Unrecognized challenges to Middle East spring: tolerance and gender equality

East Meredith, New York

The Middle East spring will take time to blossom and widen its scope. Nation-building reformers must pay increased attention to two important barriers to democracy: overextended clerical power and tolerance for gender inequality.

Initially, public protest achieved rapid results by ousting the head of the state in Tunisia and then in Egypt. This initial success has encouraged revolts in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, not to mention other less serious uprisings. However, after Tunisia and Egypt, the revolts have lasted more than expected and they are still active, bloody and inconclusive. In the second cycle of rebellion, the national armies have sided with the regimes against the protestors.

The challenge for Egypt and Tunisia is to rebuild the new political system through a participatory process. These two countries could provide a model of social change.

In Egypt, the military and the religious establishment have dominated national policy since Mubarak was ousted; so far civil society groups have only played a timid role in the new government. Secular reform groups are struggling to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood movement for shaping the future. If the Egyptian army and the religious establishment continue to decelerate and dilute reform, the country would collapse again. A second revolution will then follow, as fear of the ruling authority is a thing of the past.

In Tunisia, on the other hand, the new government has been relatively responsive to civil society and the lessons (responsible governance, freedom and equality) of the revolution are clear to the army and the religious establishment. It helps that Tunisia is more secular than Egypt.

It is less cumbersome to change structures and rulers than to change ideas. It may not be hard to identify the dictator and demonstrate for his removal. But it is not at all simple to acknowledge and remove socio-religious barriers to democracy.

The Middle East spring should not only be concerned with the removal of dictators and replacing them with democratically elected leaders. A corner stone of democracy is the extent to which minorities are protected and afforded equal rights. Reform should focus on building political systems which provide equal opportunity to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religious affiliation or gender. A major unacknowledged barrier (the elephant in the room) to these democratic ideals is the conservative religious establishment.

No society can go far in social development without restricting the power of religious authorities, which are often self-serving and biased against roles of women. Women are the largest and most significant vulnerable group in the Middle East. Bringing democracy to the region cannot be done without confronting a flawed patriarchal social order which is bent on perpetuating gender inequality and preserving outmoded family legislation, education and institutions.

In a free society, women have equal opportunity to men in education, access to health services, jobs and political office. Religious authorities should be encouraged to revise outmoded laws of personal statutes regarding marriage, divorce, burial and inheritance. Moreover, adult citizens should be allowed to choose and define their faith, interpret scripture, convert to other religions, or to abandon faith if they choose to.

So far, no Middle East society has rebelled against religious totalitarianism. The fear to criticize religious authority is deeper than the fear to criticize political authority.

Religion is deeply rooted in the culture of the Middle East. In this region, there are already three religious states, where the law of the land is scripture-based: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Moreover, in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Bahrain, religious affiliation dominates political power distribution.

In different ways the politics of Syria and Israel is faith biased: The Alawites, an ethno-religious community rules much of Syria and Israel considers itself a Jewish state. Religion plays a role in Israel’s identity, its roots and alliance with the Evangelical right. Yet, both Syria and Israel resent being labeled sectarian.

Even regional experts dodge the issue of religious reform.  During the past decade, United Nations scholars from the Arab world easily identified political freedoms as one of three major societal deficits. The scholars were equally frank when they declared marginalization of women to be the second development deficit.  However, these scholars failed to consider religious intolerance as an important social problem. Instead, the vague concept of “Knowledge deficit” was judged to be the third root-cause of Arab stagnation. The scholars, then and now have been too timid in confronting the religious establishment as a source of limitless taboos. Sexual and religious taboos, literalism in following scripture and hero worship of spiritual authorities forcefully dampen the intellectual curiosity of the Arab child and adult.

Visionary leadership and new legislation for the protection of religious minorities and women are badly needed to stabilize the new regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. If Tunisia and Egypt succeed in achieving genuine transformation in governance and protection of minorities, the model they would provide to the rest of the region would be too strong to resist. However, if Egypt and Tunis appear stuck on ideas of the past in their post-revolutionary rebuilding, the ruling reactionary forces in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain would gain momentum and frustrate the protestors.

A strong and democratic Egypt would limit Israel’s indulgent and insensitive attitude toward the occupation. The Netanyahu government will find it hard to preserve a bilateral peace partnership with a regionally-backed, democratic Egypt.

Tourists and foreign investors would flood Egypt and Tunisia if and when they find these two revolutionary countries to be stable, safe, tolerant and friendly to minorities.

The extent to which Egypt and Tunisia integrate tolerance and empowerment of women in nation building will dramatically affect the rest of the region.