1980s forging alliance onz specific issues and in other cases as well, not only in egypt but in other places. and we've seen that in a beginning sense with some of the parties in egypt. moreover, and this is something that dennis ross and stephen hadley and elliott abrams and i'm surprised that i agree with so much of some of what they said because my politics is a little different than theirs. moreover, you would think that in elections and in participation of elections that the voting public or electorate would make future decisions based on performance, based on whether these groups have delivered jobs, whether they have established better educational systems, health care that wasn't deteriorating, whether they generated economic progress as opposed to simply the idea that somehow the sharia is the answer.

the other thing related is not directly implied. i want to highlight it a little bit is that there does seem to be an assumption and i have a little bit of difficulty with this that the type of government in a place like egypt or tune eesh tunisia or elsewhere should look like the government that we have here in the united states. we suspect it to look quite different. the key thing, however, is whether these political systems, constitutions, institutions are robust enough to guarantee rights including rights of religious freedom not whether the system in the end is our model of the awe sentencible separation of church and state

and so on. how can the u.s. best foster robust democracy and religious freedom in egypt and other countries affected by the arab spring? i hope you're looking at the minutes because i'm certainly not in terms of how much time i'm taking. i think some of the key things to understand about this question is that the legacy, unfortunately, you know, the legacy of u.s. involvements in egypt and other states in the region supporting of the mubarak regime for decades is not a very good one. it makes it extremely difficult for the u.s. to be seen as credibly interested in promoting democracy, freedom and human rights, even religious freedoms in egypt and states in the future.

they sustained criticism in the past with violations or repression. interestingly enough, the u.s. did focus sometimes on some liberal activists when they were the victims of the regime's wrath like brahin or edwin nuar who i used to call condee rice's favorite egyptian. there were 20,000 or 15,000 egyptian political prisoners in jail at different times in the mubarak regime, she seemed to only focus on him. other people in prison, including members of the muslim brotherhood who now is quite prominent and people are talking about him as being a potential prime minister, the deputy guy who was unfairly tried in an egyptian military court and sent to five years in prison and served many of them and so on. no mention was made by u.s.

officials of that injustice. and it doesn't only end on january 25th, the beginning of the revolution. you might remember that on january 25th the first day of the revolution and secretary clinton said that the egyptian government was stable. i'm looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the egyptian people. the following day, she called on all parties meaning the protesters and regimes to exercise restraint setting up some moral equivalent. the following day on the 27th, vice president biden said that mr. mubarak was not a dictator and so on. and, in fact, if you want to go deeper with this, we can speculate that the message that ambassador frank wisner gave to mr. mubarak on his visit there on february 5th was not the

message we were hearing, the american administration was presenting and imdiate change now but, in fact, the message that he told reporters afterwards which is in order for an ordinarily transition to take place, mr. mubarak needs to stay in power to oversee that transition until september, probably so that an outcome like we saw in the recent elections doesn't transpire. so this point, the point here is there is a dilemma for the united states right now, right? as witnessed by the recent ngo controversy. there also has to be a recognition that the u.s. has decreased influence, not only in egypt but across the region. that an authoritarian states like mr. mubarak's and king abdullah's and so on which don't allow citizens to have significant voice in politics and policy and align with the united states and heavily dependent on u.s. foreign political and diplomatic support, that the u.s. has much greater influence in those kinds

of policies than in policies which have popular sovereignty and in which governments are supposedly based on the will of the people. and there's one other thing that gets to the religious freedom and then i'll stop even though i could go for much longer. this is more of a question. it does seem to me possibly because the way the discourse of religious freedom by the united states was seen and received in egypt over -- in the past and so on as a kind of colonial discourse, as a kind of discourse that was insincere and that championed one group, egyptian christians primarily and so on at the expense of everyone else and i will be the first person to say that egyptian christians have -- have and continue and maybe increasingly suffer discrimination and deteriorated status post egypt revolution.

but nevertheless, because that was viewed as such, it created backlash and it may be counterproductive thinking about it now to continue to pursue a discourse that focuses explicitly on religious freedom as opposed to a more general discourse focused on democracy, equal citizenship rights, including within that, of course, religious freedom. i'll stop there. i was hoping or planning to say a lot more about islamists in egypt, particularly the muslim brotherhood. but maybe in the question and answer period i'll have an opportunity to do that. thank you.

