The state of democracy and human rights in the Arab ummah (nation)1

ABSTRACT

Arab constitutions, for the most part, specify and guarantee human rights in their wordings. However, the reality of the individual in the Arab nation reveals something quite different from that which is written in the constitutions. The state is charged with providing citizens with sufficient opportunities by granting them the right to participate in political, economic, social and cultural life in addition to rendering the private life and private affairs of individuals inviolable. Arab regimes’ commitment to democracy is tenuous and in the main, these regimes preserve reference to democracy in their constitutions simply as a means for improving the image of the regime and as a pro-forma attempt at applying a modus operandi of a modern state. Despite the fact that laws are promulgated to regulate political work, the press and media, and the institutions of civil society, they are deprived of their function and impact through superficial or highly restricted legislation. For more than five decades, academic researches and writings on the obstacles to transitioning to democracy have increased and multiplied; and various ideas and opinions on the subject have been advanced. This article attempts an explanation of the phenomenon of Arab authoritarianism which fostered the crisis of the ‘Arab Spring’ and explores the reasons for the failure of democracy in the region.

KEYWORDS: human rights in the Arab world; dissension in the Arab world; social and economic rights in the Arab Region

The Arab ummah (hereinafter after referred to as ‘Arab ummah’ or ‘Arab nation’) comprises 22 states, 19 of which have a constitutional document. Of these, the constitutions of 16 characterize their respective systems as either ‘democratic’ or ‘parliamentary–representative’;²and eight lack any sort of article granting the right to organize political parties or express political pluralism.³Despite the fact that three Arab states lack a constitution and three others have ones that do not specify a democratic or parliamentary system, the Arab nation established an Arab Parliamentary Union in June 1974. The union comprised all 22 Arab countries: 13 of the parliaments were relatively freely elected; three others in which parliamentary elections were controlled by the prerogative of the ruling regime to appoint and field candidates; and six in which the members of parliaments were appointed by the ruling regime. Significantly, all the Arab countries professed to have apparatuses of accountability and oversight of state revenues and expenditures.

Thus, all these Arab regimes had the right to be members of the Arab Organization for High Apparatuses of Fiscal Oversight and Accountability, even if most of these apparatuses did not enjoy actual independence as a result of their subservience to the rulers of the respective states.⁴All this points to the tenuous conviction of official Arab regimes to democracy; and that, in the main, such regimes preserve reference to such in their constitutions simply as a means for improving the image of the regime and as a pro-forma attempt at applying a modus operandi of a modern state. In reality, this is predicated on the authorities insisting on the separation of the legislative, executive and judicial institutions as well as on the oversight of the fiscal and administrative offices. Laws are promulgated to regulate political work, the press and media, and institutions of civil society. Yet, these are deprived of their function and impact through superficial or highly restricted legislation given that the institutions and structures in question remain within the orbit of the regimes, serve to protect them, are expressive of their will and are subject to the security, intelligence and political apparatuses that actually ‘pull the strings’ in the various countries.

As for what pertains to general and public freedoms as well as human rights, all Arab constitutions contain a section on the rights and duties of citizens. This section typically contains provisions to the effect that citizens are equal in rights and duties and that there is to be no discrimination between them on the basis of gender, origin, language, religion (aldin) or credo (al-‘aqidah). Moreover, the state is charged with providing them with sufficient opportunities – granting them the right to participate in political, economic, social and cultural life in addition to rendering the private life and private affairs of individuals inviolable. This is from the standpoint of conferring a certain sanctity on the private domicile, guaranteeing citizens access to private mail as well as private telephone landlines and other communications. The state is also barred in terms of exiling nationals, preventing them re-entry into the country or surrendering them to a foreign power. Likewise, nationals are generally permitted the right to move within the territories of the state and to leave them. The state is also barred from surrendering refugees seeking political asylum based on their principles and defending their freedom. Likewise, freedom of belief is typically guaranteed along with the right to express one’s opinion freely and openly, both verbally and in writing or by any other means.

