The latest issue of Democratiya is now available online and, as always, is packed with good things - among them an interview with Iranian exile Ladan Boroumand. Some time ago I recommended Danny Postel's excellent book on the renascence of interest in liberal thought among Iranian intellectuals (which Boroumand reviewed in an earlier issue of Democratiya), and the other day I quoted this from Paul Berman's recent Dissent article:
Our role should be to offer solidarity to the authentic liberals of the Arab and Muslim world, who have been horribly betrayed by American and other Western governments and even by the left-wing and liberal intellectuals of the West. How bland this program of mine sounds, when I lay the words out across the page! But this bland program of speaking about ideas and ideologies and championing the liberal thinkers has always been crucially important for the Middle East, far more important in the long run than anything achievable by military or even by diplomatic means.
One small way in which bloggers can offer this kind of solidarity is to link to the websites of 'authentic liberals', so I'll be adding a link from this blog to the excellent Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran which maintains an online record of human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic.
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