The Arab Awakening, Tariq Ramadan’s contribution to the fast-growing body of literature on the Arab uprisings, begins with a request for the Arab world to ‘stop blaming the West for the colonialism and imperialism of the past…and jettison their historic posture as victims.’ This is an encouraging start, and hopes for a refreshing change of tone from the author are further bolstered by a sentence which would not be out of place in the pages of a journal of the American neoconservative right: ‘some people are quick — too quick — to rejoice at the collapse of American power. The same people may be unaware that what might replace it (given china’s new predominance and the emergence of India and Russia) could well lead to a regression in social and human rights…’
Unfortunately, such hopes are dashed within pages of the book’s first section, which looks at the West’s role in the uprisings and where we are met with one of the major themes of the book; what Ramadan terms as the ‘made to order uprisings.’
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