Additionally, freedom of the press, printing and publishing, and distribution are guaranteed along with the media and its independence. Typically, the right to assemble and demonstrate peaceably are also stipulated, as well as to go on strike from work. Freedom is granted to establish associations and guilds; and every accused person is presumed innocent until proven otherwise in a just court of law. Accused persons are granted the right to a trial and the right to review and contest all charges against them as well as to defend themselves before a judge. It is forbidden to investigate or detain anyone without just cause or a ruling issued by a special court. Similarly, it is prohibited to torture or humiliate anyone. In sum, Arab constitutions, for the most part, specify and guarantee human rights in their wordings. However, the reality of the individual in the Arab nation reveals something quite different from that which is written in the constitutions.

Western indicators

Given these factors, there is little difficulty when using Western indicators⁵in categorizing the authoritarian regimes of the Arab nation, despite the existence of clear and explicit texts in some of the Arab constitutions suggesting the adoption of a democratic system. In the 2015 Democracy Index,⁶all the countries of the Arab nation were categorized as having ‘authoritarian regimes’, with the exception of Tunisia which was categorized among the states with a ‘defective democracy’. As for the states such as Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, these are classed as ‘hybrid regimes’, where democracy is mixed with authoritarianism. The remainder of Arab countries are classified under the rubric of ‘authoritarian states’. The Polity Data Series indicator⁷categorizes systems of government according to three types: democracy, anocracy⁸and autocracy. According to this indicator, Tunisia was the only Arab state classified as a democracy, with the others being categorized either as anocracies or autocracies, to varying degrees.

As far as public freedoms and human rights are concerned, the annual CIRI Human Rights Data Project Report⁹places most of the states of the Arab nation lowest on the list, where in the last year eight of these showed a drop in measures for ‘physical integrity rights’. As far as freedom of the press is concerned, the Freedom of the Press Report puts all the countries in the Arab world under the category of ‘not free’ with the exception of three that are classed as ‘partly free’.¹⁰The 2013 Worldwide Index of Human Freedom categorizes one Arab state as ‘free’, six as ‘partly free’ and 11 as ‘not free’. It happens that this is actually an improvement over previous years, given the entrance of two Arab countries onto the list of ‘partly free’ in the year of the survey.¹¹

As far as what pertains to financial and administrative corruption, the indicator of the Global Organization for Transparency,¹²known as the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), has all Arab countries scoring in aggregate an average of 35 on a scale of 100 points. They failed to attain the minimum level of the global average of 43 for reaching a stage of reasonable transparency and integrity.¹³Moreover, the indicators for most of the Arab countries showed no tangible change in their rankings over the previous years and less than the requisite average to prevent their classification as ‘corrupt states’. The Arab states did manifest variation in their relative standing between more and less corrupt states, according to their rankings.

Impediments to democracy

For more than the last five decades, academic researches and writings on the obstacles to transitioning to democracy have increased and multiplied; and various ideas and opinions on the subject have been advanced. A brief note will be made of the major trends in this regard as they pertain to the Arab world.

There are those who see that the effectiveness of the democratic mechanisms and structures is not viable, except with the existence of a capitalist economic framework driven by free markets,¹⁴where a liberal capitalist economy serves as a guarantor for the development of a working middle class representing the bourgeoisie. It is said that one of the reasons for the rise to prominence of democracy in Western Europe was due to the inception of the bourgeoisie to the extent that it is claimed that ‘there is no democracy without a bourgeoisie’. Furthermore, the existence of such a class is considered to be a guarantor for the transition of societies to ones with a civil character, which transitions individuals from their belonging on the basis of ethnic, religious or partisan affiliations to belonging to institutions of civil society. These institutions drive individuals to adopt the democratic mode of operation in choosing representatives of associations or their administrative councils. Likewise, their general associations engrain the importance of oversight and accountability in terms of performance and accomplishment.

There are those who see that the success of democracy correlates to mean individual income¹⁵that should not be less than US$10,000 per annum. An increase in the level of income guarantees an increase in the standard of living¹⁶and leads the individual to pledge loyalty to the state before any other loyalty. In the case of states that exhibit a low average individual income, voter orientation remains subject to the pressures of basic needs and staples, leading to situations where whoever secures the most of their needs is elected. This typically ends, for the most part, in the predominance of the ethnic, religious or factional factor.¹⁷

Yet, there are others who see that democracy, as a model of governance, is tied to the culture of Western societies (Zeng 2015) and that it proved successful there as a result of its natural inception in those societies, in which case it is not necessarily the case that it should prove successful in other societies. This contention is most often echoed among East Asian countries that hold that their cultures oblige them to modify the democratic model in ways suitable to the culture of their societies. This is perhaps what explains China’s abstention from adopting this model as well as the current model of government in Russia.

