WASHINGTON DC

The Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center presents the second

Michael Van Dusen Lecture on the Middle East: ISIS is About the Arab Past, Not the Future

with

Rami Khouri

Former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; Senior Public Policy Fellow and former Director, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut; and syndicated columnist, The Daily Star

Khouri will analyze the many causes in the past two generations that converged to give birth to ISIS, noting that it reflects more the poor and often brutal quality of modern Arab statehood than any mass religious movement. ISIS also was not a surprise, in view of the fact that all serious mass movements in the Arab world since the 1970s have revolved around Islamist politics in one form or another. ISIS can be easily defeated militarily, but unless the underlying weaknesses and the poor quality of Arab statehood are resolved we will probably see even more brutal movements emerge in the future.

*Coffee will be served at 9:30 a.m.

About the Speaker: Rami Khouri // Former Public Policy Scholar, Director, Islam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut, Lebanon; Editor-at-large, The Daily Star