>> i see the theme of the conference is these two related species, inclusion will lead to moderation and exclusion will lead to radicalism. connected with that is this question of religious freedom. will religious freedom in general produce moderation? i want to separate those two and take those in turn. it is important to separate repression leads to extremism and inclusion leads to moderation. there's not a simple, you know, slide along the continuum where it's like reduced repression is going to automatically lead to moderation and then go back again. there is different mechanisms that could be working in each case. i'm going to talk about some of these briefly. but just to give a simple example, you could easily have a system become much more inclusive, have a large number of parties move to a more moderate direction and have some of those that are still left extremists escalate what they're doing, escalate their extremism. and so overall you still maybe

can see more violence. i think actually the literature which professor talked about this morning, the literature of oppression leads us to expect this. it's a linear relationship. you have the extreme repression loosen slightly, you'll have ann of overall violence. and so i think we need to sort of separate these two propositions. and so the one that gets, you know, that has to do with this sort of religious groups is less about the repression producing extremism which i think the logic of that is fairly clear. it doesn't always do that. but severe repression leads groups to go underground and when they don't have a whole lot else they can do, there are not a lot of options, kit lead groups that otherwise might be strange bed fellows to work together.

that happens because all the other differences get put aside. so the logic of an inclusive system is to take away that unifying point of overthrowing regime or overflthrowing a syst entirely. as you lead to a more inclusive system, people can move to what their more individual agendas might be. and you'll see, for example, islamist groups that might have a little repressive system, the differences will start to pull apart is the hypothesis you would expect to see. i do want to mention one of my big points i want to emphasize here is in a more inclusive system, you may not actually see extremists becoming moderate. what you might actually be seeing and what i sthi more often what you see is moderates

don't have a logic to ally with extremists anymore. and so the moderates will pull away, their voices become more prominent and agendas become more prominent. that doesn't mean you're seeing them pull away -- that they were the ones that were extreme being pulled to the center. i think that's an important point. that doesn't mean extremists might not necessarily also moderate. but very often that is what you're seeing. so my book faith and moderation examines islamists in jordan yemen as they enter the political system and point that i repeatedly in the book is neither one of these islamist groups sought to overthrow the regime. so to hold those as cases of successful moderation, misses the point that they were never the extremists in first place. but what happens in a more inclusive system is you separate -- you eliminate the logic for moderates to have to go ally with extremists.

that is the first question. the logic of alliances among these elites or different actors. and elites not in the sense of social and economical elites but the politically organized leaders of groups. it changes the logic of those interactions. in the more repressive system, when groups that are organizing don't have a whole lot of options and they might work together or they might be underground separately, very often the broader population will look for the group that is making the most extreme statements against the regime like let's get the regime out. let's overthrow the system.

they might have a larger support base. again this is a prop identification that i will then come back to in a second. so the logic would be that not only does an inclusive system take away the logic for moderates to have to ally with extremists against repressive system, it also takes away -- introduces more possibilities for the general public at large. so a public that wants to see something other than the incumbent regime now has a whole range of things to choose from. if you want to see a more religiously inspired, morally religiously inspired regime, you don't only have one poll to go to. you have a whole range of different groups to choose from. and here we see historically very significant differents between the muslim brotherhood and i hope you have more about this in the question and answer. it's really very instructive. so i think there are the twin lodge logics. more inclusive system takes away

the support base for extremism. it will not eliminate them entirely, even the best functioning democracies we have we don't entirely eliminate extremists. you isolate them. they're fringe factors. they're seen as nut cases, if you will. but they're there. and so if the hope is to eliminate extremism through inclusive system entirely, that's system my not going to happen. the second side of what i want to talk about has to do with this question of religion. and religious freedoms. i completely agree, you know, i think religious freedoms need to be front and center and i would even broaden that to say not just religious freedoms but freedom of beliefs. waunt to include in that freedom not to believe in religion, of course. so the freedom of beliefs needs to be front and center. for me, in any kind of inclusive system whether it's democracy or liberal democracy or represented democracy or some other kind of system, it's absolutely essential to me that be front and center.

