Shame on a complacent generation.
3
Nothing much to say about this, other than to marvel at this quote (about the "universal" struggle): "In France, it was a hike in fuel tax." So now Mr. Cohen is suddenly a populist and down with the Gilets Jaunes! My, what a difference a few months make. I eagerly await his article in praise of Matteo Salvini!
3
Meanwhile,the US is embroiled in it’s own sectarian strife.
Who cares why should the US have to be involved in everything all over the world let them figure it out for themselves. We have our own problems to worry about and thankfully we are no longer dependent on their oil.
4
Protests across the hemispheres are running neck and neck with global warming as a tsunami of catastrophes heads our way over the next 20 to 30 years. Perhaps the common enemy of extinction may result in cooperation rather than class warfare, but it is more likely to result in the Armageddon so desired by the Evangelical Right.
8
This second rise of Arab nationalism is a welcomed trend. The first wave, in the 1960’s was anti-colonial and ushered in the era of authoritarianism. But this wave is being propelled by the energy and direction generated by the “Arab Spring.”
Young people see no hope in the old, corrupt regimes and are reaching across ethnic, religious and klan divides.
When the first Arab Spring emerged the United States either stood on the sidelines or opposed the movement simply because it was not firmly under our tutelage. We like the idea of elections, but usually because we’ve already guided the results in our own policy directions.
These new movements are different and offer a different direction for their countries. The question is arising once again, do we really believe in democracy? Or are we looking for elections like the travesty that occurred in Egypt?
The answer to that question will determine whether we are a nation of values, or simply one with “interests”.
9
The Iranian boot is on their necks, and Hezbollah has the guns. Sorry, Lebanon, but this hopefulness will be squashed, and nobody is coming to the rescue.
5
Have a look at what is happening in Algeria, very interesting
Read this. Then read it again-and again. And again. A new ME, a dying USA.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
A brief return from NYT retirement - for Shukri in Beirut
04:22 GMT
The Middle East mess is the result of suffocating religious dogma, and the greed and manipulation of western nations.
The people of those states need to temper their religious fervor, and divorce themselves of archaic colonial-type subjugation.
18
I used to think that religion was the root of all evil in the world (an oxymoron, if ever there was one, but so apt). But then along came Trump, who is supremely irreligious and yet his evil and corruption is on an unprecedented global scale having nothing to do with religion (except for the relatively minor support, in terms of numbers, that he has from evangelicals; still can’t figure that one out). His evil stems from pure greed. Still, I’m happy to hear that these young people in the Middle East no longer have a use for religious sects, in relation to governing, at least.
5
@FJG
Both Iraq and Lebanon have good relations with Iran.
The US is not going to allow that to continue.
The US, Israel, supported and financed by Saudi Arabia intend to install governments in Iraq and Lebanon that do not support Iran.
They are using the justified demonstrations, to instigate coups in both countries.
Those who pay serious attention to foreign affairs, may remember talk of snipers during Ukraine's Maidan demonstations and during the early Syrian demonstrations.
That's the US CIA at work instigating a coup.
Why does the US have to cause more harm to the world?... for the sake of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Certainly there is huge corruption in both Iraq and Lebanon.
Thanks to the US regime change attempt in Syria, Lebanon hosts 1.5 million refugees, with a population of 5.9 million. This has made life in Lebanon very difficult.
Iraq is rich with oil wealth, but restoring services to the level before US invasion and wrecking of Iraq, has been difficult.
That the US is trying more regime change is really depressing.
6
@Frau Greta That "relatively minor support" from evangelicals is not remotely "relatively minor." That crowd is the entire reason that Trump is in office.
4
The line that stood out for me was the goal of separating religion from politics. I wish them much luck because a more stable Middle East would be desirable for everyone. I wish our own Christian evangelicals would recognize that religious beliefs not shared by a large majority of our population do not make for good government. Instead, evangelicals have achieved political power with Trump and the Republican Party, and they’re busy stuffing the courts with right-wing extremists whose qualifications as legal scholars are scant and whose political beliefs support white nationalism, homophobic discrimination and denial of rights, voter suppression, and extreme government interference in private medical decisions. These actions will only further divide the country as we struggle to overcome the anger and hatred that seem so much a part of politics here.
23
Secularism or the separation of state and religion is one of the most important task to do to build a democracy. And this what people from Iraq and Lebanon are asking. To those two countries you may add Algeria where there is no separation of power and religion. People are raising against a corrupt government. And they demand separation of the state and religion. Of course, Donald Trump is "all hat and no camel". But as the head of a Republican Administration which does not respect the separation of State and Church and wants to build a American theocracy, how he could support the people of Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria?
10
This is another crucial moment in the tumultuous history of the middle east. And we, with centuries of aquired history and diplomacy, are standing here like a bunch of clueless clowns not grasping the opportunities, we had been longing for so long.
3
"...when religion is separated from politics..."
Meanwhile, we in the US seem to be moving backwards toward politics captured by religion, as exemplified by the Christian Right.
12
@LS
Religion has always played a part in our politics.
