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11/22/2003 Archived Entry: "Where is the Middle East’s Sakharov"

FREEDOM IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Great article in the Jerusalem Post that points out the thirst for freedom in the Middle East is growing by the day.

Having just come back from a month in Iraq — visiting mass graves, crippled lives, talking to souls broken from years of tyrannical madness — I had nothing but immense sympathy for a fellow Middle Easterner longing for freedom. How else could the man feel about living under a police state?

I had already been shocked earlier this year to hear similar yearnings from ordinary Iranians on a visit there. Iranians are engaged in a quiet struggle: Women try to bend the Islamic regime’s dress code; young men challenge the police; everyone openly criticizes the theocratic elders. When asked about the possibility of the US toppling Saddam Hussein, most Iranians I spoke with said "Inshallah,‘ adding some version of ’So these guys [the mullahs] would understand their time could come too."

Historian Bernard Lewis explains this as the great paradox of the modern Middle East: the so-called moderate regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have populations irate with anti-American and anti-Western sentiments, while among the people in rogue regimes like Iran, Iraq and Syria, there is sympathy for the West and support for the new American mantra for regime change.

Skeptical? Go take a cab in Teheran — where the drivers feel free to curse at the government in front of a total stranger and move on to discuss ways Iranians could achieve freedoms.

Read on.