Fear and Loathing in the Middle East

June 23, Egypt

A topic that has come up a number of times in our conversations during the trip has been Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis, in which he essentially posits that the Western (Judeo-Christian) civilization is headed for a clash with the Islamic and/or Confucian civilizations. In fact, our trip was set up post-Sept. 11 partly to explore this thesis. Amr Mussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, for instance, brought it up in our meeting on June 22 to debunk it.

Our visit to Islamic countries shows how simpleminded Huntington's thesis is. We have
already seen how diverse the expression of religion is in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. When you observe the people of these nations, you find that almost each individual shows his or her faith differently. In Egypt, for instance, there seems to be a big difference in the style of dress between upper middle class and rich women (who often dress very stylishly) on the one hand and lower middle class and poor women (who dress much more conservatively) on the other.

To lump together all these diverse people in one big "Islamic civilization" category does
all of them injustice.

Plus, it completely ignores the other non-Islamic cultures that have contributed to the
making of these societies.

Egypt, for instance, has a sizable Coptic Christian community, one of the oldest Christian
denominations in the world. I walked around the Coptic section on June 22. I visited the Coptic Museum, which contains Bibles and artifacts from the sixth century onwards, and entered a church that has been functioning for the last thousand years. The Coptic community may not be always treated fairly by the Egyptian government, but it has contributed immensely to Egyptian society.

But Huntington can't abide by such complexities, even in the most populous Arab nation
on Earth. Perhaps he should come along with us on our trip. It's still not too late for him to join us on the second half of the trip to Uzbekistan and Turkey, countries that offer yet other faces of Islam.





June 22, Egypt



Egypt deserves someone much better than Mubarak. It breaks your heart to see Egyptians striving in all sorts of ways to make a better life for themselves and then being saddled with someone who has given them little but authoritarianism and economic stagnation over the past two decades.

The further away you get from the tourist section of Cairo, the more apparent the
poverty becomes. I visited on Saturday the Coptic Christian section of Cairo. The drive in between passed through several rundown neighborhoods. And on our bus rides through the city, we have gone a number of times by the "city of the dead," a massive cemetery that has become home for thousands of people. The other obvious presence here is that of Mubarak's security forces. Everywhere you go, there are cops belonging to one branch of security or the other (there's even a tourism and antiquities police), most often armed with semiautomatic rifles.

Of course, the Egyptian government would claim that this is in response to the Islamist
threat. This may have a grain of truth to it, but part of the larger purpose seems to be to intimidate the population.

Due to this and other reasons, it is difficult to say how much of a yearning there is among
the general public to get Mubarak replaced. Certainly, the activist community in Egypt's incipient civil society want Mubarak out. But how much does the demand resonate beyond people like them? We'd have to stay here a long time to really find out.

By manipulating the Islamist threat and by co-opting or sidelining opponents, Mubarak
has ensured a long reign for himself.

We met on Saturday evening with Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League.
He fielded questions on Israel/Palestine (U.S. should play the role of a honest broker), Iraq (the Arab League is opposed to the invasion of Iraq, but Iraq should cooperate with U.N. inspections) and democratization in the Arab world (which the Arab League is encouraging).

The interesting thing is that a couple of us met earlier on Saturday with Muntassir al-
Zayat, a lawyer connected with the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Zayat said that Mussa was a popular foreign minister in Egypt whom Mubarak sent to the Arab League to marginalize him. Al-Zayat also said that the main grouses that many people have against the United States are concerning the Israel/Palestine issue and U.S. support of authoritarian regimes in the region.

Hopefully, when a regime change comes in Egypt, not too many of its citizens will blame
the United States for collaborating in Mubarak's long and painful tenure.





