Will the Middle East Ever Be Liberal?

The battle for the Middle East’s future won’t be won by armies, but by ideas

A few days ago, I sat down with my colleague and friend, Amjad Aun, to ask one of the most difficult questions we face as people who work in and on the Middle East: Can the region ever become liberal? Not just in terms of economics, but also civil society, tolerance, and open discourse. It’s the kind of question that sounds academic and theoretical until you’ve lived under authoritarianism, seen civil war up close, or watched people die because they dared to think differently. Then it becomes very real.

I grew up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein—one of the most brutal dictatorships of the 20th century. We had two state TV channels: one controlled by Saddam himself, the other by his son. That was the extent of “choice.” After 2003, when Saddam was removed, we didn’t wake up to democracy. We woke up to chaos. Instead of one official truth, there were now dozens—many pushed by regional actors like Iran, each with their own agenda. Iraq was fractured by sectarianism, not united by pluralism. And the civil war that followed? No one even knows how many people died. Some say 100,000, others say a million. Either way, it was a disaster.

That experience shaped me—and taught me a hard truth: you can’t bomb liberalism into a country. Getting rid of a dictator doesn’t automatically lead to freedom. It just creates a vacuum. And if you’re not ready to fill that vacuum with ideas, institutions, and opportunities, someone else will—usually the people with the most guns or the worst ideology.

That’s why I started Ideas Beyond Borders. Not to sell people a political label, but to give them the tools to think for themselves. We translate works of science, philosophy, and critical thinking into Arabic. We fund startups that reflect liberal values in action. We engage young people who are tired of being told what to think and ready to ask their own questions. Our project, House of Wisdom 2.0, now reaches over 8.5 million followers in the region. That’s not a niche—it's a movement. And it’s growing.

Amjad brought an important perspective to the conversation. He’s a Syrian economist and advisor with IBB, and he put it bluntly: the soil in the Middle East isn’t yet fertile for diverse ideas. The problem isn’t just censorship—it’s that even the concept of ideological diversity is foreign to most people. When they hear the word “liberal,” they don’t think of John Stuart Mill or Adam Smith. They think of a cleric telling them liberalism will turn their kids trans and their daughters into prostitutes. That’s not a caricature—I’ve literally heard it.

One of Amjad’s points that really hit home is that people may like liberal ideas without knowing that’s what they are. Talk to someone about property rights, free enterprise, or education reform, and they’re in. Use the word “liberal,” and you lose them. So the work we do has to meet people where they are, not where we wish they were.

We talked about the Gulf states: the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. These countries have embraced economic openness. In Dubai, you can register a business in 10 minutes. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is aiming to shift the kingdom away from oil and toward private-sector innovation. But the question remains: will that economic freedom lead to political freedom? My honest answer: not yet. When people become wealthier, they don’t necessarily demand democracy—they often fear losing what they have. In places like the UAE or Qatar, democracy is seen by many not as a promise, but a threat.

We also raised a controversial topic: borders. Many of the Middle East’s borders were drawn after World War I, with little regard for ethnic or sectarian realities. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon—all artificial constructs. It’s not surprising that so many of these states struggle with governance. That doesn’t mean we should redraw the map tomorrow, but it does mean we need to rethink how power is shared. Amjad made the case for decentralization—not based on ethnicity or religion, but on political logic. Federalism, not fragmentation. And I agree. The alternative is continued violence.

There was also a fair question from the audience: Can you be a devout Muslim and a classical liberal? My view is yes. In fact, most of the countries showing progress on liberal values—like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Tunisia—are Muslim-majority. The reforms are happening not in spite of Islam, but alongside it. We’re also seeing a shift in the theological discourse. There’s no one monolithic Islam. There are many interpretations—and the dominant ones are beginning to change.

Amjad had one of my favorite lines of the whole event:

“You don’t need to like someone to tolerate them. You can think they have a punchable face—you just don’t punch them.”

That’s the essence of liberalism. Not agreement, but coexistence.

We also talked about the collapse of U.S.-funded media projects in the region. Programs like Radio Sawa and Alhurra have been defunded or gutted. Some deserved to be. Corruption was rampant. But there’s something disturbing about watching the so-called leaders of the free world dismantle their own soft power tools while authoritarian regimes ramp up theirs. Elon Musk tweeting that U.S. global media is criminal? Not helpful.

That’s where IBB comes in. We’re not a government agency. We don’t take taxpayer money. We’re private, nimble, and—most importantly—voluntary. People engage with us because they want to. No guns. No propaganda. Just ideas.

And these ideas work. We’ve now reached over 1 billion views across our content platforms. People are hungry for alternatives. Not because we’re telling them what to think, but because they want something that actually works.

I’ll leave you with this: if liberalism can succeed in the Middle East—the most challenging region on Earth—it can succeed anywhere. That’s why we do what we do. That’s why we’ll keep doing it.

Thanks for reading. As always, your thoughts are welcome.