Pity the Arabs!

While the bloodletting went on in Gaza, the Arab capitals were curiously silent. Nah, they were not all that silent, they were actually backing Israel in its murderous activity. The Israelis are saying publicly that, the Saudis, the Bahrainis, the Egyptians and the Kuwaitis are supporting their murderous pummelling of Gaza. Forget the issues of religion, the Arab countries should show at least as much outrage as the Europeans are showing if not a wee bit more at the indiscriminate killings and destruction. But, that will not be and that is the pity of the Arabs in general.

While all the destruction was going on, no one noticed that Qatar spent $11 billion buying slew of weapons from the US that they cannot use and they do not need to use. This in a country where America has the biggest overseas base! Among these purchased weapons were the latest version of the Patriot Missile battery which is typically used for tracking and destroying long distance missiles and other projectiles. They also bought some technologically advanced fighter jets and many more. Never mind that they have no idea why they need it. Oh well if they ever are held accountable they will say they needed these weapons to defend themselves from Iran. Why Iran? Other than just a bellicose feeling about the Persian Shias they have no answer!

That is not all, Qatar also paid untold sums to buy a small town stadium in, um, Belgium to groom and develop a soccer team which will inevitably be foreign born. As we know of Qatar's 1.8 million people only 278,000 are Qatari citizens and the rest are in servitude without ever hoping to enjoy the protection of citizenship. Even the ancient Pharaohs were more circumspect with their state's treasury and exploitation of the populace. The motto seems to be spend, spend and spend all the while egged on by clever people from the military industrial complex based in the US, UK, France, Russia and now Brazil. However, when it comes to some agreements on burning issues of our time like say Palestine, there is none!

How disorganised are these guys? We will start with a latest event, the meeting of the 22-member Arab League in March, 2014 in Kuwait. Typically this is a totally ineffective talking shop with flowery lectures, glittering robes, whitest of white tunics and absolutely nothing to show for their efforts. The March meeting was even more dysfunctional than ever. They managed to disagree on every single humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in and around their fiefdoms. Some of them support Bassar Assad of Syria, some support the opposing Jihadists and various factions within. Some of the 22 members support the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government and some violently oppose it. Qataris support the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudis and the Bahrainis and their ilk oppose it. The disagreements got so vehement that by the end of the first day, the Saudi crown prince Salman flew back to Riyadh. Arab unity is like the mythical unicorn of the fairy tales. Why do they matter? Mainly because they have money that they can use to cause mischief. One manifestation of that is their funding of Wahhabi Madrassas in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Across the region these so called Islamic states are committing atrocities and crimes against people and/or not lifting a finger to help the Palestinians or to stop atrocities by the Jihadists such as ISIS. They are too busy protecting their family and tribal treasures. In Bahrain, the Al Khalifa family rules over with its majority Shia population in total disgrace. The Shias are systematically discriminated against and their prospects are dim. In 2012 and 2013 when the Shias of Bahrain started a movement to oppose the oppression, the Al Khalifa family used tanks, Pakistani mercenaries and the Saudi tribal forces to brutally put down the protests. They actually bulldozed a square called the Pearl Square where I remember mingling with people deep into the night in the late '80s. And do not get me started on the shameful reign of the Al Saud family in the country that bears their family name as this rant will then go on forever!

What is this all about? Deep down, the Arab societies have not gone past their tribal nature and instincts. Everything is coloured by the idea of tribe and tribal identity. State, country, nationalism and/or Islam are all concepts subservient to the tribal norms. Practices such as burqas, female genital mutilation and so on are primarily tribal and has very little to do with Islam or any other religion. They have managed to conflate the tribal with the religion, with the State, with the family, with international affairs. These guys get western education but they bring a little bubble with them to their places of learning so they simply do not get any benefit of the western cultures to take back with them when they get back home to assume positions of responsibility.

The Arab societies seem prone to manipulation by the clever Westerners. We all know about Lawrence of Arabia. This was a British Imperial agent (OK, a romanticised one) who simply manipulated the Al Saud family to fight against the Ottoman Turks and foment rebellion for tribal and nationalistic gains. But the bigger game was to usher in British domination of the Arabian lands for many decades. This was at the time when Indian Muslims were waging their "Khilafat" movement to preserve the Ottoman Caliphate, um, Empire! I make no apology for the Ottoman Empire, their Caliphate was rotten to the core. But, the Arabs simply played into the geopolitical ambition of the clever empire builder.

Today the Arabs are continuing on the path. They are buying weapons and systems which have no productive value. Yes, you need some of that for self-preservation but spending the lion's share of the GDP for buying planes that they cannot fly, missiles that they cannot fire and IT infrastructure that cannot fathom make so little sense. This is nothing but transfer of wealth in an epic scale from the tribal fools to the clever ones in the West. This money will be well spent on long term educational programmes for their people so the society can someday be self-reliant. Because their status as client states to the arms dealers, these countries fail to treat their population evenly and are threatened by any nationalist movement that questions the tribal nature of their existence. So much for Arab solidarity!

We as Bangladeshi Muslims also tend to conflate Islam with Arab tribalism. We say many things in Arabic and pray in Arabic whereas we could easily do that in Bangla. We accept the King of Saudi Arabia as the Guardian of Mecca, but this is the same family who brought in the French mercenaries to kill some 1,400 people inside the Kaaba premise during the siege of Mecca in 1979 by the Salafists. I went to a Nephew's wedding one time and a whole wing of my family showed up wearing big Bedouin medallions as jewellery. They looked so outlandish and grotesque in the middle of Queens, NY, that I had to flee the wedding as quickly as I could.

The point I am trying to make is this, we must not conflate religion with tribal instinct and we must hold the so called guardians of the religions and people accountable for their action and non-action as in the case of Palestine. The Arab conquest of many lands some 1,500 years ago was happening at the right place at the right time with a firm understanding of technology and society. They need a new paradigm. You can probably compare them to the Portuguese of 2014. Portugal once was an imperial power now it is the least educated of the European nations with a culture and psyche that is left in the 1600's. Portugal is beginning to recognise the deficit and is undertaking vast overhaul of the education and social welfare system. The Arab countries badly need a Renaissance, an age of Enlightenment. Until that happens, let us not conflate the religion with the tribal.

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Kayes Ahmed runs a small yet global apparel and design business based in Boulder, USA.