In an unprecedented initiative prominent intellectuals from across the Arab world this week issued a liberal declaration of principles The challenges currently facing our societies compel intellectuals of all professions to adopt responsible positions on a whole series of pressing issues. Compounding this urgency is an emotively charged climate that is increasingly factionalising and polarising Arab cultural life and inhibiting objectivity and the rational formulation of positions. We, Arab liberals, urgently appeal against the tendency to oversimplify the crucial issues that effect our lives. It is not through oversimplification, as those engaged in the ritual bowing before "democracy" or "resistance" imagine, that we will avert impending destruction. In the face of the decay that has infested Arab societies in the name of fateful wars and sacred causes that have resulted in nothing beyond fragmentation and the perpetuation of defeat the liberalism we espouse expresses our allegiance to modernist, enlightened values. It should not, by any token, be taken as a form of loyalty to the US, regardless of who occupies the White House, though it is true that the Arab liberal consciousness finds its ideological and paradigmatic sources primarily in the Western experience, however strong the desire to wed this to the contributions of such Arab thinkers as Sheikh Mohamed Abdu and his disciples. At the same time it is also true that there exist Western governments that, in the course of their pursuit of material interests or under the influence of shifts in the complexions of their societies, are turning away from the liberal tradition. In light of the foregoing, it is essential to distinguish between ideas and their geo-political cradle for otherwise loyalty to the idea puts one at risk of an attachment that conflicts with the principle of liberty, the foundation of all liberal consciousness. While we perceive the dangers that despotism, whether military or civil, secular or fundamentalist, authoritarian or societal, poses to the fabric of our nations and their hopes for progress, we also believe that democracy is the culmination of a process, not the beginning of one, as some neo-liberals -- almost indistinguishable from neo- conservatives -- would have it. The task of change embraces entire societies. It is concerned more with establishing Arab peoples as cohesive national entities, as opposed to an amalgamation of disparate groups, than it is with overthrowing rulers, however they might deserve that fate. If the tragedy of the Iraqi people that followed the welcome collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime compels such a perspective, so does the re-emergence of sectarian provocation in Lebanon following the withdrawal of Syrian forces. As much as our hopes are raised by the fall of dictators -- Saddam being the most conspicuous example -- and by the beginning of electoral processes it is impossible to sanction foreign invasion, especially without the cover of legitimacy, as an instrument for accomplishing such ends. Whatever one might think, correctly or incorrectly, about the Syrian regime, there can be no excuse for inflicting on Damascus the disaster that befell Baghdad on the pretext of championing democracy and human rights. The West, from whose legacy of enlightenment and progress we hope to borrow, is itself in desperate need of a practical model of enlightenment and progress. The first and foremost prerequisite for this is to respect the law. There can be no more Guantanamos or Abu Ghraibs, for example. And as much as we deplore terrorism, in its Bin Ladenist, Zarqawist and subsidiary stripes, that inflicts brutality in the name of religion, we deplore too the emergence in the West of an ideological terrorism thata justifies itself, implicitly or explicitly, on the tenets of Christian fundamentalism and that furnishes Islamist fundamentalism with a raison d'être. Fundamentalist intolerance cannot be condemned in one part of the world and accepted in another. We are as incensed by the demagogic trend that celebrates death under the banner of martyrdom as we are by Israel's flagrant contempt for Palestinian rights, which are evaporating by the day with America's tacit approval. Disturbed by the outcry against globalisation at a time when our societies desperately need an influx of capital and investment, we are also disturbed by the silence that greets the need to protect the poor from the spectre of hunger and to fortify our societies against extremism and terrorism Triumphalism, whether in the name of resistance or democracy, further darkens an already grim picture. The issues we face in Palestine and Iraq, and that we may face tomorrow in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Yemen, Sudan and North Africa, require us to engage our minds more than our emotions. They also compel us to contemplate the conditions of our societies and their divisions, both old and new, rather than to draw some random line between those who are "for" the West and those who are "against". Signatories of the declaration include: Ibrahim Al-Haydary (Iraq); Ibrahim Gharyba (Jordan); Osama El-Ghazali Harb (Egypt); El-Sayed Yassin (Egypt); El-Moeti Qabal (Morocco); Bashir Al-Bakr (Syria); Torki Al- Hamad (Saudi Arabia); Gamal Nazal (Palestine); Hazem El-Biblawi (Egypt); Hazem Saghiya (Lebanon); Hydar Ibrahim (Sudan); Dalal Al-Bizri (Lebanon); Sami Zoubaida (Iraq); Samir Al-Youssef (Palestine); Sadiq Galal Al-Azm (Syria); Salah Issa (Egypt); Taha Abdel-Alim (Egypt); Abdel-Nour Ben Antar (Algeria); Fawzia Al-Bakr (Saudi Arabia); Abbas Shiblaq (Palestine); Mohamed Al-Hadad (Tunisia); Mona Makram Ebeid (Egypt); Nabil Abdel-Fattah (Egypt); Yassin Al-Haj Saleh (Syria); Wahid Abdel-Meguid (Egypt); Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid (Egypt)
