As many of you know, Egypt’s “Arab Spring” has proven, thus far, anything but “democratic.” First, it was the army and the police that seemed to attempt to grab power in the immediate aftermath of Hosni Mubarak. Now it is the “duly elected” President Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is attempting nothing more than a good old-fashiond autocratic power grab.

The so-called “Arab Spring Movements” in most of the other Middle Eastern countries, for example, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria, have unfolded in similar ways and with similar results (though milder by comparison with Egypt, except Syria) and are looking more like “Arab Winters.” Undoubtedly, there are those who would argue that the historical political problems in the Middle East are largely the result of post-colonialism. Though there is certainly real truth to that idea to a fair degree, it does not account for the inability and failure of the millenium-old Islamic political culture in the region to ever create something resembling truly representative government. The basic question, which has been asked before, is this:

“Is Islamic society, tradition, and culture fundamentally incompatible with what we in the West would consider “democracy?”

Please share your thoughts and, if you like, read the NY Times article at the link below.

DDS

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mohamed_morsi/index.html