i would wish for more for a french system, just to say what americans think as an american. i just like to throw that out. >> so you're one of the americans that is becoming french. >> i understood his point that administrators were more pulling towards the french system. but americans are pulling maybe towards a more religious system. so maybe i'm -- >> so it's our elites are becoming french. >> or am i aligning with the administration? so i think, for me, and this again echos points that came up this morning, for me, what's important about religion is not that it's confessional, per se. and so you want to have freedom of confessionalism, you believe what you like and structure your moral world around whatever framework works for you. but it's not religion, per se. i think of it as confessional systems as a world view. and so world view is sort of the

ethical, moral understanding of, you know, what the world is, how it functions and how it should function. what would be a better system? and religions, of course, are front and senter in the spectrum of world views. but there are other world views that present other moral systems. the virtue of a inclusive system is it allows you to sort of find symmetry in certain components of that moral vision without having to be the same. so the logic of trying to give the moderates more platform and more opportunities to express themselves is to allow more places to find those symmetries. to isolate the world views, religious world views and the secular world views that find no room for any alternative at all. it's my view and anything else is simply unacceptable. so a more inclusive system creates the space for those kind of symmetries to happen. in that sense, you know, different religions and groups will find all kinds of common ground about moral issues. i think that's a significant

virtue of inclusive political systems. in some ways i think the confessionalism, per se, is almost equaphenomenal to the other effects of the system. it isn't necessarily about religion or about a belief system but it's about a system that allows space for different sets of beliefs, different world views, some of which may be religious or may not be. but i think it's that kind of space that i think inclusive systems can foster that can reduce extremism by allowing for the creation of space where that symmetry can be explored, where groups can talk to each other and have open debates and have discussions, et cetera. i found this in jordan and yemen and in the case of jordan i found much more moderation with islamist party in part because islamists found a lot of common ground with secularists, communists and liberals on a number of issues. now there are often political

issues, so objection to the electoral system is the first one in the summer of 1993. the very first time all of these groups, islamists and communists had a joint press conference and it was a spectacle. it was spectacular. they should all be sitting there in agreement on this issue. it's one finite issue. that will bring me to another point in a second. but i think open system creates the spaces where we can say i disagree with you, sandra, but let's agree on this and push this issue together. and that is a positive thing for tolerance if we're going to talk about tolerance. it also brings up a point though that moderation or extremism isn't a single position on a continuum. so a group does not become necessarily moderate in all aspects of everything it does. and very often what you find is an inclusive system leads to the logic of political moderation, may have nothing to do with other kinds of issues. famously with islamists, very

conservative positions remain on women. elaborate debates about justifications of the roles women can play, you know, what cetera, criticism of certain foreign policy issues, notions of what is the best economic system, et cetera. but not mistake to say that moderation -- to the extent we might find moderation and inclusive system, you know, don't assume that a single actor will become more moderate across all issue dimensions. you have to unpack the different issue dimensions and say what issues are they moderating and on what issues have they not? really interesting work on jordan in particular that the issue of women's participation is a red line issue for the islamic action front. it's an issue that they don't want to cooperate, even where it is an agreement, they don't want to have joint press conferences on issues. they want to maintain that separate space. i think there is a lot of really interesting things to unpack here. i'm way out of order, as usual.

so the last point -- u.s. foreign policy, i had a similar reaction. there was a lot i i found in agreement with the last panel. and that was, you know, interesting to me. i want to think more about that. >> they're out of office now. >> no, exactly. they wouldn't make comments on anyone who was still in office. that was my point of my question. i think, you know, i think sam relayed this out beautifully. you know, the u.s. has such a negative reputation in the region. and my point earlier about my question about jordan and legitimacy is jordanians tell me -- the same thing with the united states. sort of anything the u.s. is pushing is automatically going to be suspicious. any group the u.s. stands behind is automatically going to have a problem. i think the way the u.s. can speak loudest is by being hands off on the particular mechanics.

but very supportive of processes in general. by being supportive of processes in general, that means not chaneling vast amounts of money to the skaf and very little money to other kinds of things. being receptive to say what do you need? do you need training in this? do you need us to come in and help you learn how to be parliamentarians? sort of an open what can we give you? as opposed to let us tell you now how to be good democrats. i think that will inherently backfire. even if there's a lot of common ground there. i completely disagree with the idea that nobody predicted the arab spring. in fact, everyone predicted the arab spring. over and over and over. the problem is we didn't pick the exact moment. if you look through writings, the famous cassandra article on egypt was 1997, i believe, said this cannot be sustained. all of us who've been working in the region, we know of vast pockets of dissent. people just disparate for that moment.

