Mohamed Bouazizi and the Last Days
# 1 > Mohamed Bouazizi, the "man of fire" in Tunisia, probably never laid eyes on the Bible. He had no idea Scripture predicted a confederation of nations in the Middle East aligning against Israel in the End Times, led by a powerful central figure who hates the true God. Bouazizi would have thought we were crazy if we suggested to him that his name would be remembered forever as the man who began the Arab Spring. He would have certainly had us fitted for straitjackets if we told him that he was actually a pawn in the hand of the Christian God, needed to give Islamists the courageand hope to overthrow tyrannical governments if Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and other countries.
# 2 > One reason why history fascinates us so much is that seemingly minor characters can trigger a reaction that changes the entire world. Do you know who Gavrilo Princip was? He was the man who assassinated the archduke of Austria-Hungary and his wife, precipitating World War I. Princip was a member of a Serbian terrorist organization, probably unknown to everyone except his family, friends, and the police. However, his actions ignited a few horrible years involving what was considered the most brutal war in history, a conflict that re-drew the map of Europe and shaped a generation. One could even argue that "The Great War" changed the entire philosophical perspective of the Western world. Princip had no idea that his shots would change the way million of people viewed life, but they did. Bouazizi was a similarly unknown character whose act shook the world.
# 3 > Today, the Muslim world looks much more like a bloc that is ready to take on the Western world of global surpremacy. The new, unchainged voice of the people is openly critical of the West and its values, and the word jihad is heard much more often, even in the highest reaches of government. For a brief period of just one year, we got a glimpse of what a large, "modern" Islamic nation would look like under an Islamist president, as Mohamed Morsi of the formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood led Egypt. Morsi term in office came to an abrupt end for a variety of reasons, from a lack of progress in the economic realm to his desire to over threw the "Deep State" in Egypt.
# 4 > Yet, for a fascinating twelve months, we were able to witness to jihad of the Brotherhood against rulers who were not Islamic enough. That Brotherhood, still active across the Middle East and primed to gobble up more power, bases its philosophy on the writing of Sayyid Qutb, one of the most influential Islamic thinkers of the twentieth century, and a man whose name you should know, Even though he had been a middling leader in the movement for years, Morsi was primed to be the first elected Islamist president in history, with the prominent bruise on his forehead proving his devotion to prostrated Islamic prayer five times a day. Hmmm. Where have I read about markings on forehead in Scripture?
# 5 > The new wave of leaders after the Arab Spring is all Isamist to one degree or another, although Egypt has capped his explosion for now with the return of Abdel Fattah-el-Sisi, a general, to serve as prime minister. Bouazizi had no idea that he had triggared the fulfillment of God's plan for the final years of current history, but he did. Not bad for a humble produce vendor. On that December day in Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi lit a match to ignite his body, and consequently, the passions of an entire region's people. In less than a single years, the Middle East was altered, a testament to the pent-up rage which Muslims in several countries had felt for decades as their basic human rights were ignored by ruthless dictators. One of the wonders of this matamorphosis is that it didn't require intervention from a Western nation to pull it off! No, it was all homegrown, as the basic human desire to be free erupted in fifteen countries across North Africa to the eastern edge of the Middle East. But where would that freedom lead? We are beginning to find out.
# 6 > The notion that Islamic fundamentalist politicians would form the core of governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya seemed impossible as 2010 drew to a close. What would change? What could change? Life was still a brutal struggle as tyrants imprisoned and killed their enemies, and ignored their citizens, bulding massive fortunes while their people went hungry. I've lived in the developing world under an unresponsive government, and I can tell you that it is hard to watch the daily suffering of the average citizen, who usually wants to work and has an extremely industrious spirit, as Bouazizi did. Everywhere you look, people are hustling to make a dollar or two ( literally ) each day because there is zero trickle-down effect and no job creation programs. Young boys sell Kleenex on busy city streets, dodging cars to get to median strips where they can shove a few packets inside the open spaces where car windows have been rolled down. These street urchins literally risk their lives to make a few cents.
# 7 > Men in torn clothing push wheelbarrows on dusty outlying roads, offering to collect your garbage and take it to a landfill for pennies. Women sit in market stalls with a few shriveled peppers hoping to sell a couple and have enough to buy a bouillon cube to make their own sauce to pour on their rice that night. Government handouts? Nowhere to be seen. If you ever want to see a country without big government and people forced to rely on their own initiative, travel to the developing world and tell me again that government is inherently evil and always blocks economic progress__but I digree. In the developing world, the government couldn't care less about the average citizen__until it comes time to pay some sort of invented tax for using a market space, pushing a wheelbarrow, or selling kleenex.
