By Dr. Adnan Bouzan
In most Middle Eastern countries, the crisis does not lie solely in the absence of democracy, but in the absence of the citizen as a free political being—one who possesses his own will and has the right to question, object, and hold others accountable. The state, which is supposed to be an institution serving society, becomes a power standing above it; the ruler, who is supposed to be a public servant, becomes the owner of the state; while the citizen gradually descends from being a partner in the homeland to becoming a subordinate, and from a rights-holder into merely a number within the herd recorded in the authority’s registers.
The tragedy is not simply that the region has known authoritarian and repressive regimes; that is a historical and political reality with its own causes and structure. The deeper tragedy is that some of these regimes have succeeded in producing a broad society of the fearful, the silent, and the apologists, to the point where repression no longer depends solely on state institutions. There are those who defend it, those who justify it, those who remain silent about it, and those who monitor others out of fear that they might be the first to speak.
Here, the unhealthy relationship between authority and citizen takes shape. An authoritarian power does not want a citizen; it wants a subordinate or a herd. It does not want a human being who asks, “Why?” but one who answers, “Yes.” It does not want someone who debates the law, but someone who fears it when the law becomes a tool in its hands. Nor does it want genuine opposition, but opposition that can be contained, subdued, or discredited. The most dangerous thing a dictatorship does is not merely imprison its opponents, but reshape the human consciousness until people fear freedom more than they fear tyranny.
A citizen who surrenders his mind, dignity, and will and becomes a mouthpiece for authority does not necessarily become a subordinate because he is poor or ignorant; rather, he becomes one because he voluntarily or forcibly abandons the essence of citizenship. A citizen is not merely someone who carries an identity card; a citizen is someone who understands that the state belongs to society, that the ruler is a temporary public servant, and that power is not sacred but subject to criticism, accountability, and change. As for the person who sanctifies the ruler, justifies his corruption, defends his crimes, and attacks everyone who disagrees with him, he is not truly practicing citizenship; rather, he becomes a social guardian of authoritarianism.
Dictatorship does not survive through force alone; it needs a culture that produces fear, a society that learns to live with it, and individuals who find moral and political excuses for silence. Every dictator needs security apparatuses, but he also needs voices saying: “This is not the right time to speak,” “Opposition is dangerous,” “Stability is more important than freedom,” and “Corruption is preferable to chaos.” Thus, fear transforms from a psychological condition into a social system, and from a means of repression into a way of life.
Yet criticizing the culture of submission does not mean equating the victim with the perpetrator. There is an enormous moral and political difference between the one who exercises repression and the one who submits to it, and between the one who makes the decision and the one who fears its consequences. Therefore, society’s responsibility does not mean absolving the authorities, but understanding the mechanism that allows authoritarianism to persist: a power that represses, a citizen who is afraid, and a society that justifies; then the authority uses that fear and justification to produce even more repression.
The Middle East does not need merely to change its rulers; it needs to change the very concept of citizenship. Replacing one dictator with another does not create a free state, and changing faces within the ruling establishment changes nothing if the relationship between state and society remains based on submission. What is required is a transition from the mentality of subjects to the mentality of citizenship, from obedience to participation, from sanctifying power to monitoring it, and from waiting for a savior to building institutions that do not need one.
A modern state is not built by a leader who waits for applause, but by a citizen who can say to the ruler, “You were wrong.” It is built by an institution that can say to a minister, “You are accountable.” And it is built by a law that stands before ruler and ruled, rich and poor, at an equal distance. When a citizen can disagree without fear, ask questions without being accused of treason, and criticize without becoming an enemy of the state, the state begins to move beyond the logic of power toward the logic of law and republican government.
As for the caravans of obedience, however numerous the herd may be, they cannot create a free homeland. Perhaps the harshest victories of authoritarianism occur when the ruler succeeds in convincing a human being that his enslavement is a virtue, his silence is wisdom, his fear is patriotism, and his defense of his oppressor is a defense of the homeland.
The homeland is not the ruler. The state is not the authority. And authority is not the truth. The citizen is the foundation of legitimacy, and the state exists to serve him, not to subjugate him. When human beings reclaim this truth, the real collapse of dictatorship begins, because an authoritarian ruler may imprison the body, but he cannot rule a society that has regained its consciousness and understood that its dignity is not a gift from the ruler, that its freedom is not a permission granted to it, and that the state belongs to no one.
The greatest problem in the Middle East is not merely the existence of dictators, but the absence of the citizen who makes dictatorship impossible. When a human being truly becomes a citizen—not a subordinate, not a devotee, and not a slave to fear—the ruler becomes a public servant, the state becomes an institution, the law becomes the reference point, and the homeland becomes the possession of all its people.