Transcript
KHALIL AL-ANANI As you may know from the invitation that you have got that I'm going to talk today about the excluding of moderate Islamists in the Middle East. But, before I start my talking, I'd like very quickly to explain two things. The first is why I’m using the word ‘myth,’ and second point what I mean by the word, or the term, ‘moderate Islamists.’
For the first thing, actually, since I came here four months ago, I met a lot of people, some of them officials, some of them academics, some of them intellectuals, NGOs, so I found that the main point from all of these meetings that there's a huge confusion and misperceptions toward understanding the political Islam in the Middle East.
And actually I found a myth that some of them think that the United States can promote democracy in the Middle East without engaging or including moderate Islamists.
And actually, the same myth that when American -- some of the American people know that I am from Egypt. Some of them asked me do you have cars in Egypt? So the answer is, we do have cars in Egypt. So there is a lot of myths actually about the political Islam in the Middle East such as there is some myths actually toward the social and intellectual life in the Arab world.
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