KUWAIT: The Arab Spring has inspired the Managing Director of Al-Anba Daily, Mohammed Al-Husaini, to publish a book entitled 'On the Path of Arab Spring'. The book launching ceremony took place on Sunday evening at the Afaq Bookshop in Shuweikh and was attended by media staff and interested people. The book consists of 200 pages, which includes photos related to the events. The book focuses on the peaceful revolutions and its roots based on a study made by the author in 2007.
"When I connected what I wrote before in 2007 to the Arab Spring, I found it interesting to publish something for the readers to compare the events and revolutions. The book is available in the Kuwaiti market beginning today, and will also be distributed in the Arab countries. I plan in the future to translate it into foreign languages to serve as a source for these events," Mohammed Al-Husaini told the Kuwait Times.
Al-Husaini also said this book is not a purely academic study or a documentary, although it could be used as a source, as it includes many details about the peaceful revolutions in nations. "The main reason for my book was to address the Arab reader and not the political experts, who were surprised by the revolutions that started in 2010 and are continuing till today, and who aim to read more about it in an easy, simple and clear way, while concentrating on the basic events," he pointed out.
Many peaceful revolutions took place during the last century. "The world witnessed tens of protests and peaceful revolutions, and I have chosen some of them which I wrote about in this book, especially those that I felt were not mentioned much in the Arab sources, although they affected the development of the Arab Spring," he explained.
The book starts with a general introduction about the Arab Spring and its results as an extension of similar movements around the world. The book highlights the fact that the West, and particularly the United States, knew that a change would take place in the Arab world. Thus they were not sure about the place and time, and so it all started in Tunisia.
The book is divided into two main sections. The first discusses in details the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. While the second section talks about the events that took place in France in 1968, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changes that followed in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, Romania, and the countries of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Yugoslavia, along with the yellow revolution in the Philippines and others.
Furthermore, the book provides information about legendary personalities whose stories were used in strengthening the peaceful struggles, such as Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. Also, the revolutions in 1848 in Europe when people protested against the regimes of dictators were also mentioned in the book.
At the end, Al-Husaini thanked those who supported him in finishing this book and in his career, especially the Editor-in-Chief of Al-Anba, Yousif Al-Marzouq, for writing the introduction for his book.
© Kuwait Times 2012
