Bahrain Reduced to “a Simple Dichotomy”

Bahrain Reduced to “a Simple Dichotomy”
2 May, 2012 – POMED

Ed Husain penned an op-ed in the New York Times describing his experience as the guest of the Royal family in Bahrain. He describes Prince Salman bin Hamad as a “liberal’s liberal,” a western-educated reformer. He says the prince acknowledged the “dire” need to reform, but said the opposition is divided and led by pro-Iranian Shia Cleric Issa Qassim. Husain argues that instead of providing “diplomatic cover” for rioters and clerics “in the name of human rights and democracy” the U.S. should support reformers within the monarchy. Gregg Carlstrom wrote a response to Husain on the The Majlis saying that he had reduced Bahrain’s uprising to “to a simple dichotomy.” According to Carlstrom Husain’s central fallacy is presenting Qasim as a central figure in the uprising.The Arabist compares Husain’s description of the Prince as a “western-educated reformer” to similar claims made about former Arab leaders. The terms presented by Husain, reads the article, are essentially making the opposition agree to the monarchy’s terms.

A Bahraini doctor, one of 20 medics tortured into a confession, wrote an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor expressing her fear despite the news of a “retrial” for Abudlhadi al-Khawajah, that the legal process is still being used “to deliberately deny justice.” Witness Bahrain interviewed Wafi Kamel Al-Majed, husband of imprisoned Zainab al-Khawaja, who described her conditions imprisonment, and said that the international community need not interfere in the situation, but simply cease giving support to the dictatorship “that is killing and torturing us and treating us worse than animals.” …more