The People's Revolution

"The hour for revolutionary action has struck, and the purge has begun."

With these ringing phrases, Libyan Strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, 31, last April unleashed what he calls a "People's Revolution." Designed to expand his military dictatorship into a nationwide grass-roots movement, it so far has spawned more than 400 "people's committees" in villages, towns, factories and schools--and more are being formed daily. TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn visited Libya and cabled this assessment of Gaddafi's most recent efforts to transform his oil-rich but backward nation:

Driving into Tripoli from the airport, you encounter some of the enormous changes that have taken place since Gaddafi seized power nearly four years ago. The domed Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus still dominates the center of the capital. But its doors are locked, and the star and crescent of Islam have replaced the cross atop the spires. Everywhere, curling, zigzagging Arabic letters have supplanted the Latin alphabet. In front of the Souk al-Turk (Turkish bazaar), there is a statue of Septimius Severus, the Roman Emperor (A.D. 146-211) who was born in Libya. A visitor would not know who it was if he could not read Arabic, since the plaque in Latin letters has been removed. Today the few Italians remaining in Tripoli jokingly refer to Severus as "Signer X."

Most Libyans are rather shabbily dressed. But Tripoli, unlike Cairo, has few beggars, and taxi drivers often disdainfully reject tips. Libya's vast oil revenues (currently $2 billion per year) have enabled Gaddafi to introduce a minimum wage for workers of about $180 a month and an allowance for university students of about $75 a month.

He has also built low-rent public housing in some impoverished areas.

The most sweeping change is the gathering momentum of the People's Revolution. When Gaddafi launched it, he noted that Libya's legal code was mostly the product of "Italian and British imperialism." Since it would take years to draft a new code, he suspended all existing laws and authorized the people's committees to proceed on an ad hoc basis, governed only by "the full precepts of justice, the commandments of Islam and the interests of the people." The committees have gone on a witch-hunting, book-burning binge, aimed at restoring Libya to Islamic purity.

With a zeal that recalls some of the excesses of the Red Guards of China's Cultural Revolution, student committees have fired ideologically errant professors, and white-collar workers have searched their bosses' desks for pornography. The walls of buildings all over Tripoli sport huge cartoons, which serve as the popular primers of the revolution. One depicts two citizens opening up the cranium of a sleeping bureaucrat and complaining: "The revolution has not yet entered into his head."

On behalf of the revolution, committee members have grabbed citizens who are suspected of being Israeli agents, Communists or members of the outlawed right-wing Moslem Brotherhood, hauled them to the police and ordered them arrested. The police must obey, even without evidence of wrongdoing. So far, at least 150 people have been interned as a result of these citizens' arrests.

Ritual Phrase. Gaddafi's revolution has particular appeal to the nation's university students, who have worked hard to rid Libya's schools of alien influences. On Libya University's 8,500-student Tripoli campus, committees composed of professors, students and workers determine the curriculum and teaching methods. There I talked with Saddiqa Arriba, an attractive brunette wearing blue slacks and a knee-length tunic. As some students now do, she introduced many of her remarks with the ritual phrase Bismillah, ar-Rahman ar-Rahim (In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate).

Saddiqa explained, "We feel that our first duty is to cleanse the university. So far, we have fired three professors of education, men who stood in the way of progress and revolution. Two of these teachers belonged to the Moslem Brotherhood, while the third we suspected of being an American agent. We have also set up a committee of professors to examine all books here and decide which ones to remove from the library. Most of the ones removed so far deal with Marxism."

Gaddafi fully approves the ideological book burning. At an extraordinary 5 1/2-hour press conference with foreign newsmen, the Libyan leader haughtily declared: "Our people have the right to choose the books they consider fit and to get rid of those they do not want."

Gaddafi's Islamic socialism, which he grandly describes as a unique "Third International Theory," rejects both Western-style capitalism and Eastern-style Communism. He clearly regards himself as the one true successor of his hero, Egypt's late Gamal Abdel Nasser, as leader of the Arab and Islamic worlds. It is a claim that other Arabs regard with some cynicism.

Gaddafi faces what may be, for him, a date with destiny. On Sept. 1, the people of Egypt and Libya will be asked to ratify a new constitution merging the two nations--a project conceived by Gaddafi and essential to his dreams of leadership. The linking is a calculated risk for him. Unless his notoriously dour and apathetic people can be mobilized and motivated, contends a Moslem writer who is a longtime Gaddafi watcher, "Egyptian bureaucrats will move in like a plague of locusts and overwhelm Libya. That is why he launched the People's Revolution. It is essentially a defensive operation aimed at helping Libyans hold their own with Egyptians after the union."

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