The first Catholic president we ever had was Kennedy. People had a prejudice or mistrust of Catholics.
Our money still says "In God We Trust" on the back.
1
How long will it last? Tribes are surging back in the West, can we hope they dissappear in the East?
2
How do these protests have anything to do with our President?
3
“Something is going on in the Middle East. People from Beirut to Baghdad are in the streets clamoring for nations to replace sects. They have been met with bullets in Iraq. They have been met with bluster in Lebanon. They are still there. A new generation is tired of the old ways. The talk is of revolution. Nation here denotes unity, not nationalism.”
To correctly understand the problem we have to go the very beginning.
In the Quran, the God’s Book, it has been specifically prescribed there is nobody equal to the Almighty.
It means even the Prophets are not even to God, meaning the messengers have no right to create and supplement God’s words or prescribe anything faith-related.
Now, what does this practically mean?
It means that prophet Mohamed didn’t have any right to prescribe the behavior or rituals outside of the Quran. He knew it perfectly well so he even specifically prescribed his physical body never to be idolized or imitated.
It means that no hadiths or Sharia Law can be construed as the faith.
Without those two human contaminations there are no Sunnis and no Shiites, thus no sects and no civil war.
If the Quran was implemented literally and spiritually, the Sunnis and the Shiite wouldn’t be two branches of the Islam but just two political parties that 14 centuries ago started a civil war over the office of presidency.
It means the Sunnis and Shiites are just the ancient democrats and republicans…
2
What is important here?
Don't pay any attention to the miniscule number of recomendations. This comment wasn't written for the atheists byt the theists.
It indends to change their worldviews.
I can tell you that over last quarter of century I couldn't find any Muslim cleric capable of undermining the aforementioned hypothesis or proving it wrong.
That's very encouraging fact for the future of the Middle East...
Just one simple question for the sake of truth.
If slamming the doors in Europe in face of the Arabs seeking a shelter from the bloody carnages ravaging the Middle East were the racism, inhumanity and hatred, should the shutting of the entrance door to the refugees fleeing from Europe asking for a refuge in Asia almost 7 decades be identically classified?
By the way, didn’t the Quran specifically prescribed to the faithful to help those asking for shelter and refuge or commended us to help those in dire need?
Didn’t God create all of us, so He naturally cares for every human being?
Mr. Cohen draws our attention to signs of hope of a post-sectarian future, well-aware of the many challenges. It's telling how many of the comments scold him for not writing a column about sectarianism.
1
This column, added to that of Jorge Ramos about Latin America, suggests the possible emergence of a “1968” (or even “1848”) global awakening (viz. the ongoing Hong Kong protests) which has yet to spread to the U.S. What such a global response to wealth inequality, plutocratic devastation of the climate, governmental corruption and the world-wide retreat of liberal democracy would look like in the 21st century is anybody’s guess. It’s hard to imagine that a similar upheaval would not follow in the U.S. if Trump is reelected with an Electoral College win while significantly losing the popular vote. The global economy may be even more unstable than academic economists, perusing graphs and charts from 2017 (“the last year for which data are available” [sic]), and social frictions may be even more of a powder keg than visiting journalists (spending “two weeks in another town”) can appreciate. Remember all those dystopian novels? Dust them off (if you’re old school) or download them again from the cloud because they may be travelogues to the near future.
7
My small experience in managing an organization taught me early on that any form of governing is more about listening than telling. What all of these sect run countries have in common is a lot of telling, and no listening---Off course that discourse pattern is a norm for leaders who know the truth. If God is talking to you, who needs to listen to the people you are ruling? God may know some certain truths, but, governing a nation is not one of them.
3
Arab spring (fall?) two? Remember how the last one worked out? The authoritarian thugs in the Middle East won’t fall easily as Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya et:al should have taught us. Without significant international support this will likely fail. It was trying regime change on the cheap and easy that gave us so much misery and failed states to begin with. We played our own role in the failures of the last two decades and under Trump are even less prepared for more chaos and confusion than before. I wish them well but hope is a rare commodity these days and lacking here as well.
10
It's hard to read this piece and draw any conclusions about what may happen to these once vital countries. An aura hangs over them of uncertainty in regard to the future but a longing to return to peace and stability. Once politics, religion, differing beliefs get in the mix it makes stability hard to provide. I wish them well and to stay hopeful that the leaders they need come forth.
7
Now if only we Americans could get religion out of politics.
And here's the phrase that captures that issue perfectly:
"If you don't want an abortion, don't have one; but get your laws out of my womb!"
27
@nlightning The states have an obligation to secure appropriate health care and protect life.All medical procedures are regulated by the states abortion is not the exception.
To compel doctors and nurses to do procedures they don't want to is wrong except in a dire emergency.To go back to the time when all abortions were illegal would be terrible.I think a woman has a right to have abortion period and if it is late term abortion so be it.
If you do late term abortions which are extremely rare and there is a viable infant that should not be abandoned or killed.
1
This analysis is heartening. I want to believe it can happen.
