'Arab Spring' hoists flag of Islamists

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Hosni Mubarak and Barack Obama

WASHINGTON – The "Arab Spring" movement, which has swept through the Middle East and across North Africa, overturning 30 years of autocratic rule in some nations, is the beginning of what observers now are calling the "Islamic Awakening," according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Already, Turkey and Iran are seeking to influence the uprisings, with Turkey wanting more secular Muslim governments while Iran wants governments ruled under Islamic law, or Shariah, much as the Islamic republic is now.

The meeting of the First International Islamic Awakening Conference held in Tehran last week served as a "strategic charter" for the Islamic states.

The initiative is seen as a bid to "hoist the flag of Islam and fight back the U.S. hegemony and the Zionist regime (Israel)," according to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, who gave the keynote address.

Since the beginning of this year, the Muslim world has seen popular uprisings beginning with Tunisia with the overthrow of President Zine El Abidne Ben Ali, then followed in Egypt by the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.

Demonstrations against autocratic rulers continue in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia – all countries which the U.S. has supported over the past 40 years.

Khamenei warned that the West will continue its "hegemony over the countries using the power leverage," he said. "In case enemies fail in their tactics, they will try to foment internal war among the tribes, races and parties and pressure countries by imposing economic sanctions and blocking their assets."

Sources say that it was due to the wave of events surrounding the Arab Spring that the Palestinians decided now to press for a seat in the United Nations.

Despite Turkey's falling out with Israel, a further symptom of increasing Islamic influence in the wake of the Arab Spring was the sharp rebuke that leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood gave to the suggestion by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Egypt to adopt a "secular state."

Such a rebuke not only shows how the Islamic influence has gripped those seeking change from their previous secular rulers. It also displays the limits of what the U.S. had hoped would be greater Turkish influence over the Arab world's Islamists.

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