Saya sudah bilang dan saya ulang: orang Arab di Timur Tengah dan Afrika Utara
menuntut demokrasi, freedom, keadilan dan lowongan kerja dan BUKAN syariah...
Agama taik anjing Islam yang dungu, buas, kejam, keji, zalim, ganas lagi
biadab itu sedang karam dipurukkan oleh kecerdasan manusia dan kemajuan ilmu
pengetahuan.
Dan adalah tugas setiap orang rasional untuk ikut membenamkan ajaran taik
anjing Islam yagn disusunorna gArab primitif itu dalam-dalam.
--
Out with bin Laden, in with Arab Spring
By Salman Shaikh, Special to CNN
May 4, 2011 -- Updated 1150 GMT (1950 HKT)
tzleft.salman.shaikh.jpg
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Salman Shaikh said the 9/11 attacks left Middle East shaken,
apprehensive, helpless
* But now a young generation is shedding narrative of hopelessness, fear he
says
* He says West's anti-terrorism aided Arab dictators' repression; Arab
Spring upending this
* Shaikh: Killing of bin Laden is chance to close sorry chapter, begin
anew; U.S. must help
Editor's note: Salman Shaikh is director of the Brookings Doha Center and
Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Shaikh previously served as the special assistant to the U.N. envoy for the
Middle East peace process.
(CNN) -- On 9/11, I was in Beirut with the U.N. envoy for the Middle East peace
process and with the late former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri,
watching on television with disbelief as the twin towers came down. The next
day, we traveled in a nearly empty aircraft across Israeli airspace to Cairo.
We were met by Ahmad Maher, then the Egyptian foreign minister, who during our
meeting broke down in tears and said, "I am really scared, I don't know what to
do."
His words summed up the bewilderment and hopelessness that descended on the
Middle East from Cairo to Beirut to Iraq to Saudi Arabia. It was a time when
the hopes and fears of more than 240 million Arabs were effectively hijacked by
just 20 of their fellow men; average age, 24. What came next for Arabs was a
conflict that would dominate the next decade -- one for which they were neither
responsible nor in agreement with.
Fast forward to 2011, and a new generation of under-30s is shaping an entirely
new region. In this extraordinary season of change, their Arab Awakenings have
managed to throw off the debilitating narratives of the recent past.
Hopelessness has been swept away as they attempt to reclaim control of their
destinies.
Granderson: "Osama got Obama" won't win in 2012
In Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and throughout the region, a younger generation has
used largely peaceful, nonviolent methods to lead entire nations to overthrow
their stale, corrupt and repressive regimes. Their calls for justice, freedom
and democracy have proved infinitely more effective in mobilizing the young
people of the region.
The previous decade was defined by "the war on terror" and its "fight against
Islamist extremism."
It was a paradigm foisted on the world by a U.S. president who waged wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and resorted too often to the binary language of "them and
us." To many Arabs, their daily struggles with stagnant, unresponsive and
repressive regimes were subsumed to the omnipresent narrative of a fight
against Islamist extremists.
New details about bin Laden raid
Pakistan involved in hiding bin Laden?
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Little damage at bin Laden compound
RELATED TOPICS
* Osama bin Laden
* Tunisia
* Protests and Demonstrations
* Egypt
* Syria
They and the universal democratic values they wanted were forgotten in their
leaders' pursuit of another goal: the destruction of al Qaeda and its
affiliates and the prized head of Osama bin Laden. In pursuit of those goals,
the West, in particular the U.S., was accused of siding with autocratic regimes
that effectively proved their indispensability as guardians against extremism
and as bulwarks for stability.
Opinion: Bin Laden: Father of American Islamophobia
The West's al Qaeda obsession and the invasion of Iraq that resulted in
particular were triumphs for bin Laden and his followers.
His goal was to rally all Muslims in an endless fight against the "Western
Zionist infidels" and create the perfect Islamist caliphate. For a while, there
seemed no alternative to the binary world that bin Laden and his enemies had
created and the Bush administration supplemented.
Extraordinarily, one act of suicide -- that of Mohamed Bouazizi in a small town
in Tunisia -- changed all that. The street vendor set himself on fire in
protest after a police officer humiliated him, setting off a popular uprising
that would topple Tunisia's authoritarian president.
>From this act of desperation, not vengeance, has emerged the promise of a new
>beginning and a new Arab world. Throughout the region, there is a sense that
>there is light at the end of the tunnel when only a few years earlier there
>seemed none.
The Arab world's response to the death of bin Laden has, perhaps not
unsurprisingly, been contradictory. Though there has been condemnation of the
United States, there has also been a mixture of ambivalence and rejoicing.
It belies a growing self-confidence amongst at least some in the Arab world to
bring about change. The killing of bin Laden has also, notably, raised fears
that Western interests will once again focus on the conflict with extremists.
Arabs themselves want to move on and are in no mood to go back to the past.
The killing of bin Laden has also been accompanied by calls to the outside
world to take notice of the Arab struggle. This is the moment to recall
President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo nearly two years ago where he called
for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim world.
This is a defining moment for a man who may well be the right president at the
right time of history. While his speech was not in itself enough to transform
relations, the killing of bin Laden presents an opportunity to close the sorry
chapter of the past decade.
As Arabs open their own new chapter in their transformative struggle for
justice, equality and freedom, it is time for the U.S. to truly join that
struggle. A transformed Arab world is the best response to bin Laden's life and
his legacy.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Salman Shaikh.
------------------------------------
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