Two major narratives have emerged to explain the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. The first and most popular narrative sees the removal of Ben Ali and Hosni Mabarak as part of the continuing long march of democracy. According to this view, the Arab Spring is a result of westernised youth wired up via social networking media, fired up with visions of the democratic life found in the west. This narrative has a general appeal among western audiences as well as the ‘westoxicated’ in the rest of the world. Its three underlying assumptions inscribe a vision of the continued centrality of the west and its fundamental superiority. Firstly, it is assumed that democracy has only one source and only by imitating that source can democracy be fulfilled. Democracy is a metaphor for pro-western government, with a free market and a society in which social conventions and mores are approximations of western society’s image of themselves. The second assumption is that technology can determine social processes that are external to it. In other words, while technology is an autonomous force that is able to bring about social transformations, it is itself not a part of society. The third assumption is that the Arab Spring means the end of Islamism and its failure. This failure is signalled by the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and the victory of American occupation in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan. These assumptions replay the insistence that history and the political are the patrimony of the West and societies that are considered to be non-western can import history but cannot make it.

Before going on to discuss these assumptions, I want to focus on a second narrative that sees in the ‘Arab Spring’ not a flourishing of people power but another chapter in an American- inspired colour-coded revolution. According to this view, part of United States strategy has been to use apparently popular mobilisations to try to weaken regimes that the US considers to be hostile. Those who hold this view focus on popular mobilisations in the former Soviet Union, the rose revolution of Georgia and the orange revolution in the Ukraine which weakened Russian hold over the region, as well as the abortive cedar revolution in Lebanon and the green movement in Iran. They point to the level of material support the US has given to those involved in these mobilisations as an indication of US conspiracy. They also point to the way in which Syria’s Baathist regime is being threatened with a regime change and also to the US silence that has allowed Saudi arms to put down an uprising in Bahrain while supporting those in Syria and Libya.

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At the time of writing, Prof S Sayyid was the Director of the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia.