A Universal Revolution

To begin with, the American history is not yet close on 500 years, since Christopher Coulombs discovered the American continent on 1492. And by a strange twist of fate, the fall of the last Muslim and Arab Kingdoms in Andalusia (Granada) took place with the rise of America, a new world and history.

And to put things right, the word “America”, although it applies to the two continents in the Western hemisphere, encompassing more than 30 independent countries in a regional organization:” Organization of American States, OAS”, is now used only in reference to one of them, the world’s sole economic and military force during the last two hundred years: the USA. And like “Cairo”, for example, which is dubbed by many Egyptians and Arabs as “Misr” ( Egypt’s name in Arabic), in spite of its being the state’s Capital and populated by only one sixth of its population, “America”, which is relatively smaller than the two continents and lesser in population, has been associated with USA alone, and no other country.

It is no secret that our meant country has various aspects, some of which are positive, namely freedom, democracy and modernity; some are negative, like the excessive materialism, consumption and licentiousness. In addition to the worst ones: monopolization, arrogance of power and imperialism.

Perhaps electing Barak Obama was optimistically regarded as a recreation of the just, generous, democratic and human rights sponsor America, because he himself was a fruit of these shiny attributes. As for patronizing the worthy ones, Obama, the young boy, benefited from this as a basketball player then as a student when he was granted the scholarship to join two of the most outstanding Universities, not in America alone, but in the entire world as well: Colombia and Harvard. As for the pursuit of equality, it was the civil rights revolution led by the black priest “Martin Luther King” at the beginnings of the ’60s, that gave the blacks the right to vote and stand as candidates for all the positions that met their qualifications.

It was the words:” I have a dream…..” King cried out in one of the famous squares in Washington in 1966 that reverberated all over the four corners of America, and were heard and repeated by the blacks and their children, including the young boy “Barak Hussein Obama” who had not even turned age six.

Actually, Barak’s climbing the ladder of the American political life was fast and unprecedented, even when compared with his white peers, who took the helm of things since independence in 1776 untill this moment.

In 2000, no one outside Illinois had ever heard of “Barak Hussein Obama”, the young man who was nominated to be a member of the local council. Before the end of his first tenure, he was urged to enter The Senate. Surprisingly, and in 2004, he became the youngest senator. Shortly after this, his supporters convinced him to fight for the Presidency itself. All bets were made that senator Hillary Clinton, the wife of the ex-American president Bill Clinton, who is still a popular hero, will undoubtly win the nomination of the Democratic Party, because its leading personalities supported her due to their loyalty to her husband, besides her planning, for the past eight years, not only for the nomination but also for being the first Mrs. President. So, it was a fierce contest.

Yet, this relatively newcomer, of Muslim Kenyan roots and who spent his early life between Hawaii and Indonesia, managed to gather the American youth around him, inspiring their imagination and energy. It was not strange then to find the veteran Bill Clinton revealing, amid the preliminaries for nomination that Obama is not a conventional candidate, rather, his wife is facing an unprecedented social movement which never occurred since the “Youth Revolution” of ’60s that was the very movement that withstood the war in Vietnam, overthrew president Linden Johnson and resisted prejudice in the South American and African parts.

Indeed, Barak Obama was backed by a new social movement of youth, that before which neither Hillary nor her husband could remain firm.

Then, it was the time for the presidential campaign. Many made it clear (including Al Ahram’s editor-in-chief) that racial discrimination in America is latent yet stout and will bear its teeth on November 4th, with the winning of the white Republican candidate and Vietnam’s warrior, Senator John McCain.

On the day of elections, results followed in succession. The entire world waited on the fifth night of November for the birth of a “new moon” and it was “black” for the first time in history.

And for the purpose of reminding our Arab readers, I, even eleven months before the elections, was the first to say that Obama’s nomination is, in itself, an internal social upheaval in America. But what if he became a president? That would be a great rise in the world. The first one took place and we are about to witness the second, when Barak Obama, the now president elect, shall on 1/20/2009 succeed George W.Bush and occupy the most important chair on this planet.

A quick look at the history of revolutions reveals that all revolutions are highlighted by attractive slogans that may be alarming to someone else.

In this way, Obama’s revolution will be a disappointment, especially to those in the Arab, African and Islamic worlds, who just want to sit around and ask him to bring back Jerusalem, Palestine, Kashmir and Andalusia. But this will never happen. Obama fought to get where he is, and so too the Arabs shall restore what they lost by themselves.