Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam

Variants

Syrian Islamists have appropriated the slogan for their own purposes, altering it to ar (), as well as ar ().

In post-Mubarak Egypt, given the fact that the military government only partially met the demands of the revolutionaries, with the state of emergency remaining in place, some protesters started using a somewhat different version of the slogan: The people want to bring down the field marshal, referring to Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Variations of the slogan were used by counter-revolutionaries, including by Bashar al-Assad's supporters in Syria as ar (), by Gaddafists in Libya as ar (), and by King Hamad's loyalists in Bahrain as ar (), referring to the main opposition party of Bahrain, Al-Wefaq.

In Jordan, a youth group named "24 March" used the slogan ar (). However, the slogan later changed to ar in November 2012, when the government imposed a hike in the price of fuel.

In Palestine, a variation of the slogan, ar (), emerged in protests calling for the two main factions Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences.

During the 2011 Israeli social justice protests, the slogan "The people want social justice" was used, chanted in Hebrew to the same cadence as ar.

The slogan was adopted to ar () in protests in Morocco against the normalization of relations with Israel.

Context

Uriel Abulof, professor of politics at Tel-Aviv University and a senior research fellow at Princeton University, commented:

Whether Arab popular uprisings will eventually transform political systems – thus nominally qualified as real revolutions – remains to be seen. But one revolution is real and clear: the people (شعب, sha'ab) was born – a collective, rather than a collection, of individuals, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The uprising's slogan was not simply, as one might have expected, "down with the regime." It is precisely because the demonstrates felt that the existence of such a people, let alone one in possession of agency, is far from obvious, that they added, in a resolute speech-act – an act created by speech – "the people wants."}}

Benoît Challand, teaching Middle Eastern politics at the University of Bologna, commented on the slogan in the following way:

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:

Gallery

File:Anti-government protest in Assi square of Hama.ogg|Anti-Assad protesters chanting the slogan in the Assi square, during the Siege of Hama on 22 July 2011 File:Anti Ali Abdullah Saleh protest in Sanaa.webm|Anti-Ali Abdullah Saleh protesters chanting the slogan in Sanaa in 2012

References

References

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