يشير الغرب إلى الإسلاميين في الإمارات على أنهم ناشطون في مجال حقوق الإنسان. وفي الواقع أنهم فعلاً ناشطون ولديهم أجندة معينة، ولكن لا يوجد شك، في أنهم ليسوا النسخة الإماراتية لنيلسون مانديلا، كما أن نظرتهم إلى البلد ليست كتلك التي حملتها ماجنا كارتا.
Articles
UAE Political Islamists Are Not ‘Human Rights Defenders’
For almost two years, the UAE’s political Islamists have been referred to in the West as human rights activists. No doubt, they are indeed activists with an agenda but there is also no doubt that they are not our version of Nelson Mandela, nor is their vision for the country that of the Magna Carta. I have been following their rhetoric — in Arabic — over the past few months on social media with great concern. I have found it to be xenophobic; anti-Semitic; sectarian; exclusionary; racist toward Asians, Africans and other Arabs and overall repugnant. Read more »
Romney Takes Issue With Muslim Brotherhood
From Mitt Romney’s geographic blunders to Obama’s ignorance of Iranian suffering under sanctions to both candidates’ treatment of Israel as a political ‘red line’, there are many good reasons why this election does not rank among the top issues in the Middle East. Read more »
US elections and the Gulf states
It won’t come as a surprise to many to learn that the US presidential elections are a secondary and perhaps even a tertiary matter in the post uprising Arab world. For starters there’s a bloody civil war in Syria backed by Russia and Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other. The latter two states control and fund Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera respectively which dominate the Arab news airwaves and are busy actively marketing the agendas of the governments that fund them. But this does not mean the Arabs are uninterested in the outcome. Read more »
The fate of the ‘Brotherhoods’ outside Egypt
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood today is the political group that calls the shots, affecting not only Egypt but also countries where the organization has active chapters. Contrary to popular belief, it could be argued that the Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt wasn’t necessarily a good thing for its regional affiliates. Read more »
The black swan of the Gulf
The military and security apparatuses of these Gulf states plays a role in keeping the peace, but the best way forward is to build a civil society that is bound by a unifying mechanism such as a functioning, representative, elected parliament. Read more »