Friday, July 05, 2013

Will It Be Different...

...this time?

Only time will tell, of course, but I see some small inkling of hope in this video. Not only are Egyptians talking about democratic aspirations, but even the army has installed, on an interim basis, a civilian president (at about 4:45 in this CBC report):



The civilian happens to be the chairman of the Supreme Constitutional Court. So far, so good - I think..

I see this as one long march toward greater democracy in the world, stemming from Glastnos and Peristroika in the last days of the Soviet Union, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iraq war right up to the Arab Spring and the Green movement in Iran. The world is a much smaller place than it was in the 1950s, and one of the driving forces behind all this change is the Internet. Technological innovation has always driven changes in social and political power, sometimes significant upheaval, in fact. Think, for example, of the impact of the invention of the printing press and what that did to the dominance of the Catholic church in Europe.

BTW, I like the comments under the Washington Post article (at "Supreme Constitutional Court" link):
"This is NOT a military coup, but a real revolution in which millions of Egyptians have participated against all odds, and we would not go back to our homes except after Morsi leaves.

We are the Egyptian people claiming back our country and we ask you to be on our side and not the side of a fascistic clan of fundamentalists who believe that the West are nothing but infidels.

We are people who love freedom, who hail from a civilization that believes in diversity of religions and races.

We are Egypt of the 7,000 years telling you: I revolted."
There is something very fundamental going on here. I keep reading references to ancient Egyptian civilization. I hesitate to say this, but perhaps what we are witnessing is not only the end of an Islamist government and a blow to Islamism, but a movement away from Islam itself. Even the WaPo article hints at that. The Muslim Brotherhood seems to be the target.

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