Sorry Sir, Your Arab Race Card Has Been Declined

Nicholas Kristof tries to play the race card on those of us who are a bit more cautious about the wave of protests sweeping the Middle East:

Is the Arab world unready for freedom? A crude stereotype lingers that some people — Arabs, Chinese and Africans — are incompatible with democracy. Many around the world fret that “people power” will likely result in Somalia-style chaos, Iraq-style civil war or Iran-style oppression.

That narrative has been nourished by Westerners and, more sadly, by some Arab, Chinese and African leaders. So with much of the Middle East in an uproar today, let’s tackle a politically incorrect question head-on: Are Arabs too politically immature to handle democracy?

Apparently I've missed the multitude of Westerners who think Arabs can't handle democracy. Kristof does eventually cite one, the apologetic British Prime Minister David Cameron, but the rest are still a bit of a mystery. Perhaps that is because the real issue has nothing to do ethnicity and everything to do with something that Kristof glosses over: Islamic fundamentalism.

I'm no fan of autocrats and I have no doubt that Kristof met some very courageous and freedom loving people in Egypt and Bahrain. The people of the Middle East have every right to determine their own governments as we do. And yeah, that includes choosing to install some Islamic theocracy if that's what they want. I don't think trading the chains of a dictator for the chains of a theocracy would be something to cheer though.

I'm not saying that bad outcomes for the people of the Middle East as a result of the wave of protests are certain or even probable. I'm hopeful that free and somewhat secular governments, or at least governments that respect freedom of worship, will replace the dictators. But hope is not a strategy and neither is breezily dismissing the Islamic fundamentalists with a wave of the hand. Everybody did just that in 1979 and less than a year later the theocracy in Iran was firml established. 

Just because someone opposes a dictator does not mean that he is guaranteed to be better. We would be wise to have a better understanding of who we are cheering than "gosh they're brave."