Amel Boubekeur is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Amel Boubekeur was a resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Prior to joining Carnegie she was head of the Islam and Europe Programme at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. She is a research fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and has taught at the École Normale Supérieure and the Stanford University Center in Paris. Her research focuses on Maghreb country politics, Euro–Arab relations, and Islam in Europe.
She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago and is a regular consultant for various United Nations agencies, the European Commission, and the Open Society Institute.
Tunisia appears stable, but only because of systematic media censorship and a lack of information about human-rights violations. The international community would do a real service for the country if they encouraged true reform.
While Tunisian President Ben Ali’s reelection to a fifth term is a foregone conclusion, the international community must press him to institute real political change and move beyond a superficial illusion of pluralism.
Events of the last months in Algeria have shown that the less the state engages in dialogue with the street, the more the street will resort to violence and abandon the tools of voting and peaceful demonstrations.
Tunisian President Benali has been in power for 22 years and he continues to justify stalling political reforms by pointing to the "Islamist threat." Today, there is certainly no chance to have an Islamist party in Tunisia but any democratic reconsideration of the regime is impossible as well.
Ten years after succeeding his father to the Moroccan throne, King Mohammed VI has implemented significant economic and social reforms but has not yet delivered the kind of political change many hoped for when he took power.
Moderate Islamist parties across the Arab world have the opportunity to present themselves as legitimate candidates for preventing the spread of fundamentalism, allowing for normalized relations with the West.
The reforms established for Morocco's recent local elections have helped improve community management, but have not succeeded in limiting royal intervention in politics.
The appointment of a Muslim woman who wears the hijab (headscarf) to the White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has generated discussion in Europe over whether European Muslim women could experience greater political participation.
This month's presidential election in Algeria revealed two important facts: the irrelevance of opposition parties, and the insecurity of the government.
As Algerian President Bouteflika moves into his third term, he is increasingly circumventing political institutions, such as parties or parliament, by using the distribution of rent to buy loyalty.