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	Waiting for an Arab Spring of Ideas by Tariq Ramadan Professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University   During a recent visit to the United States, I was asked by intellectuals and journalists: Were we misled, during the Arab awakening, into thinking that Muslims could actually embrace democratic ideals?   The short answer is no. Participants in the recent violent demonstrations over an Islamophobic video were a tiny minority. Their violence was unacceptable. They do not represent the millions of Muslims who have taken to the streets since 2010 in a disciplined, nonviolent manner to bring down dictatorships.   Many Americans were nonetheless shocked by the chaos and bloodshed across Muslim countries, believing that they had come generously to the aid of the Arab peoples during the uprisings. But Arabs, and Muslims in general, have a longer memory and a broader view. Their mistrust is fueled by America’s decades-long support for dictators who accommodated its economic and security interests; by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; by the humiliating treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay; and by America’s seemingly permanent and unconditional support for Israel.   The United States and its European allies would be well advised to examine why Muslims are seething. Withdrawing from Afghanistan, respecting United Nations resolutions and treaty obligations with regard to Palestine, calling back the killer drones and winding up the “war on terror” would be excellent places to start.   However, the time has come to stop blaming the West for the colonialism and imperialism of the past. Muslim-majority societies must jettison their historic posture as victims and accept that they are empowered actors, as millions of Arabs demonstrated last year by coming out into the streets and changing the course of history.   The timeworn dichotomy of “Islam versus the West” is giving way to an era of multipolar relations. The world’s economic center of gravity is shifting eastward. But the growing prominence of China, India and Russia, and of emerging powers like Brazil, South Africa and Turkey, does not automatically guarantee more justice and more democracy. Some Muslims are too quick to rejoice at the decline of American power. They seem unaware that what might replace it could well lead to a regression in social and human rights and to new forms of international dependency.   The Arab peoples, like those throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia, cannot, and do not want to, disregard the cultural and religious traditions that have long defined and nurtured them. As they pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and new models of democracy and of international relations, they need to draw on Islamic traditions. Islam can be a fertile ground for political creativity — and not an obstacle to progress, as Orientalist thinkers in the West have so often claimed.   The Arab world, and Muslim-majority societies, need not only political uprisings, but also a thoroughgoing intellectual revolution from within that will open the door to economic change; to spiritual, religious, cultural and artistic liberation; and to the empowerment of women. The task is not an easy one.   A struggle for political and religious authority is taking place in these societies. There are deep divisions among Sunnis — traditionalists, secularists, reformers, Sufi mystics — and also between Sunnis and Shiites.   At the moment, Arab thought has been hindered by a barren ideological construct that pits secularists against Islamists, making it impossible for either to indulge in in-depth reflection about the intellectual limitations that afflict both of them.   Westernized secular elites, for all their talk of democracy and human rights, often are carrying over former colonial agendas and are deeply disconnected from the people they claim to represent. Or if they aren’t — like some grass-roots movements on the left — their influence is marginal at best. Some have collaborated with dictators, accepted cronyism or benefited from official corruption. Others have remained close to the inner circles of the military (as in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Iraq). By standing against any overlapping of religion and politics, they have put forward a vision of democratization that is incoherent and disconnected from Islamic memories and traditions.   The Islamists have legitimacy, having paid a heavy price in opposing dictatorships for decades. They have made electoral gains in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia by adapting to the shifts in power brought about by the protesters and cyberactivists. Yet they are facing contradictory expectations: they must remain faithful to their Islamic credentials while facing foreign pressure with regard to democratic processes, economic policies and relations with Israel.   No figure embodies these contradictions more than Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new president, who tried last week to forcefully rebut President Obama’s absolute defense of free speech at the United Nations. But calling for limits on offensive speech is no solution. We don’t need more laws. We need courageous scholars and intellectuals who are willing to discuss topics their fellow Muslims don’t want to hear: their failings, their tendency to play the victim, the need to take responsibility for their actions. Only that sort of leadership will halt the tide of religious populism and emotionally driven blindness of the masses.   While the example of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., is interesting, it cannot be a reference for the entire Middle East. Turkey has a unique history; its challenges are not the same as those of the Arab world. The Arab Islamists, even as they celebrate their electoral successes, may well be entering a far more sensitive period of their history. They may lose the Islamic credibility they had as opposition forces, or be obliged to change and adapt so much that their political program is abandoned. Winning might be the beginning of losing.   Meanwhile, Salafi and Wahhabi groups with literalist interpretations of Islam have become more visible and politicized over the last five years. Having for decades refused political participation — equating democracy with kufr (rejection of Islam) — they are now slowly engaging in politics.   Some of these groups (known as Salafi jihadists) have turned to violent radicalism. Others, financed by Islamic institutions in Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf oil monarchies like Qatar and Bahrain — supposed allies of the United States — have entered mainstream politics, where they promote a religious, anti-democratic populism that plays on emotions, demonizes the West (especially America) and actively undermines the struggle for democratic reform. There is a danger that the model of Afghanistan — where in the 1980s the Taliban, supported by the Saudi and American governments, became the main force of resistance to Russian domination — may be repeating itself.   There can be no true democracy in the Middle East without a profound restructuring of economic priorities, which in turn can come about only by combating corruption, limiting the prerogatives of the military, and, above all, reconsidering economic relations with other countries and the gross inequalities of wealth and income within Muslim countries.   The emergence of a dynamic civil society is a precondition of success. Concern for free and critical thought must take the form of educational policies to build schools and universities, revise outdated curriculums and enable women to study, work and become financially independent.   The Arab world has shaken itself out of its lethargy after decades of apparent resignation and silence. But the uprisings do not yet amount to a revolution. The Arab world must confront its historical demons and tackle its infirmities and its contradictions: when it turns to the task, the awakening will truly have begun.   * Tariq Ramadan, is the author, most recently, of “Islam and the Arab Awakening.” Hussein Agha and Robert Malley offer their take on the unfolding events taking place across the Arab world, for the New York Review of Books, see link below. Visit the related web page
