Middle East Experts Call on the Obama Administration to Press for Democracy and Reforms in the Middle East

Last Wednesday, the Endowment for Middle East Truth held a staffer briefing, sponsored by the Adelson Family Foundation, as part of the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Policy Seminar Series. She thanked the Adelson Family Foundation for enabling this to come about.

Sarah Stern introduced Farid Ghadry, Ali Alyami, and Walid Phares as three Profiles in Courage, intellectuals and dissidents from the Arab world, “who have found the courage to speak out about the truth about the autocratic nature of most of the Arab and Muslim world from which they hail, " and about “their proud struggle for freedom and democracy.”

Stern then introduced Farid Ghadry, resident scholar of the Hudson Institute and author of several books on Syria, to speak.

Ghadry spoke on the importance of a project to reform Islam, and suggested a focus on “how do we feel about God, the prophet and the Koran, in the modern world.” While praising individual reform scholars, Ghadry suggested that the reform movement needed central guidance, and discipline rather than a “fragmented” approach. Ghadry said that numerous scholars and reforms need to be encouraged to work together, “in one room,” on a reform project. A reform project would need to encompass a number of key points. In particular, Ghadry said, it should reform the way Islam treats women, recommending that Islam model its treatment of woman comparable to Judaism treatment of women, which he suggested was responsible for much of the Jewish people’s success. Ghadry said, “I have three boys and a girl, and she’s my princess, and I would never treat her any different. Treatment of women is essential to our growth.” Ghadry also said that Islam must revise the way it treats “infidels” and said he was encouraged by EMET’s recent Speaker of the Truth honoree Tawfik Hamid’s work on the subject.

Ghadry closed by again calling for organization in the reform movement, and for its being supported by American legislators, saying, “If that effort can be put together, can be funded, can be announced, by numerous scholars, that it will rock the extremists tremendously. “

Next, Sarah Stern introduced, Dr. Walid Phares, Director of the Future Terrorism Project of the Foundation of Defense of Democracies, who has been the architect of the UNSCR 1559, calling for Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon and backing the democratic Cedars Revolution.

Phares began his talk with a focus on what he called, “the map of dissidents,” which he described as “stretching from Morocco to Pakistan,” but suffering under the weight of the “hard core Jihadist force within OPEC” which funded the regimes which suppressed them. “If liberal democracies haven’t been able to confront OPEC on human rights and democracy,” he asked, “how heavy is the weight on dissidents?”

Phares described the vast diversity of dissident movements in the Arab and Muslim world, ranging from the Communist Party of Iran, which had suffered some 50,000 or more deaths under the Islamist regime, to monarchists, minorities, feminists, “and everything in between.”

Phares blamed the extensive funding of Middle East Studies departments by illiberal Oil producing Arab regimes as the primary reason why America was not more aware of the dissident movements which exist. “That’s part of the reason it’s not on the government agenda,” Phares explained. “It’s not on the academic agenda.”

This dis-education, Dr. Phares said, resulted in a confused view of the Middle East by the American public. “When we began talking about the Lebanese resistance to Syrian occupation, they were talking about in 2006, when they moved into Lebanon in ’76,” Phares said, “And we’re just hearing about it now. And every time we are faced with an issue, legislators say, ‘Oh we didn’t know.’”

“Part of the reason we fail to understand the rise of Jihadism is that we haven’t studied it,” Phares said.

Turning towards a program to engage the Middle East, Dr. Phares urged that Human rights and democracy be made primary to any “engagement” with Arab regimes.

“Any time the administration wants to reengage they have to put Human Rights at the top of the agenda. In the last Administration, they talked about Human Rights, and democracy, but it didn’t drip down to the bureaucracy. Even if Washington wants to engage, Human rights and democracy have to be on the table, not off the table. There is no more imminent issue than Human rights when we talk to the Iranians. It’s just one inch below the nukes.”

The third Profile in Courage introduced by Sarah Stern was Dr. Ali Alyami, Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Stern described her first meeting with Dr. Alyami, where he challenged Middle East experts to de-link the Israeli-Palestinian issue from the pursuit for democracy in the Middle East.

Dr. Alyami began his talk by mentioning that he had just come from a senate hearing, where Sen. John McCain was speaking out against the deplorable Human Rights conditions in Uzbekistan. Dr. Alyami said, “I was listening to John McCain, and I admire John McCain. And he was talking about Uzbekistan and I had to stay until I could ask a question, and I said, ‘what about human rights and democracies, in Saudi Arabia and Egypt?’ And it raised a lot of eyebrows.”

Dr. Alyami stressed that the Saudi regime had been very clever in the way it has manipulated and befriended public officials, through showering them with gifts and financial largesse.

Regarding Islamic reform, Dr. Alyami stressed that pushing forward with human rights and democracy should not wait for religious reform, but consist of real governmental reform and the establishment of democratic constitutions, which protected “serious freedoms,” including freedom of religion. Dr. Alyami contended that Arab regimes were opposed to Jews and Christians because of their democratic values, adding, “That’s what they’re afraid of.”

Dr. Alyami added that it was America which was the first and foremost the target of Arab regimes, because of its democracy, “as I told John McCain, that if we compromise our democratic values, here at home, or abroad, we will lose it, here as well as abroad. Our greatest weapon is our values. And we can’t afford to lose that.”

Following the speeches, the three Profiles in Courage gave Hill staffers an opportunity to ask questions. Responding to a question regarding terrorist religious rehabilitation programs, such as one carried out by Singapore, Dr. Phares responded by calling Singapore’s successful program, “the exception rather than the rule.” Farid Ghadry said reformers must promote a modern brand of Islam which Muslims could be proud of. “What we need to do is put it under a name, under a banner, to give moderates something to say they are proud of. Right now, I can’t say I’m proud to be a Muslim.”

Asked about a concrete strategy for dealing with Radical Islam comparable to the Reagan Strategy to end the Cold War, Dr. Alyami said the U.S should use its influence and protection of Saudi Arabia to force the Kingdom to make changes. “I would tell them, you’re exporting of Wahabbism. We must tell them, that your exporting of Wahabbism is killing our citizens. You have two years, to shut all your extremist schools…" Alyami recommended, “You have two years to close it, or we will close it for you. We protect you, so you do what we tell you. And they’ll do it, because they care more about their survival than anything else.”

Farid Ghadry said that the movement for a democratic Middle East needed individual stories, comparable to that of Natan Sharansky in the Soviet Union. “This administration has to concentrate on dissidents, human rights, look for one or two people, get their release from prison. When they get out, they can become voices of freedom, and the people of Syria, Iran will rally around them. And that can be a spark for something big.”

Sarah Stern added instead of focusing on human rights and making models of brave dissidents such as those in the room, the current administration appears to be linking engagement with Iran and the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which Stern described as potentially dangerous, especially as recent polls indicated that Palestinians would support Hamas, an Iranian proxy, over Fatah, in governing a Palestinian state. This, she said, would only serve to empower the autocratic theocracy in Tehran.

Brought to you by the editors and research staff of FamilySecurityMatters.org.

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