British troop train in Egypt, 1882. Wikicommons/ Illustrated London News. Some rights reserved.The absence of Arab intellectuals in the age of almost unprecedented Arab social and political upheaval is a topic that has occupied me for some time. After years of revolts, mass protests, and civil war, the Arab elites have failed to produce prominent revolutionary as well as the counter-revolutionary intellectuals. Intellectuals who could have articulated the ideological platform of these movements, which is a necessary building block for societal order based on consent, rather than coercion.
In lieu of this, they have been relying on pre-packaged slogans of the current regime’s corruption, respect for human rights, or stability and the war on terror. A message of social change and the shape future society should take is almost wholly missing.
Even the Islamists, who had been in opposition for decades with a powerful native, moral message, did not present a viable alternative. Once they won elections, Islamist order was not substantially different from the old order; it simply had Islamist packaging.
