Tunisia's Islamic Government Cracks Down on Democracy

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives.}

I have been making much of the fact that when Tunisia fell to a Sharia government during the misnamed "Arab Spring" president Barack Obama hailed the event as the wondrous up-welling of democracy. He said:

There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat.

When these riots and revolutions and rapes throughout the Middle East began I was willing to take a wait-and-see approach. I had no way of knowing whether or not our progressive friends, such as the president, were correct when they cheered on the "Facebook kids" as the burgeoning democratic force that would finally tear away the brutal dictatorial regimes. I doubted it. True. But unlike Obama, who immediately jumped on what turned out to be a pro-Islamist bandwagon, I was willing to wait before making a final judgment.

To this day, many progressives continue to tell us that the "Arab Spring" is a democratic wave throughout the region. The truth of the matter, of course, is entirely different. The "Arab Spring" is an Islamist and fascistic surge brought about, in some measure, through democratic means, but the ideological source of the movement is not democracy, but Sharia... with a little dash of Nazism for spice. The intellectual figures who stand behind it include Sayyid Qutb, but not John Locke.

Thus, today we are getting reports that the Sharia government of Tunisia is cracking down on democracy through grabbing control of the media.

On Wednesday, the National Authority for the Reform of Media and Communications (INRIC) – an independent commission charged with reforming Tunisia’s media sector – decided to suspend its activities, accusing the government of attempting to censor and exert control over the media.

“The committee refuses to be just a decoration. The government is trying to control the media sector,” said Hichem Senoussi, a member of INRIC.

Freedom of the press is a core democratic ideal and when the press is controlled by the government it means that democracy does not exist. Well, guess what? I am not the least little bit shocked to learn that democracy is not very high on the priority list of the Sharia government in Tunisia. Why would it be, when democracy is entirely inconsistent with Islamic law?

Even now I do not expect the progressive-left to acknowledge its mistake. Obama never has and I expect nothing better from his partisan supporters. As much of the Arab Middle East tumbles into Sharia we will continue to be lectured at about democracy, even though the "Arab Spring" is not about democracy and even though Sharia means second and third class citizenship for us dhimmis.

What the "Arab Spring" actually is is a widespread Arab reaction against modernity and against the vicious secular dictatorships, such as Mubarack's, that have ruled much of the area for many decades. The questions that people like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna were asking themselves at the start of the movement early in the last century were not, "how can we best serve the people through the establishment of democracy?" but, "how is it that if Islam is the perfect form of human organization that we have been taken over by the infidel Europeans?" This was the motivating question behind radical Islam. People like Qutb and al-Banna, who are the ideological forefathers of the movement, looked at an Arab world that had lost its dominance and concluded that the only way to bring that dominance back was a return to the true faith. The "Arab Spring" is thus an Islamic reform movement, with ideological tendrils that go to Nazi Germany, but not a democratic movement. It is not a movement that is going to transform the region into some Arab-Muslim version of western democracy.

It is a sign of maturity to acknowledge mistakes. For example, I am more than happy to acknowledge that I made a terrible mistake when I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I wonder when the progressive-left is going to acknowledge its mistake in telling us that the rise of Sharia in the Middle East is the magnificent up-welling of democracy? I wonder when Barack Obama will do so?

On second thought, strike that. I know when Obama is going to acknowledge this crucial error in judgement.

Never. That's when.

{A Tip 'O the Kippa to Barry Rubin.}