How Fares The Arab Spring?

Well now, in Tunisia where it all started over food where a street vendor of fruit, Mohamed Bouazizi was so upset about being harassed over a vending permit that he was inspired to begin a revolution, although when he set himself alight in protest he had no idea that his act of protest would light up much of the Arab and Muslim world to re-examine itself.

The popular protest that then took place in Tunisia by people outraged over Bouazizi's act of desperation and despair because of a heartless bureaucracy saw the country's president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali removed.  Inspiring in turn similar acts of civil disobedience in countries that are better known for starkly disciplining protesters against dictatorial rule by imprisonment, torture and death.

A secular activist and blogger in Tunisia is finding as much fault now with the new Ennahda Islamist Movement, now leading the current government, as he had with the former president whom he loathed and criticized.  The evolution of the Arab Spring in Tunisia led to a splendid opportunity for the lurking Islamist factions to assume a place of popular power for themselves.

That government is now imposing an increasing number of restrictions on public freedom.  What's that old proverb?  From the frying pan into the fire?  That blogger-activist, Soufiene Chourabi, has now been arrested for the crime of drinking alcohol during the month of Ramadan.  In a country formerly relaxed about such matters, as a popular tourist destination under the former government, the Arab Spring has tightened its own noose of religious purity on the nation.

Civil society and opposition groups of a secular bent are now expressing grave concerns about what they generously term "creeping Islamization".  This is the result of a bold new initiative undertaken by the former critics of the former government, currently now critics of the new government which has taken up and surpassed what the former government imposed, from the perspective of Sharia and Islamism given free rein.

It is, of course, the fault of the common enemy of the Muslim/Arab cabal.

Iraq has experienced its revolution; gone the Baathist regime that kept the Shi'ite majority in thrall to the Sunni minority.  The bloodshed between Iran and Iraq now forgotten, since it is rather inconvenient to dwell on it as the two Shia-led countries now have more in common than not.  Including that common enemy.  Then there is Egypt which unshackled itself from its former president, Hosni Mubarak, but not from the military, not yet.

Which hasn't stopped the Muslim Brotherhood from finally obtaining the entry it has so long sought to enable it to step forward - in the most legitimate of ways, since their Arab Spring led directly to Western-approved democratic voting, heralding the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt's parliament.  With rumblings that it's time to have a second, very close look at the peace agreement so rashly signed by Anwar Sadat with the Arab/Muslim common enemy.

Oh, and Libya, of course, where that global pariah and champion of global terror, Muammar Gadhafi was unseated, thanks to the generous aid and assistance of NATO, leaving the rebels with their own tribal afflictions against one another, to bless the opportunities that fate allowed them to invite into governance Islamists whose first declaration was the advent of Sharia.  Where, like the other countries released by the Arab Spring, minorities and sectarian groups are now free game.

And let us not overlook the spill-over effect of the Arab Spring that has so hugely benefited other African/Muslim countries with the bounty of munitions and well-armed warriors returning to their homelands to challenge their governments to free themselves from the shackles of democratic oppression in Mali and Somalia to engage with justice and fairness in Islamist regimes.

Lastly, certainly not least, there is Syria, raging within itself for the curtain call.  Waiting with impatience aflame for President Bashar al-Assad to exit stage left, so that the Free Syrian Army and all the disparate liberating groups champing at the bit in Turkey and the fringes of the borders between Jordan and Syria, Turkey and Syria, Iran and Syria, finally triumph.  And the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood creep out of their dark corners and assume their rightful place in the order of the Arab Spring.

Finally, daylight and justice will reign supreme in the Middle East and North Africa.  The Arab Spring has succeeded in dislodging the dictators and tyrants - some of them, in any event - to bring a different kind of future to the region.  One that uncannily resembles the past - long past, that is.  Returning to an Arab/Muslim heritage that celebrates the purity of authentic Islam, unblemished by any notions of enlightenment that merely serves ill.