In addition to these views, there are those who hold that good governance is more important than democracy,¹⁸and such is predicated with a model that grants preponderance to integrity and transparency over political rights and freedoms. Proponents see that this drives perpetual growth as well as a comfortable life and luxury in a secure fashion, most often citing the experience of Singapore as evidence for the veracity of these contentions.¹⁹

There are also those who see that external factors are decisive in the success of the democratic experience from the standpoint of intervention or lack of intervention in the politics of a particular state. The geopolitical position of a state or the nature of the interests of the major powers in it are all issues that factor positively in the potential success of the experience.²⁰For example, there are what are termed ‘confrontational states’, that is, those in proximity to Israel; and they will remain subject to international pressures and intervention in order to guarantee the peace and security of Israel. This is a matter that is not denied by any of the Western nations and, at the forefront of them, the United States. Another example can be culled from the oil-producing states, the security and stability of which will remain contingent upon their responsiveness to global oil policies. The United States is adamantly opposed to any thinking on behalf of the producer countries about using oil as a ‘weapon’, even if it brokers no objection to its use as such – in agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – in its altercations and differences with other major powers.

Explaining the phenomenon of Arab authoritarianism

In addition to the aforementioned general obstacles to democracy, those in the Arab world take on a particular nature. Democracy requires structures of a modern state on which to build its institutions. The impasse in the Arab nation lies in the self-absorption of the ruling elites in constructing their hegemonies at the expense of building the state. They are closed elites that do not permit the entrance of anyone into their spheres except those in agreement with their special criteria, commensurate with the nature of the ruling elites themselves. This ‘closed’ aspect leads to the monopoly of a very exclusive group – ‘a political clique’ – which controls the centres of leadership, employment and politics within the state. Such factors in the accumulation of maladies within the system such as political and employment ossification, administrative stagnation, clinging to office, divvying up of benefits, nepotism, clustering around the particular leader and competing for his favour. The era of the 1960s and 1970s, which were characterized by the predominance of a comprehensive and unitary political organization, gave rise to the development of an educated elite characterized by a unity of thought and action. With the passing of time this transformed into the ‘old guard’ of the Arab systems, genuinely fearful of democracy, change and development as that would expose their dangers, flaws and interests. Yet, strategically, they were compelled to raise the slogans of democracy on public occasions, while making war on it as a reform initiative within the system’s corridors of power.

Some of the Arab regimes have endeavoured to justify their crisis of democracy with co-optive policies in which the masses are directed towards national issues such as confronting colonialism, imperialism and Western ambitions, or towards specific cases such as that of Palestine or confronting Israel. In recent times, democracy has been co-opted in factional and sectarian battles at the regional level, or it has been used to feed ‘sectarian–religious’ contentions among members of a single nation, which puts citizens before a set of sensitive and destiny-shaping priorities. Other regimes have endeavoured to position democracy as a mechanism of government in conflict with religion, where these regimes consider that religion has put in place a system of governance for the state and they have made the Quran their ‘constitution’.²¹Following this logic, there is no need to draft a constitution or to ratify one given the existence of the Quran. There is no need to set up the structures of democracy in the presence of an institution of hereditary or dynastic governance. This discourse resonates powerfully and has wide appeal among the ranks of salafists, to the extent that this led to the enthusiastic pronouncement of some of them to the effect that the mechanisms of democracy are clearly contradictory to Islam, and some even consider them tantamount to unbelief (al-kufr) (AlJaami 2005).²²

The crisis of the ‘Arab Spring’

The Cold War during the 20th century provided most of the Arab regimes with security cover through the concept of ‘sovereignty’²³specified in the Charter of the United Nations that conferred a guarantee to Arab regimes that foreign states would not intervene in their internal affairs. This helped to facilitate these regimes in dealing with their populations individually and with impunity, imposing their will upon them however they saw fit. This situation did not change until the end of the Cold War and the beginning of Western intervention to remove the peoples of Eastern Europe from the grip of their communist regimes, where this intervention was varied and took political, military and humanitarian forms.

