Fundamental facts

“Religion is reality — Sing to the divine tune;
Literature is reality — The cow jumped over the moon!”
From Please Yaar by Bachchoo
This week the British government, in the person of its foreign secretary, the bald, baby-faced wonder William
Hague, expelled the eight remaining diplomats of the Gaddafi regime from their embassy in Central London.

He invited the rebels fighting Col. Muammar Gaddafi, who is holed up in Tripoli, to send a representative to London and be the sole recognised Libyan delegate to Britain.
The insurgency in Libya is now four months old. It was preceded by victories for rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt, countries in which the West couldn’t and didn’t interfere. In Libya, the West, despite arguments amongst themselves about the relative extent of the commitment of the US and the contributory countries of Europe, took the line that they would protect civilians from slaughter by Col. Gaddafi’s forces by the strategic use of Nato air strikes.
In those past four months there have not been very clear reports as to what the West has done or won in Libya. On most days on the news in Britain, sometimes on the featured main bulletins of the BBC, there are reports of the advances and retreats of the Libyan rebels. We hear from Tripoli, from Col. Gaddafi loyalists and we hear from rebels on the frontline who seem poorly equipped but determined to overthrow what they call the corrupt Libyan regime.
Their poor equipment and do-or-die attitude certainly give them the status of heroes. But who the hell are they?
They want to get rid of the Supreme Clown, but what else do they want? Again, in the name of which described future?
The announcement from Mr Hague that Britain recognises the rebels as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people must mean that the Cameron administration has taken its soundings and is confident that this rebellion is not led by Islamic fundamentalist and surrogates of Al Qaeda or some other lunatic outfit.
It’s the unanswerable dilemma that has bedevilled Western politicians since the floridly named “revolutions” began. Are these genuine protests from democratically-minded citizens objecting to the reign of manifest dictators? Or are these mobs who are convinced that the modern world has seduced their rulers into not being sufficiently Islamic?
It’s a very good question and one that should be asked every day as the revolts of West Asia unfold. It was a question that was asked when the US, or George W. Bush, and the UK, or Tony Blair, sent American and British soldiers to bring down the regime of Saddam Husain.
There was no equivalent or mass revolt, the sort that swept Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya and Bahrain, which Mr Bush and Mr Blair were supporting. There were reports of unrest and court intrigue, but these Western leaders saw Saddam and his murderous anti-democratic policies as their main target. They didn’t think that the main threat to the whole region originated in primitive, medieval, Islamic fundamentalism that even Saddam absolutely opposed. The animal may have been vicious, but Bush & Blair killed the very cat that was determined to keep, and could have kept, the Islamicists at bay.
Khair! — as we say. Water under the bridge.
The world has assessed the popular and to date (almost) victorious revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya as manifestations of the democratic will of the people. The word “democratic” in this context would mean they should want a representative democracy with political parties offering choices to voters who have a universal franchise. It would mean a free press, an independent judiciary, a tolerance of people’s movements (“Lesbians against the burqa!” — why not?), a modern system of law and a separation of religion from the state.
But the world might be indulging in wishful thinking. A tide of public feeling, heaving against that shore has, as far as history teaches us, a determined current within it which flows in one direction and takes charge. There may have been a general dissatisfaction with Czarist Russia through the early 20th century and several revolts to question and counter its diktats, but it were the Bolsheviks under Lenin who saw their way clear and took charge of the upheaval.
So also in the revolution of the Iranian people against the repressive regime of the Shah in 1979. The people rose as one but the forces to emerge from it were the Ayatollahs. Why? For two simple reasons: The first that they had a standing organisation that could be summoned to meet every day, a hierarchy, a following and a medieval religious ideology which the population, mostly rural, was already indoctrinated with.
Karl Marx, more than a 100 years before, wrote that the working classes would develop an ideology out of the way of labour into which history had bound them. He may have foreseen, but didn’t place much store by the ideology of the peasantry which proved in Russia in 1917 and in Iran in 1979, to be predominantly religious. For the latter, Islam was the only unifying force — there were no trade unions, no political memberships with this or that ideology. There were many who had been brought up as Muslims. Islam was the province of the Ayatollahs and they would take charge.
In the revolts of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya there are definite indications that a truly democratic current exists and is manifest. Is it the strongest current? After all, democracy and all its ramifications and desires are fragments of an aspiration — they are not a religion to which you are born and into which you are relentlessly indoctrinated.
Contrary to the lure of the narrow Islamist ideology there is for these, as yet indeterminate nations, the lure of materialism — the call of Ronald McDonald as opposed to that of Osama (Fish be upon him!).
It’s a remote statistical possibility. The populations of West Asia are still given more coherence, discipline and meaning in their lives through religion than through either their secular education, their consumer aspirations or their jobs. That single fact threatens the world with the prospect that these countries in turmoil will very soon throw up organised Islamic parties which will take charge.
The Arab Spring will turn into an Arab winter of chilling frigidities.