June 21, Egypt, The Pyramids


I fulfilled a boyhood dream today. I visited the pyramids. How are they face to face? Quite as magnificent as they appear in pictures, although they are slightly more weatherbeaten. The same goes for the Sphinx. We even got to climb inside one of the pyramids (the largest one, the tomb of King Cheops). I had to bend down painfully for most of the climb on the steps inside but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. In the morning, we went to see the Egyptian Museum, which has an amazing collection of Pharaonic-era artifacts. The main section focuses on King Tutankhamen (aka King Tut), which is not surpising since his was pretty much the only tomb found intact. The museum has innumerable artifacts stored, sometimes a bit haphazardly, some of them absolutely incredible, such as King Tut's throne and mask. In between the museum and the pyramids, we visited a papyrus shop, where the staff demonstrated how they bind together the material, on which they eventually paint images, and then offered to sell us at a "special price" their papyrus paintings. At night, we went for dinner to a riverside cafe, where many of us tried to smoke a hookah (water pipe). In other words, we acted like cheesy tourists all day, with not a shred of political activity. But what the heck.





June 20, Egypt


I have seldom been lied to so blatantly in my life. On June 20, we had a lunch meeting with Nabil Osman, who is the chairman of the State Information Service here. He assured us that censorship was a relic of the past in this country, having disappeared after the 1970s, and that the press was free to criticize anything or anyone, including the president. The interior minister Habib Al Adly had, in a slip of tongue that morning, told us that the government could tell the press what to put in but couldn't tell the press what to take out. Osman made fun of his own interior minister by asking us which genius had told us that, and flatly denying that any such situation existed.

If I hadn't met with human-rights activists and a dissident journalist later today, I might
even have believed him partly. But, boy, did they have a different story to tell.

The meeting was arranged by Gamal Eid, a local human-rights activist who works on the
Arabic language Web site of Human Rights Watch. I had been in touch with Gamal from the United States via e-mail and he very graciously set up the meeting for me and a number of my colleagues. Eid brought with him two activists from a local group called Association for Human Rights Legal Aid and a dissident journalist who works for Al- Ahram, a semi-official paper of prominence. All of them told us of a nightmare of a situation. The dissident journalist informed us that censorship exists on several levels: formal (where papers regularly deleted articles critical of Mubarak or his regime) and informal (where journalists routinely engaged in self-censorship). Even papers owned by nominally opposition parties mute their criticism of the government in order to curry favor with the megapowerful administration. Things were so bad that a lot of independent newspapers have registered in Cyprus to circumvent censorship. A special squad set up by the government polices the Internet for "objectionable" material.

And things are very bad on the human-rights front. Eid, who emphasized that he's only
speaking for himself and not for Human Rights Watch, and his fellow activists told us about a law passed two weeks ago that gives the regime carte blanche to shut down or interfere in the functioning of any NGO and prohibits them from receiving foreign funding. Emergency laws that have been in effect almost constantly for the past many decades prevent any public demonstrations. Torture is routine. Thousands of political prisoners are being held in prison without fair trials. All of them thought that the Islamist threat was an excuse for the regime to stay in power.

When I met with a colleague of Osman, Mahmoud Gafar, the director of the government
press office, at a dinner organized by the Egyptian government, he flatly denied all these allegations. Never mind that the more candid of a group of journalists that some others of us met with (a meeting organized by the U.S. Embassy) corroborated some of the charges made by Eid and his colleagues. And never mind that some of the facts were substantiated by research I did before my trip. Egyptian officials are adept at lying with a straight face, such as the interior minister who insisted that all due process had been followed when I asked him about the case of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian- American activist currently in prison. Except for the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, who was the first Saudi or Egyptian official to condemn Palestinian suicide bombings, none of the officials we've met seemed to have much regard for the truth. And yet this is a close U.S. ally and the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. The Western diplomat who was at the embassy briefing on June 19 mentioned that as part of the attempt to sell U.S. policy better (he mentioned the name of Charlotte Beers), the U.S. government had organized focus groups and had been told by these groups that it was Americans who needed to understand the Middle East better rather than the other way around. And perhaps altering U.S. policy would help, too.





June 19, Cairo

The atmosphere in Egypt is so different from that in Saudi Arabia. This is in spite of a

heavy security presence everywhere and metal detectors in posh hotels and government offices. Sure, Egypt is poorer and more chaotic than Saudi Arabia, although not as poor or as chaotic as I thought. But this is at least partly compensated by the relative freedom that people have here. Yesterday, some of us went for a walk near our hotel. In a big park nearby, we saw kids cavorting around, young couples strolling together, and some teenage boys making fools of themselves. Scenes that are quite normal in most countries but that we never saw in Saudi Arabia. Forget the women. Even the men here seem much more relaxed and comfortable. People in Mubarak's Egypt relaxed and comfortable? Shows you how stifled Saudi Arabia is. Or maybe the riverboat cruise I took down the Nile -- or my hotel room overlooking that magnificent river -- is clouding my judgment.

