New Arab Revolutions That Shook the World

by Khosrokhavar,Farhad

• ISBN13: 9781612050836
• ISBN10: 1612050832
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Long considered overwhelmingly resilient, Arab authoritarian regimes have begun to fall in surprising manner. While the future of governance in these countries is unclear, the new Arab movements, largely secular and youthful, reveal a vital and ambitious new Arab generation. For these youth, radical Islam has lost its seductive appeal and religion is being marginalized. Women now are far more visibly active in societies long bound by tradition. The participants in the new movements prefer peaceful means, but are prepared to fight if necessary to change the future. They are motivated by a new global awareness from the internet and the means provided by Facebook and other new media to quickly build massive, powerful movements. Khosrokavar's compares the different countries shaken by the protest movements and he contextualizes of the demands and claims of the determined, democratically minded participants. He also looks beyond the Arab world to show how the Arab revolutions are leaving a deep imprint on countries like Iran, where unsuccessful democratic movements began months before Tunisia and Egypt. The new revolutions change the geo-politics of the region and shed light on new dynamics in which the citizen's dignity takes precedence over religion, community or even regional issues like pan-Arabism. The movements reveal the true democratic spirit of this new Arab generation which is largely unsympathetic to the aims of Jihadi terrorist actions. Looking to the future, Khosrokavar discusses how the new movements may change the world.