The events of September 11 in New York pushed the United States to announce three strategies²⁴between July 2002 and February 2003. These bore the features of change for the world order in the coming stage from the perspective that they introduced a new authoritative ‘moral’ referent for ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ensconced in and represented by ‘American legitimacy’ and based on military might instead of international law to preserve global peace. This was the case even if it entailed the United States taking on the task unilaterally and constricting the concept of sovereignty of the nation-state and declaring a war on terror by force of weapons rather than force of law, conferring a new concept of global peace tied to the principles of democracy, declaring the right of all peoples of the world to enjoy freedom and justice.

Accompanying this announcement was the discussion of a ‘Greater Middle East’ in which the states of the region were promised democracy and growth. It was for the Arab regimes to understand from these indicators the new change and to understand that the guarantees that were forthcoming during the Cold War for the regimes on the inside, under the principle of ‘sovereignty’, were no longer to be. Change was coming from beyond the unknown, and especially in the Western military camp that had huge budgets to spread ‘democracy’ in the Middle East. They trained individuals from all over the Arab states of the region to use the means of social media and the media to mobilize the masses. The West played upon the weak point of the peoples of the region, who had been deprived of freedom and were longing for democracy, while simultaneously being enraged by corruption.

Everyone thought that the West would push for reform of the regimes or their change towards democracy, especially after its apparently limited enthusiasm for the revolts of the ‘Arab Spring’ and what manifested in institutions of civil society and the media²⁵as well as the alternative media (i.e., social media),²⁶the parliaments, the intelligence organizations²⁷and the political leaders.²⁸

This was among that which precipitated a painful shock to the leadership of the Arab regimes; and especially when they were witnessing the bringing down of important leaderships among them. This led the leaders to repeatedly question the West in astonishment: Why all this? Why the ignoring and neglect of friends and allies (in need)?

The response of those in the West was simply to offer the advice ‘listen to your people’. At that moment, the leaders of the Arab regimes realized that there was conspiracy directed towards the entire Arab ummah (nation). This conspiracy exploited the thirst for the people of the region for democracy to take the place of fragile regimes unable to maintain and preserve the order. So as to incite chaos in a form now famous as ‘creative destruction’²⁹and for the purpose of fractioning the nation into a collection of minor states no longer bound together by overarching Arab ties, but rather torn apart by ethnic, factional, sectarian and partisan sentiments. It was not possible for the Arab regimes to convince their peoples of these foreign conspiratorial machinations. Due to the fact that most of these had a lengthy history of exaggeration and lying in dubious mobilization campaigns, these regimes had lost their credibility with their peoples; and their peoples were no longer responsive to them, even if this time the regimes were being truthful. There is still lingering dissension between the Arab regimes and the Arabs dreaming of democracy despite the unmasking of the recent conspiracies when everyone realized that there were those exploiting the chaos that ushered in the socalled ‘Arab Spring’ to overthrow dubious and violent groups while, at the same time, providing international justification for the return of foreign military forces into the region, otherwise known in the last century as ‘colonialism’. Despite that, up to the now the ‘Arab Spring’ has failed to realize the dreams of the Arab peoples for a democratic system that respects human rights. It has also brought with it the terror of the demise of the Arab order and fears of fragmentation and division, and has left an indelible imprint on Arab consciousness. Namely, it ‘broke the barrier of fear’ and raised the hopes of those dreaming of democracy as well as their determination to achieve it despite the stolid and harsh confrontation of their demands on the part of the regimes. Simultaneously, the leaderships of the Arab regimes became aware of the delusion and false hope of any ‘international guarantees’ that would keep them in power. Those were temporary and contingent upon the prevailing international situation as in the case of the Cold War. They realized the importance of appeasing their populations and considering their demands. It may be the case that the coming future will hold pleasant surprises for the Arab nation once lessons from the painful present are learnt.

Notes:

CONTEMPORARY ARAB AFFAIRS, 2016

VOL. 9, NO. 4, 523-535

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17550912.2016.1241531

Isma‘il al-Shatti: Writer and former Vice Prime Minister of Kuwait, Kuwait.

