Live pictures of Iraqis toppling a statue of Saddam Hussein from its towering pedestal yesterday sent shock waves through the Arab world, forcing both rulers and ordinary people to reconsider long-held beliefs.
From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, viewers of Al Jazeera and other Arab television networks sat transfixed by the same images of cheering Iraqis jumping on the ruins of the dictator's statue that fascinated U.S. television watchers.
The vivid images forced viewers for the first time to admit there was no truth behind the bluster of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who asserted until Tuesday that no U.S. forces were near Baghdad.
"We discovered that all what the information minister was saying was all lies," government worker Ali Hassan told the Associated Press in Cairo, where many turned off their television sets in disgust at images of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.
And in Yemen, homemaker Umm Ahmed watched the pictorial evidence of the collapse of Saddam's regime with tears streaming down her face.
"Why did he fall that way? Why so fast?" she asked. "He's a coward. Now I feel sorry for his people."
"We are all in shock," Abu Dhabi Television's reporter told his viewers from Baghdad's streets. "How did things come to such an end? How did U.S. tanks enter the center of the city? Where is the resistance? How come Baghdad falls so easily?"
For years Muslim leaders have used the people’s religion against them by insisting that everything was the will of God. So when you call for a holy war and lose, the people of the Muslim world are shocked and worried, because the future is no longer settled. Just maybe it isn’t God’s will that makes us to live like slaves to the rulers. Others are worried because the stability of their lives as they have known them is slipping away.
The radical element in Muslim world, the movement that wanted theocracy instead of democracy caused their own downfall, by repeatedly attacking us and bringing about this war. The instigators no doubt thought that Allah would rise up and smite us, but the cooler-headed rulers have known for years that we could snap them off at the stem if we so chose. That’s why most Arab countries are full of anti-American rhetoric publicly, but help us behind the scenes. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan can denounce our actions for their own power or populist reasons, but Saudi Arabia keeps the flow of oil high and they all quietly round up terrorism suspects for us.
Man is free in a state of nature and has to be taught to be a slave. When the glimpse and hope of freedom awakens in man, the shackles are removed from his mind. When the minds of enough men rise up, the shackles are removed from mankind.
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