Thomas Friedman in Cairo: A fact-check

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is enormously influential, with a cabinet full of Pulitzer prizes, so it's important to set the record straight when he gets some facts wrong.

Thomas Friedman is a prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, who travels the world meeting influential people and sharing his thoughts about global progress. Because Mr. Friedman is enormously influential, with a cabinet full of Pulitzer prizes, it's important to set the record straight when he gets some facts wrong – as he did in a speech Monday at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Reading Al Ahram's and The Daily News Egypt's accounts of the event, I found three apparent errors of fact made by the columnist.

1. Partially explaining the success of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in recent Egyptian parliamentary elections, Mr. Friedman said: "The Muslim Brotherhood is legitimate, authentic, progressive alternative. Only faced by the four-month old liberals, they had to win." Al Ahram's English edition quoted him as saying Egypt's "liberal parties ... are only four months old."

Four-month-old liberals? Friedman's point was that the Brotherhood has been around for over 80 years, and was therefore better prepared than secular opponents for Egypt's fairest elections in at least a generation. But this doesn't track the actual history. 

While many new parties have sprung up since the Tahrir protests last year, a number of Egyptian liberal parties have been around as long or longer than the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party. The Wafd Party, which appears to have come in third in the election, was founded in the early 20th century, and was reformed in the early 70s. The Tagammu Party, another secular group with socialist roots, also ran in the recent elections and was formed in the 70s.

2. Asked about "the future of Egypt’s free-market economy under an Islamist-led government," Friedman answered, in the words of Al Ahram, that "Islamists would eventually be forced to adapt to 'modernity.' He pointed out that the relatively lenient positions adopted by Islamist parties on certain controversial issues – like the regulations governing Egypt’s tourism industry – represented a clear indication of this trend."

His view that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood will moderate their positions as they're finally faced with the task of governing isn't an unusual one. But the way he responded to the specific question suggests that he doesn't know that, on economics, the Muslim Brotherhood are basically free-market capitalists. He appears to think they have some kind of "pre-modern" thinking about economics.

3. According to Al Ahram, "Friedman went on to draw a comparison between the Egyptian and Indonesian models. In the latter case, Islamist parties swept democratically-held elections in the 1990s, but soon lost ground after failing to meet voters' expectations."

Islamist parties did not win an Indonesian election in the 1990s, or since. Under Suharto, the Islamist United Development Party (PPP) was one of three legally allowed parties, but the elections were rigged in favor of his secular Golkar Party. In the first post-Suharto election of 1999, Islamist parties finished well behind secular parties. They have not come close to winning an election since and had their worst showing of the post-Suharto era in the most recent parliamentary election, in 2009. 

But Friedman did go on to say that Rick Santorum has no chance of becoming the next US president, something that appears to be correct, given the huge polling lead Mitt Romney has over his Republican rivals. So it wasn't all bad.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Thomas Friedman in Cairo: A fact-check
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2012/0110/Thomas-Friedman-in-Cairo-A-fact-check
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe