We are all responsible [Archives:2007/1017/Opinion]

By: Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh
Who is responsible for the bad situations the Arab citizen is suffering materialistically and morally? A question asked daily by millions of citizens living in the Arab homeland, which is meant and intended to be the Middle East. No doubt there are many answers for this question. Most of the answers attribute the bad situations to invaders and forces of domination. They are correct answers, but the most important answer is still absent or rather floating on the surface of reality or flying in space. What I mean is the answer that makes each individual human in this Arab homeland is directly responsible for that is happening.

I admit personally that I am part of the bad situation in the Arab homeland as I am one of those who read and write and know about the intrinsic nature of things and issues and nevertheless keep silent about them out of fear rather than desire for not talking. If every Arab realized his responsibility and frankly admitted to the situations we will be able to discover the right path. It is a matter of fact that the Arab homeland has outside enemies. Some people, especially those who are deemed weak, have enemies conspiring against them and preparing to attack them or to keep their poor situations as they are. But the first one responsible is the citizen. It is we who participate in the acceptability of others to conspire against us and destroy our dreams. The proof is that conspiracies in any country would not succeed unless there was the acceptance from its population that found among them those who market the conspiracy and let it pass, even by keeping silent.

Thus the responsibility becomes internal in the first place and the role of the remote enemy is by taking advantage of the opportunity and benefiting from acceptance. If we were immune patriotically and spiritually against it and refusing all secret machinations concocted by conspiracies they would not have succeeded and would not have been achieved on the ground whatever the effort the conspirators would have exerted and however strong they were.

We have to be confident that if we are faithful towards our homelands and peoples and admitted to the insincerity of holding the responsibility for what has happened and happening matters would have changed for the better. Each citizen would have felt that his responsibility dictates him to resist all that will open for evil and make situations bad. Recognition of the responsibility is the beginning of the real change and beginning of the aspired reform. There will be no change or reform unless the silent majority admits its responsibility for deterioration of the situation and bad conditions. The responsibility is not just a confession, but also vision, application and insistence on commitment and surmounting all that will keep our Arab societies in a deteriorated state.

A serious and deep reading of advanced peoples situations will reveal to us that the ordinary individual has a difficult role making for any power to break through. The ordinary individual's sense of danger makes him aware of what will befall his homeland and people and consequently him personally. Despite that it seems the ordinary person is not interested directly in politics and its affairs and he remains awake and open-eyed and calmly watches whatever may destabilize public interest and the interest of his people.

We wonder where we are from or some of the awakening with which the individual in advanced peoples is distinguished. Those peoples however do not feel satisfied with what they have attained, but some of them, out of pride, endeavor to stretch their hegemony on less developed peoples and enter in bewildered searching for outlets protecting their independence and preserving their interests.

The state will remain as it is until each citizen in these peoples admit he is responsible for what is happening in our Arab countries and the disasters that are befalling them.

Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh is Yemen's prominent poet and intellectual. He is the director of the Yemeni Center for Studies

Source: Al-Thawra newspaper
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