Author Archives: Effendi

Here’s an unsettling but ultimately optimistic appraisal of the onset of a new age of pro-democracy activism in the Middle East and a crucial component: the power of the humble blog. From an interview of Walid Phares, author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East.

The present:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What’s truly going on in Egypt?

WALID PHARES: The current popular uprising is a mixture of public discontent with economic and political affairs in Egypt, a push towards political change inside the country led by young democracy currents, the Tunisian model that gave the uprising a copycat to follow, and also a convergence of efforts by anti-Mubarak political forces not all promoting democracy. This cocktail of ingredients led to the largest demonstrations in Egypt’s history, where the focal point is opposition to President Mubarak, but there are diverging points of view immediately beyond that. In my view, this is a real surge coming from the bottom, but many others are riding the wave.

Remember how Kris Hopkins, Tory MP for Keighley, and the Labour peer Lord Janner closed the door last month on the Islamist lobby group iEngage from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia? Well, both of them have quit the APPG, after they failed to persuade other MPs to keep iEngage out of the secretariat.

The two of them have sent an email to the members citing their reasons for quitting the APPG, as Gilligan reports:

“The Group needs to be seen as above reproach and political leaning in order to maintain trust and confidence in its work.

Whilst iEngage are perfectly entitled to express their views, we did not believe it appropriate for them to do so whilst continuing to act for the group.

An orchestrated lobbying campaign on behalf of iEngage since we issued our statement has only served to reinforce our opinion.

The Quilliam Foundation has released a briefing paper on the recent upheavals in Tunisia and now Egypt and the speculative role of the Muslim Brotherhood and other extreme Islamic far-right political groups. These are the key points of their analysis:

Islamists do not have a monopoly on grassroots movements.
The ‘conventional wisdom’ that only the Muslim Brotherhood can organise grassroots opposition movements in the Middle East clearly needs re-thinking as does the idea that it is the ‘only real opposition’. While it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood is the most ‘organised’ formal opposition group in Egypt (and some other Middle Eastern countries but not in others such as Tunisia), advances in technology mean it can now be outmanoeuvred by spontaneous grassroots movements.