Therefore, the question is not whether such democratization is possible, but instead how to meet the yearning of the masses in the Middle East for democracy; in other words, how to achieve democratization in the Middle East.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There exists an unmistakable demand in the Middle East and in the wider Muslim world for democratization.
Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized.
We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.
We've gone too far in thinking we can re-create an American democratic paradise in the Middle East.
Similarly, it is argued that the culture of Islam is incompatible with democracy. Basically, this conventional perspective of the Middle East thus contends that democracy in that region is neither possible nor even desirable.
It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East.
Certainly we've seen the enormous changes across the whole of the Middle East. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.
The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics.
Can you get a democracy in Saudi Arabia? These people talk about theocracy, not democracy. So I think it's a very tough situation.
According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.