Q&A: The future of the Arab Spring?

TORONTO – The killing of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi  on Thursday marked a historic point for Libya. As the latest country to revolt in the Arab Spring, Libya is finally able to move past the 42-year rule of Moammar Gadhafi.

Moammar Gadhafi is also the first deposed leader of the Arab Spring to be killed.

While many view the Arab Spring as a positive movement toward democracy, Tarek Fatah, author and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, questions if the Arab Spring is moving in the right direction.

We spoke to him about the killing of Moammar Gadhafi, the Arab Spring and the chance of democracy in the Arab world.

In a tweet you wrote shortly after Gadhafi had been killed, you seemed to denounce the Arab Spring.  

I’m not denouncing it, I’m saying its turned out to be a complete falsehood.  Because if the tradition of public lynching that goes back almost a thousand years in the Arab world had not happened, one would have said, ‘Yes, there’s due process of law. Gadhafi was captured, now he will have a trial.’  But not only that, he was shot dead, they lied about a crossfire, and they dumped him.  And the Americans, and British and Nato not one person stood up and said ‘Wow, that’s unbelievable.  You have evidence that the man was captured alive…you just committed a war crime!’  What kind of Arab spring would there be if the slaughter of someone, extra-judicial killings would be considered fine.  Not only by the Arabs but by the Americans.

So this is a smoke and mirrors thing, where they’re talking about democracy but aren’t practicing it. 

Far from it, far from it.  I could have been wrong if there had been the process.  This was the benchmark.  You would know that a movement that wants the rule of law, which is the foundation stone of contemporary civilization, that a arbitrary law and arbitrary justice is a medieval concept.  Now the point is this shows that the same sort of public lynching that happened with Najibullah in Kabul, that took place with King Faisal in Iraq in 1958, dragging bodies in public…this is a medieval construct!  It didn’t happen in Vietnam, it didn’t happen anywhere, but it is stuck in the Arab heritage of mass slaughter every time there’s a change in power.  It isn’t the first time that a dictator has been overthrown.  In Pakistan it happened three times.  But you don’t have this spectacle.  The gory detail of bullets flying, and a captured man shot dead.  What sort of a Spring is this?

Why is it that this seems localized to Arab society as you say? 

Well, nobody’s challenging it!  And the Arab intelligencia is primarily responsible for this.  Do you find a single Arab intellectual, leader, activist, politician in Canada or outside who has said ‘This mad dog should have been brought before an international tribunal.?’  We needed to know what happened in Pan Am.  We needed to know what he did in Beirut.  We needed to know where did he get his nuclear bombs.  Did he get them from the Pakistani scientist who’s now free?  Everything was shot dead.  And this is Spring?

So all the answers died with him. 

Everything.  Everything died with him.  And this is what is barbarity.  This is not civilization.  I’m saying look at what they are doing to black Africans in Libya.  They’re shooting them on the street.  Look at what happened in Egypt.  They’re killing Christians.  What sort of Spring is this?!  And what sort of Western talking heads on television can’t a utter a simple word that ‘We’re outraged… at this slaughter.’  It seems nobody is.  Which suggests to me that in the West they’re practicing the racism of lowered expectations.  Basically saying, ‘Well, Arabs are basically not human beings so why should we hold them to the same standards as we hold ourselves?’.

Is it possible for this to somehow evolve into democracy from the Arab Spring? 

No, no, no.  I am now convinced that it won’t.  If there had been a denunciation of this killing by President Obama, or by some Arab leader, or by some Arab NGO, or  all these guys in Tunisia and Egypt who talked about a new renaissance.  Not one of them has objected to an extra-judicial killing.  Which means this is acceptable.  So once you set this “gold standard” of justice, that’s what renaissance is about…rule of law, the separation of judiciary and executive.  That’s what the Magna Carta is.  The Arab world has not yet come to the 12^th century, let alone the 21^st.

Is it too late for the Western world to come out with a denunciation? 

It’s too late.  Look, not even a person like Bob Rae, who I admire, who knows that this is wrong has the ability to say it was wrong.  We are constrained by electoral politics. We are trapped in a mediocrity that is sucking us down.  Can you imagine if anyone in the next month will say anything?  Can you find a record of one person in the whole world, any statesman, saying this was wrong?  Whether its Putin, or whether it’s the Chinese, or even the Republicans or the Democrats?  Nothing…not a word!  ‘You Arabs can kill each other like animals, and we’re fine.  Do it.  Just stay out of our way and give us your oil.’  That’s the message that’s sent.  ‘We buy you.  We give you gold guns and Cadillacs.  You behave like animals and that’s fine.’

So what happens next?  Is there an answer? 

I’m very pessimistic about the Arab world.  I’m not pessimistic about the Muslim world.  I think Indonesia, and Pakistan and Bangladesh, Iran..everyone has a bright future.  But not the Arab world.

Do you see something like another “Idi Amin” type of regime rising in the Arab region then? 

No.  I think there will be far more chaos than Obama can manage.  There’s nothing there.  The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists have billions of dollars.  The jean-clad, western secularists have to worry about their girlfriends, and their New York Yankee hats and every silly stuff, and Twitter and Facebook.  While the real world is moving on.  All these guys will come back to New York, and Boston, and Toronto and say, ‘Oh, we went there for sabbatical and had fun in Cairo.’  While the Muslim Brotherhood is deeply entrenched.  Not a single black face in all of Arab Spring.  What does it say to you?  20% of the Arab population is black, but you can’t see a single black face.  It’s a completely racist movement.   It says non-Arabs in the Arab Spring have no rights.  IF you’re Bangladeshi, Filipino, Indonesian…you have absolutely no rights.  This is worse Apartheid.  That’s why Africans are fleeing Libya, dying in the Mediterranean, to get to Italy or to Israel.