Tolerating Tyranny

Why did it take a Western power like the United States, which many Muslims deride as "the great Satan," to bring to justice the world's foremost killer of Arabs? Arabs and Muslims are the most oppressed people on earth, and their tolerance for tyranny against them by fellow Arabs is something that I find infinitely puzzling.

To be sure, the Arabs are a proud, skilled, and ferocious people who have demonstrated their capacity to throw off the yoke of enemy occupiers for generations. They will not tolerate being colonized or exploited, that is, unless it's by a fellow Arab, in which case they will suddenly put up with torture, murder, and oppression. One Israeli roadblock, put up in order to stop suicide bombers, and tens of thousands of Palestinians will be out in the streets throwing rocks. But if it's the House of Saud, Muammar Qadaffi, or Bashar al Assad who are beating Arab women and throwing political dissidents in front of a firing squad without trial, then heck, they're family, right?

It beggars belief just how hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims throughout the Middle East and North Africa allow themselves to be ruled by thugs and tyrants. How ironic that the Arabs, with a gallant history of over a thousand years of military conquest and empire-building, should allow themselves in modern times to be bullied by a small group of the most wretched human miscreants who rob them of their money and deprive them of their rights. In former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad's infamous speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference two months ago, he mentioned five times how the Arabs were living in shame and humiliation due to their economic and military subjugation at the hands of the West. But he did not once mention how humiliating it is for any Arab man or women have to live in fear of prostitute-chasing fakers like the House of Saud or megalomaniacal despots like Hosni Mubarak.

If I were an Arab man living in Libya, afraid to ever utter a single word of criticism against a degenerate like Muammar Qaddafi, I would feel permanently emasculated. I would find it difficult to live with my shame. How can Libyan men accept being fired upon in soccer stands by Qaddafi's son, Al Saadi, just because they boo his poor play, as the New York Times recently reported? What would the prophet Muhammad, who was a legendary warrior, think today of his ideological disciples as they tolerate the worst human rights abuses hurled against them by their own leaders with barely a murmur of protest? Even Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for her standing up to the terrorist regime in Iran, decided to use her Nobel speech not to criticize her tyrannical government, but to attack the United States!

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