Scholars Assess State of Democratic Movements in Middle East.

The article reports that scholars of the United States assessed the state of democratic movements in the Middle East. The scholars expressed varying levels of optimism about the near-term prospects for democracy in the region. According to the scholars, social scientists and the news media often display a faulty understanding of the process of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. Feriha Perekli, a graduate student in Middle Eastern studies and linguistics at Indiana University at Bloomington, said that the tenets and institutions of Islam are not necessarily a serious barrier to democracy.