Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The fear of fundamentalism in the Mediterranean countries

I am sure that reading the title you immediately understood my reference to the fact that the Arab spring raises more and more concerns about the regimes that succeeded those undemocratic supported  for decades by the West to stop Muslim fundamentalists. The failure of such a strategy in Algeria when, in 1991, the elections won democratically by the fundamentalists were canceled starting a decade of civil war, makes western diplomats more cautious but the fear remains.
Indeed these concerns appear more and more justified. As an example, recently, in a Mediterranean country, there were riots because a woman sat in the front of a bus instead of letting men sitting there. And we thought that racism was over after the segregation in public transports ended in the USA. More recently, in that same country, a young girl, 7 years old, has been the daily target of fundamentalists because of her “immodest” dressing going to primary school. a seven year old girl and a bunch of pedophiles, one may think.
Imagine if these fundamentalists get the power what will happen next?
Unfortunately they are already too close to power. These incidents, in fact, happened in Israel and the fundamentalists are Haredim.  And we know how much right wing radical Jews influence already Netanyahu government.
A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist, Christian, Jew, Hindu or Muslim. They all have to be fought in the same way. Jews fundamentalists are no better than Muslim fundamentalists. In the same way as Israeli's bomb is no better than a Iranian bomb. Stop being blind and have a flexible morale.

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