DAR AL ISLAM - SYRIA: ISLAM IS ON THE RISE

`The only place left to turn is Islam'
Disheartened by `democracy project,' Arab Muslims seek new source of hope
Mitch Potter
MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

DAMASCUS–For prominent Syrian career woman Luna Rajab, the moment of truth came last Ramadan at an evening social gathering of friends and colleagues.

Steeling herself to express outwardly what she had felt inside for many years, the 34-year-old architect stepped forward to reveal a decision that would earn the dismay of many of those closest to her, her mother and grandmother included.

Rajab's favourite motto had always been "say it with actions, not with words." And on this night, she said it all by covering her hair with that most Islamic of accessories – the hijab.

Never before had she worn the head scarf. Never before had anyone in her social circle, or even her own family. Today, she won't take it off. Rajab's hijab is here to stay.

The most cutting comment that night came from one of her best friends, who stared, jaws agape, like a witness to religious lobotomy: "But Luna, I thought you were open-minded."

Rajab ruminates sadly on that comment three months later over a glass of mint lemonade with the Toronto Star. We are in the hidden courtyard of Jabri House, one of a handful of grand and glorious Damascene homes that Rajab has dedicated her life to saving as an architect specializing in historical preservation.

She knows the decision to wear hijab placed her out of step with many in her circle. But taken in the context of the larger Arab world, she says, it is her friends who are out of step. Which is okay by her. Rajab does not believe in forcing anyone on the question of hijab. In a free world, it is a personal choice, she says. Yet Rajab takes comfort in the fact that by just about any standard one might care to apply, Islam is on the rise again in the Middle East.

Politically, socially, culturally, the process of Islamification has been underway for decades, despite the repressive efforts of Arab regimes that see an existential threat in the steady rise of political Islam.

For many, the process is happening almost by default, as the era of secular Arab nationalism loses the last of its legitimacy, its promise all but exhausted by decades of rampant corruption and failure to deliver benefits to the region. If anything, the process has been accelerated by the attacks of 9/11, or more specifically, by the response to that dark and bloody day.

Lebanese sociologist Abdo Kahi describes the drift toward Islamic identity as anything but ideological. "Ideology has logic, but the return to Islam is happening as an idea without logic. It is happening by default, without discussion, as a matter of the heart. What all human beings share is the universal desire for hope, security, justice, values – and one day perhaps, real democracy.

"And if you look to the Middle East of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, there was some hope these things would be delivered. But the Arab leaderships failed utterly – they only enriched themselves. And the U.S. failed utterly, protecting those corrupt regimes and at the same time ignoring the need to forcefully find a solution for the Palestinian question, which remains an open wound," said Kahi.

United Nations researchers three years ago pinpointed the dimensions of unrest in the 2004 Arab Human Development Report. Arriving just as the rationale for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was rebranded from a hunt for weapons of mass destruction into a much larger scheme to implant Arab democracy, the UN's words appeared to point the way forward.

"The Arab world finds itself at an historical crossroads," the report's authors warned.

"Caught between oppression at home and violation from abroad, Arabs are increasingly excluded from determining their own future – freedom requires a system of good governance that rests upon effective popular representation and is accountable to the people, and that upholds the rule of law and ensures that an independent judiciary applies the law impartially."

But as a string of elections, some more democratic than others, hiccupped around the region, many Arab thinkers lost faith. What some describe as the "democracy hypocrisy" was laid bare one year ago with the surprise election of Hamas in Western-backed elections in the Palestinian territories.

Those who actually covered the campaign saw the Palestinian electorate embrace a deftly played Hamas election platform built as a war on corruption without so much as a mention of the word Israel.

...


Pertinent Links:

1) `The only place left to turn is Islam'