This paper was selected from the 2016 Arab National Conference.
The constitution of Yemen does not clearly specify a democratic system. However, in lieu ofthat, it mentions ‘mechanisms of democracy‘. Article 4 states that the people possess power and are its source; they exercise it in direct fashion via means of general referenda and elections. Additionally, they practise it indirectly by means of legislative, executive and judiciary bodies, and through the local, elected council (majlis). Article 5 states that the political system of the republic persists with political and party pluralism with the goal of the peaceful rotation of power. As for the Omani constitution, it does not describe the system of state; however, Section 9 mentions that rule in the sultanate persists on the basis of justice, mutual consultation (al-shura) and equality, and that the citizens – in accordance with this basic system as well as the conditions and circumstances clarified under law – have the right to participate in public affairs. As for the constitution of the UAE, it does not indicate the nature of the system of the state.
Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Syria, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon.
See the website of the High Arab Organization for Fiscal Oversight and Accountability Apparatuses; see also the website for the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau of the State of Palestine which lists special laws for accountability apparatuses in the Arab nation under the section on Arab oversight apparatuses (http://www.saacb.ps/SaacbLaws.aspx).
Taking into account the political backwardness in the Arab nation on the basis of Westernindicators leads, in general, to misleading results. Doing so engenders in Arab citizens feelings of weakness, waywardness and insignificance, and it engrains a sense of inferiority towards the West and its perceived superiority. Thus, in the author’s opinion, Arab citizens must register their objections and observations with regard to these indicators that exhibit a great deal of manipulation, bias and outright deception. It is possible to provide examples of these observations along the lines of the following: (1) promoting and propagandizing the Western capitalist model where most of the results accord a conspicuous position to wealthy Western states with liberal democratic systems or states strategically allied to these, all of which gives the impression that ‘progressiveness’ lies in the acquisition of resources and alliance with the West; (2) arbitrariness in transforming concepts into numbers (i.e., the quantification of qualitative data); (3) eclecticism in selecting criteria and excluding problematic or anomalous results; and (4) concealing the role the West has played in inculcating the prevailing backwardness, where such becomes evident in the role of the West in selling weapons and war material to non-Western states at war or in making war on small commercial projects in the interest of major corporations. For more details, see Al-Shatti (2014).
The ‘democracy indicator’ is one of the units of information taken into account by The Economist magazine in order to assess the state of democracy in 167 countries. This unit of information in the democracy indicator relies on 60 criteria summarized in five different categories: electoral processes; political pluralism and civil liberties; government performance; political participation; and political culture.
This indicator is from the series Reports on Government published by the University ofMaryland for assessing democracy in the countries of the world.
An ‘anocracy’ is an unstable system that blends between autocracy and democracy.
The CIRI project to evaluate the status of human rights throughout the countries of the worldis funded by the US National Institute of Science, the World Bank, the German GTZ Corporation, as well as Binghamton University in New York and Connecticut University. This comprises 17 criteria where the sum total score indicates the relative respect of a given state for human rights: (1) freedom of assembly and association; (2) instances of disappearance; (3) domestic freedom of movement; (4) electoral self-determination (formerly categorized as ‘political participation’ and ‘free and fair elections’); (5) the empowerment rights index;

(6) extrajudicial killings; (7) freedom of foreign travel; (8) independence of the judiciary;

(9) the physical integrity rights index; (10) political imprisonment; (11) freedom of religion; (12) freedom of speech; (13) torture; (14) women’s economic rights; (15) women’s political rights; (16) women’s social rights; and (17) workers’ rights.

