Cultgeo Zakaria, Fareed. \"How Democracy

Cultgeo

Zakaria, Fareed. "How Democracy Can Work in the Middle East." Time. 3 Feb 2011. Retrieved online: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2045888,00.html

Before the NATO and allied intervention into Libya, even before the Libyan people protested Gaddafi en mass, Fareed Zakaria offered poignant commentary related to the cultural geography of the entire region. Now nearly every nation in the Middle East is turning itself upside down and inside out. Each country has its own unique history and domestic issues and peculiar relationships with the United States and other foreign powers. Zakaria focuses on Egypt to illustrate the diversity of the Middle East, even the diversity within Egypt itself. Moreover, Zakaria quells fears that the democratic revolutions taking place throughout the Middle East may help give rise to Muslim extremism. After all, what is apparently a genuine populist trend throughout the region has caused some anxiety among Americans, Europeans, and Israelis as well as the citizens of these nations. Zakaria argues that those fears are largely unwarranted because "in this sense, these might be the Middle East's first post-American revolutions," (p. 4). Taken in the context of European colonialism and imperialism, the recent revolutions can be seen as the first organic outcroppings of homegrown democracy.

Zakaria therefore frames the Egyptian revolution -- and arguably those in Libya, Bahrain, and other Middle Eastern countries -- in a historical context. A cultural geographer must understand that Middle Eastern history has been one of colonialism and imperialism and foreign intervention over the course of several centuries. First, the Ottomans bore down on the region to offer a false sense of unity under Muslim heritage. Then, the First World War saw the downfall of the Ottoman regime. The downfall of the Ottoman regime revealed the fissures within Middle Eastern society, but Europeans painted the whole area with one broad cloth. Whether due to ignorance, xenophobia, or racism, the Western imperialist trend was the third step in the Middle East's modern evolution.

Western intervention helped to create Israel, but also destabilized the entire region by installing and supporting brutal dictators. The chickens have come home to roost with the rise of anti-Western terrorists. Now, it would seem, the chickens are dying. Gaddafi is a symbol of the years during which American interventionism in the Middle East reached a peak.

Zakaria focuses on Egypt but the article pertains equally as well to Libya. Fears of Muslim extremism are, as Zakaria notes, overblown. The author states, "Asking women to wear veils is different from making men wear suicide belts. If the U.S. is opposed to every expression of religiosity, it will find itself unable to understand or work with a new, more democratic Middle East," (p. 4).