Whoever wants Arab entities to be civil, sophisticated, progressive, and secular must curb the tide and forces of fundamentalism in effective, legal, and democratic ways, We do not mean here at all the use of violence, dictatorial methods, tyranny, or the suppression of any party, whether fundamentalist or not, Rather, curbing them is done by presenting a convincing alternative to most of the people of these nations, who were not sectarian before 1440 years ago, nor were they fundamentalist in the way they have become in the last fourteen centuries, In those centuries, the people did not practice the civilized, peaceful political exchange under the monopoly of fundamentalist violence of the Quraysh and Ottoman dynasties over all authoritarian practices, which were initially limited to the violence of the sword and later to the violence of the cannon and the rifle, As a result, the people became accustomed to the moans of the wounded and the screams of children before they were slaughtered from vein to vein, and then to kidnapping, killing, dragging, destruction, sniping, thuggery, slaughter, imprisonment, torture, oppression, poverty, etc. The times of those practices led to their entrenchment in the conscience and psychological being of the human being.
The voice of the people disappeared and they were unable to move their tongues and utter a word, They no longer thought, questioned, answered, created, went to the huge Roman theaters, or cultivated the land, They were transformed into slaves after having been emperors, lawyers, and philosophers, The people were transformed into subjects of the camel herders from the Bedouin of the island, For 1440 years, the history of the region did not know a single individual like Zeno of Citium or Banipal the lawyer, nor a person like Julia Domna, Zenobia, Ishtar, Semiramis, or others, The invaders initially benefited from the expertise of some Syriacs in translation, such as Isaac ibn Hunayn and Hunayn ibn Isaac, and then in administration directly after the conquests. But after Arabization, their matter ended and their role ended until their existence at the hands of the predatory and savage Umarite covenant.
Violence, deeply rooted in the human conscience and psyche, enabled factional fundamentalism to assassinate the 2011 revolution, i.e., the Arab Spring. Just as fundamentalist ruling authorities assassinated the will of the region’s peoples and enslaved them, it is not surprising that religious fundamentalism finds fertile ground for its growth under an authority no less violent, criminal, corrupt, and fundamentalist than itself! The corruption of the authorities is mainly manifested in theft, exploitation, the practice of individualism, and the monopolization of the material and moral resources of society, Meanwhile, the corruption of religious fundamentalism is primarily rooted in an intellectual background of racism and reactionism, followed by violence, bloody repression, dictatorship, and corruption—as the saying goes, “My livelihood is in the shadow of my spear!” Furthermore, fundamentalism, in whatever form it takes, is incapable of keeping pace with civilizational developments, Therefore, its outcomes have been catastrophic, The outcomes of religious fundamentalism are no different from those of fundamentalist authorities claiming to be civil in terms of their disastrous nature, In fact, it has become clear that the outcomes of religious fundamentalism were worse than the fundamentalism of authorities claiming to be civil by degrees.
There is a direct correlation between the growth of authoritarian fundamentalist systems claiming to be civil, with all its flaws and diseases, and the growth of religious fundamentalism, The failure of an authoritarian system claiming to be civil forced it to turn to religious fundamentalism or to share with religious fundamentalism in dividing hegemony and interests. That is, there became two fundamentalisms, one authoritarian and the other religious and sectarian.
The era of partnership between fundamentalisms led to transformations in the structure of society from a political structure to a sectarian structure, In the conflict of fundamentalisms, whether it was the fundamentalism of the majority or the fundamentalism of the minority, each fundamentalism was able to occupy a place for itself on the political stage, i.e. practically a power-sharing arrangement, Each fundamentalism protected itself with weapons that were neither thoughtful nor planned, On one side were the battalions of the authority claiming to be civil, and on the other side were the legions of the mujahideen who chanted takbir, They were all violent fighters without reason, And what can we expect from those who lack reason except violence, war, destruction, killing, etc.? They were all pioneers of barbarism!
The mission of authoritarian fundamentalist regimes was to surpass religious fundamentalism through some deceptive practices, including the practice of forging legitimate documentation of its existence, such as obtaining 99.99% of the voters’ votes in a referendum they called the “wedding” of democracy, It also included the ability of authoritarian fundamentalism to agree with religious fundamentalism on sharing the spoils, Thus, the henchmen of the two fundamentalisms were able to enrich themselves through quotas in corruption, In practice, fundamentalisms, whether religious or authoritarian, failed at the hands of corruption and then at the hands of political ignorance and intellectual weakness, which opened the way for weapons and wars, which led to their defeat by the weapons they relied on and fought with.
They all practiced killing and sabotage, Those among the people who were not killed by the bullets of the war conflicts died under the rubble. Their sabotage did not stop at the urban boundaries, but rather went beyond them to political destruction,Among the political destruction, for example, was the sabotage of the Baath Party, then the sabotage of the communist parties, and the attempt to sabotage the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and others, Those parties were supposed to play a leading role in society and in establishing a state that must be civil and secular in order to succeed in the project of advancement and progress.
Authoritarian and religious fundamentalisms have eliminated thought and dialogue,The justification was sometimes the protection of the authoritarian regime that had transformed into a fundamentalist one, and at other times the protection of the divine religious system.,The fundamentalist authoritarian regime has transformed into a family system that has shaped the country in its name, which led to the relative rise of religious fundamentalism, not because religious fundamentalism is intellectually mature, nor because it is progressive, nor because it is democratic, It was weak and feeble in all areas, but at the beginning it was stronger than authoritarian fundamentalism. In the second half of the war of about a decade and a half, the situation was reversed, and then it was reversed again with support from abroad about two years ago, so that religious fundamentalism was able to control the government in Syria and Iraq. In Syria, religious fundamentalism was Sunni, and in Iraq it was Shiite. Does the reader know which is better?
