The Irrepressible Tyranny of Pure Faith

The Arab world is turning itself inside-out. Like a snake in season, shedding its skin. And what is found beneath the shed skin of the snake re-inventing itself? Why, goodness gracious, another skin. The new skin, needless to say, accommodates a larger snake.

The traditional tyrants that have oppressed and suppressed the various countries' populations of the Middle East and North Africa are finally being toppled. The people are speaking. Not necessarily with one voice, but they are united in their anger and their antipathy toward those who have maltreated and abused them for so long.

They want change. At least those among them who are gathering and creating a revolution. They are by no means necessarily the majority of those populations, but they are those who have assumed the audacity of the crowd, having discovered that loud, belligerent demands have gained legitimacy in a new world where communication is open and everywhere.

Regimes, even resolutely and bitterly nasty ones, do not appreciate being embarrassed on the world stage. Their pretense at liberal and kindly attention to the needs of their own cannot be upheld when evidence to the contrary is electronically conveyed through the news and social networking systems' worldwide tentacles. Condemnation sits poorly on their self-esteem.

And the free world, peering in from the outside, amazed at the events that steadily unfolded and continue to do, has voiced its approval and its remote support for whatever it is that the burdened are engaging in to produce something that looks similar to participatory democracy. Even within totalitarian regimes. Whose response is swift, harsh and uncompromising.

The world's most powerful country had two of its presidents, by turn, address the issues of liberty and human rights in the Muslim and Arab world. Both had the temerity to recommend the acquisition of human rights and the ascension of liberty for all. Former President George W. Bush claimed: "Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection."

He was feeling fairly confident about the U.S. involvement in Iraq, overturning the abysmal tenure of a brute, and helping to usher in a state of democracy in a country whose inhabitants were mired in tribal, ethnic and sectarian hatred whose passions were unleashed by the removal of their personal tyrant. Resulting in nightly bloodbaths as Sunni butchered Shia and Shi'ites murdered Sunnis.

And then, the biracial miracle of the new President Barack Obama, representing the mountain visiting Muhammad, to deliver his Cairo speech to the world of Islam, that America had no mission but to inspire trust and reconciliation between itself and the world of Islam. A democratic Middle East would find no interference impeding its progress by the United States of America.

And he extended his friendly hand to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it was spat upon, a clenched fist the response. For Iran had already transited to democracy without the intervention of the U.S., and under the auspices of Islam itself, and the Grand Ayatollahs fumed at his impudence. President Mubarak, listening to Presidents Bush and Obama, held his counsel to himself.

And then, history was overtaken by the currency of the present, and President Obama oversaw, approvingly, the removal of President Hosni Mubarak. Who had done his utmost to repress fanatical Islamism and maintain trust with the United States, and peace with Israel. Tunisia, Libya, Syria, have all experienced their Arab Spring, and the winter of fundamentalist Islamism is impressively on tour.

Everywhere that women were accustomed to moving freely and with confidence, they have gradually been garbing themselves much as the women of Saudi Arabia, that great good friend and confidant of the United States, have been impressed upon to do. In fact, just as Iranian women must now also dress, for the culture of Sharia would have it so.

Those two fundamentalist Islamist states, one Sunni, the other Shia, each representing itself as the true gatekeeper of Islam, engaged in a struggle for supremacy. Saudi Arabia has possession of Islam's holiest sites, but Iran will soon be possessed of Allah's supreme weapon. Each have used their oil wealth to instigate violent jihad, to spread the word of Islamic superiority. On the way to a global Caliphate.

Farewell, tyrants of the Middle East. Welcome, ye faithful and pure Islamists. Tyranny has many faces and none so rigid and uncompromising as the righteously entitled.