Walid Phares: A Mideastern View of the Fourth of July

FrontPage Magazine ^ | July 4, 2005 | Walid Phares

[quidnunc]

Americans understand an intractable portion of the Islamic world opposes America and all she stands for. What many Americans do not know this Fourth of July weekend is how much Middle Easterners know about America's ideals, values, and revolutionary principles of liberty. What viewers and audiences in the U.S. were not told is the magnitude of political and social change America is provoking in the region, even beyond the wildest imagination of those planners who said they were entering a “war of ideas” a few years ago.

What students in this country are forbidden to learn — too often by their own college professors — is the intellectual and mental tsunami triggered east of the Mediterranean by the plain, clear, and powerful words spoken by leaders and activists from these shores. The dominant story in the mainstream media portrays the greater Middle East as a gigantic monolithic mass, fully absorbed by an inexplicable hatred of America. And if an explanation of this rage is warranted, it becomes –thanks to these same academic and media “experts” — the “despicable policies” of the United States all over the world. But if you further analyze the arguments presented by the raging crowd and their sympathizers within the country, you'd discover that the “home of the free” is feared and hated just for that: for its liberty, a characteristic not welcomed by the dominant elites in the Middle East, nor by the fascist ideologies serving their purposes.

Revolutionary France was hated by the absolute monarchies of Europe, and today revolutionary America is hated by the absolute dictatorships and jihadi regimes of the Arab and Muslim world. It took a few decades in old Europe before French republican ideals storms the continent from Spain to Poland and beyond. A similar phenomenon is happening today from Morocco to Afghanistan. Students are discovering, women are learning, and masses are challenging the old order. And let's be clear: the rise of the democrats in the Middle East is caused by earthquakes hitting the fabric of the regimes and their ideologies. And one cannot hide it anymore; the epicenters are in Kabul, Baghdad, Beirut — and soon in Damascus and Tehran.

-snip-

[chesley]

While I agree with the general tenor of the argument, I cannot agree that French revolutionary values should be spread. In fact, it seems to me that the philosophical descendants of the French Revolution are rooting for the murdering jihadists.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

And if an explanation of this rage is warranted, it becomes –thanks to these same academic and media “experts” — the “despicable policies” of the United States all over the world

All those middle-easterners that diss America with their mouths and then vote for it for their feet at the first opportunity.

[GOP_1900AD]

Fascinating! ....

[GSlob]

"All those middle-easterners that diss America with their mouths and then vote for it for their feet at the first opportunity."
Well, they could [sometimes] remove themselves from ME, but could they remove ME from themselves? For otherwise it merely spreads the disease.