On Eid, I am thinking of the Middle East, where I spent over 26 years. The mind goes back to the beautiful and peaceful place we were fortunate to be in – Oman – and the great people and their wise ruler. The courteous behavior of the ministers and other royal family members is still fresh in my mind. Thoughts of Eids past make me smile.

From this beautiful memory, the mind goes to the turmoil in Iraq, Libya and now in Syria as well. Iraq and Libya had dictators and Syria has one. Were these dictators cruel – yes, they were. Were they venal – perhaps so. Did they do bad things to some of their own people? Yes, they did. However, we also have to ask – were these countries stable? Were they prosperous? Were they relatively – as compared to what is happening now – safe? The answer has to be “yes”. People described Baghdad in glowing terms and Tripoli also was the capital of a very rich country.

In destabilising each of these countries, the west – particularly America – had a major hand. Perhaps they meant well, but the results show that they really do not understand that the nature of governance suited to a population depends in large measure on the cultural and religious ethos of the country. People who are used to eating shawarma cannot be forced to eat black pudding and vice versa.

Americans think that because they won their democracy through revolution, the same template can be applied to other cultures also. However, they need to realise that democracy will come to Arabia in its own time. Islam has its own notion of equality and democracy and it is very different from the western notion. It encourages individual equality in the religious and social milieu but a strong central leadership – it could be a dictator, a monarch or a religious head – in terms of governance.

This does not mean that democracy cannot come to Arabic countries. In Arabia, the progress towards democracy has to be evolutionary and not revolutionary. Revolutions in an Islamic country are likely to bring the kind of theocratic regime we see in Iran or the vicious, intolerant regime we find in ISIS-dominated regions. Evolution, born of education and modernisation – is more likely to bring about governance in the mould of Malaysia and Indonesia. Unless the western powers, including America understand this, they will continue to initiate misadventures of this kind, resulting in untold misery for millions.

I then think of some of my wonderful Pakistani friends and the nature of governance in their country. Is it really a democracy or is it a military dictatorship behind the mask of democracy? A thought for next Eid, perhaps. This Eid, let me stay with my friends in Arabia.