The PostGlobal discussion for this week is: "What changes would people in your part of the world be grateful to see in the coming year?" At first glance, all of my answers would be political. A deeper look, however, would be mental, social, and educational. These are the real problems that cripple us in the Arab World (and they certainly are linked to political freedoms). For this argument, I borrow from an earlier article I wrote this winter for Asia Times Online. I would like to people braver, smarter, and less Puritan, not only in Syria but also throughout the Arab World.
Some would immediately argue: these changes cannot be achieved without political reforms. I invite readers to read through the article and then decide which must come first: mental and social reforms, or political ones. I hope readers digest what’s written in this article, and then try to imagine how horrendous political freedoms would be to an Arab society that sadly still has this devastating mentality on women's rights, religion, education, and freedom of speech. Democracy cannot be achieved by pressing a button. It has to start with a correct mindset and with education.
A short while ago, I had a long conversation with a friend about being free (hurr) and being liberal (mutaharrer). Freedom is the prerequisite for liberty. Back in the early 1940s, the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani was criticized on the campus of Damascus University for writing about women at a time when the nation was ablaze with anti-French riots. He asked, "Why have we been spilling blood against the French since 1920?" A friend replied: "For independence." "Wrong" said Nizar, "we did it for freedom!" Syria might become independent, he added, but it needed to be free in order to be a healthy country. "Nations, just like human beings, need two legs to function properly,” he said. “One leg is independence. The other is freedom."
If the Syrians are not free, they can never enjoy independence. They will remain like a one-legged human, crippled and permanently disabled. Freedom means the right to live and the right to love. This applies to women as much as men, he added. A woman has the right to be born, to receive an education, to love, to be loved, to be a sister, a friend, a mother. She has the right to succeed and be independent from any man. Finally she has a right to grow old and to die satisfied with dignity.
Freedom, he added, also means the freedom to choose one's own social, political, and religious beliefs.
One can be free and still be conservative. Freedom comes from reading good books, learning new things in life, and watching different societies, if not in person then through television or the Internet. Accumulating new ideas is to educate, however, rather than duplicate. The human mind is well suited to digest, challenge, adopt, or discard different views. Freedom comes from proper education, at home, school, university, and life. Many Arabs adopted 'liberty' from short trips to Europe, and by watching Lebanese satellite television. But ‘liberty' does not mean wearing short skirts, drinking alcohol, or speaking a few words of English. It does not mean hanging out at the new posh restaurants of Damascus, Beirut, or Cairo. There is nothing wrong with that, for sure, but adopting these values without being educated about them produces very shallow, materialistic, and one-dimensional people who judge each other by how they look, where they socialize, and what kind of car they are driving. Life without entertainment is unbearable. Entertainment without life, however, is equally destructive.
The solution to 'all of the above' is education. Things are slow, but they are moving in the right direction. Several new private universities are mushrooming in Syria. In Lebanon, we have the prestigious American University of Beirut and Jesuit. Prestigious international and American schools are opening in the Gulf; Georgetown now operates in Qatar, and Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi. It will take a long time for these schools to have a strong effect on society--decades--just like the time needed to bring about the right change in Europe.
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