12
A stable, Democratic Middle East will only evolve through social and cultural revolution, and certainly not by the intervention of third parties (US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia) acting in their own self interest. These third parties will try mightily to maintain their influence, because influence equals money and power. It may take several generations of Arab Springs to produce the changes necessary to permit peace and prosperity in the former British and French mandates. This is a time when the Middle East needs informed and decisive leadership from the US, something Trump could never provide. A well educated, democratic, non sectarian Middle East is the only road to peace for all parties, including Israel.
9
I think Trump's psychopathological aberration of empathy is tied to his extremely limited vocabulary. The 4 October 2019 issue of Science has a section devoted to the effects of language on the brain. I think Trump is an interesting case of getting by on 500 words or less.
10
It looks like Roger thinks in the old way. He thinks that America is the solution to Middle Eastern sectorial problems. Trump, on the other hand, thinks unnecessary American involvement is a cause of the sectarian problems there. He wants to keep America out as much as possible. That may be one of the reasons why unity is spreading many places there. Under Trump, nobody in the middle east should expect unrealistic protection from America to sectarian elements there. As a result things will get settled in a natural way. The recent Turkey - Kurdish conflict is a perfect example.
2
Israel is conspicuously absent from the list of Middle Eastern states striving to become "post-sectarian."
About 12 years ago, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that absent the elusive two-state solution, Israel risked becoming either non-Jewish or non-democratic. Since then others in Israel and elsewhere have echoed this concern.
I would welcome an analysis by Mr. Cohen, whose experience and insight I greatly respect, of what outcomes are possible -- and likely -- for Israel, in a post-sectarian Middle East.
20
@Michael. The Arabs, not Israel, reject “two states for two peoples.” The binary choice you and others posit, Israel as either non-Jewish or non-democratic, is a talking point more than a substantive one. It is a version of the false 19th century European concern (that declining birth rates compromised their national identity) projected onto Israel.
While it has also become popular rhetoric to call Israel a theocracy or beholden to religious extremists, anyone with actual knowledge knows that to be a false charged.
It seems that most of these arguments, because they are premised on false assumptions or worse, represent a continuing unease with the “novel” concept of the Jewish people once again being in control of their destiny with the re-establishment of their right to self-determination in a part of their historical homeland.
The issue so many seek to avoid, by dragging Israel in to discussions in which it has no place, is why are the Jewish people the only indigenous group to have been restored to sovereignty? Why is the default position to return lands lost by one imperial conqueror (the Ottomans) to the prior imperial conqueror (the Arabs) rather than to the indigenous people who were (and remain) subject to Arab colonialism?
Israel is the all too convenient distraction from this far more relevant discussion. Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans and others have rights denied to them by their Arab (and Turkish and Persian) overlords the world continues to ignore
5
@Michael: Many Israelis are post-religion. The Orthodox, of course, are not.
2
Here too, systems are rigged for the privileged. Yet it seems most of us plebeians are accepting of that.
It may be true that Americans are 'exceptional' this way. I'd rather we were more like these non-sectarian protesters.
1
It will be interesting to see how these young idealists behave once (if) they begin to approach the assumption of political power. Will they coalesce around shared policy preferences, or will they fall back on the old ties of sect and ethnicity?
1
@Green Tea: Dictatorships like Syria's generally do not groom the public for self-governance in schools that debunk illusions and delusions. Assad himself asserted that Syria needed to do this to become democratic, over a period of time.
1
The scales have begun to fall from the eyes of the Lebanese and Iraqis. Their rulers use of Israel as the all-purpose boogeyman and distraction from their authoritarian and corrupt rule suddenly no longer works. If they could achieve anything close to the rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs, the region would benefit.
Unfortunately, Iran, Turkey and their assorted jihadists proxies (along with their Western sympathizers) are prepared to fight for their own hegemonic goals over the bodies of the locals. Whether they can get away with their homegrown forms of repression remains to be seen if this is truly a grassroots protest. All it would take to swing the issue would be the defection of the Lebanese and Iraqi militaries - but as both have been deeply penetrated, nothing is certain.
In all this, unfortunately, the critical player may prove to be Russia. Are Western interests really going to made dependent on what Putin’s Russia decides?
55
@Charlie in NY It's a good thing people know about the rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs - whose Joint party is now the third largest in Israel. The Israeli Arabs could do two things to help bring to the Middle East the post-sectarian future of which Roger Cohen's article speaks, and also peace between Israel and Palestine. What the Israeli Arabs could do is 1): insist on performing some kind of national service in Israel - where they are not conscripted for a variety of reasons, most of which are stupid and 2): open their mouths, louder, and tell the rest of the ME what it's like to have almost the same opportunities as the rest of the citizens of their country. The reason they don't have exactly the same rights is 1). My secret agenda concerns the power of the Rabbinical Court, which controls Family Law. If or when the Israeli Arabs have more power, they can help the secular population get out from under the yoke of religion and join the young Middle East in a post-sectarian future. Inshallah.
9
@Charlie in NY
@Jenifer Bar Lev
It is the US and Israel with funding and support from Saudi Arabia hijacking justified demonstrations as cover for coups in Iraq and Lebanon.
If Russia chooses to have any role in this mess, it would be to calm things down... I bet.
