When I was a kid back in the sixties, my U.S. Foreign Service/Department of State family was stationed with the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. I thought that I would be dropped into an alien land with little linkage to my American upbringing up to that point. Instead, I found a Western-oriented culture, current American and European movies playing in the local theaters, bikini-clad beach-goers, chi chi men and women wearing western clothes mingling with traditionalists in more conservative garb (but with very few women with covered faces), lots of children – boys and girls (but usually in separate schools) – getting solid educations.
Christians (then about half the population) and Muslims held strong mutual ties. Everybody was exceptionally friendly, the streets were safe, public transportation gave me the first real “freedom to explore” in my youth, and the attitude was very pro-American and pro Jack Kennedy. When he was assassinated in 1963, there was mass mourning in the streets.
A trip to nearby Damascus showed a more conservative place, more traditional Muslims and a more repressive government. The subtext in the Middle East appeared to be that adhering to modern Western values would ultimately generate the kind of American standard of living that everyone saw on TV or in the movies. It was a pervasive feeling across the entire Middle East, an optimism that justified those who sought secularism in their future.
But change was slow, and pervasive corruption of often dictatorial governments (supported with massive U.S. or Soviet aid) sapped the wealth that should have spread down the economic ladder. Locals watched as conspicuous consumption above never seemed to improve their lives at the bottom. They blamed those who gave aid to the repressive rulers, who in turn blamed Israel for everything. Leaders told their people that girding for military confrontation with that Jewish state required that resources be spent on that battle before life would improve for the masses.
Enter a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam, one that teaches the dalliances of Western modernity are hardly to be coveted. These are distractions from true piety and dedication to a higher moral plane, they taught. Essentially, they explained and justified pervasive poverty and very tough social mobility well. It made people comfortable with the ancient traditions and led them sequentially to reject the kind of lives depicted in Western film and television… lives that apparently they would never achieve anyway. It also negated and defiled the massive umbrella of corruption that seemed to define any government that played ball with the West.
These resurfacing old-world values also reversed or stopped the rise of women’s rights in too much of the region. We find unacceptable notions of submissive and black-swaddled women, headscarves and facial coverings, lowered aspirations and a future totally dependent on repressive marriage and restrictive attitudes. Americans cannot believe that anyone would ever freely embrace such values… but strangely, a vast number of women rail at the Western alternative just as fiercely.
Even where Western elements are routinely accepted, one only has to scrape the surface to see that this rejection of deeper Western values is becoming increasingly popular. Despite years of American occupation, and even in the most progressive parts of urban progressiveness, old values still govern in Afghanistan: “[I]nterviews with dozens of Afghan youth paint a picture of a new generation bound to their society’s conservative ways, especially when it comes to women’s rights, one of the West’s single most important efforts here. Attempts to alter women’s roles in society remain controversial among the younger generation, perhaps the starkest example of the West’s limited influence as coalition forces prepare to withdraw next year.
“‘If someone thinks that youngsters have changed, they should think twice,’ said Amina Mustaqim Jawid, the director of the Afghan Women’s Coalition Against Corruption. ‘These young men grew up in a war environment. They don’t know about their own rights; how can we expect them to know about their sisters’ rights, their mothers’ rights or their wives’ rights? If they wear jeans and have Western haircuts, that doesn’t mean they are progressive.’
“Even in Kabul, one of the most liberal cities in Afghanistan, many young men and women express beliefs that fly in the face of the messages coming from American Embassy outreach efforts. Censorship, particularly when it comes to religious offenses, summons little ire. Many consider democracy a tool of the West. And the vast majority of Afghans still rely on tribal justice, viewing the courts as little more than venues of extortion.” New York Times, July 31st.
We seem to have this notion that if people freely elect their governments, fundamental Islam will collapse and pro-Western values will soar. Egypt elected a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, fundamentalism personified, and the government lurched radically to the religious right… before it was toppled by an Army unhappy with their increasing marginalization. Secularism battled Islamists. The story plays out in Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, etc., etc.
But like it or not, these seemingly anti-Western values are the mainstream of socio-political thought in the region. Imposing a “democracy” doesn’t mean that the “will of the people” will lift women to the skies, embrace secular freedoms of speech and free association or add new layers of pro-American affinity to the mix.
The global economic collapse has generally been blamed on the United States, and its “corrupt” power elite is seen as one that gathers wealth without rules, a notion reinforced in China’s own marketing of her centrally-directed brand of government. The United States is seen as falling; China and its models are now the rising stars. But safe and sparse Islamic fundamental values have given a new majority a new comfortable level that clearly challenges our view of the world. They no longer believe that the American way is remotely the best. And there’s not really much we can do about.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is so strange how reluctant too many Americans are about allowing others to embrace political choices so far from our normal expectations.
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