African Independence Movements 2.0: Muslims Continue Civil Rights Marches in Tunisia, Egypt

Recently, a wave of freedom cry has been brushing the shores of certain African nations, notably Islamic. This is a good time to reflect on the matter of national liberty, which is a basic dream of humans organized into communities we call nations or states.

As nations and peoples are concerned, the march toward full political freedom is usually a three-step journey, often punctuated by much sweat or blood, and usually separated by decades of overt and hidden struggle between the masses and the ruling powers.

Step 1: National Independence

The first step towards political freedom is national freedom, which liberates a people to govern themselves by their own laws of government. For African nations, that first wave was the “African independence movements”, which began in the mid-1950s and continued into the 1960s and beyond. In the roll call of national independence, African nations received, won, and/or declared independence from colonial masters like Great Britain, France, Portugal, White-rule South Africa, among others.

2. Regional Equality

Due to the tendency for an independent nation to withhold liberty from some of its own people, the second phase of political freedom takes the form of regional equality, as one region of the country fights to be treated with respect and equality by another. Typically, regional equality is delivered through the bloody womb of civil war or national conflict. Not even America was exempt from this phase of freedom’s maturation.

Likewise, African nations, too many to list here, engaged in civil wars, many of them protracted. Some countries emerged from civil wars severed into separate states (Congo, Ethiopia, et al), while others managed to remain intact (Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, etc).

3. Human & Civil Rights

The third step toward political freedom is human and civil rights, whereby all citizens, regardless of color, ethnicity, tribe or status, are treated with equal dignity under the law (for the most part). Africans who have experienced national independence and some semblance of regional equality have for the most part been forced to stare at civil rights or personal freedom without tasting. The African masses have gazed at civil rights on display in other societies, smelled civil rights up close, and having been thus appetized, they can no longer be barred from taking a bite, drinking from the fountains of personal liberty.

For the longest time, some observers have assumed that societies dominated by Muslims were somehow beneath rising up to demand their human rights from their governments, that those masses too brainwashed to resort to widespread public demonstrations. Tunisia has proven those observers wrong; via freedom rallies the brave Tunisians forced their dictator to step down and flee the country.

Now Egypt, another Islamic country, has caught freedom fire. The masses pour into the streets, disregarding government-imposed curfew. Egyptian President Mubarak has shed his democracy mask to reveal the face of the tyrant that he’s been these 30 years. Afraid to suffer the same fate as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, his deposed Tunisia counterpart, Hosny Mubarak has imposed a state of emergency, used the military to crack down on demonstrators, and shut down Internet along with mobile phone network access. Another shortsighted tyrant frantically bouts for his last breath, as if turning off the lights in a room might cause the sun not to shine. The sun of civil rights still shines upon freedom-loving Egyptians, and it is Mr. Mubarak whose flickering dim flame is about to kiss the night.

What are we to make of these developments in predominantly Islamic societies? For one thing, our hope for civil rights in Muslim-dominated societies need not die after all. Secondly, we are witnessing the newest form of African independence movements, except that this one is mostly Islamic or Muslim. The human spirit has proven once again that repressive religion or government is no match for the currents and torrents of freedom. Once a people’s innate liberty bell begins to toll, it refuses to be silenced, not even by state-sanctioned violence against those who thirst for Lady Liberty’s refreshing milk. Tunisians will have civil rights. Egyptians will too. It’s just a matter of time. After that many more Muslims by their millions will be inspired to rush to freedom’s streams to receive their fill of liberty, justice, human rights, civil rights. Too late to stop them now.