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Professor Tariq Ramadan is a man of no need to introduction. He holds MA in Philosophy and French literature and PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Geneva. In Cairo, Egypt he received one-on-one intensive training in classic Islamic scholarship from Al-Azhar University scholars. Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University (Oriental Institute, St Antony’s College ). He is also teaching at the Faculty of Theology at Oxford. He is at the same time a Visiting Professor in Qatar (Faculty of Islamic Studies) and in Morocco (Mundiapolis) and a Senior Research Fellow at Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan).[/symple_box]
The regional destabilization process began in 2000, and more clearly with the announcement by G. W. Bush of “the Middle East’s democratization” and the “liberation” of Iraq. Since then, the Iraqi model is the rule: fragile political systems, divisions between clans and religious affiliations within the respective countries, while securing the access to resources (oil, gaz, etc.) and redeploying of regional security and arms policies.
Yemen – where the al-Qaeda networks settled appropriately after Afghanistan – offered the United States, Europe and Israel, a historical opportunity to reposition themselves through the general process of destabilization of the Middle-East. Iran, which is central, becomes the enemy within … and the useful parameter of polarization and division. The “Sunni” forces must “unite” and protect themselves… Within this chaos, we must ask the question of “who loses ?” All the Arab-Persian peoples of the region. All of them. Economically, for some years to go, China, India, Russia and the new non-Western economic actors will see their growth slow drastically in the region.
We must stop being naive … US policy, the European follow-it-all and the Israeli positioning are cynical and horrifying. But not as much as the hypocrisy, cowardice and negligence of the Arab leaders in the region. It is them who betray their people, forget all the human principles and who are the shame of our time.