The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are raging tigers out to obliterate any country that supports Iran.
I hope that all three countries somehow get what they give.
Though that would mean more violence.
I was going to say unproductive violence, but unfortunately violence is very productive.
It produces more violence.
If Putin can calm the situation, cheers to him.
The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia do not seem to have the genetic ability to encourage peace...
or maybe they could do peace after they obliterate Iran and arrange the rest of the world to their liking
3
https://twitter.com/asadabukhalil/status/1192955528369995776
Doesn’t exactly fit the narrative here.
I am deeply distrustful of all Western reporters of whatever ideology who go overseas and find protestors who seemingly line up exactly with the reporter’s own views. One can’t help suspecting that there has been a certain amount of cherry-picking going on. And when one reads other sources, it generally starts to look more complicated.
And Mr. Cohen neglects to mention another place where protestors are met with bullets— Gaza. Mr. Cohen writes for a newspaper where four opinion pieces defended the shooting of those protestors, putting all the blame on Hamas. And if nonsectarianism is the wave of the future in the Middle East, what does that say about Zionism? Is Mr. Cohen in favor of a one state solution with equal rights for both Israeli Jews and Palestinians? He doesn’t even mention the issue. Is nonsectarianism only supposed to be good everywhere else in the Mideast?
13
@Donald Mr. Cohen is much more than a reporter. He is a scholar of the Middle Eastern regions and Europe.
The real positive here is America not sticking its nose in anymore. American foreign policy and military adventurism.. peppered with torture, corruption and breathtaking ignorance.. has brought the Middle East to its knees since the spurious excuse of 9/11 was used cynically to invade, occupy and “democratise.” It institutionalised and embedded sectarianism in Iraq’s political structures. It empowered Iran. It led to the the political power play and pushback of the Islamic State in Iraq as a counterweight to Shia corruption and Iranian influence.. and then Syria. Now, at last, Trump has pulled out of the American influence game in the Middle East to the screams of the US foreign policy “experts” and indoctrinated military thinkers droning on about terrorism and national security. The clear evidence has been there for all to see.. American influence and interference has made things worse... much worse. It’s no accident that things are starting to change slightly in the Middle East ... and it is directly related to the US not sticking its nose in. There’s a long way to go, but the usual power plays are beginning to look a bit different. Three things are essential. Lay off Iran. Keep your nose out of Iraq and Syria and stop back the sham democracy in Israel. Let it play out for once.. history has shown that the US pretty much makes a mess in the region... oh! And pull out of Afghanistan yesterday. Trump is the bizarre and unhinged unintended consequence you’ve been waiting for.
4
Maybe Cohen is finally getting it. The last step is writing about how the systems are rigged not how they “look” rigged. It’s not about democracy. Look at our own country.
2
Adding guns to any dispute only escalates it.
1
Meanwhile, theTrump Administration and conservative judges are trying to give (Christian) religion a larger role in government.
What could go wrong?
8
Yes, there is something in the air all over earth
Little people, are rising, fed up with strong men thieves
Hong Kong also
US will too when we realize how trapped we are
Government everywhere is working only for a few
and they keep upping their weaponry
Peace on Earth...
3
When the rubber hits the road we'll see how post-sectarian the Middle East is. I'm going to guess not very.
3
A few oddities in this piece, otherwise onto a dynamic of great potential consequence: the dream worthy demolition of the ancient hatreds that dominate the Muslim world.
But the oddities go further, and Coehn is onto a more relevant subject but is blind to it by his own prejudices. He says "Such identity obsession, which stands in the way of shared citizenship, seems anachronistic to members of a younger Middle Eastern generation raised on a borderless cyber world." Where is there another another country where "identity obsession" is tearing itself apart? Well...the United States.
The US, led energetically by no less than the Times, is more like Lebanon. Do we have a balance of women, blacks, gays, hispanics on this or that company board? Do the (recent Times bizarre story) Amherst athletic teams have a good balance of "people of color"? Can the Democrats (gasp!) get away with a ticket combining only a woman and a gay or, God forbid, white people?
The US, as the old Lebanon, is obsessed with ethnic, racial and gender identity. At least in Lebanon the population sees the evil of it. Here, led by the Times we should note, racial and identity obsession is a high priority.
When will we take to the streets?
1
@Allan H.
The battle being fought in the streets of Beirut is for freedom from religious rule and for individual -- for all humans -- equal rights. The battle being fought in the streets of The U.S. is exactly the same. When is asking for equal rights for every human regardless of ethnicity, race, sex or sexual preference, age, religion or absence of religion -- or any other damned thing -- an "evil" obsession? We are, and have been for too many weary years, in the streets. Why aren't you?
You can keep blaming the European powers for everything that happens in the Middle East but its not inevitable that people have to kill each other because they are different from one another. Where's your diversity is the answer to all problems here. Always the same lame explanations with little intellectual insight into what is actually going on.
"Her voice broke. Tears overcame Zeinab Mirza, a political studies lecturer at the American University of Beirut. She was crying for Lebanon’s awakening. “In a way,” she said, “We were in a coma before.”"
