Reflection 3

Paul Ropp           

                                                Reflection 3.

                Over the week, in tandem with the reading I found some very interesting point that were made in the reading about Sa’ids three “epistemological questions” regarding Arab civil society, and the sense of uniformity they possess.

                In the course we talked about the gradual process to democratization as a better solution to the instant gratification of half-baked revolutions, the rich traditionalist history, and stark cultural divides that all play into the creation of a uniformed civil society. Sa’id argues that although Arab civil society is not remotely like the civil society in the west, however, it still exists and plays a prevalent role in the MENA region. The West has a grand notion of civil society, an affinity for the mass polarization and proclamations. However, in the MENA region civil society is a much more tamed beast, an undertone of social influences, not the vociferous animal in the West. MENA region civil society deals much more with the sectarian unit, the community next to you, not the community at large. It is this difference that hampers the democratization of the MENA region, the “building of Sultanic” states. There was another interesting point brought up in the reading that caught my eye that the premise of all MENA region civil society being the same, the strong sectarian loyalty, the absence of mass polarization against tyranny, and the absence of any mass advocacy all seem to fit as correlation and I think there is a good point to the idea. Yes, not all of the MENA region civil societies will be exactly the same but they all seem to have similar foundations and similar building blocks. Is it any coincidence that three MENA region countries had revolutions against the tyrannical regimes at the same time due to , or are they all operating on a similar premise? These are things that I found really interesting about this week’s reading. Although, I did want to add something interesting I was just reading in the news.

Turkey launched an artillery assault on Syria after Syrian shells killed 5 Turkish citizens, and NATO convenes under article 4. I was curious what this meant for the rebel forces, if NATO were to intervene and quell conflict would democracy become an easier task, with far less bloodshed. What would a ending of the Syrian regime mean for civil society would it be able to spread and bloom among the war town society or would the people there only look to a higher authority to make things better for them. Whatever the case this situation really interests me and will be one I plan on following !