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Europe was not prepared. A few months ago, when the people in various nations of the Arab world began the rise up, it was a big surprise for their neighbours to the north. It is all the more crucial now to recognize the opportunities this process presents. By Wolfgang Meissner

They weren’t on anyone’s radar screen. First they were tens of thousands, then millions of 17 to 27-year old people. In December 2010 they began to demand freedom, political and cultural diversity and social justice on the streets and squares of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria.

They are pupils, students, unemployed young academics, school and university graduates, young physicians and engineers, computer scientists, lawyers, skilled workers and members of social professions. They demand radical political, social and cultural reforms, free and general elections and the downfall of authoritarian regimes. A cultural revolution is underway in the nations of the Arab world, a revolution borne by young intellectuals, artists and cultural professionals, journalists, media specialists and media activists. All of them master the electronic language of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera.

Nonetheless – or perhaps for this reason – they weren’t on anyone’s radar screen and weren’t taken seriously as a new social power factor with the potential for upheaval.

One eye on the decision makers

They weren’t on anyone’s radar screen. Not that of the established politicians, not the political scientists, the historians, the global marketing specialists, media and opinion makers, journalists, operators, producers and editors of the global image and television news agencies. Not even the hosts of experts in international development policy, in the embassies, the experts in Arab and Maghreb studies, the Middle East and North Africa gurus of our times.

Over years and decades, one eye was kept on the respective ruling decision makers in the ministries and state-owned enterprises. Sometimes an eye was on the ‘bright young men‚’ who were offered lucrative scholarships to study at Harvard, Oxford, Berkeley, Toronto or elite universities in other countries to open doors to them to a globally active world of finance and services in the hopes and anticipation that these ties would lead to lucrative contracts and agreements in business and politics.

Yet, now it is a revolution spurred on and fuelled by educated, cosmopolitan young women and men who say, “Enough is enough!” It is also enough of the perception propagated for years in the west and the north of people in the so-called Islamic societies. This perception is far too often dominated by a notion of crazed Islamists, burqa-veiled women and exotic dictators ruling over second-class people. The perceivers are frequently prejudiced by servility and resignation.

Now, within only a few weeks and months, it is dawning on many that the people in the Arab countries are quite normal people; people like me and you. They are not people who have been raised or even culturally indoctrinated to blindly obey authority and to resign themselves to being bullied by ‘enlightened despots.’

No place for phobias

This is a big opportunity, but also a challenge for Europe. The revolutions in the Arab world are of neither an Islamist nor nationalistic nor anti-western nature. Most of all, Europe must recognize that these are cultural revolutions, characterized by globally accepted values such as the keeping and perpetuation of universal human rights, gender equality, equal opportunity in education, science and in entrepreneurial actions. There is no place here for old, irrational phobias. Europe must recognize that the Arab nations desire genuine dialogue, exchange and cooperation at eye level.

They weren’t on anyone’s radar screen, these revolutions in the Arab countries. It is time that the west remember its own battle generations and centuries ago for universal humans rights bought with suffering and war and realize that with determination and courage millions of citizens in the Arab states – under the leadership of young people – are in the process of throwing overboard dictatorial structures of domination that grew over decades, tolerated and courted by the west.

They weren’t on anyone’s radar screen – until now. Who had heard of Mohammed Nabous, 28 years young, who in February 2001 within a few weeks launched the first free Libyan television station – Lybia Horaa – broadcast on the Internet and via satellite? Nabous, from a well off family, created his own Internet café, and from this very garage broadcaster, on 17 February Libyan General Younis invoked the revolution against Gaddafi. On 19 March Nabous was killed by a bullet to the head while filming the onslaught of Gaddafi’s troops on Benghazi.

“We want bread and freedom”

No, they weren’t on anyone’s radar screen. Who had heard of Wael Ghonim from Cairo, a successful web designer at the young age of 18, the Google marketing manager for the Middle East/North Africa who was arrested by Mubarak? Who had heard of websites like ‘wikiwili,’ activist groups such as Z.E.P. , W.A.L.I. and many more? Hundreds of thousands of young people in Egypt have been commenting on and following the overthrow and revolution for months via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In Morocco, too, now 50,000 Facebook users communicate daily on the ‘Twentieth of February Movement’ with their comments and appeals, with proposals for the wording of a new constitution for the kingdom.

As Ben Achour, chair of the Revolutionary Council in Tunisia said, “For decades we were told that it is preferable to have bread without freedom. But, we had neither and now we want both.”

This is also and above all an opportunity for European educational and cultural policy, which seriously seeks out dialogue with the people in the Arab countries. To be taken seriously here, it is inevitable that we have to break down familiar patterns of perception and to fundamentally redesign the cultural and developmental policy discourse with the young people in the countries south of the Mediterranean.

The cultural institutes of European nations, some of which have been active in the region for decades, are called upon to literally open their doors and give space, an open ear and respect to the civil dialogue with our neighbours to the south.

The writer is the director of the Goethe-Institut in Rabat, Morocco.