“On the Shore of Freedom, our Revolution’s Ship has dropped anchor”, sang one of Qaddafi’s enthusiasts following his military coup d’état in Libya in September 1969. The vast majority of Libyans welcomed the coup d’état and spent days and weeks dancing in the streets in celebration of the end of Libya’s constitutional monarchy.
That is not an event of which Libyans wish to be reminded nowadays. Many of them now admit that they had made a terrible mistake in welcoming Qaddafi. Their regret appears to vindicate Aristophanes’s characteristic ridicule of popular choices and the demagoguery they might produce; it also puts a big question mark over the wisdom of “The people have spoken” mantra, which seems to be slavishly repeated every time there is a large–scale popular reaction somewhere.
Of course, wiser heads know that when “The people spoke” in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the result was Adolf Hitler.; when “The people spoke” in Iran in the late 1970s, the outcome was Ayatollah Khomeini; and when “The people spoke” in Gaza in 2006, the consequence was Hamas. Likewise, when “The people spoke” in Libya in September 1969, the beneficiary was Qaddafi. The question we now have to ask ourselves is: Why is it that on so many occasions in modern history, the “people” have spoken disaster? It is not entirely clear why some nations support dictatorships against their better judgment, but historical evidence does reveal some contributing factors that may help us answer this puzzling question. Take the case of Germany.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Germany had become one of the most advanced countries in the world. Yet, within several decades, it managed to plunge itself and the rest of the world in one calamity after another. Analysts have pointed to certain factors that may explain this: Germany’s late unification; its whole-hearted embrace of Romanticism; the reluctance of its outstanding thinkers to support a liberal democratic system; the authoritarian structure of the family unit; and grievances emanating from a wounded national pride. Combined with an unstable political situation and a devastating economic crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the inevitable outcome was a vigorous popular support for Germany’s then two dominant totalitarian ideologies: Nazism and Communism.
This German lesson may help us shed light on the irrational tendency of modern-day Middle Easterners to spurn constitutional governments in favour of totalitarian ideologies. Like the Germans, Middle Easterners, especially the Arabs and Muslims amongst them, have for a long time been obsessed with the question of unification. Like the Germans too, they have been inclined to favour Romanticism. And just like German thinkers were not in general great supporters of the liberal democratic system, Arab and Muslim thinkers have by and large steered clear of such a political model and its values. Arab and Muslim families too seem to be structured along authoritarian lines. In addition, Arabs and Muslims have for a long time been reeling from a wounded national/ religious pride that has given rise to numerous grievances, just like in Germany. Finally, if we combine all of this with the Middle East’s serious political and economic crises, the natural corollary à la Germany is a diehard popular embrace of totalitarian ideologies. That is why, for much of the past century, Arabs and Muslims have mainly supported either pan-Arabism or Islamism, just like earlier in history the majority of Germans had supported either Nazism or Communism.
It is this background that can help us understand the modern-day Arab/ Muslim propensity to reject enlightened, constitutional governments, such as those of President Bourguiba in Tunisia, King Farouk in Egypt, King Idris in Libya, and King Faisal II in Iraq. It can also help explain why the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims have passionately and unquestioningly supported some of the worst political figures in the modern history of the Middle East: Nasser (pan-Arabist), Qaddafi (pan-Arabist), Saddam Hussein (pan-Arabist), and Osama bin Laden (Islamist).
In particular, the aforementioned Middle Eastern context constitutes a key to a deeper comprehension of the modern political history of Libya. However, there are other, more specifically Libyan reasons lying behind the nature of modern Libya’s political culture. A brief outline of Libya’s history may help us reveal some of those reasons and the nature of their relationship to the overall Middle Eastern context as explained above.
Libya had for many centuries been an enigmatic country. Up until very recently, most people knew very little about it, except for Qaddafi, oil, and the desert. What a huge proportion of people might be surprised to hear is that Libya is actually more urbanized than countries like Germany, Switzerland, or Russia. Furthermore, Libya is in fact a beautiful country, with a very rich cultural heritage: It was a Libyan man, Mark the Evangelist, who wrote what is now considered by scholars as the original of the three synoptic gospels. It is also said that the largest quantity of ancient Greek remains outside of Greece is to be found in Libya. The Libyan thinker Aristippus founded the Cyrenaics school of thought, which strongly influenced the philosophy of Epicureanism. Besides, Libya has important Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman remains, especially in Leptis Magna and Sabratha.
On the other hand, and unlike places like Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, Libya did not have life-giving rivers that would have been conducive to large-scale human settlements, the establishment of a solid agricultural society, and the foundation of a strong state. Its inhospitable terrain has thus historically undermined any serious efforts to establish a well-founded Libyan society, with a clear-cut national character and a stable political structure. This was later aggravated by the first Islamic invasion of the country in the seventh century AD, followed by a second invasion in the eleventh century, this time by hordes of Arabian nomads known to Muslims as Banu Sulayim (and some as Banu Hilal), something which so horrified the well-known Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun that he referred to them as “The Locusts”.
Libya was later invaded by Spain and the Knights of St. John, but the Christian forces were expelled from Libya, as well as from Tunisia and Algeria, by the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. For the next three to four centuries, both the Ottomans and the Karaghla (Libyan descendants of Islamicized Europeans who had constituted the political, military, and administrative elite of the Ottoman Empire) governed Libya. The first Libyan state in the modern era was actually founded by the Karaghla in 1711 and lasted until 1835 when the Ottomans, mainly worried about France’s recent occupation of Algeria, reclaimed Libya for the Empire. Although in those 124 years the new Libyan state paid lip service to Ottoman suzerainty, it did nevertheless enjoy throughout that period much freedom of action. A similar modern-day equivalent would be Australia, Canada, or New Zealand in relation to the United Kingdom.
From the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, the Karaghla and the Ottomans established the rule of law in a country that had been largely lawless; they set up a public administration system where there had been none to speak of; they built a modern banking system; they vastly improved education and sent Libyans on scholarships to study in other parts of the Ottoman Empire; and they introduced the printing press in Libya for the first time ever. Nevertheless, neither the Karaghla nor the Ottomans found it easy to subject the local population to the rule of law. The mostly nomadic mentality of Libyans meant that there wasn’t much of a Libyan society as such; in addition, this same mentality was to a large extent responsible for Libyan recalcitrance in respect of the state and its laws.
Later, this historical, time-honoured Libyan tradition of rebelling against the state helped Libyans put up a stiff resistance to Italy’s invasion of their country in 1911. The Italians too found it hard to subdue the country and, when the Libyans sided with the Allies in World War Two, both Italy and its ally Germany were expelled from Libya. The country won its independence in 1951.