Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Saad Eddin Ibrahim teaches political sociology at the American University in Cairo and is the board chairman at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. Formerly he was the director of the Center for Arab Unity Studies, in Cairo, and the head of the Arab Affairs Unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. He founded the Initiative for Peace and Cooperation in the Middle East, as well as both the Arab Organization for Human Rights, in Cairo, and the Arab Council of Childhood and Development. His publications include رياح الشرق: الديمقراطية بين المد والجذر (Winds of the East: democracy between ebb and flow), Cairo, Ibn Khaldun Center, 2008; شرق اوسط جديد غاضب اسلام ديمقراطي (New and angry Middle East, democratic Islam), Cairo, Ibn Khaldun Center, 2006; النظام الاجتماعي الجديد (The new Arab social order), Cairo, Arabic Culture Center, 1998; and المجتمع والدولة في الوطن العربي (Society and state in the Arab world), Beirut, Arab Unity Studies Center, 1996. Born in 1938 in Mansura, Egypt, Ibrahim holds a B.A. from Cairo University (1960) and a Ph.D. from Washington University (1968).

Tyrants who seek to exploit religion to legitimize their actions and dominate God's faithful are opening the gates of hell for themselves, their peoples and countries, and are harming Islam….

There exist devout Muslim faithful who accept and rally behind this attractive divine slogan ["Islam is the solution"] without questioning: where and when did it serve a society without problems?…

Muslim Arabs are the ones who manipulate these religious slogans, but not non-Arab Muslims. This explains why a third of the world's Muslims currently live under an elected democratic rule while the other third lives in the shadow of non-elected tyrannical systems. This last third is made up of Muslim Arabs who transform the slogan "Islam is the solution" into a problem. And God knows best".

–Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "Even if Islam Were the Solution, Muslim Arabs are the Problem," Ahl AlQuran, May 20, 2008