These are Lebanon, Tunisia and Kuwait.
The Worldwide Index of Human Freedom is issued by the Fraser Institute in Canada, Germany’s Liberales Institut and the US-based Cato Institute. It contains criteria on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, economic choice for individuals, freedom of assembly, levels of crime and violence, freedom of movement, rights of women, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights.
The International Organization for Transparency, located in Berlin, has been issuing its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) since 1995; it also issues a global corruption report that is a barometer for global corruption and the payment of bribes. However, the US branch does not ever comment upon any case of corruption in the United States in any of its reports, which is ironic given that it obtains its funding from the Boeing Corporation whose chief executive officer (CEO) was imprisoned for a case of corruption – suggesting at the very least that the organization does not enjoy complete transparency, at least not with regard to its sponsor. Furthermore, the organization is sometimes the victim of hasty information and hasty judgement as in the case of what happened with Venezuela in May 2008 when the organization was obliged to settle a dispute on the basis of what it had published in its report on the section on ‘transparency of increased income’ to the effect that the stateowned Venezuelan Oil Company had failed to disclose essential information, such as the amount of increase in the company’s revenue as well as the amount of taxes it had paid in addition to claims that it had not provided accurate account information. As a result of this, the report gave Venezuela the lowest ranking for tax estimates among the oil companies of 42 countries; however, the report proved to be in error as all the information for the Venezuelan Oil Company was a matter of public record. This led to accusations against the International Organization for Transparency for conducting a campaign against the Venezuelan government.
The indicator is scaled from 0 to 100, where the lowest ranking (zero) indicates rampantlevels of corruption and lack of transparency and the higher rankings indicate greater transparency and integrity. Comparison of annual rates of transparency and integrity show the degree to which a given country has either evidenced a favourable increase on the scale or whether it has shown a relative increase in levels of corruption, as indicated by falling score.
The well-known American thinker Samuel Huntington (1968) in his The Political Order in Changing Societies comes to a debatable conclusion that democracy in states such as South Korea came about primarily because of the stage of economic growth that preceded the adoption of the democratic system.
The first to propose the case for the relation between mean income and democracy wasSeymour Martin Lipest (d. 2006), the American political sociologist. The concept was subsequently known as ‘Lipest’s law’ (Lipest 1959). This topic has been discussed by researchers such as Boix (2009), Acemoglu et al. (2008), Collier (2007), Paldam and Gundlach 2008; and Fayad, Bates, and Hoeffler 2011).
Larry Diamond of Stanford University’s Hoover Institute wrote: ‘Some see the existence of a large accumulation of evidence for the ability of the ruling regime to remain in power in the case of the improved economic situation’ (Diamond 1992, 450). A study conducted by Adam Przeworski and associates (for the 1950–90 period) found a direct and fixed correlation between average individual income in the country with democratic governance and the possibility for the death of democracy in some particular year. The more the wealth of the country increases, the less likely is the possibility for the failure of democracy. However, the more important result for the discussion here is that at all the levels of economic growth (even at the level of the highest sector of an annual mean income of US $10,000 according to 2009 exchange rates), democracy is most subject to collapse during economic recession, as observed by Przeworski et al. (2000) as ‘the death of democracy a clear pattern’. In a more recent study, Kapstein and Converse (2009) arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to democracies that came into existence between 1960 and 2004. They found ‘a major connection between a rise in total average growth of the Domestic Product and reduced chances for the demise of democracy’, whereas ‘rises in average rates of inflation in one of the years has a major connection to the occurrence of a tangible increase in the potential for the demise of democracy’. In other words, good economic performance facilitates the survival of democracies, where as poor performance threatens it.
The demise of Indian democracy takes place in this context: despite the democracy of theIndian system, it did not succeed in overcoming religious struggles or overcoming them; and the right-wing Hindu nationalist party – the Bahartiya Janata Party (BJP) – remains one of the most powerful political parties in the country.
Good governance is a system for oversight and orientation at the institutional level that determines responsibilities, rights and relations with all the particular groups and clarifies the bases and necessary procedures to make good decisions pertaining to the work of the organization. It is a system that calls for justice, transparency and institutional accountability; and it reinforces trust and honesty in the work environment.
The view of the late founding president of Singapore, Lee Kwan Yu, proceeded from thestandpoint that growth must precede democracy. He emphasized that democracy be implemented in states where order and stability prevail and not in ones where there are situations of dissension and chaos. The people must have attained a certain stage of discipline and ability to bear responsibility without being supervised by anyone. Similarly, democracy does not succeed except when the culture of toleration is prevalent. Lee reiterated in his book From Third World to First (Lee 2011) that had democracy been implemented immediately after Singapore’s independence from Malaysia in 1965, that would have caused a disaster from the perspective that Singapore was suffering from security, economic and social problems in addition to financial and administrative corruption. Lee saw that before the implementation of a democratic system, such obstacles must be overcome, and also on the condition that education and the economy are developed and that a middle class is formed where life is not only a matter of endeavouring to meet basic needs.
