GREEN CURTAIN ON THE MEAS”T

 There were great expectations, especially in the Western Democracies, that the so called “Arab Spring” will bring a new atmosphere to the Middle East, an era of more openness, greater freedom of speech and expression and more democracy, of course in Western terms. But instead a new curtain is separating the Arab World from the Western Democracies – the “Green Curatin” of Islam.

Tunisia is the most Westernised country in the Arab World, well rooted in the French culture. A long series of laws, legislated at the time of the corrupted president Zeine El Abidine Ben Ali, protected women’s rights in the country. Tunisia was one of the rare places in the Arab World where women could walk with a more revealing clothes, as in Europe, or to go the the beach with bikini. In the election of 10/23/2011, the Islamic party Ennahda, a local branch of the Islamic Brotherhood, won 40% of the votes and is now running the country (see – Arab Indication).

A steamy front page cover that shows Sami Khedira, the German-Tunisian midfielder for Real Madrid in a tuxedo holding his naked girl fiend around the chest appeared recently in Tunisian newspaper Attounissia. The publication has landed three Tunisian journalists in jail for the offense of “offending public morality,” according to a Reuters story, on 02/16/2012.Tunisians now worry that the government, led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, will censor material considered offensive to religious morals.

In Egypt the Military is still controlling the country but instead of cracking down on Islamists, as it was in the days of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the Military Supreme Council – SCAF, allied itself to the political and popular majority of the Muslims Brotherhood and is cracking down, now, on liberals and Democrats in Egypt (see – Foggy Hopes). Copts are persecuted (see -Copts 10.09.11), NGO activists facing trial and jail, journalists, especially females, suffer police brutality and ongoing harassment and bloogers, like Maikel Nabil, are jailed for insulting the military. Just recently , on 02/12/2012, the Egyptian Muslims Brotherhood threatened America that any cut of American aid to Egypt will be considered as a violation of the Camp David Accords (peace with Israel).No doubt they took hostage the peace with Israel and America too (see – Mutual Mistrust).

In Libya militias terror, out of any control, reign the country and in some parts, like in Tripoli, pro Al Qaeda elements are running the city. Many thousands are kept without any access to any judicial system, some of them tortured to death. On Tuesday 02/15/2012, thousands of militia fighters from across Western Libya, opposing the Eastern Benghazi domain, held a parade in the capital, displaying heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

Already in early 11/2011, the transitional Libyan authorities announced that the Shariaa code, which allow the marriage of 4 women concurrently by a man (but not on the contrary), will now be praticed in issues of marriage, abolishing Gaddafi’s period law which enabled a man to marry only one woman. Goodbye women’s rights in the LIBYAN DEMOCRACY.

In Syria, although the crisis is not over yet, more and more Al Qaeda end Islamic elements join the fight against Bashar Assad while all minorities, Alaouite, Druze and Christians , fearing Islamic radicalization and persecutions, are still supporting Bashar Assad’s regime (see – SYRIAN DILEMA).

Despite hopes of a new democratic dawn in the Middle East a big and thick green curtain is to cover the Middle East and the illusions of democracy.