Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam
[20] In Palestine, a variation of the slogan, Ash-shaʻb yurīd inhāʼ al-inqisām (الشعب يريد إنهاء الانقسام, "the people want the division to end"), emerged in protests calling for the two main factions Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences.
[21] A parody of the slogan has been used by Bashar al-Assad's supporters in Syria as ash-shaʻb yurīd Bashār al-Asad (Arabic: الشعب يريد بشار الاسد, lit.
[22] Another parody of the slogan has been used by King Hamad's loyalists in Bahrain as ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ al-Wifāq (Arabic: الشعب يريد إسقاط الوفاق, lit.
[23] Syrian Islamists have appropriated the slogan for their own purposes, altering it to “The People want the declaration of Jihad” (Arabic: الشعب يريد إعلان الجهاد, romanized: ash-sha’ab yurīd i’lān al-Jihād), as well as "The Ummah wants an Islamic Caliphate" (Arabic: الأمة تريد خلافة إسلامية, romanized: al-Ummah turīd khilāfah islāmiyyah).
For in the two long centuries since Napoleon landed in Alexandria, the moral foundation of modern politics -- popular sovereignty -- has been absent from the Arab Middle East.
Never a subject for thought and action, the people lacked political agency, powerless to forge a collective moral self, let alone a nation to demand self-determination: the right to tell right from wrong in the public sphere.
"[27]Benoît Challand, teaching Middle Eastern politics at the University of Bologna, commented on the slogan in the following way: The rendering of autonomy in Arabic illustrates my point as the term is translated as tasayyir daati [sic] – that is the "self-impulse," or "self-drive."
[28]Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, commented in the following manner: It will largely be determined in these streets, as well as in the internet cafes, and in the union halls, newspaper offices, women's groups and private homes of millions of young Arabs who have served notice as publicly as possible that they will no longer tolerate being treated with the contempt and disrespect their governments have shown them for their entire lives.
