Raif Badawis era is knocking on doors

Arab and international News Agencies have reported from Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo this week. Arab league gatherings rarely get reporting of significance in daily European newspapers and media. When they manage to be on the headings it s only embarrassing.

Unlike the situation in the European Union, where the delegates to the European Parliament are elected through a free vote in the Member States, and where appointed ministers represent parties that are also elected for limited periods of time, many of the representatives who sit around the small Arab League s table year after year, and era after era, do neither represent citizens nor parties.

The Arab rulers who chose and send them may definitely suffer from a Pharaoic disease. It seems as the Arab leaders favourite religion is the religion of the pyramid. The ruling political elite, the Pharaoic clan, climbing on the shoulders of the people to reach the top, occupying the time by self-worship.

The play, which gets titles suggesting democracy, is today disclosed to the Arab citizen, female and male, in the information-based global society. But the players “representatives” insist to follow up the fake game. Saudi Arabia and its policy of repression and intellectual terrorism is one of the best living examples of this failed and out-dated strategy. After all it is not surprising at all that a political remnant from a medieval age gets a considerable international media attention when it denies facts as obvious as the noon sun in the mid of the desert sky, and on the top of this even get support from "progressive" Arab leaders.

So what s the story?

The Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, was an honorary guest at the Cairo meeting. It was agreed that she will hold a speech at the opening of the meeting in the Arab league. It was a gesture of gratitude after the Social Democratic government’s diplomatic recognition of the State of Palestine. But for the owner of the Saudi decision, Palestine as a whole weighs nothing in his bowl when it is not a matter of populist speeches and political games that strengthen the Saudi-family. The Saudi part put pressure on the "representatives". The result was the cancellation of the Swedish minister’s speech. Wallström returned where she came from without even getting an opportunity for discussion or negotiation with the Saudi "humiliated" part.

This was followed by a statement of Arab foreign ministers where they, even the Palestinian representative, expressed their full support for Saudi Arabia. They rejected entirely the Swedish minister’s remarks on Saudi-Arabia’s violation of Human rights. I recite the following from the statement:

"Such statements are contradictory to the Constitution of Saudi Arabia which is based on the tolerant Islamic law. Sharia has guaranteed human rights and preserved people’s lives, possessions, honor and dignity. The ministers consider the comments as irresponsible and unacceptable”.

What is really interesting is how these "representatives" would explain and justify this statement. If we exclude the possibility that places the persons who run the Arab countries foreign relations in a totally embarrassing position, that they actually repeat the Saudis instructions as parrots, and lack the will and political stands, how can criticism of a brutal, yes, medieval, judgment of a thousand lashes, imprisonment for ten years in addition to a fine of tens of thousands of dollars be described as irresponsible and unacceptable?

How can any sane person claim that interpretations and applications of the religious law that are followed by the Saudi Wahhabi regime, with Badawis case as an example, protect life, body, dignity or private possessions?

Raif Badawis issue clearly shows the weakness and indecency of Arab politicians and the urgent need to insist on democracy and universal ethics.

We Arabs, sons and daughters of the twenty-first century, need and only recognize constitutions that derive from the popular will and are issued through democratic processes. Arab constitutions must guarantee freedoms and rights of citizens, women and men, elder and younger, majority and minorities. The Saudi Constitution is neither an expression for the principals and intentions of the Islamic law, nor the will of the Saudis. It is only a perverted tool of arbitrariness and oppression in the hands of the family (clan) of the ruling Al-Saud and mercenaries from clerics who do not deserve to be called ulama.

In his blog "free Saudi liberals", Raif Badawi demands the Arab governments to give Arab intellectuals a little space with fresh air to breathe in, as he puts it. The good news is, In the suffocating atmosphere of Saudi Arabia, liberal thoughts had spread and crossed the border despite heavy guard on the ground and in the electronic network (and in the sky?)

The views and hopes of Badawi has reached the ears of the whole world. When will the Saudi regime and the Arab leaders in general, realize that they represent the last part of the tragic historical novel belonging to the last century and what has preceded it, centuries of tyranny and ignorance?

Blackout policy do not work today. Raif Badawis era is knocking on doors.