FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Whither the Arabs?

Rant number 430 2 March 2011

The holiest places of ancient Greece was Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. There the god’s oracle doled out answers to all questions. Apollo, of course, was smart. His utterances were obscure, couched in riddles. Basically, the oracle worked by holding up a mirror to the worshipper’s self. You saw in it what you wanted to see. Consciously or not, the answer you sought was inside you, contained in our own mind.
The old god is defunct but his oracle, wondrously, functions on. The priest detects this in many responses to the current Arab unrest. What do the Arabs want? By and large, what the voluble commentators answer is just a report of their own desires. For example:
1) Democracy. This goddess (the word is feminine-gendered in Greek) is now the Apollo of the West. A truly deified political doctrine. Anyone who dares question her virtues is treated as either bad or mad. So it is natural the Arab revolt should mirror the Western commentators’ democracy-besotted mind. Naturally, insofar as the democracy is not tyranny, and the Arabs crave to shake off their tawdry tyrants, democracy is not implausible, but note: the British and French empires which ruled and looted much of the Arab and Muslim worlds ran on democratic parliaments. Iraq and Afghanistan’s disastrous invasions are the children of two bellicose democracies. Israel, which will not relinquish illegally occupied Palestinian lands, calls itself a democracy. Moreover, the deep economic, financial, demographic and moral woes of the West are closely bound up with its political system. Thus, my good Arab friends, I wish your revolution well but, before you fall for the deity democracy, beware!
2) Islamic Awakening. Thus claims my favourite TV channel, Press TV. The revolt is about Islam. Dear Pressies, I love you but...you are an Islamic channel so...get it? The Oracle again.
Now, Islamic and Islamist are not the same thing, we know that. Verily, the Islamist bogey makes strange bed-fellows. ‘It’s al-Qaeda! Al Qaeda!’ mumbles the ineffable Colonel Qaddafi, the astounding Queen of Libya, fingering his home rebels as Bin Laden’s stooges. His distorted mirror image is Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu. (A Tripoli-Tel Aviv anti-Islamist axis!) It is all Shia Islam’s fault, Bibi swears. Yet he avers that ‘it is riveting when people defy the powers of dictators’. Indeed. But why does Bibi ignore the Bahraini people’s defiance of their own unjust monarch? 70% of the tiny nation’s people are Shia. Yet they are excluded from the government, the Army and the police. The ruler has even been trying to alter the ethic composition of his country, by ladling out wads of citizenships to foreigners. Torture, illegal detention and state violence are daily occurrences. Yet Bibi bewails an Iran-dominated Persian Gulf. As if by magic, dictators became good when they host US bases!
Sure, Islamists, for decades repressed by Arab governments, will play a role in the region’s future. So will Islam proper. But remember, religion is just as congenial, as natural to an Arab, as water is to a fish. The Arab language makes constant reference to God and the Arab mind swims in the divine. Unlike the suicidal West, Arabs have not as yet forsaken the religion that made them great.
Not that Muslims can’t go wrong. Colonel Qaddafi is a believer OK. He has spent plenty of cash in spreading Islam in Africa and elsewhere. He even tried out conversion on 600 Italian beauties in Rome, with Berlusconi’s (!) collusion. Yet, the toga-wearing leader is not quite flavour of the month with lots of Libyans. Hence religious fervour is no ultimate guarantee of righteousness.
3) The Erotic Fleshpots. This is a bit cynical and reductionist, as it emanates from my offspring Linus, a problematical film-maker in chilly Sweden. He has just shot a documentary about Arab youths. ‘Dad, believe you me, these guys are starved for sex. They really are. They dream about it day and night. Masturbation ain’t enough for these hot-blooded kids. What would they not do to get laid! This revolt is one for sex. ‘Make love not jihad’, kind of thing. Forget the politics, young Arabs want what young Europeans want – and have – girls! Politics is only a smokescreen...’ You get the picture. Ahem, got to be careful here, Linus will be reading this. Can’t just claim Eros rules my boy’s mind, though...in actual fact...he seems to discard girl-friends as often as I discard paper hankies...I wonder...he is half a Latin, after all.
Still, a séance I & friends held way back in 2001, summoning up one of the 9/11 suicide bombers, came up with a similar answer. It was indeed largely about frustrated studs hankering after release of their vital juices. However, the Arab unrest isn’t only by the young. It affects all sections of the population, young women included. Besides, not all youths are quite as horny and sex-obsessed as my errant offspring claims. So, I don’t buy it. Not quite.
4) It is the economy, stupid. Unemployment, corruption, jobs, opportunities, decent salaries and the like. This makes a lot of sense, dear oracle. As Cherie Blair in a moment of lucidity said, meaning suicide bombers, ‘As long as young people have no better hope in life...’ But even people from filthy rich Gulf States and Saudi Arabia appear to be restless. King Abdullah is trying to buy off the discontented but ‘Man does not live by bread alone’ said Jesus. Consumerism and loads of money won’t suffice.
5) Freedom. With this, you can’t go wrong. The oracle is on safe ground here. Everyone wants freedom. No one agitates to be a slave. But freedom comes in two stages. First, freedom from. From tyranny, poverty, torture, humiliations. Arabs want freedom from them. But next is freedom for. What will they use their hard-won freedom for? The oracle is not clear here. Only a fool would hazard predictions. Ultimately, only God knows.

And the priest? What is his answer? What do the Arabs, like all the world, want? Here the oracle’s voice must be both predictably priestly and oracular: Ichthus.