They have been in coma over the last 14 centuries. I have been saying it over the last quarter of century. I know why and can prove it. The arguments and logic supporting it are so strong that no Muslim can raise their voice to object it.
Just provide me with the platform to present the solution.
My hope for the future is the youth of the world who recognize the insanity of it all and seek equality.
13
@Elaine Donovan
There are archives holding reports and pictures collected for well over a hundred years in the libraries of ouf great cities that show the youth of the world recognizing the insanity of it all and seeking equality. My mother marched in the 1920's, I marched in the 1960's and 1970's; some of us are still out there today. Religion is still here. Racism is, too. So, of course, is sexism, ageism and xenophobia. And ERA still hasn't made it. There is no hope.
I ho[e Cohen is correct, but I'm not sure Lebanon is the model: Lebanon is split almost 50/50 between Sunni and Shia Muslims, which forces them to work together. By contrast, Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni (with a Shia dictator - he must be a dictator in a country with less than 15% of the population Shia), and Iraq is majority Shia whose recent past includes a brutal Sunni dictator (Saddam Hussein).
2
The US emphasis on the primacy of the sectarian divide has been due to poor understanding of the region and possibly also to the nefarious influence of Israel and its interest in promoting this version of the Middle East. The result has been a systematic over-emphasis on Iran's putative power/ influence and a failure to see how much-- however divided the society--the Arab Spring was/is really a revolt against poor governance. One despairs at US ineptitude.
We're watching in real time what will be marveled over a century from now when the retrospective is crystal clear---that the electronic portal to the world that most of us now hold in the palm of our hand largely helped change in years what previously has been an epochal stalemate. It's not pretty with the granular complexities of the region along with entrenched oligarchy/plutocracies hanging on for dear life. But it's now only a matter of time before sweeping revolution will come to this region.
Here, of course, in usual form, we've taken higher possibility with the advent of digital technology and turned the into a cesspool of unfettered capitalistic ignorance and idiocy. Leave it to "American Exceptionalism" to have to be shown by the rest of the world what its innovations are REALLY supposed to achieve.
And that answer has zero to do with materialism. It has everything to with the intangibles of human social and political progress, which is what people of N. Africa and the ME obviously have recognized in this decade.
It's hard since we're living in the middle of these times and their endless turmoil, but in the end, changing the landscape of the human condition and progress is what the internet's pioneers and philosophical forebearers envisioned.
1
Let’s give Putin back the oil rich Middle East .
Wars surrounding his lust for the area have been going on since post WW2.
We do not need their oil.
We need vision and bravery and a Renaissance of technology clean and plentiful . We have our own oil reserves in North and South America. Let’s use Peace and cooperation after this dark Era is done and we Boomers are just a Dream again.
When we were young we thought our world would be wonderful for the future. We failed you miserably.
1
I know how to reform and pacify the Middle East in the shortest possible time and without any cost.
I’ve been filed-testing it over the last quarter of century and nobody was able to defeat the idea. Their only defence of the critics was the stubborn ignorance.
I just need an opportunity to explain it in a single op-ed.
Maybe the op-ed should stand for “opportunity to edit the current conditions”…
How ironic that just as the US, under the ruling party, tries to inject religion into secular law when so many in the Middle East reject the paradigm that has led to such suffering.
We are seeing what happens when the US shrinks its influence on the world order under Trump--who cozies up to crony dictators and tribalists while following his own interests versus those of the nation he leads.
It's a terrible time, a rudderless time, but like Johnson, I'm not sure it's time for hope when such an abundant amount of experience says otherwise.
Overseas, we watch protests in the streets from people yearning to be free of religion and corruption. Where are our protests as we watch lawlessness run rampant in Washington?
31
@ChristineMcM : Cohen listed the flash-points that have set off current protests==tax hikes--elsewhere in the world. Here it is talk about tax-hikes that has our billionaires protesting. How do we focus a meaningful protest against religion and corruption?
3
This confuses popular revolt with nationalism.
"The talk is of revolution. Nation here denotes unity, not nationalism."
Unity within borders is nationalism. The exclusion of those across the border, who have the same feelings about everyone inside their own borders, is a serious danger in nationalism. An example is the pulling together of Louis XIV France from its various components, which then produced a huge problem for everyone outside, especially those just outside. Another example is pulling together the various German kingdoms by Bismarck, which also produced that problem.
"The trigger can be small because a lot of struggling people across the world are at the end of their rope, angry at what look like systems rigged for the privileged."
That describes the popular revolt against a delegitimized government, aka Arab Spring in the Arab world, but Color Revolution in Eastern Europe, and other things in places like Chile.
The difference is important, especially in the US where we are already quite nationalistic, but also ripe for some form of revolt. There are fears among some already that if we can't get it from the vote, we might seek it some other way as we did in the 1960's (see the Police Riot of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention)(see also Kent State).
Popular can be right wing, left wing, or just intensely frustrated everybody. The status quo establishment seeks to demonize the very idea, but it is a valid and important idea.
7
@Mark Thomason
I like you independent and objective analyses.
