If there was any doubt in my mind that the so-called Arab Spring was nothing more than a backdrop to a long winter freeze, that doubt was set aside by the gory scenes of the death of Col. Gaddafi, played again and again on TV networks. The mad dog of the Middle East was dead, but not before he was captured alive and subject to mob justice and public lynching that have become part of Arab heritage for the last 1,400 years.
For me this was the turning point. Had the captors of Gaddafi arrested the butcher of the Libyan people and subjected him to a public trial, I would have said the Arab Spring has blossomed and that rule of law, the essence of contemporary civilization, had finally arrived for the Arabs to savor.
Too bad. It seems the course the Arabs have chosen in dealing with their oppressive dictatorships has little to do with individual liberty, rule of law or a sense of justice.
Gaddafi's extra-judicial killing reminded me of my childhood when another slaughter in the Arab World unfolded. It was July 14, 1958 and the Iraqi army under the command of Col. Abdel-Karim Qasim marched on the royal palace in Baghdad to stage a military coup to end the monarchy and establish a republic.
King Faisal II had read the writing on the wall so he ordered the palace guard to offer no resistance. Before dawn, he surrendered himself to the insurgents and the palace guard lay down their arms. The peaceful surrender was not enough to satiate the bloodlust of the Iraqi army officers.
As the Baghdad morning sun rose, the King, his Crown Prince Abd'allah and several members of the royal family, including women and children, were asked to gather in the palace courtyard from where they were told they would be transported to the prison. However, when the family reached the open space, they were met by machine-gun fire. Reports say the bodies of the king were dragged through the streets of Baghdad and in the bizarre custom of the Arab world, people fired their guns in the air to celebrate a massacre.
Gaddafi and Faisal II are not alone. The custom of mass slaughter at the time of a coup has its roots in Arab heritage that goes back to the successors of Prophet Muhammad, but best exemplified in the year 750CE that marked the end of Islam's first century and dynasty, the caliphate of the Ummayads.
Even after the takeover in Damascus, the new Abbasid caliph was worried. Remnants of the deposed Umayyad family were still alive and he feared they might strike back. To lure them into a trap, Caliph Abu al-Abbas declared amnesty for all surviving members of the deposed caliph's family. After the first round of massacres, the survivors had gone into hiding. The caliph sent out the message that all Umayyads were welcome to a grand reconciliation dinner party. Except for Abd al-Rahman I, grandson of the Caliph Hashim, they all fell for the ruse and were slaughtered as they sat down to eat dinner. It is reported that even as the dead and wounded lay bleeding on the floor of the caliph's court, Abu al-Abbas ordered that dinner be served and the revelries of the victorious continued amid the groans of the dying.
Those who escaped were rounded up. Marwan II, who had escaped Damascus and taken refuge in Egypt, was discovered in his hiding place and put to death. Another nephew of his had a hand and foot chopped off, and in that mutilated state he was put on a donkey with his face blackened, and paraded in humiliation throughout Syria with a herald announcing his arrival, "Behold, Aban, son of Muawiyah, the most renowned cavalier of the House of Omayya." The agony of this man ended only after he was no use to his tormentors and was beheaded.
A millennium and more later, the tradition of extra-judicial killing continues unabated. Yesterday it was the Umayyad caliphs, King Faisal, Col. Gaddafi and many more. Tomorrow, it will be someone else.
Arab Spring? What Arab Spring? It's the same old wine in a new bottle.
Follow Tarek Fatah on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TarekFatah
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First of all, I dont appreciate how you talk about Gadaffi and judge the Arab Spring and at the same time you conveniently ignore the most fruitful parts of the Arab Spring. You go on talking about isolated incidents in the last 1400 years of arab history but you ignore what actually happened in the Arab Spring. If you have not noticed, Mubarak has not been humiliated and murdered, he is currently on trial, and on top of that they decided not to broadcast his trial to avoid pressure on humiliating him. Saddam Hussein was killed, but only after a trial that lasted a few years. Ben Ali of Tunisia has had a trial in absentia and they are fighting to extradite him from Saudi Arabia so he can serve his term in prison..
"For me this was the turning point. Had the captors of Gaddafi arrested the butcher of the Libyan people and subjected him to a public trial, I would have said the Arab Spring has blossomed and that rule of law, the essence of contemporary civilization, had finally arrived for the Arabs to savor."
Really? Fatah's hopes for the future of Arab civilization turn on whether Gaddafi received his day in court? In 1945, Mussolini was summarily executed by a mob of Italian partisans and strung up on a meat hook. The suggestion, at the time, that his manner of his death was to condemn Italy to an interminable state of lawlessness would be viewed as laughable today. To surmise that Gaddafi's death will have any far-reaching implications for a series of separate (though related) political movements across a number of Arab countries is equally absurd.
As a dabbler in medieval history, I know there were quite a few medieval kings (and a few queens) who got the chop and were replaced by a much more reasonable/responsible usurper.
In France, before the guillotine (the famous device for carrying out executions by decapitation), members of the nobility were beheaded with a sword or axe (which typically took at least two blows before killing the condemned), while commoners were usually hanged, a form of death that could take minutes or longer. Other more gruesome methods of executions were also used, such as the wheel or burning at the stake. In the case of decapitation, it also sometimes took repeated blows to sever the head completely, and it was also very likely for the condemned to slowly bleed to death before the head could be fully severed. The condemned or the family of the condemned would sometimes pay the executioner to ensure that the blade was sharp in order to provide for a quick and relatively painless death.
This is what was going through France during the revolution. My advise to Mr. Fatah is to read more about Europe before the French revolution.
Barbarians with zero concept of the Geneva Convention.
Wasn't Ghadaffi armed and on the move?
Maybe if he approached the rebels waving a white flag you would have a case. I could see your point if he had surrendered, was in custody, and a mob just showed up and lynched him.
You obviously don't know much if anything about what happened except for a short summary. Gaddafi was captured and disarmed, he was no longer a threat and he was wounded. The chances that a wounded man that has trouble staying up unassisted would flee his captors are slim to none. When captured, he was set upon by a mob that paraded him around, humiliating him, pulling his hair and taking as much photos as they could. After the videos were taken, he died, apparently of a bullet in the head and another in the chest, which they pretend was in a "crossfire" (yeah, right).
They then stripped him almost to his underwear, and dropped him on the asphalt in his blood, to satisfy the bloodlust of the mob.
At the same time, another of his son was killed. Though they said to westerners that he was not captured alive, unofficial say otherwise and observers who saw his body noticed cigarette burns on him.
Tarek Fatah seems to be, unfortunately, right.
"A U.S. Predator drone was involved in the airstrike on Muammar Qaddafi's convoy Thursday in the moments before his death, as he tried to escape Sirte, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.
The official said the drone, along with a French fighter jet, fired on the "large convoy." A French defense official earlier said about 80 vehicles were in the convoy -- the official said the strike did not destroy the convoy but that fighters on the ground afterward intercepted the vehicle carrying Qaddafi. He was later killed, reportedly in the crossfire between Qaddafi supporters and opponents as he was being transferred."
"Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
Martin Luther King, Jr.