Coming straight from a day of reporting on the latest unrest between Israel and Gaza, the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was at the Frontline Club on 14 November to discuss the historic events that have reshaped the Middle East. He reflected on their political context, history and the evolving landscape as documented in his new book, The Arab uprisings: The people want the fall of the regime.

Joined by Samir Farah of BBC Arabic, Bowen noted that, in retrospect, even people who had intimate knowledge of the region were naïve as the events unfolded. When leaving for Egypt as things began, Bowen thought he would be back in three days and packed as many shirts. As it turned out, he would be gone for over a month and spent much of the past two years documenting the aftermath.

“The thing which actually makes me feel OK about the fact that I didn’t see it coming is that Mubarak did not see it coming, Assad didn’t see it coming, MI6, and CIA didn’t and actually looking back on it, we should have seen it coming. People knew that some change was pending,” he said.

Both Farah and Bowen also dispelled some of the myths arising from the desperate act of suicide on December 17 2010 in Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself after being prevented from selling vegetables on the street. The tragedy is widely regarded as a catalyst, along with food inflation, drought, shifting demographics and other macro and socioeconomic realities, not just for the removal of the country’s president but also for the spread of unrest.

“Early on in Tunisia, there were reports saying that [Bouazizi] was a university graduate who had to sell vegetables because he couldn’t get a job and university graduates identified with that. Actually he wasn’t, he hadn’t even finished high school …[but] he was supporting his family from a young age and he just became an archetype which people could identify with and that was the thing in the end that made it happen,” he said.

Bowen also cautioned against oversimplification, not only of the diverse cultures and regions in the present day, but also in drawing parallels to other historic events. As it developed, the situation at first seemed reminiscent of Eastern Europe. Describing it as the “Arab Spring” references the Prague Spring and by extension the dominoes falling in the former Soviet Union in 1989. There was an expectation that by the summer of 2011 there would be a whole new Middle East. Not so, Bowen pointed out:

“It is going to be a generation-long process of change as we are seeing in Syria and we would have seen in Libya had there not been foreign intervention,”

Meanwhile, democracy in Egypt is still in its infancy:

“I have [heard] pious Muslims … say that [what the] Muslim Brotherhood [needs to do is not teach them] how to pray … they need to provide jobs, better healthcare, end corruption, make things efficient otherwise [they] might have to vote for somebody else,” he said, adding also that since the revolution, the amount of anti-Western feeling is increasing exponentially.

Audience questions leaned towards predicting what would happen next, particularly about the continuing devastation of the civil war in Syria and as Israel and Gaza began heating up in a dramatically altered Middle East.

“I think Syria is headed for a deepening war … some kind of sectarian fragmentation and going through the sort of horrendous experience that Lebanon went through in its 15-year civil war with the capacity too, to destabilise other parts of the region, you are already seeing it in Beirut … Turkey, in Iraq,” he said, adding that Israel is conducting an operation in Gaza now in a different world than that of Cast Lead.

Also looking to the future, Farah noted that amid the uncertainty one thing is for sure; Big change is coming.

“The Middle East will never be the same,” he said.

Watch the full discussion here:

A lot has changed in the years since 9/11. The date itself has become emblematic of a change in attitudes towards Islam, perhaps most notably in the country which bore witness to the infamous attacks that day. Popular opinion has shifted, and the land of the free has become an increasingly hostile environment for Muslims. American Muslim: Freedom, Faith and Fear examines what it means to be a Muslim in America today and the consequences of the fact that, for many, the words Islam and terrorism are now permanently intertwined. 

The documentary, featuring Karen Zarindast from BBC Persian and Samir Farah from BBC Arabic TV, was screened at the Frontline Club. The team travelled across the length and breadth of the United States in order to examine the lives and experiences of a vast range of American Muslims. They discovered a country in which fear and confusion surrounds Islam, and where politicians and the media often foment unrest in order to further their own objectives. What was once a thriving cultural melting pot where Muslims were welcomed has now developed into a nation over which a sinister and pervasive Islamaphobia has taken hold in the last decade.

A question and answer session followed, during which Darius Bazargan, the film’s producer, Azadeh Moaveni, the author of Lipstick Jihad, and Zarindast discussed the film and some of the key themes that emerged. One of the most important issues was the impact of American foreign policy, as Bazargan suggested in response to the question of whether or not American Muslims will ever be able to escape the dogma associated with 9/11:

“I don’t think there’s any chance of going back to the quiet life, especially because of the impact of American foreign policy in Islamic countries; either through the involvement with Israel or elsewhere. It will be less resonant if there are fewer coffins coming home, and there will be fewer coffins coming home if American foreign policy changes.”

The panel also talked about some of the difficulties faced when filming, including budgetary and time constraints, as Bazargan made clear:

“We had editorial difficulties, you’re a slave to the road in these kinds of documentaries. There were lots of interesting people we had to drop from the final cut simply because they popped up at the wrong point in our journey and didn’t fit the arc of discovery."

As the evening ended somewhat acrimoniously, with conflicting views being raised from the floor over what is clearly an emotive issue to many, Zarindast did offer a consolatory take on her experience:

“I asked people if they would leave the country. They said no. I think it was fascinating, because I spoke to people in Birmingham after some of the recent trouble and they had never been to Pakistan or Bangladesh but they said that they would leave England in an instant. Nearly everybody I spoke to in America said no… this is their country.”