4
Brilliant explanation, Roger Cohen, of how the younger generations all over the Middle East are waking up to the values of a democracy that America is abandoning right now under our rogue president Donald Trump. Revolution is in the air in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, and young post-sectarian people of many eastern Mediterranean rim countries are claiming their place in the sun of liberty and freedom.
President Trump, to our shock and shame, has abandoned our former allies, dissing them in social media and his demented foreign policy actions. He has embraced our enemies, absolute monarch Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, dictator Kim Jong-un in North Korea, and the present Russian Czar who's led that country's post-Communist ruin (remember the Berlin Wall coming down this day in 1989, unexpected by the nations of the world?).
Human rights and post-sectarian democracy in woke countries will bow to climate change. The world today is in pre-apocalyptic mode with Arctic melt and climate-warming bringing record snow and single digit cold to our central and eastern states, and catastrophic fire-birthing heat to our western states. We all need to wake up to the reality of extinction of life on earth cohabiting with national pride in newly woke countries and the downfall of our own.
9
Look at the parallels happening in the Middle East and contrast them with America. There we have people hopelessly divided by sect and religion for the purposes of greatly limiting individual freedom and keeping the autocratic rulers in power and wealthy. The words of autocrats mean nothing and they say whatever they think people want to hear.
Here we have a people with a great deal of individual freedom who are being divided by autocrats and billionaires for purposes of keeping the ruling class in power and wealthy. Our autocrats are using sectarian liberty as a cause for limiting individual freedom, which is the basis for the divisions. The words of autocrats mean nothing and they say whatever they think people want to hear.
Looks like the people of the Middle East have learned something from a century of suffering that we are on the road to abandonment. That is, a nation cannot thrive if every group in it is at each other's throats. That is, all groups must be treated equally to the point that the divisions between them dissolve and disappear. Here we are reinforcing divisions so the point that we are tearing our nation apart.
Can we learn from the new beginnings happening over there in time before we end up like what they are trying to escape? Like a lyric from a Joni Mitchell song, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone".
4
I do hope for the best for Lebanon. If this young generation will be able to forget the centuries long feuds of the Lebanese sects, then we will be facing a bright and beautiful future in the entire Middle east.
may it all come true.
4
There may be hope--but we need to temper it with realism; there have been hopes before, crushed when some autocrat became too threatened, and driven underground for generations.
Moreover, one can never predict how these protests will go--they have a tendency to flow with the unpredictability of a river out of its banks.
I am reminded of a statement supposedly attributed to Leonid Breshnev about such unpredictable movements. When asked why the Soviet Union had pulled back from fomenting instability in third world nations in the late 70's, he said "Comrade, I know that in a stable world, given time, our system will prevail. But in an unstable world? You and I could wake up tomorrow ruled by the kangaroos."
Breshnev wasn't very prescient about his system surviving even in a stable world, but he knew in a free flowing situation any predictions as to final governmental outcome were purely speculative. Add to that now the disruptions of electronic media, and those of climate change, and I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to what the political world might look like even a few years from now.
3
@Glenn Ribotsky: Freedom is chaos. Liberty is the power to negotiate the gives and gets of one's life equitably.
1
We have heard this narrative, i.e. that riots in Arab countries will result in more democracy and liberty, before on the occasion of the so-called "Arab Spring".
The Arab Spring led to the civil war in Syria, Libya falling apart and the seizure of power by a dictator (Al Sisi) in Egypt.
There are reasons to remain skeptical about the current events in Lebanon.
6
The "Arab Spring" was a first round - a round which largely failed as autocrats cracked down (or doubled down) and/or armies staged coups. However, such an outcome was never going to be the end of the story. We are seeing a second round (or the beginning of a second round). Only time will tell whether real change will come now or whether another crackdown, pause, and new uprising will be necessary.
Unfortunately, if the leader is someone like Assad, who was willing to destroy his own country & decimate his population in order to maintain power, there may be few left in some places to sustain recurring demands for positive change. Still, if other countries change, the region will change.
6
The British/French carve up of the Ottoman Empire was the work of generals who had led the war there. They drew straight lines on a map with no consideration of the Arab tribal groupings. Many herders found that their summer and winter feeding areas were now in different countries. The Kurds are not Arabs so they were not considered and Arab nations took control of the Kurds in the territories the generals had created.
I believe the current wars are a direct consequence.
8
@irdac.What we call Sykes-Picot was originally Sikes-Picot-Sazanov, until the Tsar was overthrown and they did seek to carve up the Ottoman Middle East to suit their national interests, at least at first glance. The British has bigger plans than using the French sector as a buffer to block any Russian incursion - as can be divined by their various promises and actions.
The British sought to control the entire area for reasons of Empire. To achieve this, they threw in their lot with the Hashemites (who at the time were the power in Arabia) and sought to establish a unitary Arab state ruled by them. The British faced two main problems. The most important was that the various Arab clans had no interest in being ruled by the Hashemites or having one big state. The Saud clan kicked them out of Arabia and saw themselves as the leaders because of their control of Mecca and Medina. The other Arab warlords and tribal heads wanted independence not any Hashemite suzerainity.