Two topics dominate our conversation here: Sept. 11 and the Israel/Palestine issue. The
first thing we did yesterday was to meet with Mouhamed Said Tantawy, the grand shiek of Al-Azhar seminary, perhaps the most important theological school in the Muslim world. He strongly condemned the Sept. 11 attacks but refused to unequivocally condemn the Palestinian suicide bombings. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day.

At a meeting that evening with the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs, a quasi-
governmental body with many current and former officials as members, we were lectured on the Palestinian issue and how the United States is so biased on the subject due to (and they sometimes don't directly say it) pressure from the Jewish lobby. After witnessing the outpouring of anger over the issue in both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, I must say that the emotions seem genuine and that the United States may pay a heavy price if it doesn't change its Mideast policy. At the same time, there's a depressing inability to acknowledge even minimally that Israel may have legitimate security concerns or to clearly condemn the suicide bombings. About Sept. 11, Egyptian officials love to tell us that they were ahead of the curve on this one, since they've been battling Islamists since the early 1990s, and that they're providing full cooperation to the United States.

During one briefing, a Western diplomat said,"Mubarak is a good guy, but he's an
authoritarian leader. He has a heavy reliance on security forces and has a difficult human- rights record." He went on to acknowledge that Mubarak had sent Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and a group of gays to jail for years on trumped-up charges. But the United States still thinks of him as "a good guy." It is contradictions like these that get U.S. foreign policy in trouble.





June 18, Saudi Arabia


Saudi Arabia is changing. In spite of all the strictures by the religious establishment and the unhelpful attitude of the royal family, Saudi society is slowly transforming itself. Two obvious signs are the availability of satellite television (with programming ranging from Al- Jazeera and CNN to American movies and T.V. shows) and the Internet, both of which the Saudi establishment has reluctantly allowed. But there are less obvious signs, too. We went yesterday for a visit to the old section of Jeddah. We did see the usual stereotype of Saudi women fully covered up. But we also saw women who had defiantly removed the veil from their faces. On a walk in the afternoon, I came across a young woman who was talking on the cell phone, veil askew. Beneath her outer covering, a pair of jeans was clearly visible. Let us be clear: Saudi Arabia is not Afghanistan under the Taliban. The space given to women to study and to work (in segregated conditions) does give them an opportunity to fight for change. And many of them seem to be doing this, some more obviously than others. Our Saudi hosts kept one message throughout ("U.S. should not support Israel." "Osama is not any more representative of Saudi society than Timothy McVeigh is of American society." "In our cultural restrictions, we are just following the norms of our religion."). But it was these small transformations that we observed on the side that were the most insightful -- and heartening.





June 17, Jeddah

Jeddah is a more pleasant place than Riyadh. Located on the Red Sea, it is more
picturesque and has more moderate climate than Riyadh, where the temperature was hitting 110. Perhaps because of its shore location, it seems less insular and conservative than Riyadh. We were hosted for lunch by the editor of the Arab News, reputedly the premier English-language newspaper in this country. The women in his family were all unveiled and eager to mingle with us. And they were very forthright, too, especially on the issue of Israel/Palestine, which keeps on coming up. People tell us that U.S.-Arab relations can't improve unless there's a change in U.S. attitude on the issue. There also seems to be a palpable sense of hurt at the portrayal of Saudi Arabia in the U.S. media after 9-11. A number of people have told us that they will stop visiting the U.S., due to fears of racial profiling and harassment. Our lunch hosts gave us an earful on all these issues, plus the control by the "pro-Israeli lobby" of the U.S. media. It was perhaps the most interesting encounter of the trip. The other events -- including meetings with the ministers of education, information and Islamic affairs -- were all pretty much scripted, with the answers being boilerplate in the fashion of Crown Prince Abdullahs. One honest answer came when the minister of information said, "We don't help our enemies," when asked about what the Saudi media was doing to dispel the myth that the Mossad was behind 9-11. Another came when the vice minister of education tore into one of us: "We believe our values are better than yours. You may not like it. But at least tolerate it. Tolerance is not a one-way street." Oh, for more such genuine moments.





