Lahouari Addi, a native of Algeria, is associate professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Lyons, France, and visiting professor of political science at the University of Utah.
How well-founded are Western concerns that the nascent parliaments of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain will be captured by antidemocratic Islamists and lead to the ‘Talibanization’ of the Gulf?
Four excerpts from the Iranian press-on elections and democracy and on religious intolerance and intellectual pluralism-suggest the extent to which democratic thinking has gained a foothold in Iran.