When President Kais Saied announced the seizure of the executive, legislative and judicial authority and the freezing of Parliament;
The most important thing for me was the people's reaction.
I was not surprised by the overwhelming joy that the streets of the country witnessed, because I knew the depth of the street's hatred of the conflicting political class in the parliament.
These masses who took to the streets express their support for the coup with their spontaneity, simplicity and spontaneity and their legitimate right to protest against the nightmare they are living in and their right to hope for a better tomorrow. They are the same deceived masses that descended on all historical occasions from the ocean to the Gulf to welcome Hosni al-Zaim, Adib al-Shishakli, Abdul Karim Qassem and Abd Salam Arif, Saddam Hussein, Omar al-Bashir, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and others.
I was also not surprised by the depth of the pathological hatred that social media exuded against the Ennahda movement;
The first victim of the coup.
The political “tactic” that became a registered trademark of this party was able to add to the eradication’s hatred - for known reasons - the resentment of the revolutionaries, and the Renaissance became the fifth wheel of the counter-revolution, the steadfast ally and keen partner of the corruption parties that succeeded in the political arena, “Nidaa Tounes” and “Long Live Tunisia.” and “Qalb Tounes,” and it would have been better to call it “Tunisia’s Corruption 1, 2, and 3.”
To explain this joy;
Some democrats said that it was the joy of the supporters of the old regime, and others said that it was gloating in the ruling system as a whole, not welcoming the coup.
There was joy behind it for many reasons and discordant groups that met that night only on one stand;
It is welcoming the end of a hated parliament and a worn out government, and it does not matter the mechanism or the outcome.
Perhaps the Democrats neglected the most serious reasons, or perhaps their subconscious mind refused to delve deeply into the explanation of the phenomenon.
These masses who took to the streets express their support for the coup with their spontaneity, simplicity and spontaneity and their legitimate right to protest against the nightmare they are living in and their right to hope for a better tomorrow. They are the same deceived masses that descended on all historical occasions from the ocean to the Gulf to welcome Hosni al-Zaim, Adib al-Shishakli, Abdul Karim Qassem and Abd Salam Arif, Saddam Hussein, Omar al-Bashir, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and others.
And when you analyze this scene that is repeated throughout our modern history, you discover that behind it all the objective causes of impoverishment, injustice, ignorance, contempt and exploitation, but if you examine closely the hopes of these masses, who have been robbed by corrupt and violent minorities - throughout history - of their dignity and the rest of their rights, you will discover a renewed illusion of the presence of the final solution for all Its problems while in the minds of the majority is not a system, institutions and laws;
Rather, he is a long-awaited person who was finally determined by merciful fates, whose name is the "just tyrant".
Few who notice that the "just tyrant" is a linguistic heresy of the type of cold fire and hot snow. Just as a male is not a female, a tyrant cannot be just.
Is not the monopoly of all power the same injustice, which deprives them of their share of it - and the consideration and wealth that follows it - a huge number of human beings?
How can the just be tyrannical when, by exercising tyranny, he can only be violent and unjust?
However, in order to understand the penetration of the concept in the collective mind and the strength of its influence until today, it must be remembered that it is associated in our history with Omar Ibn Al-Khattab;
We are the ideal of good governance, and the problem is that combining a just tyrant and al-Faruq is a grave mistake.
The main characteristic of the tyrant is that his reading of the law is the law, and sometimes he does not need any law;
His will - so that we do not say his whims and desires - is the whole of the law.
But Umar ibn al-Khattab never judged by his whims and did not place his will above the will of the Muslims, especially above what the sacred text commands.
Ibn al-Khattab subjected himself to the right of others to evaluate him with the edge of the sword if he erred, and he subjected all his actions to the provisions of the constitution of that era, i.e. the Holy Qur’an, and therefore there is no room to describe him as a tyrant in a clear confusion between firmness and determination and tyranny, and between the strength of legitimacy and the legitimacy of force.
Where did the toxic concept come from?
If its roots among the common people are a misunderstanding within an imaginary history, its roots among Arab intellectuals are the Western enlightenment thought of the eighteenth century.
Muhammad Abdo (1848-1905) may have been the first to popularize a concept translated from French (Le despote éclairé), the exact translation of which is "the enlightened tyrant".
This concept we owe to two French writers, Voltaire (1778-1694) and D'Alembert (1783-1717).
We must not forget that Europe lived for many centuries under the tyranny of absolute monarchy.
This is how, in the face of confrontation with it, came out of the brains of reformist thinkers - this myth about the enlightened tyrant and has a tacit acceptance that the absolute monarchy preserves its powers, but it is required to kindly treat the poor people with something of good conduct and crumbs of justice.
The European and American revolutions went beyond this cowardly and failed strategy to impose the abolition of tyranny, not soften it, by creating democratic regimes.
And try telling a Westerner today that he will overcome the crisis of democracy in the West - which is a deep and aggravating crisis - by returning to the enlightened tyrant, and he will explode laughing in your face.
But most of our peoples - in the face of disappointments with democracy in Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia - are ready to accept a return to the myth of the just tyrant, and the evidence is the large number of lamenters of the eras of tyranny that at least guaranteed stability even in the shadow of corruption and enslavement.
It does not take long for all the deceived to discover what has always been proven by the experiences of our ancient and contemporary history that the "savior" after his mastery becomes increasingly tyrannical and his hoped for justice diminishes every day until a corrupt and criminal tyrant ends up costing his people what the tyrant who preceded him and who will succeed him cost him, and the masses are always ready to cheer every representative New emerges from the unknown to play the role of collecting all comedy and all tragedy.
Is there any hope that the series will stop one day?
The West has forgotten the concept of the enlightened tyrant, and society has moved to the state of law and institutions, and this was not due to the change in the quality of the Western human being, who has risen culturally to the level that the Arab human has not yet reached.
It is the transition of the West from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization - along with the struggle of societies and their numerous revolutions - that enabled democracy to emerge and survive.
This means that the democracies we are building are still fragile, because the economic and social base on which we build our modern institutions is still the basis of the agricultural civilization system with its backward understanding of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, which is the relationship between the shepherd and the flock, and all that is required of the shepherd is not to waste his sheep and not to rebel against the guardian command.
Fortunately, the rapid development of our societies and the contemporary technological boom make these societies engage in a path that turns their backs on the illusion of the just tyrant, even if it is still dominant among the poorest, least aware and most vulnerable sectors of the people to ignorance and misinformation.
This means that all those aspiring to the eternal role are swimming against a mighty historical current, and that they will get tired and drown before the current gets tired and goes in the opposite direction they want to history.
The task of the new generations who have tasted freedom is to confront with full force these dangerous backward ones so that we Arabs may also move from subject peoples to peoples who are citizens, and from tyrannical states that own enslaved peoples to free peoples that own states of institutions and law.
And on that day these generations will say no, we have finished the “curse” of Elijah Abu Madi:
We ask for salvation by a brutal one who does not save a slave from a slave
Night must pass.