Using the weapons of Non-Violence to break stereotypes

The Middle East?

My favorite class thus far is called the Arab Spring - a political science class in which we look at the various political and social roots of the events that that took place in the Middle East this past year. We each have to choose a research project topic for the semester. While I have not fully formed my paper title, I would like to focus on the application of strategic nonviolent action in the recent uprisings. The vast majority of the theorists that we read the past week either overtly stated r more subtly implied that revolutionary violence is a necessary prerequisite to breaking with repressive past and creating a peaceful future. In Revolutions and War Stephen Walt said that “mass revolutions are almost always bloody and destructive” – making the nonviolent component of the recent civil insurrections especially interesting to me because they seem to dispel this notion.

I also find this a good way to challenge stereotypes of Arabs/Muslims. I remember reading in James Zogby’s Arab Voices: What TheyAre Saying to Us, and Why it Matters that one of the big “supermyths” that Americans hold about Arabs is that they’re passive followers or autocratic leaders on one extreme or crazed terrorists. This, plus the image of the Arab as an irrational “bad guy” perpetrated by popular culture and the media (I watched the documentary Reel Bad Arabs which explores how Hollywood has consistently villafied Arabs) stands to be refuted by these strategic, nonviolent movements. On a side note, I wonder if a shifting American cultural perception of Arabs as more than just the “one-dimensional terrorist” but rather a young revolutionary capable of using modern technology (Facebook) to organize a non-violent movement will shape in any way U.S policy towards these nascent Middle Eastern states?