As Libyan dictatorship falls, and the people of Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain and Jordan gather together in a quest to free themselves from dictators or dictatorial Monarchy, this article I had published before becomes more important. Especially because the West had earlier aligned themselves to so many of these Monarchies or Dictatorships that are now (hopefully) falling. What would the US do if the Saud family who rule Saudi Arabia fall ? We should view these freedom movements as potentially beneficial to all of us, as I see this as an Arab Renaissance. So I am republishing it.<\/p>\n
“You cannot free a mind just to contain it with in boundaries. And when the collective mind gets free it multiplies the surge of new thinking, new art, new industry and new systems. It represents a surge in optimism and also therefore a surge in tolerance and secularism.<\/p>\n
But it also entails a surge in the vulnerability as people explore a new found freedom.? As they pursue a dream that have dreamt in private and often in fear for many years. It represents a yearning and an almost impossible optimism often.? There lies the danger and vulnerability.? Any suggestion of controls of that freedom, a perceived violation of the newly discovered joys and optimism, can turn into a surge of anger and disappointment. At that time the vultures of fundamentalism, of terrorism, of extremist thought are waiting to feed quickly on the corpses of those dreams.<\/p>\n
What the intense renaissance that is happening all over the Arab word needs therefore are new? leaders that can channel this new energy to take the once great civilizations back to the glory they knew. For if they do not, the vultures are waiting on the sidelines.? What happened in Egypt was so mature that it needs now very very mature leadership and systems to protect that maturity.<\/p>\n
And I am afraid it needs far more maturity from the West.? There is nothing called \u2018partial freedom of the mind’.? It is either free or it is not. The Tunisians are coming in their hundreds illegally to Italy. Once they came as unwelcome refugees.? Now the whole Western world has supported their fight to democracy. Encouraged their new found courage.? Now they come to Europe with same courage and expect to be treated as friends.? Did the whole world not encourage and applaud the Tunisians and hail them for their great revolutionary courage?? Now you cannot just hrow them into prisons.<\/p>\n
As the people of Bahrain rebel against their rulers, the US must be worried about where their Third Fleet will go if the people decide NOT to have US naval bases in Bahrain.? You cannot encourage people to ask for democracy and then not bend to the will of those very people.? The West cannot then try and protect the Shia rulera against Sunni majorities, or vice versa.? The rulers of Saudi Arabia are of course now vulnerable.? Iranian people are potentially the best friends of the Egyptians and Bahraini people.? These are the new realities.<\/p>\n
The West needs to re asses it role in the whole of the Arab world and can no longer be double sided. The Arab people are changing their destinies and are looking to shake of colonial shackles – it’s time that they did.? They were once the greatest sources of Culture, Astronomy , Mathematics , Medicine etc.? We should look forward to their re emergence and not view them any longer form one point of view-.<\/p>\n
Oil ..”<\/p>\n
Shekhar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Libyan dictatorship falls, and the people of Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain and Jordan gather together in a quest to free themselves from dictators or dictatorial Monarchy, this article I had published before becomes more important. Especially because the West had earlier aligned themselves to so many of these Monarchies or Dictatorships that are now (hopefully) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\n