Now that we are about to officially head into the Autumnal paradox of the Arab Spring, there is no limit to the excess of punditry about why it happened, is happening and will continue to happen. Back in February, the historian Bernard Lewis weighed in on the current uprisings for an interview in The Jerusalem Post (which, for those with any historical memory, is not your parent’s Jerusalem Post). The article begins with Lewis’s summation in a nutshell: “The sort of authoritarian, even dictatorial regimes, that rule most of the countries in the modern Islamic Middle East, are a modern creation,†he notes. “The pre-modern regimes were much more open, much more tolerant.†Ah, yes, that Golden Age of Islam when the caliphs of the Arabian Nights were the community organizers of their eras. Surely Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah did not really mean to destroy the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem a millennium ago. That “more open, much more tolerant” pre-modern political paradise is as absurd as the more common Islamophobic trope that Muslims have always ruled by the sword. Indeed, as Lewis notes, the modern dictators in the region are a modern creation, but (as Lewis does not mention) largely the result of Western carving up and interference after World War I.
But the part of the interview that is most telling is the Freudian framing of the Arab twitter generation. I note here the question from the interviewer and the response by Lewis:
As we look at this region in ferment, how would you characterize what is unfolding now? Can we generalize about the uprisings that are erupting in the various countries? Is there a common theme?
There’s a common theme of anger and resentment. And the anger and resentment are universal and well-grounded. They come from a number of things. First of all, there’s the obvious one – the greater awareness that they have, thanks to modern media and modern communications, of the difference between their situation and the situation in other parts of the world. I mean, being abjectly poor is bad enough. But when everybody else around you is pretty far from abjectly poor, then it becomes pretty intolerable.
Another thing is the sexual aspect of it. One has to remember that in the Muslim world, casual sex, Western-style, doesn’t exist. If a young man wants sex, there are only two possibilities – marriage and the brothel. You have these vast numbers of young men growing up without the money, either for the brothel or the brideprice, with raging sexual desire. On the one hand, it can lead to the suicide bomber, who is attracted by the virgins of paradise – the only ones available to him. On the other hand, sheer frustration.
The fact that a young man (or woman) in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Yemen cannot get a job and make a living at home is not the tipping point for Lewis; no, it is pure jealousy — give me hamburgers and blue jeans or give me death — don’t tread on my cell phone. Then there is that particular “another thing.” If as a young Arab man you can’t get laid, then you might as well go out in the streets and brave the dictator’s thugs and tanks. After all, unlike the casual West, you can only get sex in marriage and in the whore house. Continue reading If a young [Arab] man wants sex →
