Do Not Blame Instability on Foreign Conspiracies - Blame It on Marginalizing Minorities ..by Dr. Yassin El-Ayouty, Esq

Attributing instability to foreign conspiracies is like blaming your household problems on your absent neighbors. Conspiracy advocates are essentially escapists. They are also brainwashed by the old colonial narrative. But if a nation looks at itself from within, it shall soon discover that salvation comes from within. No conspiracy has a chance for success unless a nation is so fragmented that a conspirator could come in through national cracks.

Take a broad look at the history of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire collapsed (1516-1916) because it abused its minorities. Al-Astanah (Constantinople) regarded the Greeks, the Serbs, and the Arabs as empire-servers, not empire co-builders. The so-called Ulamas (Islamic scholars), through their deep ignorance of Islam, advocated disengagement from the west. Those Ulamas were the forefathers of Boko Haram (Western learning is sinful).

But Turkey revived in 1923 with Ata Turk ending the Caliphate and made Turkey secular. The imperial period was no more. However denying the Kurds the right to use their language and have an autonomous status in this 21st century will keep Ankra as the capital of a country which is in constant battle within itself. And if Ordogan fancies himself as the new Islamic Sultan, he must be smoking some strong weed (hashish).

In Syria, now flattened and fragmented, the minority (the Alawites-Shiis) are brutalizing the majority (Sunnis). Under Bashar, a war criminal, Syria has descended from "a failed State" to a "non-State." Bashar (ironically it means in Arabic "good tidings") might keep on fighting. But what he shall end up with is a partitioned Syria, with an Alawite enclave protected by a Russian base and is smaller than Lebanon. Again the disappearance of Syria did not result from foreign machinations. It is the inevitable outcome of a lopsided power sharing between an oppressive minority and an internally-colonized majority.

So it is laughable to still read banners at the entrance of Damascus declaring a blatant fiction: "One Nation With An Eternal Message!!" (UmmatunWahidah That RisalatonKhalidah).

An Eternal Message has been bequeathed to the Muslims in the Quran -DIVERSITY.For Islam is not "a faith and a State."It is "a faith and a Nation." Islam does not create a State. The Quran gives clear evidence on diversity being both a natural human phenomenon the respect for which is a predicate for good governance. "If your Lord had so willed, He could have made mankind one nation." (Chapter II, Verse 118)

The terms "minority" and "majority" might also apply to women in Saudi Arabia. In spite of the huge oil wealth, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a bifurcated governance: The Governorate in Riyadh, and the Wahhabis in Diriyah. Riyadh rules, and the Wahhabis run the country's social life with a belief in denying gender equality. Whereas women sat on the councils of the Prophet Muhammad, today's Saudi women are subjected to walls, to totally covered faces except for eye peep holes, and to total rule by their male folks. Can this last forever? Impossible. Is 50% of the Saudi population a minority? Yes, a minority in being deprived of rights equal to those enjoyed by the male half of that population.

This may explain why, in Egypt, recent attacks on the Coptic minority (10% - 15%) of the nearly 100 million population have triggered the declaration of emergency laws by the government. Reporters of the New York Times based in Cairo, such as Declan Walsh do no justice to that paper's motto "All TheNews That Is Fit to Print." It is misleading to read a headline in that paper's issue of April 11, 2017: "Attacks Show Isis' Strategy for Egypt: Gaining Ground by Killing Christians."

Rubbish!! Does ISIS, a faction on the run, has a strategy? Are they gaining ground in Egypt? Could hits and runs or suicide bombings be a strategy -a term reserved for structural command and control? It is ominous for world peace to find the America of Trump so divided upon itself to the point that its unstable President could not accomplish through his first 100 days one single piece of legislation. And daily descriptions in US media of El-Sisi as having engineered a military coup in July 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood shall have no effect on the New Egypt. Egypt is now becoming the only strong State in that volatile region. It is demographically cohesive.

For within the space of a few years, we might have a new Sudan (without Darfur and Kurdufan); a new Libya (back to 3 provinces); a new Yemen (South Yemen and North Yemen); a new Iraq (Kurdistan is gone, and might be followed by a fictitious sectarian divide between the Sunnis of the north, the Shiis of the south). And the non-reconciled Palestinian statelets of Ramallah and Gaza. All the historic outcomes, not of foreign conspiracies, but of uneven minorities - majorities relationship.

But Egypt is, and shall remain, a different story. Though with impoverished educational and public information systems, its DNA of national unity is always pumping reflexive energy.

This energy could be augmented by an Egyptian one person lobby in Washington, D.C. -A Copt, preferably a female, speaking good "American" as Ambassador.

That would be an enlightened response, representing a true "thinking outside the box." A monumental return to the Egypt bequeathed by Muhammad Ali. From 1832 to 1839, that Egypt has nearly conquered the ailing Ottoman Empire. Cairo's weapon was diversity!!

NOTE: New blog postings shall be periodical, until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War OnJihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"