Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the famed Egyptian reformer, and current visiting professor at Harvard University, spoke this morning at the foreign policy panel at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) annual convention.
He was optimistic that the Obama administration could work to empower reformers, despite indications that pro-democracy reform was not something the administration would be investing much in. His speech in Cairo sent that message, despite lip service to the need for reform.
Ibrahim said something pretty disturbing. In discussing the need to re-think the dichotomy between moderate regimes and radicals — a question put forward by the moderator, Yousef Munayyer, he said that the Arab “monarchies are more stable and more benevolent” than the radical secular regimes the leftist Arabs used to praise in the 1960s.
He said, “some of the old radicals are still in power.”
His examples? Qaddafi has 40 years in power, he pointed out. When was the last time leftist reformers held the Libyan leader in high regard?
He also mentioned Hosni Mubarak — hardly a leftist beacon.
Ibrahim made a humorous quip about Mubarak’s nearly 28 years of rule. After Ramses II and Muhammed Ali, Mubarak is the third longest ruler in 5000 years of history.
His assumption is because secular leaders have proven to be dictators that the monarchies are somehow preferable. That is an objectionable dichotomization, which was something he sought to re-think from the start. He should have condemned both. If he purely means it as a comparison, he should have qualified it in criticism of both.
After all, Arab monarchs stay in power for life and only run on hereditary succession. Plus, with the non-monarchs increasingly taking on similar succession patterns in Syria and Egypt, the dichotomy he suggests is contrived.
As a dissident who has faced punitive action by Mubarak, I respect him as a man of action. However, his praise of the monarchs, even if relative, is inexcusable.
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