Second, the British economy couldn’t substation such grandiose goals - something the government generally recognized but its officials on the ground didn’t.
Third, the British needed to get rid of the French, which they did during WWII when a defeated France was weak. The French were monitoring intercepts and knew what was happening but were powerless to stop it. They did enough to stymie British pretensions.
The British traded the rights of the indigenous and non-Arab people for their imperium, every side lost.
4
If the Lebanese people can rise above the trap of identity politics they will experience peace and progress. If not we will see more of the same.
8
The takeout from this piece is very clear and it’s to do with the real values of democracy. Of the three great values - liberty, equality of rights under the law, and fraternity, America has championed and exhausted the first, freedom, when it has suited it. Freedom and equality are always in a state of tension.. like two magnets North to North .. and cannot become properly functional without the lubricant of fraternity. Freedom and equality are legal concepts and are defined and protected by the courts. Fraternity, on the other hand, is not a legal concept and cannot be protected in an open society.... and yet it is the democratic super-value, the value without which there cannot be a functioning democratic state... as the US has found to it’s cost with its own dysfunctional democracy.
The kids in the Lebanon and Iraq .. and around the Middle East .. will do much better than the US could ever do because they understand the notion of fraternity much better than the so-called expert interventionists in the State Department and the Pentagon. For once the US has to back off, keep its shallow focus on freedom to itself, and not interfere with fraternity (which they did to terrible effect in Iraq and elsewhere) in the pursuit of client states and economic leverage. What we are witnessing in these countries is the rebirth of fraternity in this post-American interference era.
17
This article is screaming “optimism!” for a region that has, unfortunately, known none for a hundred(s?) years.
It’s ignoring the most recent brush with optimism known as the Arab Spring, which while obvious as a bad development at the time for people that truly understood the region, now in hindsight was a terrible development resulting in increased entropy and chaos for all to see (including those who saw it as a “spring”).
Nothing good will come out of the collapse of the Lebanese banking system, especially for these younger protesters. Where were they when for years power cuts were the norm ( still are), garbage was not collected, and sectarian systems ensured an entrenched status quo? How does a tax on WhatsApp drive such protests while years of a systematic collapse don’t?!
These are silly protests with no clear goals or planning. They will further collapse a nonfunctional system and provide no replacement. Waiving flags is not an objective...
I can’t predict what will happen in Lebanon, but it’s not going to be an optimistic outlook... more chaos, more poverty and sectarianism for a region in a continued collapse on its way to becoming the new Afghanistan.
4
@Jacques: The claim to know what God thinks always divides because it is non-negotiable.
@Omar N
Zeynep Tufekci and her book Twitter and Teargas has codified popular Middle East uprisings by the internet generation (Arab Spring). They can generate protests but being leaderless and not adaptable they peter out, exposing themselves as marks by the establishment and energizing the police state to maintain the status quo.
Mr. Cohen should hold his comments for the revolution in Israel that will finally bring an end to the imposition of Sykes–Picot sectarian rule there. As for Lebanon he fails to mention that the Hezbollah political bloc includes Druze Christians and Sunni and their ally the FPM is the most powerful Christin party in Lebanon. The suggestion that Putin was called on to exert influence over Hassan Nasrallah to prevent Hezbollah violence against protesters is absurd. Nasrallah has made statements that the protesters have the right to protest but he has called for calm and not to disrupt peoples ability to attend to their work and for children to attend school. The Lebanese know what they are protesting against and who is on their side and they don't need Mr. Cohen's misguided and misinformed two cents and they could care less what the US and Trump think about it.
12
@SNS. You confuse the Jewish people which is a well understood group with the religion of Judaism. Israel is not sectarian in the commonly understood use of the term. Its laws are not copied out of the Torah and are, for the most part, indistinguishable from those of Western liberal democracies.
In some cases, Israel’s laws are more liberal than, for instance, those of France (which bans certain Arab dress in public) and Switzerland (which bans minarets) to name but two. Democracies address their particular interests in their own ways. None does so perfectly. But it should be self-evident that none of Israel’s neighbors are - politically speaking - in the same ballpark.
Perhaps Lebanon and Iraq will break the mold but the very first step in the direction of real self-representation requires these demonstrations to succeed in ousting all foreign influence. Even then, much will remain to be done to mimic what Israel has been since its founding. One must hope they succeed, because that is the only path to real peace and stability in the region.
5
We should all be careful in the ME. Some of these stories have been going on for millennia and it be very unwise to think having a current military advantage can change anything.
Hard to hear but the path to a solution is respect, calm, diplomacy and compromise.
5
It seems, Mr. Cohen, that you will never learn. You and other NY Times reporters were fascinated by events in the Middle East and developed various unrealistic hypothesis about a different Middle East. First it was the Arab Spring and than the revolutions in several Arab nations and the disposition of some of the dictators there. So demonstrators tell you and the world they aspire for equality, human rights, democracy and so on. Of course they aspire and of course Western reporters like their aspiration but if you really understand the Middle East you should know it is all Doomed to failure especially in Lebanon, Iraq and certainly in Syria. Why? because of political, economics ans specially religion. You really believe that Lebanon whose economy controlled by 6 families, the political power in the hands of the Hezbollah and Iran while the Sunnis, Christians and Druze losing the power they once had and all this on top of the growing hate between Shiites and Sunnis. It is not a different Middle East only a more fragmented one. President Trump is doing the right thing when he leaves this swamp.
