without questioning it, your membership of a society is reduced to being a mere statistic. The nation is effectively in autopilot mode, and the plane it's flying in, the country, also becomes it's government. This becomes highly dangerous because that same plane becomes a runaway train, and it's passengers effectively hostages of an uncontrollable machine whose will cannot be challenged...
I am not entirely sure what is it that drives mainly us muslims to be so complicit with our governments, be they democracies, monarchies, military juntas, religious or quasi-communist tyrannies. Is it cowardice? Is it our happiness (not really happiness but being content with the bone thrown) and tolerance ("God will give, God is merciful")? Is it our lack of education? I'm pretty sure it's a combination of all these elements. Topped off with the golden cherry of dubiously competent politicians. And then to add injury to insult, we have certain unscrupulous minority elements that will foster chaos without regard to anything, least of all human life, to bring about changes and a reality they know the majority of their countrymen would never support. Indeed our predicament is a heavy one, and then the west comes only to point it's rude finger and mock, or worse wield it's superior stick and teach us a lesson...what to do? Shut up and suffer.
I come off contradictory in many ways, confusing too, but I know a particularly loaded Arab nation on the Mediterranean coast who had a king, and then decided to kick the bucket and take matters in it's own hands for some rather petty reasons. They got served the reward for demanding outright change without foresight... They paid the highest price. There's always worse possible, always a cautionary tale to support the worn floskule of "careful what you wish for". In the end I wish the good people of these parts all the best and I refrain from judging them. They know best what they really want and what is good for them, and thankfully more than a few of them have both sound reasoning and the powers of rhetoric to back their ideas and arguments up. Even these loud arguments are actually great, the internet will prove instrumental to healing some eternal Arab problems. If you ever watched any Arab league meetings, any Al Jazeera debates (well some of them are deliberately sensationalist infotainment but nevertheless, these people aren't fresh produce salesmen you know) you know how it goes. This here is both diplomacy and democracy, opposing views are aired backed up by argument and no one gets to yell over each other, thereby taking away the opponent's right to express himself.
I just believe any change should be gradual and well timed, because these "rich-to-beggar, fool-to-wise" and vice versa u-turns always leave a lot of scars and gaping wounds that fester and eventually threaten the very nature of existence...
without questioning it, your membership of a society is reduced to being a mere statistic. The nation is effectively in autopilot mode, and the plane it's flying in, the country, also becomes it's government. This becomes highly dangerous because that same plane becomes a runaway train, and it's passengers effectively hostages of an uncontrollable machine whose will cannot be challenged...
I am not entirely sure what is it that drives mainly us muslims to be so complicit with our governments, be they democracies, monarchies, military juntas, religious or quasi-communist tyrannies. Is it cowardice? Is it our happiness (not really happiness but being content with the bone thrown) and tolerance ("God will give, God is merciful")? Is it our lack of education? I'm pretty sure it's a combination of all these elements. Topped off with the golden cherry of dubiously competent politicians. And then to add injury to insult, we have certain unscrupulous minority elements that will foster chaos without regard to anything, least of all human life, to bring about changes and a reality they know the majority of their countrymen would never support. Indeed our predicament is a heavy one, and then the west comes only to point it's rude finger and mock, or worse wield it's superior stick and teach us a lesson...what to do? Shut up and suffer.
I come off contradictory in many ways, confusing too, but I know a particularly loaded Arab nation on the Mediterranean coast who had a king, and then decided to kick the bucket and take matters in it's own hands for some rather petty reasons. They got served the reward for demanding outright change without foresight... They paid the highest price. There's always worse possible, always a cautionary tale to support the worn floskule of "careful what you wish for". In the end I wish the good people of these parts all the best and I refrain from judging them. They know best what they really want and what is good for them, and thankfully more than a few of them have both sound reasoning and the powers of rhetoric to back their ideas and arguments up. Even these loud arguments are actually great, the internet will prove instrumental to healing some eternal Arab problems. If you ever watched any Arab league meetings, any Al Jazeera debates (well some of them are deliberately sensationalist infotainment but nevertheless, these people aren't fresh produce salesmen you know) you know how it goes. This here is both diplomacy and democracy, opposing views are aired backed up by argument and no one gets to yell over each other, thereby taking away the opponent's right to express himself.
I just believe any change should be gradual and well timed, because these "rich-to-beggar, fool-to-wise" and vice versa u-turns always leave a lot of scars and gaping wounds that fester and eventually threaten the very nature of existence...