Structured Response #7

Civil society within both the United States and the MENA region can be surprisingly similar to the unsuspecting Westerner. All across Arab society one can see CSO’s that advocate Gay Rights, women’s rights, minority rights and various religious rights just like many Liberal and secular organizations in the US. On the other hand, there are MENA CSO’s, just like some religious and Conservative organizations in the US, that advocate a more regressive approach, for instance, to Islamize society. Just like Cavatorta and Elananza stated in their work "Political Opposition in Civil Society: An Analysis of the Interactions of Secular and Religious Associations in Algeria and Jordan", secular and religious CSO's will often conflict with each other in Arab society to push for their way of social "change" in their country. However, there is also some cooperation between religious groups and secular groups as well to push for change. For example, a loose coalition was formed between Djazairouna (run by a Secular woman) and Disparus (which is "'vaguely' Islamist") to discover what happened to people kidnapped by Islamist groups (Cavatorta 571). This scenario should ring a bell for the myriad people who pay attention to American civil society.

There have been many instances in American society where religious groups and secular groups join forces for a brief amount of time to fight for something. For example, in 2009, environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and religious groups like the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light came together to "challenge Dominion Virginia Power’s plans to build a new coal-fired power plant in Virginia's Wise County"(source is here: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/news/2009/01/12/5470/faith-based-and-secular-groups-join-forces-to-fight-big-coal-in-virginia/). This is a usual example in America of how completely different civil society organizations can come out of the struggle "space" and fight a common enemy. Instead of an issue with kidnapping by Islamic groups (as what happened in MENA), however, these two US religious groups came together over a concern of environmental stability.


A show of unity between US religious organizations and secular groups, just like in Arab society, does not occur, though, with many social issues. In countries like Lebanon, there is tension between some secular pro-gay rights organizations and religious Islam organizations over the issue of gay marriage, just as there is tension over gay marriage between anti-gay rights Conservative Christian organizations and many Secular liberal organizations. This shows once again that the MENA region's civil society is not too different from America's civil society.