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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (353579)	10/4/2007 6:00:12 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577896

Might have to add a few new members into your liberal playbook.... Moving ahead on the right track By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large Published: October 03, 2007, 23:52 gulfnews.com Development in Gulf states is normally measured on economic grounds, and is given as a set of dry numbers in which biggest is assumed to be best. But there is also a vigorous battle continuing over how the same countries handle their social development, and in which way they want to grow. Gulf societies face three broad choices and how they make that decision is at the heart of social and political discussions in the Gulf. Most Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states follow and encourage a broadly liberal agenda with different emphasis on the other two choices, which are to be either more conservative or more Islamist. All GCC societies incorporate all three trends within their societies, but each country has a different emphasis on how important any one element might be. For example, the UAE has embraced liberal thinking, but the country remains firmly Arab and Muslim, and very conscious of its history and traditions. And while Saudi Arabia has the most overtly religious policies, reflecting its history, the country's religious agenda still fits into the broad agenda set by the state. All GCC states have to deal with their more conservative elements, who often fear that change has gone too fast and hanker for older values and more stability. What often makes debates on social development more complicated is that any one individual might also share these three trends: for example, a dedicated liberal might also share a conservative concern at the pace of change in some areas and could also be a committed Muslim. The liberal agenda in the GCC states means favouring tolerance for individuals within society and giving people a choice on how they want to live within the broad guidelines laid down by law and wider social conventions. The more liberal societies are usually also in favour of more economic openness, and actively work for globalisation and open markets. Conservative means working to encourage a more strictly Arab society and also to enforce more traditional Gulf social values. Such conservative efforts seek to impact areas like education, for example encouraging nationals to be taught in Arabic, and in social areas such as the treatment of women. The broad direction in all GCC states is to follow a liberal trend, but this has combined with several decades of absorbing immense oil wealth to force profound change on society. Conservatives feel that the Arab and Muslim values of the past will vanish completely in the wave of change and they worry that their social values are being eroded beyond that with which they are comfortable. This means that most conservatives often do not have a particular manifesto that they encourage, but they tend to react to the excesses of a particular change in society which they see as going too far, too fast. Those supporting a more Islamist view of society have a much more coherent agenda, and while it might share some of the conservatives' values, the Islamist agenda is much more forward looking. It offers a more spiritual alternative to the broadly materialistic and libertarian agenda of much of the West, which it fears is being imported in the Arab states along with economic open door policies. The Islamist agenda focuses in particular on social and legal areas, like family law, divorce and inheritance; encouraging or enforcing more religiously acceptable social behaviour; and establishing an education syllabus which is more Islamic in both content and attitude. Three forces These three forces in Gulf society are present in all the GCC states. For example, the most liberal states also include Islam as a basis in their legal system and they all have sharia courts which are responsible for certain types of crime, committed by a Muslim or non-Muslim. The more religious states also work to accommodate the social habits of the large numbers of non-Muslim foreigners working and living in their territories. Where the struggle for the future soul of the GCC states has been hardest fought, is in deciding what should be offered in education. This has a vital role in shaping how the young people see their future, and across the six GCC states an average of 65 per cent of in each country's population is under 25 years old. This is unstoppable. A tidal wave of young people has their opinions largely formed by their upbringing and education. If they have gone through an education system offering only Arabic they will be more socially inward looking and less confident of themselves in the international arena and may be less aware of what is happening in the world at large. If their teachers gave them a more Islamist education, that will be the moral touchstone by which they judge all events for the rest of their lives. If the education was open to global issues and used a lot of English language, then the majority coming through that curriculum will be more confident in the increasingly global world they inhabit. The variations in these trends shape many of the differences in the GCC states as they tackle their future together.