An Arab Nightmare

The great make history.

Imbeciles worship it.

It is distinguished about the cultures of the orient that they highly praise humility and modesty, to an extent that they shame individuality. They promote hard work, perseverance and sacrifice only if it follows social guidelines and norms under a steel, low-ceiling of traditions.

Divergence is a sin.

If your hard work makes you shine, if your perseverance makes you ascend above your personal weaknesses and challenges, if your sacrifice makes you personally fulfilled and happy... none of that counts because you have sinned by focusing on yourself and perhaps weakening the group pride. Others would look at you with awe, undermining what you have achieved in every way possible, yet deep inside envying your courage.

Your hard work must bring on the growth of the group the way they have been taught is necessary to grow... your perseverance must not, under any circumstance, break the norms or destabilize the inherited roles... your sacrifice must only make society pleased because your happiness will come from being content, and to be content you should be a sheep, a white one or maybe one of a blemish here or there, but not too unique.

In the Arab world, sheep make a prestigious feast, not history.

Arabs need great minds to plan a future as "great" as our past, a past which, for so long, there was no mission more divine than transforming it into legends closer to mythologies. The steel strong ceiling of traditions we live under had made it impossible to look up for new heroes. Arabs born in the twentieth century have had little choice but to glorify historic figures predating the Ottomans, the latest era of defeat alive in Arab memory. From our history, heroes revived were two kinds, the one that had a brain and the other that had a sword. In the absence of vision, tolerance, and ambitions, the former found few followers while the latter seems to have occupied the imagination of the imbeciles between us. We, who export a wealth of human and natural resources, are facing the surreality of becoming victims of our worshipped traditions and glorified legends.

It is time we admit that humility will not save us. Modesty will not defeat the psychopaths who threaten our future in the name of tradition and religion. It is time we admit that our Arab history is not the beacon to be followed in the twenty first century. There are more highly distinguished people of Arab origin alive today than there was ever in history, only most live in the West in places that respect individuality and individual choices.

The Arab society today is living a nightmare. Our pride-rich-dreams of reclaiming an esteemed position among the nations, blaming everyone for what we are, brainwashing ourselves with bloody fantasies predating the fifteenth century, and living in total denial to the kind of sheep we have become and pretending to be wolves, was all magically turned to reality in the form of a Caliphate; an army of hooded criminals committing genocides in the name of religious and historic duties.

How do we plan on ending the nightmare? With weapons and armies?

By definition, a nightmare ends when a person wakes up, so wake up.

In addition to modern laws, we have enough collective wisdom in our culture with no need for divine obligations that hold our afterlife to ransom. We need a brighter future. We need new sources of inspiration for young generations. We need to create modern heroes. It is time we get rid of the carrot and stick of heaven and hell. Let us imagine what would life be in two centuries, not what it was ten centuries ago. Let us fantasize about science, about space and galaxies, and not rule our lives by quotes of a warlord or a clergyman that died a thousand years ago.

Allow yourself to dream and be the great one that makes history.



by Nael Gharzeddine