In the news: 2011
What the media say about The Doha Debates...
As controversial and timely as the latest headlines, The Doha Debates have been making news themselves. Here are a few of the stories that have aired or been written about us:
For now, though, Egypt offers no concensus about this revolution. Eight months old, it’s at best a riderless horse, dragged in turn by the neck and the tail, bruised, bloodied, misunderstood — and widely unloved. No one is sure who owns it or controls it. There are doubts about whether it is even a revolution at all. It has many bizarre faces and some Egyptians are getting scared.
Later in the debate, an audience member challenged Sultan's claim that the military allows for freedom of expression, citing the implementation of emergency law and increase of military trials for civilians. El-Yazal responded that "the military, since the revolution, promised to protect Egyptians and they feel obliged to follow legal procedures due to instability, lack of security and the presence of thousands of thugs nowadays."
Moderator Tim Sebastian began the debate by reflecting on the pressures the organizers faced at finding a proper venue in time, after cancellations by the Egyptian government forced them to relocate twice at the last minute. “Someone apparently didn’t want this debate to happen,” said Sebastian.
One obstacle in Wednesday’s debate - and possibly one of the biggest criticisms leveled against Egypt’s ruling military council - was that the team defending the army seemed unwilling to listen to the other side. Sebastian, a seasoned moderator, struggled at times to contain the heated back-and-forth and repeated interruptions.
A forgotten theme amid the reporting of the Arab Spring, now the Arab Summer, is that many people in the Arab world support freedom of speech in a way that seems odd to many in the censorious West – and this despite the existence of authoritarian regimes of various forms.
Many Persian Gulf Arabs are frightened and pessimistic about the uprisings and revolutions that are sweeping the Middle East and are too afraid to speak out against their rulers. According to a new opinion poll commissioned by the Qatar-based public forum The Doha Debates, that's the current mood among many gulf Arabs.
"How much longer do I give Qaddafi? I hope he leaves tonight.” It wouldn’t be unusual to hear people whisper such strong political opinions in cafes across the Middle East, but this statement, made by a 30-year-old Libyan student in a black abaya named Aisha Aghliw, was televised in Doha and shown on a BBC program that reaches 400 million viewers worldwide.
Last March, Sebastian brought his team to the American University in Cairo for the first time for a riveting debate on the timing of the upcoming parliamentary elections with leaders from both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wafd party facing off with two young liberal political activists. The result was one of the most heated and open debates Cairo has ever seen.
The debate, the first to be held in Doha following recent specials on Tunis and Cairo, saw panel and audience members discussing the most pressing event in world politics, disagreeing over whether the Arab states should have taken a leading role in the intervention in Libya.With a number of Libyan audience members participating in the debate, discussions were passionate and highly relevant.
Pressing their votes on palettes at their chair-side after listening to a lengthy debate, audiences of a Doha Debate special, hosted in Egypt, chose not to champion hasty elections over real democracy.
Two young, passionate Tahrir revolutionaries sat opposite Essam Elerian, from the Muslim Brotherhood, who was avuncular and fluently unintelligable in English, and the young, erudite Sherif Taher, from the Wafd Party, an old Liberal nationalist party left over from the fight against the British mandate.
In a special episode of BBC World's Doha Debates -- the first ever to be screened from Egypt, and hosted on the American University of Cairo's Downtown campus -- representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood and the liberal Wafd Party traded verbal punches with activists opposed to a summer election.
Eighty-four percent voted for postponing Egypt's parliamentary and presidential elections at the first Doha Debates held in Egypt, while 16 percent voted against the motion.
The Doha Debates yesterday did what the free-speech advocate does best: provided a platform for free speech to students in Qatar and their peers in an altogether different Cairo.
After January 14 a new status quo of freedom has emerged. Meetings are now possible where the opposition and civil society groups can finally meet, discuss possibilities for Tunisia with the future still uncertain during a transition period...
It is high tide in the sea of demand for political change. In just over a decade of the 21st century, the Middle East has witnessed several colourful revolutions and movements – Blue and Orange in Kuwait, Cedar in Lebanon, Kiyafa and million march in Egypt, Green in Iran, Jasmine in Tunisia, and ‘Pink’ (colour of protesters’ bandana) in Yemen, among others. This pro-reform sentiment was corroborated in two recent surveys. While 63 per cent of the audience in a Doha Debates episode favoured democracy, a YouGov poll across 17 Arab countries found that the majority preferred to live in a democratic state.
As violence continued on the streets of Cairo last night, Doha Debates held an open forum at Georgetown University in Qatar where students and experts discussed the issues surrounding the recent and current political instability in Tunisia and Egypt... Students asked numerous questions, touching on a variety of issues, including the importance of social networking and modern media, which the speakers said have been an important aspect of the fight, but not the cause of the revolution.
Education is worthy in and of itself. In the absence of freedom of speech, education may be worth less, but education is never worthless.
