Islamic Radical Regimes and Western Ignorance/ Elias Bejjani

On January 31/2011, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted this statement on his website: "there is no doubt that based on realities envisioned by God, a new Middle East will be formed and this Middle East will be an Islamic Middle East."

Apparently, the western world and its US leadership are walking blindly through a field of explosive mines in the entire Middle East. This questionable and confusing path is seen by many Arab, Israeli and Lebanese analysts and politicians as a self destructive act due to the fact that all the pro-western regimes are falling one after the other, while the west it self is paving the way and preparing the milieus for Islamic fundamentalist groups to take over.

Sadly, it makes no difference if western policies are executed intentionally or unintentionally because they are advocating for the model of the two axis of evil regimes, Syria and Iran, which operate using Hezbollah and Hamas as their terrorist militias. The perplexing western acts of hostility toward their own allies by characterizing them as oppressive and not respecting the will of their own people, are portraying these two evil regimes as substitutes for all the pro-western ones.

It is strongly believed that the western cowboy-like policies are completely detached from the Middle East realities and alienated from all its social and religious norms. The policies of the west if not reassessed will definitely lead to more chaos, anarchy, disasters and loses in the whole Middle East.

The west, for reasons that are not understood yet, is abandoning all its Middle East allies under the pretext of the two false slogans of democracy and freedom. Western leaders ignore the deeply rooted fact that the majority of the Middle Eastern people comprehend these slogans in a very different way than to western societies. The criteria for norms in the Middle East and the western world are not only different, but at times completely contradict each other.

One wonders why suddenly the west has decided to get rid of its number one ally in the Middle East, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak after toppling their other loyal ally, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. There is no doubt Mubarak is a very bad ruler. But if he is compared to the Muslim Brotherhood organization's leadership, who might now get their hands on Egypt and turn it into another Iran, Mubarak looks like a guardian angel. It is worth mentioning that Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri, the number two man in Al Qaeda's hierarchy, is an Egyptian and not much different from his Muslim Brotherhood organization counterparts.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood organization is the oldest and largest radical Islamic group, the grandfather of Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. Its main objective is to erect a Muslim regime in Egypt and all other Muslim countries and impose Islamic Sharia law. Dr. Walid Phares, a well known terrorism analyst and writer, has studied the Muslim Brotherhood. Phares says its history shows that the group is not secular and not moderate. �The Muslim Brotherhood is the mothership for the jihadi ideologies and thinking. And therefore one can say today's Al Qaeda, and today many other jihadists, are off shoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.�

One also questions the western wisdom in keeping a blind eye on what is happening in Turkey whose current Islamic leadership is gradually changing their secular country into another fundamentalist Iran, while still receiving western aid worth billions of dollars. The same Turkish scenario is gradually unfolding in Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan.

The same question applies to the Baathist Syrian regime, the most notorious dictatorship in the world. The USA, and all the European countries are appeasing and cajoling this murderous regime and allowing its merciless leadership to sabotage its neighboring countries Iraq and Lebanon. Syria is given free reign to interfere in their internal affairs through terrorism and murder. Syria's President Bachar Assad was again last month given the West's blessings to abort Lebanon's Cedar Revolution, topple its unity government, and appoint a pro Syria-Iranian PM to form a new anti-Western government. It seems also that the pro-western Jordanian monarchy is on its way to face the same Mubarak fate.

Since the early seventies and up until today the bizarre and questionable policies of the USA and the majority of the European countries have been offering wrong predictions and calculations in regards to all the radical Islamic regimes in the Middle East. Looking thoroughly and objectively in some of the dramatic unfolding events since 1970 we learn with great disappointment that all the Islamic radical regimes were brought in power by the USA and Europe on the account of their pro western allies. The sequence of the following events show plainly this problematic trend:

In year 1975: Arab countries, Europe, and USA gave Syria's notorious butcher and dictator Late Hafez Al Assad the green light and full support to invade and occupy Lebanon, the only multi-cultural, democratic country in the Arab world. In 2005 the Lebanese Cedars Revolution forces Syrian troops to leave Lebanon. Last month Lebanon fell again a prey to Syria and Iran and again the with the blessing of western countries.

In 1979, the USA brought to Iran Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic revolution on the account of its strong and powerful ally Shah Reza Shah Pahlevi. The Iranian Islamic Revolution under the late Khomeini and his current his successor, Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei oppressed its people, murdered or muffled all opposition groups' and individuals. Iran is now working hard on owning an atomic bomb, destabilizing Arabian Gulf Emirates and kingdoms through terrorism, demonizing the USA as a satanic regime, and is terrorizing the Middle East through its armed militias Hezbollah and Hamas. Meanwhile, the west has turned a blind eye to Iran establishing a mini-state in Lebanon through its armed militia, the terrorist Hezbollah..

In 2003, the USA invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussien's regime and replaced it by a pro Iran-Syrian one that have massacred the Christians and forced most of them to leave Iraq in fear for their lives.

In Afghanistan the USA nurtured and created the monster Al-Qaida and its devil Ben Laden, who orchestrated and executed the 911 terrorist attacks that instigated the western invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile the USA and Europe support and finance the most notorious fanatic and oppressive regimes in the world including Pakistan, Syria and others.

Elections and democracy are not always the road for freedom and liberation. No one should forget that in 1932 Adolf Hitler through structural elections took over Germany and created the worst dictatorship in history.

In this same western kind of mentality and wrong calculations, Ehud Barak's Israeli government abandoned its Lebanese loyal allies in south Lebanon in the year 2000 and handed south Lebanon without any fight to Hezbollah. While in June 2007, Ehud Olmert's government watched silently as Hamas took over the Gaza strip without giving its Palestinian allies any help.

Iran's President Ahmadinejad, Syria's dictator Bashar Al Assad, Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas' leadership, and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez among many leaders supporting terrorism allege that the West is a coward when it comes to confrontation, does not have the guts to fight, and always abandons its allies after using them. Well, the recent events unfolding in the Middle East make these allegations credible.

In conclusion, we believe that the western world has an obligation to help its Middle Eastern allies to gradually adopt a kind of democracy that is tailored to the culture, beliefs, traditions and history of their societies. They should not take any role in toppling them and help the Islamic fanatics to take over. Hopefully, the Western policy makers will wake up soon to the reality that they are playing with fire in the Middle East, because as we say back home in Lebanon, " He who plays with fire ultimately burns his fingers".