West Should Let Arab-Muslim World Be
Arab despots are doomed, to be overthrown and hanged or shot, as were Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi.
They have had their moment on history’s stage and, almost without exception, they have been deserving of utmost contempt.
Their exit does not, however, mean an end to some variation of authoritarian rule that will remain tyrannical for non-Muslim minorities, women, dissidents and others deemed unfit to be part of the intimidated Muslim majority.
Authoritarian rule in the name of Islam is the legacy of Arab-Muslim history. There is a tradition from the early centuries of Islam which decrees a day of strife is worse than
60 years of tyranny.
The religious authorities in Muslim countries armed with this spurious tradition are ever ready to sanction tyranny and repress freedom. Hence, among Arabs and Muslims, the worst of tyrants are frequently men in religious garb, preaching their bigotry from the sanctity of mosques and legitimizing their cruelty in Allah’s name. This is what occurred in Iran in 1979 when Iranian nationalists, supported by religious authorities, painted the Shah of Iran as a monster supported by the U.S. and drove him out.
If the Shah had been as much of a monster as he was made out to be by his opponents, he would have acted as the Chinese communists did in 1989 when they set tanks against students rallying for freedom in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Four months after Iraq was liberated in April 2003, a visitor from Iran, Seyyed Hussein Khomeini, arrived in Shiite Islam’s holy city of Najaf.