Today’s guest is Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, the co-founder of Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB), a nonprofit that translates books and articles about limited government, freedom of thought, and market economics into Arabic and other languages, and distributes them for free in the Middle East and other parts of the world. (Full disclosure: Reason‘s Nick Gillespie is on the board of IBB.)
Gillespie talked with Al Mutar about IBB’s new book, Untold Stories of the Middle East, which celebrates entrepreneurs in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whom IBB has given startup grants; how the October 7 attacks on Israel and fighting in Gaza and Lebanon will affect the region for decades; and what it was like to grow up in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein, various Islamic terrorist groups, and the U.S. occupation. This conversation was taped in front of a live audience in New York.
0:00—Introduction
1:26—Untold Stories Of The Middle East
4:20—Micro grants in the Middle East
6:20—The hope of Kurdistan
9:00—Beirut’s post-explosion struggles & recovery
11:12—Oil vs. the entrepreneurial spirit in the Middle East
14:20—Building a vocabulary of freedom with Ideas Beyond Borders
18:20—Censorship & internet access in the Middle East
19:39—Hiring Middle Eastern translators
22:16—A brief history of political upheaval in the Middle East
30:12—The ‘liberal minority’ in Lebanon
33:29—U.S. intervention in the Middle East
39:45—Impact of October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel on peace processes in the region 44:00—Funding schools for girls in Afghanistan
46:05—The tragedy & hope of Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires
49:43—’Sanctions Boy’: Growing up in 90s Baghdad
59:04—’We don’t have the privilege to be depressed (about the Middle East)’
1:01:35—Economic freedom & self-determination restore agency
Previous appearances:
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, Melissa Chen: Bringing Enlightenment Values to the Middle East, May 25, 2022
Faisal Al Mutar Fights Radical Islam with Western Bestsellers, September 21, 2018
Today’s sponsor:
The Reason Speakeasy. The Reason Speakeasy is a monthly, unscripted conversation in New York City with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy that doubles as a taping of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie. Go to reason.com/events for information and tickets to the next one.
- Video Editor: Ian Keyser