# 8 > Life Among the Mohamed Bouazizis of the World
Even though I never met Mohamed Bouazizi, I feel like I have met him. He reminds me of the many Muslim friends I had in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. Those small-time merchants formed the core group in society that I and my teammates sought to reach with the gospel of Christ. I watched those merchants struggle with a deaf government and corrupt officialdom for four years, culminating with the highly suspicious burning of the vast market in our city of one million. Hundreds of wooden stalls went up in flames in a single night as part of an inferno so loud and destructive we could hear it two miles away in my home. Have you ever heard a fire? It's a chilling sound that I will never forget, a roar that sounds like a stadium crowd but never stops to take a breath.
# 9 > Early the next morning after the blaze, we were told of the devastation and knew that many of our personal friend's businesses were ruined. Eyewitnesses said the fire had begun simultaneously in four corners of the market, a phenomenon that is impossible without advance planning. Most people believe the flames were lit by government-backed arsonists who wanted to force the stubborn small businessmen and women to rent spaces in the new concrete municipal market that charged more than double the rent. Welcome to political policy in the developing world. Dozens of vendors jumped into the flames that night, brothers of Bouazizi in a sense. They knew that their life savings were burned to a crisp as their inventories went up in flames or the fire destroyed the currency they had buried in their stalls, as many had.
10. They also drew the quick conclusion that they would never get out from underneath their crushing debts, as all possibilities for profit turned into smoke. Thousands of others packed their bags the next morning and fled the city and country, returning to Mali and Burkina Faso to begin a new life far away from their creditors and a hostile government. The fire was a clear message to these Muslim immigrants: "Pay up or get out of town." Little wonder that Cote d'Ivoire exploded into a civil war a couple of years later as rebels set up their headquarters in Bouake and ruled the northern half of the country for four and a half years. Because of this experience watching small-time merchants suffer horribly, I understood Bouazizi's struggle and knew immediately why he did what he did. His action reflected the common citizen's cry of "Enough!" in reaction to the despicable treatment that the average person receives from a distant and dishonest government. Bouazizi was a hard-working man who supported his mother, uncle, and younger siblings ( his father died when he was just an infant ). As a vendor, he faced constant police harassment because those officers made much of their living on bribes, as many government workers do in the developing world.
11. - That's not entirely their fault; inefficient government are often months late on payment, if the paycheck comes at all. Perhaps you too have felt the weight of government on your small business. Maybe you too have longed for righteous men and women to run your country. Part of the premise of this book is that my readers have far more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than they would ever imagine. That doesn't mean that we are cousins in the faith, but it does mean that we share many of the same desires, yet our visions of the world change shape drastically as they are funneled through our worldviews. In other words, of all people to understand Islamic fundamentalists, we evangelical Christians should be first, because both of our "tribes" long for a world where God reigns supreme and where fervent practitioners of our faith are in charge. That's precisely why true Christ-followers should never, ever surprised by any rightward swings in the Islamic world.
12. - Bouazizi had experienced run-ins with the police many times in his decade or so of laboring in his town's streets, a precarious existence shared by millions of earnest men and women across our planet. You can fly to one hundred countries today and find innumerable small business-people like him, men and women who occupy a tiny space in a market or push a cart and sell vegetables and fruits. They are known by everyone and almost universally loved as they provide a quality product every day at a fair price. Think of your mailman or, if you are old enough, of your milkman. These vendors have to maintain a pleasant outlook and be cheery with their customers, or they will be out of business quickly. Bouazizi was this type of person, by all accounts.
13. On the day he set himself on fire, he was told he lacked a proper permit, but be could be forgiven on this fabricated requirement if he anteed up a large-enough bribe. This cycle of harassment and bribes had run for years, to the point that he had accumulated an ongoing debt to his suppliers. On December 17, he needed to have a good day of sales to make a dent in his two-hundred-dollar debt, Think about the pressure of that sort of debt when you make only a few dollars a day. Beneath his sunny exterior, Bouazizi was stressed, a bomb waiting to explode in many ways. The fuse was lit when he met up with a surly female municipal officer who scolded him for not having the proper permit__again__and may or may not have slapped Bouazizi, depending on which eyewitness you believe. In any case, his electronic scales were confiscated by the officer and his produce cart was tossed aside. The fact that all of this went down in public view was an extreme humiliation for Bouazizi in a shame-honor culture, which we Westerners will never fully understand. The shame cut to his heart.
14. How would he face the public again after this latest degradation? When he later went to the governor's office to reclaim his scales and a small measure of his personal dignity, he was ignored again, as commoners in the developing world are treated every single day. Bouazizi reportedly said, "If you will not see me, I'll burn myself." He promptly bought a gallon of gasoline, returned to the governor's office, and doused himself with it. In the middle of severe burns despite the attempts of onlookers to douse the flames. Eighteen days later, Bouazizi died, despite a visit from Tunisia's president and a typical unfulfilled promise of an airlift to France for treatment. The 90 percent of his body that was burned proved to be too much for his weary soul. I think he lost the will to live. Three days after Bouazizi's death on January 4, 2011, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled his country for fear of his life, which suddenly ended his twenty-three-year dictatorial rule. The Middle East would soon be turned on its ear.
