The Middle East has a very long tradition of using humor to bring down the powerful. Successful revolutions have hardly ever happened without political jokes and satire coming first. This is a converse of the Gandhian description of the powerful's response to a people's campaign: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win. When we are seeking to bring down autocracy, we begin by ignoring it and are awakened to the possibility of change by laughing at it, then we attack it (nonviolently, if we want the best chance of success), and then we win. According to Khalid Kishtainy:
"Napoleon, who refused to sleep with fat Egyptian women -- considered by ordinary Egyptians to be the most desirable -- became the target of jokes about his lack of virility and the effete nature of his troops. The French occupation of Egypt led to the development of an interesting expression of patriotism through sexuality. Ali Kaka, a doll with a monstrous penis, became a symbol of Egyptian 'manhood,' defying French domination. The dolls were popular gifts among Egyptians, and pastry shops produced Ali Kaka cakes for children. After a few months of this satirical sexual prelude, Egyptians rose up in a bloody revolt."
This passage and virtually every example of nonviolent revolt that I've mentioned all come from "Civilian Jihad," a wonderful book edited by Maria J. Stephan and published in 2009 with a photo of a 2005 protest in Cairo on the cover. In the book, Stephan makes this rather successful forecast:
But when that patience is gone, should the approach be nonviolent or murderous?
Stephan reviews world history to justify her answer. She cites a Freedom House study from 2005 that found that 50 of 67 transitions away from authoritarianism between 1972 and 2005 were driven by bottom-up civic movements, while armed revolutions and insurgencies had very little success. Another study, co-authored by Stephan, looked at 323 violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and found a 26 percent success rate for armed insurgencies but a 51 percent success rate for nonviolent action. In the understatement of the decade, Stephan put these words on the first page of the book:
"The views presented in this book do not reflect those of the U.S. government."
However, the U.S. people is another story altogether. A terrific essay included in "Civilian Jihad" by Rami G. Khouri compares Middle Eastern nonviolence with the U.S. civil rights movement:
"The conditions for Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East today do not correspond exactly with those of African Americans in the United States, and the tactics they use sometimes vary because of these differing circumstances. That said, however, the underlying sentiments and motivations among Arabs are the same: a desire to assert their humanity and demand recognition of their civic rights from their government. To achieve this, they are willing to brave death, in order to affirm life; to fight powerful overlords, in order to overcome their own powerlessness and vulnerability; and to stand up and risk repression, rather than remain on their knees."
Someday, perhaps they will say, together even with U.S. atheists like me:
Free at last! Free at last! Allahu Akbar, We are free at last!
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