5
@Shlomo Greenberg Have you been to Lebanon lately, Shlomo? I was there a month ago, the latest of several visits. And I was struck by the changes i sense in conversations with college students at AUB and at Universite Norte Dame. They are fed up; far more fed up than I’ve sensed on my previous visits. What does Israel have to fear about a democratic state on its northern border?
@Shlomo Greenberg Nobody likes to give up power and privilege. Why just look at Netanyahu in Israel's slimy efforts to start in control despite the best interests of the country. Yet, I believe in the Israeli people just as I believe in the people of the countries discussed in Roger's article. Ultimately they will prevail despite the corruption, manipulative tricks and appeals to hate of their leaders.
1
The Middle East could be a prosperous and peaceful place, if everybody understood Ataturk! Thanks to him, Turkey did, 100 years ago, what Lebanon and Iraq (and many others in the region) are trying to do now. A secular republic, with full and equal rights to women (vs. men). Equal citizenship, no matter what your religion or ethnicity is. Peace at home, peace in the World. Ataturk's legacy is actually becoming even more valuable, as time goes.
35
@Yalin Sadly, as I learned on a recent visit to Turkey, the secular republic is being silently overthrown by Islamists, led by Ertogun. One example: the largest single item in the Turkish budget used to be (as it probably is in the US) the defense budget; I understand that now it is the funding of the national religion...e.g. each Imam is on the government payroll and must preach from a script distributed by the government at Friday’s prayers. Ataturk must be spinning in his grave.
25
@Yalin: Ataturk was cured of religion in the Gallipoli campaign of WW I, where he was a staff officer in the Ottoman Army.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_campaign
1
"It’s a different Middle East. Over a couple of weeks in the region recently, I scarcely heard the United States mentioned."
The US was the international order's one indispensable nation -- until it wasn't. Perhaps the feckless abdication of the American empire and the concomitant dissolution of its beguiling veneer of principled high-mindedness, distressing as it may initially seem, will liberate a wave of self-reliance among formerly passive nations.
If the backbone of the current protests in Lebanon and Iraq is truly a rejection of the politics of sectarianism, that could be a game-changing development. The negotiated division of the public pie among competing sects was always an institutionalized form of corruption. It was doomed from the outset.
Can this knot be untied? The forces of corruption will not surrender without a fight. Hopes for fundamental change in the Middle East have been raised before -- and cruelly crushed. The idealistic commitment to non-sectarian solutions will be tested, and if it unravels under stress or temptation, nothing permanent will be accomplished.
20
Trump was elected to protest that the system was rigged for the privileged. Yet the traditional role of the United States has been to defend the privileged, and the president elected to give the finger to the privileged is not going to side with the common people. Trump does give the finger to the privileged, but does so by repeatedly scamming them, not by trying to limit their power as the left does.
2
@sdavidc9 Trump's first and only successful act in accordance with a Republican Congress was to give a PERMANENT tax cut to the privileged but a time-limited tax cut to the majority of Americans. That doesn't sound like a scam on the privileged to me.
2
This was enlightening and poetic. I wish them all the best, and sooner rather than later. They are progressing, We are regressing. Is that the way of the World, the cycle of good times/bad times, or a temporary ghost in the machine ?
Time will tell.
63
"... angry at what look like systems rigged for the privileged."
People around the world are taking to the streets to protest against injustice and to promote equality and accountability, and they are doing so with passion.
Americans can learn a lot from them. And maybe, if we're lucky, that will happen before it's too late.
101
@Blue Moon : Unfortunately, as history shows, such uprisings too often end up getting taken over by a despot -- a Napoleon, a Mussolini, a Stalin or a Hitler.
2
"Such identity obsession, which stands in the way of shared citizenship, seems anachronistic to members of a younger Middle Eastern generation raised on a borderless cyber world. "
It's been predicted that religion will not survive the invention of the Internet. That probably hold trues for sects, tribes etc... We are still in the growth stages but more and more young people around the world are getting on- line and they are uniting for a future without what they view as unnecessary divisions .
48
@William "It's been predicted that religion will not survive the invention of the Internet."
Will democracy survive the invention of the internet? (Thinking mostly of the US as I ask this.)
3
@Rabitz
It's not the internet that is destroying our democracy.
It's the money that feeds corrupt politics and federal elections in particular Citizen United.
It's the evangelical Christians and orthodox Catholics who have taken over the GOP and thanks to Trump have infiltrated the Cabinet, the agencies, the White House, and the federal judiciary.
No matter what you think of the internet, it's just a vehicle through which information is dispersed. Only uneducated ignorant Americans can't (or won't) differentiate between the truth and lies. They are responsible for destroying democracy.
9