	High civilian death toll from campaign of indiscriminate attacks in Syria by Amnesty International   September 2012   Civilians, many of them children, are the main victims of a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army, Amnesty International said in a new briefing.   The briefing paper (and accompanying video footage) is based on first-hand field investigations carried out in the first half of September by Amnesty International into attacks which killed 166 civilians, including 48 children and 20 women, and injured hundreds in 26 towns and villages in the Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and north Hama regions.   The briefing paper provides fresh evidence of a pattern which has emerged in recent weeks in areas where government forces, pushed into retreat by opposition forces, are now indiscriminately bombing and shelling lost territory – with disastrous consequences for the civilian population.   “Government forces now routinely bomb and shell towns and villages using battlefield weapons which cannot be aimed at specific targets, knowing that the victims of such indiscriminate attacks are almost always civilians. Such weapons should never be used in residential areas,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who recently returned from northern Syria.   “The plight of the civilian population in this region of Syria has been under-reported as world attention has largely focused on the fighting in Aleppo and Damascus. But the horrors of what the residents of Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and north Hama endure every day is just as harrowing. Such indiscriminate attacks constitute war crimes.”   Civilians are being killed or injured in their homes, while running for cover, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the bombardments. On 16 September, eight civilians - five of them children - were killed and many more injured in a series of air strikes in Kafr Awayed in Jabal al-Zawiya. Residents told Amnesty International that seven of the victims were killed at a wedding party and in nearby houses, and a six-year-old boy was killed while buying bread.   The same pattern is repeated throughout the areas which have come under the effective control of opposition forces.   Amnesty International witnessed daily air bombardment, artillery and mortar strikes in towns and villages throughout the region. The deployment of such imprecise battlefield weapons and munitions against residential areas in recent weeks has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of civilian casualties.   Among the victims of such attacks were 35 civilians killed in the village of Kafr Anbel in two separate air bombardments. On 28 August, four air strikes in the market square killed 22 civilians.   On 22 August, a bombardment near a grocery story killed 13 civilians, including 31-year-old Zahia al-Aabbi who collected plastic around the village and then sold it to support her mother, sisters, disabled brother and blind father.   Attacks near hospitals shortly after a large influx of casualties, or by bread queues raise suspicions that such attacks deliberately target large gatherings of civilians, a serious violation of international humanitarian law (IHL) and a war crime.   The high death toll of children documented by Amnesty International further underlines the indiscriminate nature of many attacks by the Syrian Army. In one, four children - Ghofran Habboub, her brother and two cousins - were killed when their home was bombed on 14 August in the village of Shellakh (near Idlib).   A few days later, on 18 August, a large calibre mortar landed in a street in Ma’arat al-No’man, south of Idlib, killing two five-year-old girls, Hajar Rajwan and Ines Sabbouh and two cousins aged 10 and 11, as they played outside their homes.   Some have been killed as they fled for cover or where they sought refuge. Hundreds have lost their lives or were injured, many of them children, in recent weeks alone, since the Syrian government forces unleashed a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate air and artillery attacks.   Yet the international community remains paralysed and riven by disagreements which have so far prevented any effective pressure being brought to bear on those responsible for such attacks.   Such indiscriminate attacks constitute war crimes and those responsible up and down the chain of command should know that they will be held accountable and that they will not be able to hide behind the excuse that they were obeying orders.   The UN Security Council should speed up this process by referring the situation in Syria to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to ensure that that the perpetrators of these war crimes and other crimes under international law are brought to justice.   “Members of the UN Security Council should set aside their political wrangling and put the victims first,” said Rovera.   “A referral to the ICC would send a powerful message to those responsible for crimes under international law that the time for impunity is over and would make all parties involved in the conflict – government forces as well as opposition forces – think twice before committing such violations”.   Opposition fighters have at times also used imprecise weapons (such as mortars) or even inherently indiscriminate weapons (such as home-made rockets) in populated residential areas, further endangering the civilian population.   As the conflict grinds on there is a danger that opposition fighters, if they succeed in their efforts to procure longer range weapons, will also step up indiscriminate attacks and other abuses which the international community has been unable and unwilling to stop when committed on such a large scale by government forces.   All Syrian armed opposition groups – those belonging to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and others – must make it clear to all those under their command that the fact that government forces violate IHL does not excuse similar grave violations on their part and that such violations will not be tolerated.   http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/syria-new-evidence-high-civilian-death-toll-campaign-indiscriminate-attacks-2012-09-19   * Over 60,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict.
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