The Islamists - our new friends?

If you are taking the Political Islam course or generally interested in our southern and south-eastern neighbours then you might find the latest issue of the CEPS* European Neighbourhood Watch useful. It contains an interesting editorial on a developing dialogue between Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa on the one hand and European policy oriented NGOs and think tanks on the other. A number of things are interesting about this, notably the way the dialogue bypasses the governments of Europe and the Middle East, both of whom have decided that the only good Islamist is a severely repressed Islamist. But it is also interesting in its frankness about the fundamental existential questions that divide the European outlook from the Islamist one. The newsletter also contains a piece by Dr. Saad el-Deen al-Katany, the parliamentary leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in which he sets forth the need for dialogue between Islamists and the West.

If you are not interested in political Islam or the Middle East, the newsletter also reprints an interview with President Lukashenko of Belarus, one of world's great scary leaders.

You can download the newsletter here: CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch

*Centre for European Policy Studies