Easterly et al. (2009) ask what the economic consequences of American interventions are ofthe sort practised to keep in place and support political leaders in other countries. The lack of credible information on these secret interventions up until now constitutes an obstacle to serious treatment of the like of this question. Despite this, recent Cold War-era documents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have become declassified, and this is among that which has made it possible to deal with this subject methodologically in the context of the Cold War. On this point, see Andrew and Mitrokhin (2000, 2006), Blum (1986, 2004), Bueno de Mesquita and Downs (2006), Easterly, Satyanath, and Berger (2008), Kinzer (2006), and Westad (2005, 2007).
The assertion that ‘the Quran is our constitution’ is either a denigration of the place of the Quran and its sacredness or ignorance of the nature of a constitution and its intended function. This impels us to define what is implied by the term ‘constitution’ so as to make clear the error of comparing between the Quran and the concept of a constitution. The general definition of a constitution is a set of basic principles that define the form of the state and the ruling system within it. It specifies basic guarantees of rights of individuals and assigns the extent of the powers of the state in addition to regulating its public powers with a clarification of the particular functions and nature of these powers. Some constitutions delimit the relationship between the state and religion and the relationship between ethnicities or minorities among one another in the event that the society is comprised of multiple races and factions/denominations. According to this definition, it is not possible for the Quran to be the ‘constitution’ of any state. The Quran is a book sent down by Allah for humanity across all times and for all places. Its purpose is more extensive and comprehensive than simply delimiting the form of state and the ruling system within it. Rather, its purpose is to construct a creedal concept that regulates the relationship between the creator and the created beings and between the human being and the rest of creation and between creatures and life. It is a set of concepts and worldview that if the human being were to follow, it would engender values and balances commensurate with the rhythm of the movement of creatures and which would guarantee the continuation of life and the sanctity of the universe as well as the survival of humankind. It is a concept that takes up more than two-thirds of the Quran in detailed explanation and repeated types of examples, confirming evidences from history, the universe, the environment and the human self. The other third contains accounts from the history of the prophetic mission of the Prophet (peace be upon him), instances in which revelation occurred either to record them or to comment on them for the sake of their becoming a code of law to be obeyed. The Quran relies on propounding law (al-tashri’) to a greater degree than that human thought nourished by the values and balances spring from that perception related to Providence. Thus, the Quran did not broach most of the issues pertaining to the form of the state and the system of government within it, leaving these instead to the innovative capacities of the ‘believing’ Most of what is related to political affairs is connected to rulings that came in the context of interventions of divine revelation in the Quran with regard to the developments confronted by the mission of the Prophet. Furthermore, most of these came as a corpus of general and diverse principles such as al-shuura (the practice of mutual consultation), justice, equality, sales and contracts, etc. As for the areas that were not touched upon by revelation and left open to human ijtihad (independent human reasoning guided by Islamic precepts), these are thousands of times more frequent than those areas covered explicitly by the Quran and sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., his normative, legally binding practice). This is another perspective on the inimitable nature of the Quran. Politics, economics, administration, technology, arts and literature all change and develop over the course of the ages and the international system and its composition change along with the nature of the state and the basis of its existence and identity, along with the system of rule within it. Before this inevitable sort of change, which demands great flexibility, Islam does not propound anything more than general principles and a reason whose thought is regulated according to the providential set of concepts. For this reason, the Quran is virtually free of the sort of detail contained in constitutions about powers and their constitutional institutions as well as their make-up, specializations and the points of articulation between them.
Al-Jami is a founder of the contemporary salafist movement which came into existence in Saudi Arabia and calls for obedience to the de facto rulers (i.e., the Saudi royal family) while rejecting opposing political work as well as opposition political activities, demonstrations, preferring adherence and the lack of any public criticism or the rulers as well as others.
