Reza Aslan, founder of “Aslan Media,” an online journal that provides news and entertainment related to the Middle East, visited campus the past Friday to examine the origins and repercussions of the Arab Spring movement in his presentation entitled “After the Arab Spring.” The Arab Spring was a series of pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East that began in December 2010. The Arab Spring began when Mohamed Boazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor, self-immolated in front of a municipal building in protest of the confiscation of his fruit stand when he was unable to afford a police bribe, said Aslan. “The thing that became essential and clear to everyone was that the days in which the government could act without any kind of concern for its people or its people’s thoughts, were over,” said Aslan. Images of Boazizi’s death circulated around the world and sparked revolution in over 18 Middle Eastern countries with oppressive regimes. Thus far, these revolutions, have led to the forced removal of rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Countries with both a high unemployment rate and large youth population are often plagued by social instability. According to Aslan, about three quarters of the population of the greater Middle East is under the age of 35. Aslan also highlighted the role that social media played in the Arab Spring. “When you live in a part of the world in which the levers of communication are wholly monopolized by the government, where there is no such thing as freedom of the press, there is no such thing as freedom of speech, there is no such thing as freedom of assembly,” said Aslan. In Egypt, for example, social media played a critical role in ensuring all protestors showed up in Tahrir Square at the same time on January 25, 2011. “The original January 25th [Tahrir Square] protest started on a Facebook page. They all met on Facebook, about 250,000 of them, they agreed exactly what time they would all show up at once, and that’s how it happened. You can arrest five people at once, but you cannot arrest 250,000 people at once. So first and foremost, it played this pivotal role in actually allowing people to communicate with each other,” said Aslan. Aslan said that the Arab Spring was initially mischaracterized by the media as an Islamic takeover. Aslan presented the results of a survey taken last year in nine Arab countries. The survey asked participants to list priorities of the uprisings. All nine countries chose democracy over other options such as infrastructure, better education and higher wages. “As you might know, democracy takes a long time,” said Aslan. He pointed out the U.S.’s own 250-year struggle to establish and refine its democratic system. Aslan explained that although many post-Arab Spring countries such as Egypt are still struggling with conservative Islamic backlash, categorizing the revolution as a “failure” ignores the complexities of the situation. “It’s a false dichotomy that actually masks the complexity of what’s going on here: which is really about competing visions of a new state and competing interests in a country that has never had the opportunity of actually being able to voice those interests,” said Aslan. “This isn’t about the failure of a revolution, this is about a post-revolutionary state trying to define itself,” said Aslan. Aslan was brought to campus in part by the Muslim Student Association (MSA), with help from Junius Williams ’14 and Frank Tipton, West Quad North Cluster Dean. Iman Masmoudi ’14, Co-Head of MSA first wanted to bring Aslan to campus during her Lower year, when she realized that many students were not aware of events occurring in the Middle East. “I mostly speak at colleges, but when I get the opportunity to speak to high schools, especially ones like this one, I never pass it up. This is what I live for. I would much rather speak to high school students than to college students precisely for the reasons that I said: there’s much more of a desire to engage with the world, whereas in college you start focusing inward and you’re so stressed out anyway that your views and opinions tend to become a little bit more stilted,” said Aslan in an interview with The Phillipian. Dr. Aslan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. In 2005, he published a book entitled “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” which was named as one of the 100 best books of the last decade by “The Financial Times.”
