Raise a glass to the fight against Islamism...

An essential article about how liberal values are being defended in Bahrain under the guise of maintaining the right to drink, wear short skirts and smoke cigarettes. (I'm 2 for 3 in showing solidarity with the movement - I just don't have the legs for the short skirts.)

A Bahraini liberal fights for his right to party.
Drinking Liberally

by Joseph Braude

Manama, Bahrain

Civil rights activist Abdullah Al Madani has drawn a line in the sand within this tiny desert island kingdom--and stockpiled plenty of whiskey and beer well behind it. "Let them try and take away our simple pleasures," he warns over a cold one. "We won't go down without a fight." Behind this frothy threat to prohibitionists in Bahrain stand 31 civil society organizations and a new grassroots movement Madani leads called We Have a Right (Lana Haqq). The group has signed up feminists, labor organizers, musicians, and other typical victims of Islamists' restrictive social agenda to a platform espousing equality of religions, genders, lifestyles, and every skirt length. The country's conservatives appear to take the movement seriously enough to denounce it: Several prominent mosque preachers reportedly declared its adherents to be "pagans"--fighting words in Arabia--accusing We Have a Right of spreading alcoholism and prostitution. American policymakers, meanwhile, have largely ignored or snubbed the organization.

"Your National Democratic Institute representative in Bahrain told us we weren't serious," Madani tells me, puffing a cigar between swigs. "He said we should focus on the real issues in Bahrain, and personal liberties will come later." The International Republican Institute, which has also actively engaged Bahraini leaders, has no contact with We Have a Right either. Nor does the State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative, which now funds several Bahraini projects in tandem with the government and private sector.

But Madani's nascent movement--which is well-publicized and hard to ignore--represents a smart new strategy for Arab liberals in the Middle East, and American reformists active in the region ignore We Have a Right at their own peril. The group's niche agenda exploits the widespread resentment secular Muslims feel toward encroachments on their individual rights by Islamists--while behind the hot button campaign lies a deep and wise long-term vision. The group's initial success in attracting followers in Bahrain, a national Petri dish of the Middle East's political and religious schisms, suggests there may be similar opportunities to galvanize Islamism's opponents in larger Arab and Muslim countries. So, rather than turn a blind eye to Madani's merry crew of libertine activists, the United States would do well to raise a glass to them--and figure out how to promote a similar approach in Iran, Iraq, throughout the Gulf, and beyond.

Read on...