‘Sovereignty’ is based on the legal concept of a set of powers; that is, of rights and duties that apply in a basic way to all members of the legal order. Following on this, all members are equal before the law. From this there emerges the principle of equality among ‘sovereign’ The United Nations’ (UN) Charter, in the first paragraph of its second section, specifies ‘equality in sovereignty between the states’ – one of the most important principles upon which the UN organization is founded. The fourth paragraph of the same section specifies censures the use of force or the threat of it on the part of all member states of the UN against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. As for the seventh paragraph, it specifies that there is nothing in the charter that sanctions the intervention of the UN into the internal affairs of the internal authority of any state. This means, in accordance with the foregoing, that sovereignty has two guarantees: (1) the political guarantee of sovereignty manifest in the independence of the state and the impermissibility of encroaching upon its territorial integrity; and (2) the legal guarantee of sovereignty represented in the equality between it and other states in addition to the impermissibility of intervention in its internal affairs by other states.
These are: the national strategy for security of the nation, issued in 2002; the national strategyfor combating weapons of mass destruction, issued in September 2002; and the national strategy for combating terrorism, issued in February 2003.
The satellite television channels played an essential role in inciting and provoking the Arabstreet. Some Arabic-language satellite channels espoused ‘neutrality’ with regard to one event at the expense of another; and it was observed that some of these channels sometimes actually caused a particular event in question by conflating it, fabricating it or manipulating its course. An opinion poll conducted by the Arab-European Centre for Research, based in Paris, revealed that Arab satellite channels did not operate with objectivity with regard to what was transpiring of events in the Arab nation; and this included Arab satellite channels as well as those set up by Western states.
YouTube™ clips and activity on Twitter™ played a major role in garnering international attention for cases of autocracy in some of the countries of the Arab nation. Some surveys indicate that the number of those using Facebook™ in the Arab region alone by 2010 had reached 20 million users, most of whom were among the youth. (All the Arab countries in which the survey was conducted showed that youth accounted for 90% of users.)
According to the website al-’Arabiyah News on 18 April 2016, British intelligence services are assisting Syrian rebels in mounting successful attacks against the forces of the regime. The weekly newspaper Sunday reported that British intelligence services played a secret role in the revolt against the regime, which erupted first in March 2011. It reported that British intelligence was using its military bases in Cyprus to track the movements of the Syrian army as well as to transport Syrian fighters through Turkey. The Swedish website Today on 15 July 2015 published two pictures of prisoners with the following description: ‘These two British soldiers were arrested by Iraqi police in 2005 while planting a bomb at night in one of the crowded marketplaces, which was set to go off in the morning, thereby inciting civil strife in order to strike a blow at the Iraqi people in all their different sects, a people who lived for centuries in diversity and brotherhood.’ Under investigation, these two British soldiers confessed to kidnapping 34 individuals among both Sunni and Shi’ite extraction and to torturing and killing them, thereafter throwing their corpses in the street in order that Sunni and Shi’ite factions should accuse one another of the crimes. Soon thereafter, British forces broke into the Iraqi police station in order to ‘liberate’ the two soldiers. The Chinese newspaper The People (a newspaper close to Chinese intelligence) reported that in one of its investigations it discovered that 60% of the operations involving detonation of bombs in marketplaces and mosques as well as the kidnapping and killing of civilians were undertaken by foreign intelligence services through their operatives. This is the same scenario that is occurring in the countries of the ‘Arab Spring’. In 2009, an Iraqi citizen was arrested at a US army checkpoint. The Iraqi driver was taken out of the car and into the adjoining building. After the other passengers had been removed and while the driver was being held, his car was booby-trapped. After apologizing and assuring the driver that his detention had merely been routine security procedure, he was released. There was, however, a car driven by another Iraqi that happened to be following the aforementioned individual who reported that once the lead car reached one of the crowded streets, it was detonated by men of US intelligence. This is one of the ‘black ops’ of foreign intelligence used to create civil strife and incite civil war in Iraq. Another Iraqi reported that during the Iraq War, Iraqi mental patients in one hospital were drugged and then booby-trapped before being released; and when they arrived at particular points, they were blown up by remote control.
The website Aljazeera.net on 24 February 2011 reported that US President Barack Obama asserted in a press conference at the White House on 23 February 2011 that the wave of revolts sweeping through some of the Arab countries of the Middle East were taking place as a result of the will of its peoples and not in accordance with the will of Washington. Subsequently, Aljazeera.net went on to report on 5 May 2011 that Obama said that the uprisings in the region of the Middle East served the United States and granted it a major opportunity; and he saw that these revolts opened up vast horizons before the new generations. Obama described these revolutions as ‘winds of freedom’ blowing through the region and said that the forces that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should cooperate with the United States and Israel.
‘Creative destruction’, or what is perhaps more aptly termed ‘creative chaos’, is a political– ideological term that refers to the creation of a political situation after a phase of premeditated chaos in the wake of events. It is undertaken by appointed persons without their identities being revealed; and this is aimed at turning matters to their advantage and interests. It may also be used to foment an amenable human situation after a phase of premeditated chaos by known persons in order to help others to become self-reliant.

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