JACOPO RIPANDA, “HANNIBAL CROSSING THE ALPS”/GIANNI DAGLI ORTI/THE ART ARCHIVE AT ART RESOURCE, NY
Thanks for the posting
A country in Northern Africa that doesn’t suck the big one? Neato.
“Obamano delenda est” Bertisius
The template is “The Arab Spring” . Spring is the time of Christian Resurrection, the rebirth of life suppressed in the winter.
I have come to think of the events as “The Islamic Restoration”. The events are the visible evidence of a great schism, a rendering asunder of Islam. The battle for minds, unlike the Christian Reformation, is to restore the restrictive purity that had dissipated. Whereas the Christian Reformation was to shed the oppressive repression and corruption of the established church.
The struggle will be long, but it will be lost. Those attempting to reverse the tide if history and modernization will lose. Their pernicious zealotry may temper the thought but will not prevail. The quest for the good life and well being and families and yes,freedom will overcome the smothering religious radicalism.
The future lies to the east of Suez. Along the Gulf, further east in Mayalsia and Indonesia there are millions and millions of people that have adapted their Islam with an evolving modernization .
The wealth of the GCC has developed a capitol in the UAE. There the forces of multinational commerce have gathered to create from literally nothing a new and economically powerful force in world trade. The rebirth of the Arabian peninsula and the Indies as a major force in industry and business provides the image of real hope for a better life. Such a glimpse of the future and of reality trumps the dark vision of a repressive and backward Restoration.
The Christian Reformation was indeterminate at the outset and lasted for perhaps two hundred years before it began to take final form. But the reformers overcame the forces of Church corruption and political oppression and prevailed. The course of the Islamic Restoration will be similar. The Restoration effort will be long but will be rejected, over come and will not prevail. Just as with the Christian Reformation, the shackles of repression will be rejected.
“We want to modernize, but not to Westernize” HRH Prince Bandar