{"id":5457,"date":"2011-03-01T19:43:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T19:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5457"},"modified":"2011-03-01T19:43:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T19:43:02","slug":"the-law-of-arab-averages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-law-of-arab-averages\/","title":{"rendered":"The law of Arab averages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen the secular face of the revolutions so far (though if the Bahrain popular revolt succeeds I can&#8217;t see how it wouldn&#8217;t be more religiously inflected), but how long was this going to last? Yemen, the most backward of Arab nations, seems most likely to break the string. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/02\/world\/middleeast\/02yemen.html?_r=1&#038;partner=rss&#038;emc=rss\">Powerful Cleric Joins Protest to Urge Islamic Rule in Yemen<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The cleric, Sheik Abdul Majid al-Zindani, has been on the United States Treasury Department\u2019s list of \u201cspecially designated global terrorists\u201d since 2004, suspected of fund-raising for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. His call was a marked contrast to the message of the rebellions that brought down the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and now threaten the rulers of Libya, Bahrain, Oman and, to this point, Yemen, where uprisings have been seen as secular and inspired by democratic goals.<\/p>\n<p>In the past, he has publicly opposed terrorism, if not jihad, or holy war, and his word as a spiritual leader carries considerable political and moral weight in Yemen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, it isn&#8217;t as if Yemen is Tunisia anyhow. So it wouldn&#8217;t be much of a change. Probably more a shift from pro-American theocratic society (like Saudi Arabia) to an anti-American one (like Iran).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen the secular face of the revolutions so far (though if the Bahrain popular revolt succeeds I can&#8217;t see how it wouldn&#8217;t be more religiously inflected), but how long was this going to last? Yemen, the most backward of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-law-of-arab-averages\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5458,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5457\/revisions\/5458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}