Something is a better message than nothing

Sam Tadros, MA in Democracy and Governance student, has some advice for helping his fellow Egyptian liberals improve the resonance of their message:

Because liberals have been obsessed with unity that lacks any meaningful ideological content, they’ve forgotten that they don’t really share many interests between themselves. They don’t share an economic outlook. They differ on social policies. They also differ on foreign policy. The only thing they have in common is what they are not. They are not Islamists. Note that, perhaps without anyone even noticing, this ends up framing the debate as one between Islamists and the rest. This is a losing debate for the liberals,-not because Egyptians are ignorant religious people who blindly obey their religious leaders, but because, given the choice between an incoherent political message and a coherent Islamist message, Egyptians will choose the latter.

In other words, you can’t beat something with nothing.