Reports are that huge crowds are gathering in the streets of Cairo, shouting demands that their President leave. Leave! Leave! Leave!
Personally, I do not know whether he ought to leave, or not. The whole Islamic world is going through a massive shift--one might very well call it a cultural revolution--from a medieval mind-set to something that more resembles what Europe has already gone through. Historians say that just as Islam was founded about 600 years after Christianity, many of the changes that have already happened to the "Christian world" happen to the "Islamic world" later. Both Christianity and Islam have had their "medieval periods", when nationhood was really just a form of being a religious community, when the rulers claimed to represent God in political community. They supported, or pretended to support, religious nationhood. Christians hear that claim very clearly in the chants of Islamic nations today, but once it was just as clear in Christians territory. In fact--in dismal fact--Americans still pretend, sometimes, that we are a Christian nation; whatever that meant in the past.
All across northern Africa, and into parts of the Middle East, what has up until now been medieval forms of Islamic nationhood, has been bursting at their own seams, trying to find ways to become part of the 21st century. Ideas about democracy are sweeping through them. Science has been washing over them. Reason, rather than divine authoritative declarations, has been intriguing them. They are going through a revolution.
They will have to do it at their own pace, and in their own way. This is no time for outsiders to pretend to understand what is happening inside their heads. There surely will be intolerable acts of violence, and some against their neighbors, as well, and other nations will have to take action to protect themselves, but essentially, at its heart, those Islamic nations will have to move into the 21st century in their own ways. We can be quite sure that sometimes they will make the same damned fool decisions that Europeans made, and that they will make some uniquely Islamic and African and Asian mistakes of their own. But so far as we can, we ought to be modest in how we choose to respond. We are still working through some of the problems, ourselves, making our own messes.
Personally, I do not know whether he ought to leave, or not. The whole Islamic world is going through a massive shift--one might very well call it a cultural revolution--from a medieval mind-set to something that more resembles what Europe has already gone through. Historians say that just as Islam was founded about 600 years after Christianity, many of the changes that have already happened to the "Christian world" happen to the "Islamic world" later. Both Christianity and Islam have had their "medieval periods", when nationhood was really just a form of being a religious community, when the rulers claimed to represent God in political community. They supported, or pretended to support, religious nationhood. Christians hear that claim very clearly in the chants of Islamic nations today, but once it was just as clear in Christians territory. In fact--in dismal fact--Americans still pretend, sometimes, that we are a Christian nation; whatever that meant in the past.
All across northern Africa, and into parts of the Middle East, what has up until now been medieval forms of Islamic nationhood, has been bursting at their own seams, trying to find ways to become part of the 21st century. Ideas about democracy are sweeping through them. Science has been washing over them. Reason, rather than divine authoritative declarations, has been intriguing them. They are going through a revolution.
They will have to do it at their own pace, and in their own way. This is no time for outsiders to pretend to understand what is happening inside their heads. There surely will be intolerable acts of violence, and some against their neighbors, as well, and other nations will have to take action to protect themselves, but essentially, at its heart, those Islamic nations will have to move into the 21st century in their own ways. We can be quite sure that sometimes they will make the same damned fool decisions that Europeans made, and that they will make some uniquely Islamic and African and Asian mistakes of their own. But so far as we can, we ought to be modest in how we choose to respond. We are still working through some of the problems, ourselves, making our own messes.
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