LISTEN TO THE ARAB REFORMERS: Jackson Diehl. Excerpts: …The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria. They are made up not only of intellectuals but of businessmen, women, students, teachers and journalists. Unlike their governments — and the old school of U.S. and European Arabists — they don’t believe that change should be gradual, and they reject the dictators’ claim that democracy would only empower Islamic extremists. It is the delay of change, they say, that is increasingly dangerous.

These people weren’t created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice, an audience and at least a partial shield against repression — three things they didn’t have one year ago.

“In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football — and you talk about democracy,” says Mohammed Kamal, a young political scientist from Egypt. “Some people condemn the Americans, others say, ‘Look at the other side, these are universal values.’ The point is that for the first time in many years, there is a serious debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United States has triggered this debate, it keeps the debate going, and this is a very healthy development.”

[clipped]

more

Via Oxblog.