Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Longtime readers know that I believe that if a policy is so vital and so worth pursuing even in the absence of significant alliance support, then that policy should indeed be implemented. Of course, this entails a cost-benefit analysis, as many key decisions do, but we should not pronounce it as being especially extraordinary if that analysis falls on the side of unilateral action in certain cases.

I put forth this statement as a general one. Its application will vary from case to case. But I also put forth a caveat: There is unilateral action and there is isolation. The two should not be confused.

This is isolation:

Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Shariah, should rule our day-to-day lives.

And yes, we, the silent Arab majority, do not believe that writers, secular or otherwise, should be killed or banned for expressing their views. Or that the rest of our creative elite - from moviemakers to playwrights, actors, painters, sculptors, and fashion models - should be vetted by Neanderthal Muslim imams who have never read a book in their dim, miserable lives.

Nor do we believe that little men with head wraps and disheveled beards can run amok in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq making decisions on our behalf, dragging us to war whenever they please, confiscating our rights to be adults, and flogging us for not praying five times a day or even for not believing in God.

More important, we are not silent any longer.

Rarely have I seen such an uprising, indeed an intifada, against those little turbaned, bearded men across the Muslim landscape as the one that took place last week. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, received a resounding "no" to pulling 350 million Arabs into a war with Israel on his clerical coattails.

The collective "nyet" was spoken by presidents, emirs, and kings at the highest level of government in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, and at the Arab League's meeting of 22 foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday. But it was even louder from pundits and ordinary people.

These are the sentiments that cause me to have faith in the long term for the Middle East. A decaying ideology that forsakes the religion from which it claims to draw inspiration has done little tangibly except create in its face an enlightened opposition. There is no certainty that such an opposition will prevail. But we can draw at least some measure of encouragement from the fact that it is making its voice heard, and that after a fashion, it has expressed itself so powerfully in diplomatic circles.