Tom Friedman prefaces his
column, syndicated to the
Sacramento Bee from
The New York Times (behind a paywall), by noting he began his reportorial career in the Middle East.
COTTonLINE believe that troubled region is the only subject about which Friedman writes with clear authority. First he sets up his thesis:
The biggest question about the recent protests in Iran – combined with the recent lifting of religious restrictions in Saudi Arabia – is whether together they mark the beginning of the end of the hard-right puritanical turn that the Muslim world took in 1979, when, as Middle East expert Mamoun Fandy once observed, “Islam lost its brakes” and the whole world felt it.
Today Iran and Saudi Arabia have something new in common: a majority of their populations are under age 30, young people connected through social networks and smartphones. And a growing number of them are fed up with being told how to live their lives by old, corrupt or suffocating clerics – and they want to bury 1979 and everything it brought.
Then he notes the new, young leadership in Saudi Arabia, contrasts it with the old leadership in Iran, and concludes:
In Saudi Arabia there’s a move, from the bottom up and from the top down, to get past 1979 and birth a different social future. In Iran, there’s a move from bottom up by many youth to get past 1979, but regime hard-liners want to crush them from the top down.
We should root for both the Iranian and Saudi youth movements to bury 1979. It would be a gift for Muslims the world over – and for the world at large, which has spent trillions of dollars countering the furies fueled by that pivotal year.
Friedman’s entire column is worth reading, if the Middle East interests you.
