By Abir A Chaaban
Obama's Facebook pages were invaded today by Chinese Malaysians begging the Lord Obama to come to Malaysia and bring democracy to their country. A post on gun control for example had until this moment some 39,150 comments and still going. This attack was made to all posts on both Obama’s Facebook pages. Does this tell us something about the role the public globally believes America plays in the promotion of democracy?
The US government and associated media discourse of public diplomacy champions the United States as a promoter of freedom and democracy. Yet, not only America promotes freedom and democracy, the EU is equally concerned with such promotion. The US discourse nevertheless is associated with heavy military intervention by US Forces in Asia and the Middle East. American military power has been used as a method to invade states under the public discourse of democracy promotion. The United States so far has not succeeded in bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Most states that were targeted for the democracy project are currently inflicted by internal conflict and anarchy, rather than the assumption of peace that would be achieved due to the democratization process. This is so, since the United States concept of democracy is a religious and ethnic concept rather than a political and juridical concept of government.
The United States utilization of military power to promote political systems is ill-informed about the distinction between ethnicity, religion and politics. This lack of knowledge makes the United States a supporter of religious and ethnic extremists that may be representatives of a small minority of the ethnic or religious group in question.A case in point is the case in Syria. The United States and associated American media envisioned the democratic process based on demographic analysis of the “Sunni” majority versus a “Shi’a” minority. In such analysis, the US underplayed the secularism and diversity the Syrian Sunnis. Syria had a secular revolution that was historically in conflict with the ideology of the religious state promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood. The US took this disagreement by assuming that the Sunni majority also supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Alawite Shi’a is a minority that usurped power. The media discourse continued to evaluate the conflict in Syria as sectarian. See for example articles by Thomas Friedman, CNN December 12, 2012,The Telegraph December 20, 2012 and Al-Jazeera December 20,2012. Discourses of sectarian conflict communicated by the media do not explain how is the regime still in power in an uprising that is two years old, if the Sunni majority which is estimated by the Central Intelligence Agency at 74% is waging a war against the Shī’a minorities less than 16%.
The Wahabi-Salaf constitutes five percent of the Lebanese Sunnis acording to NOW Lebanon and one percent of the Sunni in Syria according to Nishapuri. The Salaf nevertheless is represented by the Media as the Sunni majority instigating a sectarian war against the Alawite Shī’a minority regime. In fact the majority of the Syrian Sunnis are either Sufi Shafe’i or Hanafi meaning of different sects than the Islamist Wahabi-Salaf insurgency. The insurgency has conducted several attacks on Sunni religious clergy by targeted assassinations in Damascus the most recent of which was the assassination of Sunni scholar Al Bouti . Consequently the insurgency becomes a radical minority that wishes to usurp power violently with US support.
Obama's Facebook pages were invaded today by Chinese Malaysians begging the Lord Obama to come to Malaysia and bring democracy to their country. A post on gun control for example had until this moment some 39,150 comments and still going. This attack was made to all posts on both Obama’s Facebook pages. Does this tell us something about the role the public globally believes America plays in the promotion of democracy?
The US government and associated media discourse of public diplomacy champions the United States as a promoter of freedom and democracy. Yet, not only America promotes freedom and democracy, the EU is equally concerned with such promotion. The US discourse nevertheless is associated with heavy military intervention by US Forces in Asia and the Middle East. American military power has been used as a method to invade states under the public discourse of democracy promotion. The United States so far has not succeeded in bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Most states that were targeted for the democracy project are currently inflicted by internal conflict and anarchy, rather than the assumption of peace that would be achieved due to the democratization process. This is so, since the United States concept of democracy is a religious and ethnic concept rather than a political and juridical concept of government.
The United States utilization of military power to promote political systems is ill-informed about the distinction between ethnicity, religion and politics. This lack of knowledge makes the United States a supporter of religious and ethnic extremists that may be representatives of a small minority of the ethnic or religious group in question.A case in point is the case in Syria. The United States and associated American media envisioned the democratic process based on demographic analysis of the “Sunni” majority versus a “Shi’a” minority. In such analysis, the US underplayed the secularism and diversity the Syrian Sunnis. Syria had a secular revolution that was historically in conflict with the ideology of the religious state promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood. The US took this disagreement by assuming that the Sunni majority also supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Alawite Shi’a is a minority that usurped power. The media discourse continued to evaluate the conflict in Syria as sectarian. See for example articles by Thomas Friedman, CNN December 12, 2012,The Telegraph December 20, 2012 and Al-Jazeera December 20,2012. Discourses of sectarian conflict communicated by the media do not explain how is the regime still in power in an uprising that is two years old, if the Sunni majority which is estimated by the Central Intelligence Agency at 74% is waging a war against the Shī’a minorities less than 16%.
The Wahabi-Salaf constitutes five percent of the Lebanese Sunnis acording to NOW Lebanon and one percent of the Sunni in Syria according to Nishapuri. The Salaf nevertheless is represented by the Media as the Sunni majority instigating a sectarian war against the Alawite Shī’a minority regime. In fact the majority of the Syrian Sunnis are either Sufi Shafe’i or Hanafi meaning of different sects than the Islamist Wahabi-Salaf insurgency. The insurgency has conducted several attacks on Sunni religious clergy by targeted assassinations in Damascus the most recent of which was the assassination of Sunni scholar Al Bouti . Consequently the insurgency becomes a radical minority that wishes to usurp power violently with US support.
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