we didn't predict the moment. i'm not saying that we got it right. but there was, you know, the idea that everybody saw these as e quill librium states and they were oppressive and nothing was going to change i don't think is quite fair either. >> i think what dennis ross said is the obama administration did a review in which most agreed it wasn't sustainable. >> right. >> but that it simply was not about to change. and it was the repity and the surprise of the change that took them -- i mean, weeks after this thing was published this guy set himself on fire in much of the middle east. there's probably more agreement there than disagreement. sam? which is unusual in this field. i'd like to point out. please. >> first, thank you for inviting me here to speak. it's a great pleasure. especially as professor farr has indicated, i'm a former student of his. so anything i say you disagree

with, you know who to blame for. anyway -- sorry. the two questions that -- the two first questions that were posed to us that i will comment on and then perhaps focus a bit on the situation in egypt towards religious freedom at the moment and how it will progress. the first question as the professor indicated is very hard to answer in the negative. who possibly can argue that a fully inclusive free, fair, democratic system that makes room for everyone is good on the long run. the formation of the question takes into consideration, perhaps, all those criticisms that have been put forward towards the promotion of democracy under the bush administration or in general. the free inclusive, free and fair, takes into consideration this perhaps modern debasement of the concept of a free society to essentially mean a ballot

box. we're talking about something more than that. it's highlights of the system we give room to others. whether it's islamic voices or religious minorities. we're talking about the long run. sure, no one would disagree with such a statement. the second statement, however, is perhaps a bit more problematic. the statement says that whether -- i got the same statement that the doctor received. whether a regime of liberal democracy including adherence to principles of religious freedom might serve to moderate or unleash the liberal radicalism of some of these voices. there's a couple of assumptions in this statement that deserve me consideration.

the first of these assumptions, of course the statement indicates some form ofalificati. some of the voices will either be moderated or will become more radical, and not all of them. but there is an underlying assumption that there is some form of relationship between religious freedom or the lack thereof and religious radical i station. that this form of relationship is one of negative correlation. the more you have of religious freedom, the less you have of radicalization. that assumption, however, needs to be tested with the reality of the situation. as edmond burk indicated in the opening pages of his reflections on the revolution in france, it is circumstances and not abstract principles that -- whether beneficial or toxic to human beings. so in that light, the question

is whether there is a relationship in the past between the emergence of islamism as a clear discourse and between the lack or the existence of religious freedom or liberal democracy. looking at the past, looking at the beginnings, the formations of the salafi movement in egypt, for example, 1912 and 1926 the establishment of the first salafi organizations in egypt. the establishment of the muslim brotherhood in 1928. whether at that time the lack of religious freedom was important, whether it played a role in the formation of modern islamism, and whether thus by providing more religious freedom we will get a better situation. we find in the writings of those founders of islamism a lack of importance of that factor. true, they have many complaints regarding the west.

coloniali colonialism. there are many there. when he views democracy, he views it rather in the negative and not as something he would complain about as to one of the reasons he would form his organization. so looking at the past might be something to consider about this statement. the second, however, assumption is also worth some consideration of ours. there is an acceptance in the statement of the claim by islamism to be an authentic representation and interpretation of islam. now that islamism claims to be so is something that is obvious to anyone. that that claim is correct or that we should consider it as true is something, perhaps, that we need to think about a bit more. certainly, islamism is a modern phenomenon. its roots might not be traced necessarily into islamic jurs

prudence. paragraphs the salafis having much more an authentic claim to some forms of islam than the muslim brotherhood. but in the case of muslim brotherhood, those roots are hardly there or hardly evident to point to. so why should we care about religious freedom, then? am i arguing that religious freedom is only a nice concept that, yes, we should promote because it's a good human value? certainly not. there is a value in religious freedom in this debate. and perhaps it was referred to here. by religious freedom here, i refer to the ability of people to bring religion to the public square. of making religious-based arguments in that open public square. however, there's an interesting, here, word that is missing that is, perhaps, taken into -- as a granted fact in the united states. and that's "diverse" religious views. the reason why religious freedom

would be extremely important in egypt and in other countries in the region would be because of the ability of individuals to think differently. and then to collectively form an alternative to the basic assumptions. if there is no religious freedom in egypt -- was not allowed to write and chris size the basic premise of islamic history, then tis lammic state modern will become the applicable mold and the one that is the only applicable one or the only one presented to people. if he's not allowed to criticize or offer a different interpretation of the islamic tradition in hadid, then the existing interpretation, the one dominated by the islamists will be the only one offered to the egyptian people. it is thus no surprise that being muslim would be only