"The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands"
About this Quote
A future "written" by the Arab world is a deliberate rejection of the region as a stage where other powers script the plot. King Abdullah II’s line borrows the oldest cliché in politics - the pen - then tightens it into a claim of agency: not just change, but authorship. The phrasing matters. "Writing" implies choice, revision, drafts, and mistakes; it’s a softer, more palatable verb than "fighting" or "seizing", especially from a monarch whose legitimacy depends on stability as much as vision.
The subtext is aimed in two directions. Outward, it’s a message to Washington, Brussels, and the usual rotating cast of geopolitical patrons: partnership is welcome, tutelage is not. Inward, it’s an attempt to convert frustration into responsibility. If the pen is "in our own hands", then the region can’t indefinitely blame outsiders for stagnation, corruption, or misrule. That’s where the rhetoric becomes politically useful: it redirects anger away from regimes without fully indicting them. "Our" blurs the line between state and citizen, leader and led, creating a collective "we" that sounds democratic even when power is not.
Contextually, Abdullah’s Jordan sits at the crossroads of war spillover, refugee pressure, and reform demands. In that reality, the quote reads less like triumphalism than preemptive narrative control: a bid to frame incremental reform and managed change as self-determination, before chaos or foreign intervention gets to write the next chapter instead.
The subtext is aimed in two directions. Outward, it’s a message to Washington, Brussels, and the usual rotating cast of geopolitical patrons: partnership is welcome, tutelage is not. Inward, it’s an attempt to convert frustration into responsibility. If the pen is "in our own hands", then the region can’t indefinitely blame outsiders for stagnation, corruption, or misrule. That’s where the rhetoric becomes politically useful: it redirects anger away from regimes without fully indicting them. "Our" blurs the line between state and citizen, leader and led, creating a collective "we" that sounds democratic even when power is not.
Contextually, Abdullah’s Jordan sits at the crossroads of war spillover, refugee pressure, and reform demands. In that reality, the quote reads less like triumphalism than preemptive narrative control: a bid to frame incremental reform and managed change as self-determination, before chaos or foreign intervention gets to write the next chapter instead.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
II, Abdallah. (2026, January 16). The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-arab-world-is-writing-a-new-future-the-pen-is-113828/
Chicago Style
II, Abdallah. "The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-arab-world-is-writing-a-new-future-the-pen-is-113828/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-arab-world-is-writing-a-new-future-the-pen-is-113828/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
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