Posted by
malize on Saturday, May 19, 2007 1:43:36 PM
When Americans expressed outrage at the Dubai Port Deals
maybe they should have taken a tip from old Doc Brown from Back to the
Future and “think Fourth Dimensionally.”
I say this because having made several trips to the Emirates on the
Uncle Sam World Travel Plan (otherwise known as the U.S. Navy,) I understood
the true nature of the Emirates. A
collection of principalities that have been quietly in our corner for decades.
Another thing that Dubai itself has been doing is becoming a
showcase for the staged implementation of converting traditional arab
socio-political structure into something more palatable with the globalizing
world. In short laying out a roadmap
for creating a progressive arab society as the Muslim Reformation movement has
envisioned.
In Dubai the women are acquiring more freedoms, there was
just a massive investment in creating a “knowledge-based” culture by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, and
while they do not vote there, the rulers are engaged with the population and
the population is involved in various aspects of policy…low grade forms of
empowerment, if not actual representative democracy. Some residents have the not unreasonable view that the upcoming
generations are being carefully groomed by the current rulers to have the vote.
While in America we
chaff at the thought of supporting arab autocrats and do not understand why if
we get democracy to the people (like in Iraq) they go off and elect theocrats
and autocrats who will take their newly won freedoms away. Sort of like wondering why Americans would
vote Democrat.
The truth of the
matter in the Arab world is that the populations there are not ruled by far
thinking men like Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, who is the modern embodiment of the
Enlightened Absolutist. However, Sheikh
Mohammed makes Catherine, Frederick, Gustav, and the rest look like
pikers. The majority of arab states,
Turkey excepted, suffer under varying degrees of autocrat or theocrat who have
no great desire to visit an Arab Enlightenment on their countries.
Whatever form of
globally palatable progressive society the arab world settles itself around in
the future, it will be very unlikely that society will more than superficially
resemble what we in America call Democracy.
But it also does not mean we should force the process, lecture them, and
get in their way either. It took
Western society a couple hundred years to arrive at where we are today, with
plenty of notable exchanges of “one step forward, two steps back, three steps
forward, two steps back.”
After all,
any country with a 50's themed club can't be all that bad, can it?