This excellent news was comes from Al-Arabiya via the Project on Middle East Democracy. Here’s the summary by Max:
Al-Arabiya has just reported that, under pressure from the United States, the Secretariat-General of the lower house of the Egyptian Parliament invited ten members of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc to attend Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo on Thursday.
The delegation will include Dr. Saad Al Katatni, leader of the bloc, who said that the invitation “came as a compromise solution between the American administration and the Egyptian government, considering that there is increasing pressure on the administration from the American press on the necessity of meeting with all members of opposition and other influential forces…”
In other good news, Brotherhood members are being allowed to return to the legal bar. Katatni credited the administration’s actions to pressure from the U.S. press. Regardless of the motivation, this is excellent news. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement, as one might expect, but a non-violent one despite oppression from the government. I don’t think that even with 5 billion some dollars in aid a year to Egypt we’re really in a position to suddenly democratize the country, but we could do a lot more to work by getting over fears of Islamists.
I’m now much less worried about the Cairo speech. If this is how they’re setting it up, than the administration might find a way to balance dignity and democracy support after all. We’ll know for sure on the fourth.
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