Dubai: The future of the Middle East depends on social reform and a much greater emphasis on human rights, better opportunities for women and youth, and more respect for minorities and opposition groups.
"We found the soft issues much more compelling than the hard issues," Marwan Muashar, Senior Vice President for External Affairs at the World Bank, told Gulf News.
Muashar was the chair of the 18-strong Council on the Future of the Middle East, and had spent two days developing and refining its conclusions, which were still being collated as he spoke, but significant elements of the final report are included in what is reported below.
His high-powered council included business leaders like Rasheed Al Maraj, Governor of the Central Bank on Bahrain, and Hussain Al Nuwais, Chairman of Emirates Holdings; political leaders like Saeeb Erekat of the Palestinian National Authority, and Amr Mousa of the Arab League; and journalists and analysts like Shafeeq Ghrabra of Jusoor Arabiya Consultancy in Kuwait and Ali Hamade of Al Nahar newspaper in Lebanon.
The council considered that a successful future of the Middle East depends on grand reform to avoid decay, and that there needs to be a revolution of minds to move beyond the existing order. While these reforms can start with a renewed commitment to human rights and encouraging full participation from a diverse population, it has to end with the adoption of more formal legal changes like transparency, good governance, open elections and accountability.
This kind of reform will need to include respect for diversity and pluralism. This means allowing minorities to share power and have a significant stake in the power structures, and inclusion of all forces into society.
In its ongoing discussion, the council noted that the Arab world has two opposing cultures, one is the liberal force and the other is the more dominant conservative Islamic movement. The two forces will continue to express their different agendas in dealing with the challenges for reform in the Arab world. Both strands of thought are vital to the Arab world, and they are both essential to the reform agenda, neither can be excluded, and both will be part of contributing to letting the reform agenda evolve over time.
Dealing with failures
This programme for reform is essential to dealing with the failures of the Arab world, which include failed secular authoritarian parties, a political vacuum in many countries and across the region, and a vanishing legitimacy for many leaderships.
The council also noted that there is a need for reform within Islam itself, taking note that the traditional thinking can be reviewed and a process of ijtihad (Islamic theological review) can be initiated among the leading scholars and thinkers of the religion.
Looking ahead, the council found that any reform must be able to break tribal, familial, class and sect impediments to social mobility. It was looking to find a way that all individuals of the Middle East might be able to take part in society to the best of their capabilities.
The council was sure that better education is fundamental to allowing this reform to happen. Curricula across the Middle East will need to be changed to encourage thinking and initiative, and stop including learning by rote which avoids thinking for oneself. This is a serious step that all the national governments will need to start, working from changing the curricula, to retraining the teachers, and then telling the parents and pupils what is expected from them.
By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large