Category Archives: US and the Middle East

02Jun/08

Illiberal Democracy on the Rise?

published in THE WEEKLY STANDARD

Recent events highlight the need for liberal institutions in the Middle East; here’s how to promote them.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Nir Boms
04/13/2006 12:00:00 AM

When Americans learned that 41-year-old Afghan citizen Abdul Rahman could be put to death for converting to Christianity, they were outraged. Chuck Colson spoke for many when he wrote, “Is this the fruit of democracy? Is this why we have shed American blood and invested American treasure to set a people free?” (Although Abdul Rahman was ultimately whisked away to the safety of Italy, the apostasy laws used to charge him haven’t been repealed.) When the Abdul Rahman case is added to Hamas’s electoral victory in the Palestinian territories and the Muslim Brotherhood’s gains in Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections, a disturbing trend emerges: the rise of illiberal democracy in the Middle East. Continue reading

21May/08

A Democratic Middle East?

By Nir Boms and Erick Stackelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 4, 2004

On Oct. 1, over 30 Middle Eastern American groups gathered at the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss something that is only whispered about in their native lands: freedom.

The Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy, a conference organized by the Washington-based Center for Freedom in the Middle East along with a number of Middle Eastern American pro-democracy groups, had hundreds of participants representing a wide range of countries, ethnicities and religions.

Continue reading