We asked six writers to choose one or more events that they think have marked the past decade. Today, Yemeni Ali al-Muqri, born in Taïz, Yemen, in 1966, who has contributed to progressive newspapers. As early as 1997, following articles deemed offensive to Muhammad, he was the target of heavy attacks by religious authorities in his country. But it was in the 2000s, when the Handsome Jew (Liana Levi, 2011), staging the marriage of a Muslim woman with a Jew, which was the most heated controversy. Forced into exile after a fatwa was pronounced against him, the novelist took refuge in France, where he has lived since 2015. His work as an essayist, poet and novelist includes ten books, including the very noticed Alcohol and Islam (ed. Dar Riyad al-Rayess, Beirut, 2007) or Forbidden woman (Liana Levi, 2015). His next novel, The Commander's Country, will be published in March 2020 by Liana Levi.
Tribune. "The people want the regime to fall!" " It is by chanting this thundering slogan that a decade ago crowds of demonstrators took over the streets of the Arab world. Since then, this world is not what it used to be.
No one could have imagined that the famous Tunisian verse – "When one day the people want to live, it is for destiny to respond" – would find such an echo among populations suddenly set against their long-standing oppressors, many of whom believed that they had been forever tamed by them.
The decade started with what we were going to call the “Arab Spring” and its popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Today it is preparing to close with new movements in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon. These revolutions are a historic opportunity to overcome a number of problems in the region, the main one of which is the absence of modern states that respect democracy, human rights, and collective and individual freedoms.
Dictatorships, the bane of the Arab world
Founded on the rejection of political pluralism, these repressive states have, in addition to monopolizing wealth and opinion, sealed the monopoly of power around a party, a confessional community or a single clan. Over time, it turned out to be that of a single family whose sons were to succeed the fathers, as was clearly foreseen in Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and Libya before the revolutions swept away these plans. (and as it did in Syria).
