Saad Eddin Ibrahim on al Jazeera

Saad Eddin Ibrahim is often held up - for good reason - as one of the brave Arab reformers who Americans should be supporting.  He has also often been held up - for less good reason - as a response to critics such as myself, who doubt the sincerity or efficacy of Bush administration democracy promotion efforts in the Arab world.   Either way, Saad Eddin is the kind of Arab liberal who might be taken more seriously than a talking aardvark by those who care about Arab reform, the Arab media, and such things.   

In a talk to a conference in Cambridge this September, reproduced in the new TBS Journal, Saad Eddin Ibrahim offered some thoughts on the Arab satellite television stations like al Jazeera.   I'll just reproduce some of his key points here, and invite readers still mulling over my arguments in defense of the Arab media in the MEMRI debates and elsewhere to throw Saad Eddin Ibrahim's opinions on to the pile:

Ibrahim:  "Arab satellites have done probably for the Arab world more than any organized critical movement could have done, in opening up the public space, in giving Arab citizens a newly found opportunity to assert themselves."
...
Ibrahim:  "What Arab satellites did was to break and shake this pattern by virtue of giving you some diverse perspectives, some different interpretations, by allowing people to be interactive with the  media. This is new to the Arab world and that takes me to one very important personal note.  I am indebted to the Arab satellites. 

"During my ordeal during my incarceration during the Ibn Khaldoun case, we have two interesting contrasts:  at the one end a very powerful Egyptian state media concentrating on framing one individual and his associate researcher for the simple reason that they had called a spade a spade... 

"It was only the Arab media, the Arab satellites, that gave me an opportunity to break out of this.  We were able to answer them. I did not reach every Egyptian home like state-controlled media, but satellite allowed me to try."

Saad Eddin then describes his argument for the need for Arab reformers to step forward and begin change from within instead of waiting for others to step in and force change, and then relates: "That was the message that appeared in an article in al Hayat, and triggered a series of debates on the Arab satellites. I was a party to six or seven of them.  The debate still goes on, the change by our own hand from the inside or the outside, and that debate compelled the regime to take on the agenda of reform - whether they are sincere about it or not, we can debate - but the agenda of change and the items of change.... All of this became the agenda of reform advocates in the Arab world today.  I again have to give credit to the Arab satellites for making these issues daily issues in the language of discourse."

That's Saad Eddin Ibrahim, making the aardvark's case for the centrality and vitality of al Jazeera as a force for reform in the Arab world.  I vividly remember one of the al Jazeera talk shows Ibrahim mentions above - it was December of last year, and Ibrahim appeared alongside the prominent Egyptian Islamist moderate Fahmi Huwaydi to discuss the prospects for Arab reform and the role which outside powers such as the United States might play.  I remember it so vividly not only because Ibrahim and Huwaydi are such interesting figures, who engaged in a high quality and quite thoughtful debate, but also because that program signaled a resurgent interest in questions of reform after most of 2003 had been dominated by an Iraq crisis which drowned out virtually all other topics.   

At any rate, comparing the profound revolution in Arab political culture being driven by satellite television to the increasingly desultory reform promotion efforts of the Bush administration really should give pause to those who sincerely believe in the strategic urgency of reforming the Middle East but love to bash al Jazeera and demonize the Arab media. 

Comments

[praktike]

There was a very interesting and somewhat heated debate between the Washington Bureau chief of Al Hayat, Salameh Nematt (who appears to be represented by the infamous Benador Associates) and Yusri Fouda of Al Jazeera at the New America Foundation's "Al Qaeda 2.0" Conference.

Nematt accused Al Jazeera of legitimizing terrorism and stressed that it was a tool of the Qatari monarchy and Osama Bin Laden; Fouda attacked Nematt as a tool of the Saudis, and the whole exchange had to be broked up by Peter Bergen ...

[the aardvark]

Doesn't surprise me - Nemaat is a frequent guest on al Hurra, and is one of the most bitter Arab critics of al Jazeera on the Fox News circuit (Mamoun Fandy is probably the other best known example of this profile).

Fouda might be wrong about Nimaat being a tool of the Saudis, though; I remember him as a tool of the Kuwaitis!

[praktike]

Ah, what a wonderful world.

Have you ever heard of this?

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001693.html