“Within the Arab mainstream, two sides are battling for the future of Islam. One is the establishment, which includes regimes and their elitist supporters in the press, academia, mosques, and elsewhere. For years, they have used a mechanism that nurtures incitement against others to stay in power – without free elections – and encourage the Islamist movement now terrorizing the world…. On the other side is the reformist camp, which is fed up with the establishment. Its supporters are allying with the West and backing the struggle against ideological sources of terrorism. They include opposition political figures, student movements, intellectuals, authors, and columnists.”
Steven Stalinsky gives a boost to the pro-imperialist Bush-admirers backed by MEMRI’s “Reform Project”, pretending that they represent a significant ideological force in the Middle East.
Front Page Magazine, 29 July 2005
In an open letter to MEMRI last year, written at the time the organisation was threatening Juan Cole with legal action for telling the truth about them, Marc Lynch had this to say about the Reform Project:
“it tends to select statements by pro-American reformers who concentrate on criticizing other Arabs … with little regard for the real debates going on among Arabs. Your selective translations therefore offer a doubly warped perspective on the Arab debates: first, over-emphasizing the presence of radical and noxious voices; and second, over-emphasizing the importance of a small and marginal group of Arabs who share your own prejudices. What you leave out is almost the entire Arab political debate which really matters to Arabs: a lively debate on satellite stations such as al Jazeera and al Arabiya and in the elite Arab press about reform, international relations, political Islam, democracy, and Arab culture which English-speaking readers would greatly benefit from knowing about.”