The movements that were hailed as the harbingers of an “Arab Spring” revealed the reality of societies whose inhabitants' minds and spirits had been crushed under the weight of a number of factors that had permeated their lives for many years. One of these factors was their subjugation by despotic regimes that had come to power after national liberation, but that were now mired in ignorance and corruption and detached from the march of human progress. Another factor was the shocking decline in the educational institutions and curricula and the application of outdated educational systems long discarded by advanced societies. Yet another was an overcharged and invasive religious discourse that extolled blind obedience and conformity, decried independent thinking, and was one of the main reasons for the gap separating the peoples of Arab societies from the world of progress and innovation. Finally, there was the general cultural climate that encouraged people to retreat into the past and into an imaginary utopia whose glories were magnified as an antidote to their unpalatable present, with the result that they gave little thought to the future or its challenges. An earlier book of mine, published six months before the first movement that ushered in the Arab Spring in Tunisia, pointed clearly to this catastrophic situation. The basic message of the book was that the Arab mentality had been so eroded and crushed by these four factors that it had become susceptible to the siren songs of the past and infatuated with an idealised history of unparalleled glory that was in fact nothing more than one of many chapters in the annals of human history. Moreover, it was a chapter whose dark moments in the seventh century CE had eclipsed many of its shining moments. Unfortunately for the Arab societies, the Arab Spring erupted at a time when the administration at the helm of the world's sole remaining superpower was headed by a president possessing what I believe to be a Third World mentality, with all the problems that this term denotes. While I am in no way implying that the administration in question instigated the movements that came to be called the Arab Spring, I maintain that it played a central role in the transfer of power in most of the countries involved to repressive forces inimical to the values of progress. Its actions in this instance ran true to form. In 1979, the administration of this superpower, drawn from the same political party that has been in power since 2009, and with the help of Saudi Arabia, supported the establishment of an entity that became the organisation known as Al-Qaeda a few years later. Following the same pattern, the administration has, since the Arab Spring began, convinced itself that the Muslim Brotherhood in general, and its representatives in Egypt and Tunisia in particular, has evolved to become a “moderate” political movement. This bizarre belief does not come as a surprise to me. Having visited the capital of this superpower many times and spoken with many “experts” on Arab affairs in some of its top research centres, I saw the writing on the wall and could foretell that we were heading for disaster. The geographical and historical isolation of this superpower renders many of its leading intellectuals and politicians, even its experts on Arab affairs, unable to understand the nature and extent of the destructive energy that permeates political movements in Arab societies that mix politics with religion. Instead of wielding its enormous influence to advance the cause of education in these societies (a modern educational system being the only lifeline that can save them), the superpower began negotiating at a feverish pace with movements that mix politics with religion (negotiations that began and continued during the five years preceding the first revolution of the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2011) in the misguided belief that it could transform a poisonous scorpion into a tame canary. The civilised world is today faced with the dilemma of how to deal with mediaeval movements that mix politics with religion. As I see it, this dilemma is largely due to the inability of both the world's sole superpower and other advanced societies to realise that the strategic interests that determine their policies must incorporate the values governing humanity at its current stage of development, which is the stage of Western civilisation. Interests cannot be reduced to economic advantages alone, but instead must, especially at this advanced stage in the evolution of humanistic values, include the values adopted by human civilisation in its present highest form, namely Western civilisation. It goes without saying that the outcome of the battle in Arab societies between regressive forces (which include the movements that mix politics with religion), on the one hand, and progressive forces that believe in education and progress on the other will be determined sooner or later within these societies themselves and by their own citizens. However, though the battle for the soul of these societies can only be resolved by the fierce struggle currently underway between those clinging to the past and those looking to the future, one factor that can help the struggle come to a healthy and civilised end is the attitude of the advanced societies. The question is whether their attitude will continue to be based on purely economic interests, or whether they will come to realise that their strategic interests entail adherence to the values to which their own societies adhere. These values, more universal than purely Western, represent the greatest achievement of human civilisation, greater than all the material achievements, scientific and economic, of humankind. Indeed, this set of values, forged over millennia, is now the cornerstone of human civilisation and progress.
