Every democracy is different, just like every culture is different. Arabs, even Arab leaders, know they need democracy. They have tried everything else, and nothing else works. But democracy is strong medicine for the current Arab leadership, and many would rather just talk about it, and go no further. And that is the problem in the Arab world. Islamic terrorism is the result.

When the king of Saudi Arabia stated to the assembled Arab leadership that they are the problem, that was a sign of progress. Arab leaders are victims of their own success. Their rule is based on corruption and police state tactics. Compare Eastern Europe before 1989 and the Arab world now. Both fed up with their leaders and governments, however the Arabs are not willing to make a painless switch as the East Europeans did in the 1990s. Eastern Europeans had two choices; communism or democracy. The Arabs have three; despotism, democracy or Islamic dictatorship.

The king of Saudi Arabia told the assembled rulers that the biggest problem in the Arab world was poor leadership. This was a bold statement, but not unusual for the senior people in the Saudi government. These princes have also been supporting the Arab Reform Movement, which is based on the idea that most of the Arab world’s problems are internal, not the result of outside interference. But knowing and admitting to the problem does not solve it.

Most educated Arabs will admit that their leaders have been less than stellar, and largely responsible for the corruption and bad decisions that have put the Arab world so far behind the West, and in every region except Africa, when it comes to economic growth.

After Saddam Husseins Baath Party dictatorship was overthrown, Iraqis eagerly embraced democracy, only to find that the people they elected, were not a big improvement over Saddam. Some of Iraqs new leaders backed terrorists. This was especially true of Iran backed Shia factions, which unleashed death squads that killed thousands of Sunni Arabs. Some of the Sunni Arab leaders supported terrorists who targeted Shias. Further there was the corruption, with billions of dollars of government money missing.

This incompetence is also, as the Saudi king points out, the cause of the Islamic terrorism that is growing in the Islamic world. These terrorists began attacking kafirs (non-Moslems) in the 1990s when they realized they were getting shut down in Arab countries. In Egypt, Syria and Algeria, Islamic radical attempts to toss out corrupt governments all failed since Arab dictatorship style leadership mastered the art of running a police state.

Attacking non-Moslems, outside of the Moslem world, brought into play the Western media. The Western media had 24 hour, world-wide (via satellite) outlets reporting what the Islamic terrorists did. Another benefit was the appearance of Arab language satellite news services in the 1990s. Prior to this terror attacks inside Arab countries were largely ignored by the rest of the world. Terrorist movements thrived on publicity, and the more news channels there were out there, the more attention terrorist attacks would get.

Fed up with the corrupt and incompetent leadership back home, millions of Arabs immigrated to western democracies. These Arabs were making more money than they were back home or cashed in on the welfare system of the country. However, this Arab Diaspora provided a refuge for Islamic militants and terrorist regime cells.

Thanks to all those suicide bombs and breathless news reports, the secret of corruption in the Arab world was out for the entire world to see. There was an al Qaeda call to overthrow the corrupt leaders of the Arab countries. Al Qaeda came up with the “war on Islam” angle to justify September 11, 2001, and earlier attacks. But the root cause was bad leadership at home.

One of the least known members of the Arab League, Mauritania, held elections and now have the freely elected democratic government. The divisions in Mauritania, with a population of less than four million, are between the Arab (about a third) and “former slaves” (black Africans from the south). Mauritania exists on the border between Arabs and Bantu (the ethnic group that predominates in Africa south of the Sahara). Blacks were the slaves, and slavery was formerly abolished only in 1981. But slavery still exists in Mauritania, along with democracy?

In Iraq the Islamic radicals react to democracy in which they call it un-Islamic and kill those who disagree with them. The Arabs have to deal with this, but the violence in Iraq has revealed another Arab problem.

Even if you remove religion from the equation, not all Arabs are keen on democracy. In Iraq, the Sunni Arab minority believe it is their right (or responsibility) to run the country. This is a common pattern in Arab countries. One minority believes they are rulers by right, and that democracy is an abomination and un-Islamic. This is the pattern in nearly every Arab country.

By Arsalan Iftikhar

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Arsalan Iftikhar.

August 25, 2011: In what has come to be universally known as the “Arab Spring,” in less than a year three major countries in North Africa have effectively ended nearly 100 combined years of dictatorial rule under despots named Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gadhafi.

Seeing the revolutions from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, it is amazing to recall that these grass-roots pro-democracy movements began with the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia, when a 26-year-old unemployed fruit stand owner named Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire after a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed produce stand.

Nobody had any idea at the time that this one young man’s sacrifice would motivate an entire generation of young Arab women and men to use social media tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to help overthrow dictators who had ruled their respective countries for decades.

As President Obama recently said about Libya: “In just six months, the 42-year reign of Moammar Gadhafi has unraveled. Earlier this year, we were inspired by the peaceful protests that broke out across Libya.

“This basic and joyful longing for human freedom echoed the voices that we had heard all across the region, from Tunis to Cairo. … For over four decades, the Libyan people have lived under the rule of a tyrant who denied them their most basic human rights. Now, the celebrations that we’ve seen in the streets of Libya shows that the pursuit of human dignity is far stronger than any dictator.”

Ten years ago, if you had told knowledgeable global observers that Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gadhafi would be toppled from their dictatorial perches within the same year, they probably would have chuckled in your face. But this democracy renaissance across the Middle East and North Africa became possible only through the grass-roots, democratic mobilization that we have seen on the streets of Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli over the last few months.

With neighboring countries like Yemen, Bahrain and Syria in the midst of similar pro-democracy uprisings, the possible falling of each dictatorial domino within the region should give much hope to the men and women of the Middle East who yearn for a brighter future for their daughters and granddaughters.

With their own “Berlin Wall” moments, young people across religious, sectarian and ethnic lines are helping to build their undemocratic Arab nations into societies that forgo the dictatorial treachery of the past for the hopeful politics of the future.

Thomas Jefferson once said: “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Let us pray that, in a region of the world fraught with cults of megalomaniacal personalities who have spent the better part of the last 50 years oppressing, torturing and marginalizing their own people, pro-democracy movements will inspire people to keep up their efforts to bring political change to Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. This “Arab Spring” could turn into an “Arab Year” that the whole world can celebrate together.

Editor’s note: Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, global managing editor for the Crescent Post.com and Legal Fellow for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding in Washington, a research organization that provides information about Muslims in the U.S. and around the world.

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The Arab world is undemocratic by nature and the few experiments with democracy have always ended with an Islamic dictatorship state such as in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza.

Is there freedom in Iran? Is there democracy in Gaza? Does the Hizbullah promote human rights?

Extremists want an Egypt that goes back to the Middle Ages. They want Egypt to turn into another Gaza, that will be run by radical forces that are against the freedom for people to live as normal human beings and everything the democratic world stands for in the 21st century.

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