One of the main determining factors of the Arab-Islamic area nowadays is the loss of democratic quality and the liberties associated with it, as a consequence of the abandonment of the processes of democratic transition inaugurated two decades ago and the later abrupt switch to more and more authoritarian positions of the established regimes. This and other arguments are object of study in the book The Arab and Islamic world in view of the challenges of future, a volume in which several authors analyze the conflicts that affect the Arab world from different perspectives.
Coordinated by Carmelo Pérez Beltrán, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies of the University of Granada, the volume includes contributions of Beatriz Molina Rueda referring to the Islam, the Arab world and the Western world: vicinity conflicts; Carmelo Pérez Beltrán himself, who deals with civil society and social movements in the Arab world; María Angustias Parejo Fernández, who recounts power switching, succession and political Islamism in Morocco during the beginning and the end of the century; Ignacio Álvarez Osorio Alvariño, who writes about the rhetoric of the Intifada of the AQSA: The Palestinian revolt through their statements; Caridad Ruiz-Almodóvar, who deals with private law in the Arab countries and its repercussion on women; and, in the section of thought and ideology, María Antonia Martínez Núñez reports the power and opposition theoretical instruments in the Islam; Juan Antonio Pacheco talks about the Arab thought as a space of ideological controversy; Gema Marín Muñoz deals with the western perception of the conflicts in the Muslim world: culture against politics; and Gunther Dietz, who reflects on the situation and the role of Muslim women in Spain.
According to Pérez Beltrán, you do not have to be an expert to see that the situation in the Arab world “goes from bad to worst lately, and if we are looking for out-and-out data, we just have to glance at the “Arab Human Development Report” (AHDR), released by the United Nations Development Program (PNUD) to confirm the degree of deterioration and alienation of the Arab world from the social, political and economical point of view due to a high unrest regulated in an authoritarian and repressive way at the internal level and in a servile way in relation to the western interests”.
According to this development of the Arab world, professor Pérez Beltrán is convinced that future does not seem exactly promising: “especially −he says− because the war of Iraq has accentuated even more the gap between the needs of the population and the interests of their governors and between the concerns of the Arab world and West purposes”.
The Arab businessmen who met in the Arab Business Council expressed in January of 2004, in the Forum of Davos, the need for urgent changes in their governments, fostering and promoting the democracy, civil society, education, judicial independence and women participation.
Reference: Prof Carmelo Pérez Beltrán. Dpt. of Semitic Studies
Phone number. 958 243 574 (direct) / 958 243 572 (department)
958 248 354 (University Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies)
E-mail: carmelop@ugr.es