June 17, Jeddah

We met Crown Prince Abdullah -- the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia -- today in one of
the promised highlights of the trip. And it was a complete bust. Or at least the interview part. We were taken to his magnificent palace in Jeddah,and we waited for a couple of hours in a meeting room larger and more well-appointed than any I've ever seen. When the Crown Prince came in, he tried to make us feel at ease by coming up to each of us and shaking our hands, including the women's. But his responses (in Arabic) to our questions were absolute nonanswers, evasion's and cryptic boilerplate. Sample answer:"I expect all good deeds and good events (from the United States). U.S. is always doing best and looking to make peace." Or, "My first aim is a permanent and long-lasting peace and to stop bloodshed." To a question about whether Sharon was serious about peace, he threw it back to the questioner with, "What do you think?" At the end of the interview, his aide told us that we could quote him on record. Some of us joked: If there was anything to quote.





June 16, Riyadh

The U.S. and the Saudi P.R. machines attacked us in tandem. At a meeting with the
American Business Group of Riyadh (with representatives of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Bechtel present), one corporate executive (we were asked not to reveal specific names) told me, "Saudis do not want democracy. It's not in the Saudis' best interests. They do things by consensus here."

"We believe in America. We believe in our ally. We believe we are doing good," another said, when I questioned the wisdom of doing business with a regime with such a poor human-rights and foreign-policy record.

Not that the Saudis needed much help with their P.R. They kept us really busy with well- choreographed visits throughout the day, including a visit to a hospital, a newspaper office ("Who says we don't have a free press in this country?"), and to the ministry of petroleum resources (a really soporific event).

I was kept so busy I was barely able to play phone tag with the dissident lawyer I was hoping to meet.

The only interesting "official" encounter I had was at the hospital, where I was made to sit with three young female computer professionals, who were quite open (albeit a bit defensive) in answering questions about the status of women in Saudi Arabia, belying the stereotype of women in this country.

How much were they representative of women in general in this nation? Hard to say.

I missed a site of interest, since i dozed off on our tour bus. It seems that we passed by an "execution square," where they supposedly execute people in public. It looked like any other public plaza. Or, at least, that's what my tourmates told me.

Now on to Jeddah.





June 15, Riyadh



The Saudi government has really laid it on thick for us. At the airport, we were met by a bunch of officials and rushed through passports and customs and straight to a reception organized by Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki (not to be confused with Crown Prince Abdullah), the minister in charge of the investment board.

We were received by a long greeting line, comprised of officials and journalists and other members of the officially approved intelligentsia. They made us feel so much at ease that the women among us undid their headscarves and shook hands with everyone.

I was greeted by one person with "Isn't Wisconsin the land of cheese and beer?" A professor of English at the university here told me that his favorite poet was Wallace Stevens. It almost made you forget the grimmer reality here. The only visible sign was the absence of Saudi women.

Our hosts knew what to say and how to say it: We want change, said Ihsan Ali Bu- Hulaiga, a member of the Shoura (consultative) council, but the people are resistant. If it was up to the king and us, women would be driving and doing other things just like men. Bu-Hulaiga, who lived in Milwaukee for five years, said that the U.S. and Saudis shared values such as "respect for life and a peaceful attitude."

Prince Abdullah, who to be fair was quite down to earth for a royal, told us that the bond between the United States and Saudi Arabia went back to the 1950s due to a hatred of the "atheistic" Soviet Union. Besides, he said, for Muslims, Christians and Jews are People of the Book. (As a semi-believing Hindu, I felt left out.)

Osama and his followers, he said, had no connection with Islam and with Saudi society. They exploited, he said, legitimate grievances, such as U.S. support for Israel (which came up again and again, along with the influence of AIPAC and Israel on the U.S. media) and underdevelopment in some Arab societies. Saudis, he said, were very hurt by the post-9/11 portrayal of them in the U.S. media. I was about to ask him about resentment toward U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia but, at that very moment, his aides whisked him away.