Americans have committed trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of troops to protect U.S. interests in the greater Middle East. Vali Nasr, author of "Forces of Fortune," argues the only way Westerners will get less, rather than more, rejection and extremism is not with more sanctions and conflict — but with more business and interaction.
Neither do they, by and large, stand with the West. We should make no mistake in that regard. Their opinions are in tune with the mood in the Muslim world.
We have to face the fact that the new Middle East being reshaped by the rising middle class is going to be — at least in the short run — Islamic, conservative and all too often prudish and misogynist.
It is certainly not looking for advice or guidance from the West about which of its traditional values should be abandoned. But that does not mean that this middle class will not welcome reforms and that there is no desire among them to fight for more freedom and rights.
In Pakistan, the spontaneous eruption of the lawyers' movement stood up to dictatorship and brought tens of thousands of religious and secular Pakistanis to the streets. There were people in jeans and traditional shalwar kameez, day laborers, students, professionals and housewives, shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of democracy.
These protests were just about the only thing that had brought Pakistanis together as one nation for as long as many could remember. The world must take heed of this powerful expression of craving for democracy and the protection of liberal values among so many ordinary Pakistanis.
In Iran, for the past two years hundreds of thousands of women, and surprisingly also men — both religious and secular — have rallied behind the One Million Signatures campaign to demand rights for women in divorce, in child custody cases, at work, at home and in the labor market.
The movement energized civil society activism and collected its signatures in record time, and made women's rights a hot-button campaign issue in the 2009 presidential elections.
In June 2009, those fighting for women's rights joined hands with many more men and women of the middle class to form the Green Movement, so-called for the ubiquitous green headscarves and wristbands that all of a sudden seemed to be everywhere. The Movement was to mark support for Mir Hossein Moussavi's campaign, and to protest the outcome of the presidential elections and demand political freedoms and social reforms.
But such hopeful signs of political vitality, cutting across the religious–secular divide, could take time to bear fruit ...
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