Egypt's strongman, Hosni Mubarak has now gone, handing over power to a council of the army.
But we cannot say with certainty whether this event bodes well for the Islamic world in general, and Egypt in particular.
Will peace with Israel endure? Will Egypt go the democracy way or will it go down the fundamentalist road taken by the likes of Pakistan? Or will the so called "success" of democracy craving youth extend into the dungeons of the Arabian peninsula, read Saudi Arabia?
Only time will answer these questions, but history has proven that every ten years there are cataclysmic events that alter the shape of the world.
1981 brought Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States. And Reagan unleashed a series of economic interventions encouraging increased consumption aided by easy debt availability to the Americans. Further, the American economy systematically moved away from manufacturing to services. The results were far reaching - the effect was to be seen only after 2008, when the malaise of toxic loans hit the most powerful economy of the world, with catastrophic effects, which then had to rely on the Chinese to support it - whether it was for money or for manufactured goods.
The invincible Soviet Union was brought down to its knees 1991. With no countervailing balance, the only remaining superpower, the United States unleashed deadly wars in the Persian Gulf, which stoked flames of militant Islamic terror, which today can be felt in every continent on the globe. More flames were stoked by cheap arms made available from the disintegrating Soviet military, which also encouraged bloody conflicts in Africa and Latin America.
2001 brought terror to shores of the United States with the 9/11 attacks. And America's psyche was deeply hurt to the core, like never before, which made the world lose its innocence for ever.
So the big question today is whether the events in Egypt today would sink the Islamic world deeper into a medieval era, or towards a resurgence?
No comments:
Post a Comment