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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt (top) was the ideological mentor
of Colonel Muammar al Qadhafi (bottom) Nasser photo
Courtesy Embassy of Egypt
In the late 1980s, Qadhafi continued to perceive himself as a
revolutionary leader. Qadhafi has always claimed that the September
1969 overthrow of the monarchy was a popular revolution, not merely
a military coup d'état. In fact, only a few military officers and
enlisted men took part in the September revolution. Qadhafi
reconciled the apparent inconsistency by stressing that the
military--and more specifically the Free Officers Movement, whose
members took part in the coup and subsequently formed the
RCC--shared the humble origins of the people and represented their
demands. Qadhafi depicted the military as the vanguard elite of the
people, a concept adopted from Marxist-Leninist ideology. But
although Qadhafi wanted to be recognized as a revolutionary leader
and justified military domination of Libya with the concept of the
vanguard elite, he excoriated communism as well as capitalism.
The wellsprings of Qadhafi's political thought are the Quran
and Nasserism. As an ardent admirer of Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser,
Qadhafi has never wavered in the conviction that he is Nasser's
legitimate heir. As such, he felt compelled to advance Nasser's
struggle for Arab unity and socialism. Qadhafi was influenced by
Nasser's theory of the concentric Islamic, Arab, and African
circles of influence. And Qadhafi, like Nasser, was also influenced
by the ideology of the Syrian Baath Party, which advocated Arab
unity and socialism.
Qadhafi expanded Nasser's political thought by emphasizing the
Islamic bases of socialism in that the Quran condemns class
domination and exploitation. Qadhafi stated that although Islam
"cannot be described as socialism in its modern sense, it strives
to a certain extent to dissolve the differences among classes."
According to Qadhafi, "almsgiving is the nucleus of the socialist
spirit in Islam." Socialism in Libya was to mean "social justice."
Work, production, and resources were all to be shared fairly, and
extreme disparities between rich and poor were to be eliminated.
But social hierarchy, as provided for in the Quran, would remain,
and class harmony, not class warfare, would be the result. Qadhafi
stressed that this socialism, inherent in Islam, was not merely a
stage toward communism, as the Marxist theorists would argue.
For Qadhafi as for Nasser, Arab nationalism took primacy over
pan-Islamism. Both leaders can be described as secularists,
although Qadhafi increasingly emphasized the Islamic roots of his
ideology. Yet, his main interest undoubtedly lay in the secular
rather than the sacred world. Revolution, the propagation of The
Green Book, mass mobilization, and liberation remained his
obsessions. "I love the people, all the people," he proclaimed in
a 1986 interview with a French television newscaster published in
Jeune Afrique. "I would like the people to vanquish the
government, the armies, the police, the parties, and the
parliaments," he said in explanation of his notion of direct
democracy in which people rule themselves without the mediation of
traditional governmental institutions. "I am the prophet of the
revolution and not the prophet of Allah," Qadhafi declared in the
same interview, "for what interests me in this century is that
The Green Book become the bible of the modern world."
The secular basis of Qadhafi's philosophy was emphasized
further by the Libyan adoption of the Baath Party slogan of unity,
freedom, and socialism. These ideals were embodied in the first
revolutionary pronouncement of September 1, 1969, and reiterated in
the Constitutional Proclamation of December 11, 1969. They were
afterward refined and modified in response to practical Libyan
considerations. The ideal of freedom included the freedom of the
nation and its citizens from foreign oppression. Freedom was
considered to have been achieved by the revolution and the
subsequent negotiations that quickly ended the existence of foreign
military bases in Libya. The ideal of freedom also encompassed
freedom from want of the basic necessities of life and freedom from
poverty, disease, and ignorance. In this regard, the ideal of
freedom called for the ideal of socialism.
Libyan socialism has succeeded to the extent that social
welfare programs have been subsidized by oil revenues. By all
accounts, the Qadhafi regime has succeeded to an impressive degree
in fulfilling basic human material needs
(see Health and Welfare
, ch. 2). Libya has also been relatively successful in achieving
economic egalitarianism. To Qadhafi, such equality entails
abolishing the conventional employer-employee relationship. Wage
labor is regarded as a form of slavery. Similarly, to prevent
landlord-tenant relationships, no person may own more than one
house. Furthermore, because domestic servants are considered "a
type of slave," the residents of a house should perform their own
household work. To achieve economic justice, the slogans of
"partners, not wage-earners" and "those who produce, consume" have
been proclaimed and, to a significant degree, established.
The Libyan revolutionary ideal of unity was Arab unity, the
cause for which Qadhafi was the undisputed champion after the death
of Nasser. Qadhafi believed that, through unity, Arabs had achieved
greatness during the Middle Ages, when Arab accomplishments in the
arts and sciences had overshadowed European counterparts. He
further believed that foreign oppression and colonial domination
ended Arab unity; until it was restored, the Arab world would
suffer injustice and humiliation, as it had when Palestine was
lost. Qadhafi believed that the ideal of unity should be realized
through practical steps, initial combinations of Arab states
providing the nucleus for some form of ultimate unity. Toward this
end he initiated unity schemes between Libya and several other
countries, but, as of 1987, none of the schemes had been successful
(see Foreign Relations
, this ch.). At the 1972 National Congress,
Qadhafi likened the role of Libya in unifying the Arab nation to
that of Prussia in unifying Germany and to that of Piedmont in
unifying Italy.
Although most Arab leaders share or sympathize with Qadhafi's
ideology of Arab unity, most consider as naive his ardent
conviction that unity can be accomplished. Despite his
transnational orientation, Qadhafi is parochial in his outlook. His
beduin background, obviously a critical factor shaping his
personality, inculcated a set of values and modes of behavior often
at odds with prevailing international norms. Therefore, he has been
awkward at diplomatic give-and-take in comparison to other Arab
leaders. For Qadhafi, nomadic life is preferable to urban ways
because of its simplicity, pervasive sense of egalitarianism, and
puritanism unpolluted by modern, largely alien, cultural
influences.
Data as of 1987
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