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If the president rules for 30 years

If you look at the map of the Arab Maydans, you can immediately see that the Maydans did not expand the borders of the Arab Caliphate, but exactly fit in the old place. We can safely say that the Arab Spring of 2011 is the spring of the Arabs.

But who are these revolutionaries?

Why did they rebel against the traditional order? After all, the peoples of the past Arab Caliphate are very conservative: the elites are very revered, the peoples are obedient to them.

Of course, you can immediately put the Maidan and the Ottoman Empire on the map. But it won’t be the same.

First, because the Arab spring was attended by Arabs, not the South Slavs, and even more so, not the Turks but only the Arabs. Therefore, we will consider this speech more Arabic and less religious. Religious strife on the basis of different trends of Islam has always been, since the time of the fourth righteous Caliph. The influence of religious intolerance is still not the most important thing in Arab nationalism although the religious component is less important (At least from the point of view of over-conservatism. Why didn’t the Arabs colonize, say, Mars, or get ahead of Europe in creating the internal combustion engine?), it also explains a lot.

How did it all start?

It all started with the fact that the Arabs were nomads of the Arabian Peninsula. That explains a lot. Many things explain, but not all.

They would have remained in the old place, even if the future colonizers, and we mean those Europeans who brought modernization to these places and, perhaps, would have presented us with an Arab version of pure bourgeois nationalism. However, the founder of the new faith, the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), was born in Mecca. And after the preaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), the Arabs turned from local nomads of the aborigines into nomads of proselytes, spreading the faith among other peoples with the sword and preaching. So they would have stayed in place and lived no less well.

Thus, the Arabs could not have turned into nationalists either in the XIX century or in the XX century, when modernization took place among the Europeans. To do this, they did not just have a material base. There was gold, there were material values, there were troops, talented generals, great scientists in the east, but the main material principle was not there.

First, it means that the traditional Muslim people did not welcome the trade business like all nomads. Caliphs, sultans, viziers knew only about the benefits of trade, so they tried to protect the caravaneers and merchants represented by different peoples from violence and plunder, but the trade itself was not welcomed. First, nomads have always been warriors. And where there is a military caste, there is always a traditional hierarchy. Secondly, the Koran did not welcome loan interest (how it practiced the ancient Jews). Giving money at interest and taking money at interest is a grave sin.

Now you can just look at the late leaders of the Arab countries during the modernization period and draw some conclusions:

Tunisia.

First President Habib Bourguiba. He ruled for 30 years. He left the post under the pressure of protests and old age. He was replaced by Ben Ali. Ben Ali ruled for 24 years. But in January 2011, riots broke out in Tunisia. Like Bourguiba, Tunisia’s new leader, Ben Ali, has been re-elected several times and extended his term through referendums. For two, three decades, all the dictators in the East quickly turned state power into a personal feeder and the feeder of their clan. Another big minus to the same: Ben Ali was henpecked. Everyone saw and believed that the country was ruled by a woman. The second wife and her ten brothers were hated.

As already mentioned, Tunisia has the highest educational level in Africa. High development indicators. The government raised only the price of bread and everyone was immediately outraged by the regime. The market jobless merchant committed self-incineration. One thing overlapped with the other and there was an explosion that caused a domino effect throughout the Arab world.

But, once again! The Tunisians hated his wife. In a Muslim country, provided with the Internet, this turned out to be the main fuse of the Tunisian Maidan. Before that, there was a rumor that Leila Trabelsi was going to become president. And this would be outraged by any traditional people, not just Tunisians. Although Tunisia has been modernized, urbanized, and so on. And what is the effect of this? Nothing. And this is despite the fact that the Tunisian elite is partially Europeanized. French influence is traditional. Ben Ali himself studied at Saint-Cyr.

Egypt.

Now fast-forward to the centuries-old administrative and spiritual center of Islam, to the capital of Egypt – Cairo.

Egypt remained a landmark for the Arab world, not just an administrative legacy. After independence, Egypt was one of the first to break free from colonial dependence (1922), although it lacked the physical strength for real independence. Yet the Republican officers were among the first to overthrow King Farouk (1952) in Egypt. The same Libyan captain, Muammar Gaddafi, carried out a coup only in 1969 because Libya, next to its brisk neighbors, has always been backward. Most of the territory is the Sahara Desert. The officers of the Arab countries took an example from the Egyptian passionary charismatic Abdel Nasser.

After the assassination attempt and the death of an associate of Nasser Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak was president for 30 years (after all, such a sweet power in the east!). From Nasser to Mubarak, Egypt underwent modernization, developed industry, and raised the educational and cultural level of Egyptians. However, if we talk about urbanization and urbanization did not have time to «absorb» new streams of babies being born. Egypt had the highest fertility, with almost 4 babies per woman. The population growth was very high. The population of Egypt is 100 million. And all the people fit along the river and the Nile Delta. High density! By 2011, 2 million Western students had returned home from Europe. One of them just repeated the self-immolation action, which served as a reason for a social explosion. The words about corruption, poverty, and dictatorship were repeated. How it is everywhere the same and familiar.

As a result of the new elections, the protégé of Muslim fundamentalists, Mohammed Morsi, came to power. The semi-literate Egyptian province, the most traditional, conservative electorate, voted for Morsi. The urban population, which wants to separate religion from the state, lost for the first time. And this is despite the fact that Mubarak brought the literacy rate of the population to 70%. But what can modernization do in such a favorable climate? (Revcon has a zeref’s loop. It means overpopulation. Modernization is powerless here). The main items of replenishment of the Egyptian budget are revenues from the Suez Canal and from tourism. Thus, Egypt as a state resembles just a large-scale rentier. Actually, Saudi Arabia is thriving due to the exploitation of mineral resources, so what’s the big deal? For us, the whole question is interesting: can tourism change the thinking, and hence the reflection of the Egyptians? It is difficult but possible, to carry out modernization in such traditional conditions. This means only one thing: the population of a hundred million people will shake more than once. Without the modernization of consciousness, all traditional peoples know only one thing that represents the whole traditional meaning – reproduction. Breeding to win (who to win? No one knows. For nomads, one law is a tradition. And for tradition, the more children are the more joyous. These included administrative and military victories. If the larger the army, the more likely it is to have power. Even democratic principles confirm that the only majority choose the government.

Here we focus on the terms of the government of the Arab so-called presidents. Despite the statements about freedom and democracy, all of them, as we can see, have ruled for a very long time, no one wanted to leave their post quickly and on time. The Eastern circumstances themselves hinted that the upgrade itself means nothing. If the population «does not move» from place to place, but lives in one place for a very long time, it will always be conservative.