Change
When people become dissatisfied with their conditions they begin to aspire to change. Talk of change, then, becomes an expression of the desire for reform. In itself this is a healthy phenomenon: it renews the energy of a people. The difference between a backward society and a developed one is that the latter is always open to the possibility of change while in the former resistance to change makes it far more difficult to implement.
Yet talk of change these days has a different aspect altogether: there is a justified feeling that we are on the threshold of a new phase that requires different means and instruments. The fact is that the world is starting on a new stage of its history. The Iraq war merely emphasised some dimensions of this new stage. We may or may not like it, but we must deal with it. Rejection would result in our being crushed utterly. We have no choice.
The Arab world is in one of the regions most affected by the new factors that have come to govern the international community. That this is so requires that we alter our mechanisms of action to suit a new vision for our future in the context of the changing world that surrounds us and which is, quite literally, barging into our homes.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 26 June - 2 July 2003 (Issue No. 644)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/644/op6.htm