When I was living in Sharjah, at a certain point, we had to rent a car. There is an area of town where car rental shops line the street, so me and my family went from office to office trying to find a good deal. The first thing you notice when you enter these offices is that they are tiny.
Of course there is no reason for them to not be tiny; they just need the office to interact with customers and fill out paperwork, and all the cars are in the parking lot in the back, or on the street in front of the office. But the funny thing is that in these little, tiny offices, the owner always sits behind an enormous desk that takes up like two-thirds of the space. It’s a desk you would expect to see in the vast office of some CEO of a major corporation.
And, of course, he always has a massive, plush leather chair, while customers sit on wobbly plastic stools.
Bro, you are a small business owner, congratulations for that, but you are not the Chairman of the Board of Lockheed Martin.
Sometimes he would have to literally climb over the desk just to get out from behind it. As if the impressiveness of the desk lends their business, and themselves, an aura of importance and success which will attract customers.
It seems to me that many of our Islamist leaders suffer from Big Desk Syndrome. They form a little party, a little organization; like the modest little offices of these car rental companies; and they put on pretentions of grandeur and importance, thinking that this, in and of itself, will make the people rush to follow them; even if, like the rental car dealers, they are selling the same thing everyone else is selling.
But a real political or social movement starts from the ground up, not from the top down.