TO BELIEVE that the current Middle East rage has links with some less than amateurish-produced YouTube video ‘Innocence of Muslims’ denigrating Islam, will not give us the full story. Muslims in several parts of the world, but most notably in the Middle East, quite understandably and rightly so, are enraged over the video’s mockery of Islam and Prophet Mohammed. Even non-Muslims in a global show of solidarity should now express their disapproval and distaste for this continuing denigration of Islam.

This kind of disparagement is not the first. There was in 2004 the case of the Dutch film producer of Theo Van Gogh’s film that criticised Islam’s treatment of women, which showed Quranic verses on the bodies of nude women. Then the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in 2005 published 12 cartoons negatively depicting Prophet Mohammed. And there also was the case in 2011 of Christian pastor, Terry Jones, who burned a copy of the Quran at his Dove World Outreach Center, a Christian fundamentalist church in Florida. But this latest in a series of vilifications against Islam is not the only reason for the Middle East outrage.

However, Ed Husain, in a CNN report (Arab Spring nations don’t yet grasp freedom of dissent), would want people to believe that Arabs have little understanding of citizen freedoms, and that they believe that the U.S. Government could clamp down on anyone producing a film mocking any religion, hence the protests; as he noted: “These are people who were born and raised in dictatorships. They are accustomed to thinking that a government controls its citizens — that a film or documentary cannot be produced without government approval…In light of this assumption, they hold the U.S. government responsible for the tacky and distasteful film produced by a right-wing Muslimphobe.”
Husain’s argument places these Arabs as being naive and unable to understand freedoms as exist in the U.S. On the contrary, they do know about U.S. freedoms vis-à-vis the Internet, etc. And it is precisely this kind of argument that Husain makes that casts a shadow on the real reasons behind the violent protests against U.S. embassies and other properties in the Arab Spring countries. Let us try to unravel some reasons behind the protests.
Last year, the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya unleashed a fury in what came to be known as the Arab Spring, bringing to an end decades of political tyranny, fully harnessed and supported by Western powers. And there also is the possibility now of the Arab Spring making incursions in Syria which is facing an anti-government revolt for a good part of this year.
Notwithstanding soaring oil revenues, many Middle Eastern people grew up in poverty-stricken conditions in their countries with long-serving dictators, fully buttressed by Western governments; these conditions of deprivation still prevail. For this reason, many Middle Easterners in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries believe that their real enemy was not only their local dictators, but also Western governments. That is why the Arab Spring was an attempt to dislodge both the dictators as well as the Western stranglehold on the Middle East.
The Arab Spring was successful in so far as it removed the long-suffering dictators; but it may be failing in that it has produced weak governments, unable to terminate the lingering resistance from enemies of the Arab Spring, enemies striving for a return to the past dictatorships. These past dictatorships were amenable to Western powers. And weak governments coming out of the Arab Spring are gullible to Western influence, as they are no match in the negotiation process with Western administrations. Therefore, it is not difficult to discern who will be the victor in such processes.
And there are observers who would see the YouTube video ‘Innocence of Muslims’, currently capturing the world’s attention, especially through instantaneous internet infrastructure, as the factor provoking the violent protests in the Middle East. But this may not be totally true. As far as the producer and associates of the YouTube video are concerned, the intent is to discredit Islam; and there are many Muslims in the protests who are genuinely outraged by this denigration of Islam, and where the politics of the Arab Spring may not be a factor in their equation for protesting.
Even so, there may be other groups opposed to the Arab Spring for different reasons. In this case then, the YouTube video provides an opening for some of these groups opposed to the Arab Spring, to pressure and embarrass the existing weak governments, and hopefully enable these groups to regain some political leverage in order to restore the image of the old dictatorships.
However, there also may be other groups opposed to the Arab Spring for a different reason, namely, that they want to preserve the Arab Spring but without overwhelming Western influence on Middle East governments and societies.
The fate of the Arab Spring is at the crossroads of stability for the Middle East. Weak governments, a product of the Arab Spring, are facing twin challenges. One, from Western powers who want to regain their lost stranglehold; and two, from the lingering resistance groups who desire a return to the past political tyranny. There may, however, be a third, unrelated challenge: Noman Benotman reported to CNN (9/13/2012) that al-Qaeda top man Ayman al-Zawahiri recently posted an online video pleading to Libyans to retaliate against the murder of al-Qaeda’s second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
In any event, removing these challenges would require more than electoral reforms that now place these weak governments in the seat of democracy; where Husain (CNN report) sees democracy as more than free elections, as it must also produce free societies; I agree.
Even so, removing these challenges would require the removal of poverty, removal of squalid living conditions, a return to full employment, and the institution of fundamental freedoms. Doing away with these challenges would sustain the Arab Spring, and postpone, for now anyway, the coming of any Arab Winter.