Author Biography

Born in Iran, now living in Paris, the distinguished Iranian-French sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar has interviewed Arab nationals throughout his career. A student of Arab and other Middle East languages, he is the author of seventeen books, which have been translated into ten languages. He writes frequently for major French magazines. He has taught or lectured in the United States at Yale, Harvard, and other universities. He is a professor at cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales in Paris (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Enlarged Phenomenological Perspective	p. 5
A New Paradigm for Social Movements?	p. 8
The Demo-Movements (DM)	p. 10
The Arc of Demo-Movements	p. 11
Unexpected Demo-Movements in the Middle East and North Africa and Their Dynamics	p. 15
The Iranian Green Movement	p. 21
Differences and Similarities between the Arab Revolutions	p. 21
Precedents of the Green Movement	p. 24
The Tunisian Revolution of Dignity and Freedom	p. 28
The Historical Precedents	p. 28
The Gafsa Mineral Field	p. 28
The 18 October Movement for Rights and Freedoms	p. 31
The Ben Guerdane Revolt	p. 32
The Counterintuitive Character of the Tunisian Revolution	p. 32
The Jasmin Revolution's Symbolic Causes	p. 35
The Hectic Revolutionary Imaginary	p. 36
The Revolutionary Drama Unfolds	p. 38
The Effect of New Communications on the Jasmin Revolution	p. 41
Egypt's Revolution	p. 43
Historical Precedents	p. 44
The Kefaya Movement	p. 45
The April 6 Youth Movement	p. 47
Khaled Said and His Posthumous Role	p. 47
The Impact of New Communications on the Egyptian Revolution	p. 48
The Arab Spring through Historical Precedents in Other Countries	p. 51
The Reactionary Awakening and the Containment of the French Revolution	p. 51
The Springtime of the People, 1848	p. 51
Dual Visions of Revolution: 1688 versus 1789	p. 52
Comparison with Color and Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe	p. 53
Latin American Transition to Democracy as Another Parallel to the Arab Spring	p. 55
The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon	p. 56
The Would-Be Middle Class as the Subjective Foundation of the Arab Spring	p. 59
The "Would-Be Middle Class"	p. 61
Women and the Sense of Quasi-Equality with Men	p. 63
Dignity versus Honor	p. 64
Dignity, Humiliation, Decency, Recognition	p. 68
The Three Periods and the Fate of Empathy	p. 71
Perspectives of Civil Society	p. 76
The Subjective Civil Society	p. 77
Netizens and the Virtual Agora	p. 79
Lessons from the Past	p. 79
Subjectivation as the Self-Realization of the Would-Be Middle Class	p. 80
The Role of the Economy in the Would-Be Middle Class	p. 82
Diaspora and the Dream of Joining the Middle Class	p. 83
The Imaginary Side of the Diaspora	p. 85
Revisiting Modernization Theories	p. 86
Characteristics of the Demo-Movements	p. 91
Lack of Explicit Leadership	p. 91
Avoidance of Violence	p. 93
Reconsidering Nonviolence in the Arab Autumn	p. 94
Lack of Explicit Strategy	p. 97
Lack of Specific Ideology	p. 97
The Death of Holistic Utopias: Authoritarian Nationalism versus Jihadism	p. 97
The Lack of an Avant-Garde and the Advent of Intermediary Intellectuals	p. 99
The Loss of Centrality of Religion: The Post-Islamist Age	p. 103
The New Pan-Arabism versus the Old	p. 104
The Historical Precedents	p. 104
Divisions in the Arab World	p. 106
The Three Waves of Pan-Arabism	p. 106
Democracy without Shame	p. 107
The Gender Issue	p. 110
The Islamic Puzzle	p. 112
The Islamist Question: The Taming of the Shrew?	p. 118
The Evolution of a Revolutionary Group towards Democracy in Morocco	p. 120
The Student Movement in Iran	p. 123
Obstacles to Democracy	p. 126
Sectarian, Communal, and Tribal Strife	p. 126
Bahrain as a Case of Pseudo-Sectarian Strife	p. 128
Syrian Sectarianism	p. 129
Egypt's Communal Strife	p. 131
Yemen's Sectarian and Communal Strife	p. 133
Libyan Tribal Strife	p. 137
Violence in the Uprising	p. 142
The Persecuted Identity	p. 143
The "Refuseniks" Attitude	p. 146
The Difficult Task of Overcoming Sectarianism	p. 146
The New Social Actors	p. 149
Social and State Actors and New Technologies	p. 151
Types of Social Movements According to Communication Technology	p. 151
Technologies of Communication	p. 152
Authoritarian Governments' Use of the Media	p. 156
The Internet, Arab Public Opinion, and the New Individual	p. 158
Soft Mobilization Technologies	p. 164
The New Social Actor and Demographics	p. 167
Demographic Change	p. 167
Role of Education	p. 170
Access to New Communication Technologies	p. 171
Types of Activists, Old and New	p. 174
Citizen Journalists	p. 175
Mistreated Journalists in the Post-Revolutionary Era	p. 177
Human Rights Activists and World Public Opinion as a Moral Witness	p. 178
Nonpolitical Activists	p. 183
Child, Adolescent, and Teenage Activists	p. 185
Political Activists	p. 187
Professionals	p. 188
Medics as the New Activists	p. 188
Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs	p. 190
Women Activists	p. 194
Asma Mahfouz	p. 194
Mona Seif and Gigi Ibrahim	p. 196
Nawara Najem	p. 197
Tawakul Karman	p. 198
Bushra al-Maqtari	p. 200
Syrian Women Activists	p. 201
Simple Nurses	p. 203
Transgression of Blasphemy Rules: The Naked Woman on Facebook	p. 203
Clerics and Theologians	p. 205
Muslim Brotherhood Youth	p. 207
Martyrs for a Cause	p. 208
Self-immolation: Bouazizi's Paradigm of Martyrdom	p. 208
Benghazi's Martyr Mehdi Zive	p. 210
On-the-Spot Journalist Mohammed Nabbous	p. 211
Al Jazeera Martyr Ali Hassan al-Jaber	p. 211
Fortuitous Martyr Neda Agha Soltan	p. 212
Martyrs with or without Premeditation	p. 213
Collective Tunisian Martyrs and Their Celebration in a Politically Motivated Manner	p. 214
The Ambiguous Martyr	p. 214
Heroes	p. 215
Trade Union Activists	p. 216
Heavy Metal Activists	p. 217
The Trans-Sectarian Activist: Fadwa Soliman	p. 218
Royal Family Members	p. 218
Ambiguous Actors: The Ex-Jihadist Belhaj	p. 220
The Cousins al-Zumar, Former Jihadists, Current Peaceful Party Members?	p. 221
Organizations as Social Actors	p. 222
The Gaza Youth Movement	p. 223
The Campaign for One Million Signatures and Iranian Women Activists	p. 224
Football Clubs and Players	p. 226
The Free Syrian Army: Defecting Soldiers	p. 228
The Egyptian Islamic Group Gama'a al-Islamiya: From Jihad to Peaceful Party Politics	p. 229
The Symbolic Dimensions of the Arab Spring	p. 232
The Revolutionary Slogan "People Demand …"	p. 236
Cultural Mobilization through Music and Poetry	p. 237
Symbolic Days	p. 244
New Functions of Western Languages	p. 255
Symbolic Topography	p. 257
Countersymbolic Figures	p. 267
Desecrating the Dictator	p. 268
Rationale behind the Jokes	p. 273
The Symbolic Dimension of Mubarak's Trial	p. 275
The Geopolitical Actors	p. 276
Before the Arab Spring	p. 276
The Counterrevolutionary Reaction to the Arab Spring	p. 277
America's Dilemma	p. 280
Ambivalent American Policies and Their Unintended Consequences	p. 282
Iran's Malaise	p. 284
Arab Governments, Washington, and the Rise of Turkey	p. 287
The Rise of Qatar	p. 290
Current Consequences of the Arab Spring	p. 291
Conclusion	p. 294
Glossary	p. 301
Notes	p. 303
Bibliography	p. 337
About the Author	p. 351
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