Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Dissidents and Reformers from the Arab World Speak Out. It was hosted by AEI's Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin, and featured Egyptian Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Tunisian Neila Charchour Hachicha, Libyan Mohamel Eljahmi, Yemenites Ali Saif Hassan and Hafez Al-Bukari (a famous Uzbek name, I wondered about his family origins, perhaps Uzbeks in Saudi Arabia?), Kuwaiti Rola Dashti, and Iraqi Kanan Makiya.
Strangely, there was no representative from Saudi Arabia on the panel--though my new acquaitance, Dr. Ali Alyami was in the audience, and asked a question.
If I had to characterize the speakers, I'd say Pletka and Rubin gave good introductions, and Kanan Makiya some excellent closing remarks about the difference between dissidents and reformers. Most outstanding speakers were Rola Dashti, who declared:
Yes, with our will, determination, perseverance and support of friends like you we won our first battle against the ideology of radical Islamists, our dream came true and things started to change...But winning the battle is not enough, we need to win the war against these radical Islamists who not only oppress women, but also embrace extremism as a mode of thinking, enclosure as a mode of life, and terrorism as a mode to conflict resolution...And Nelia Charchour Hachicha, who pointed out:
Therefore, under long-lasting autorcarcies free elections do not offer a 'democratic' solution since the electoral tool becomes a demagogical tool...Now, pacifying first the Moslem societies to allow free elections seems to me the right way to obtain real democratic elections. But! Under the imperative condition that we first get an open political context to build a free independent civil society.
The most disturbing presentation came from Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had been jailed by Hosni Mubarak and freed only due to American pressure. He basically appeared as an advocate for the Muslim Brotherhood, arguing that the Muslim Brothers could become the Arab world's equivalent of European Christian Democrats during the Cold War. Neither of the Arab women panelists were convinced, and neither was I. He seemed to be, at best, a sincerely misguided liberal, or at worst a liar and a con man.
For during the Cold War, Christian Democrats shared an anti-Communist ideological agenda with Western liberals. But today, the Muslim Brotherhood shares an anti-Western ideological agenda with Islamist terrorists. The correct analogy would be to European Communist parties during the Cold War. American strategy--correctly, IMHO--sought to exclude them from governments, not to empower them, because they were on the side of America's adversaries. The same policy would be wise to follow with the Muslim Brothers. To answer President Bush's famous question, they are "against us." Helping them to win elections--as some member of the audience from the National Endowment for Democracy stated the US government has been doing--is suicidal as well as dumb.
In the end, the event well and truly produced a great deal of both heat and light, and the AEI is to be commended for actually hosting a vigorous and exciting debate. A good next step, if AEI is serious about reform and dissidence in the Arab world, might be to add a panel on the question of democracy and human rights in Saudi Arabia, and invite Dr. Alyami to participate...