Source: The Side of Freedom | The George W. Bush Institute
Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian democracy activist who exchanged radical Islamism for the Federalist Papers after studying in the United States, is featured in the Freedom Collection and recently shared his story with educators from across North Texas. “I don’t know how many people can say the Federalist Papers actually inspired them to quit their fanatical sort of outlook on life,” he says, “but to me … that was really empowering.”… Like Natan Sharansky a generation ago, the stories of men and women like Phyoe Phyoe, Joseph, Ammar, and Dalel keep the skeptics’ view in doubt today. Even in the Middle East, where the democracy deficit is the starkest in the world and the immediate outlook is bleak, there’s no doubt that the universal tug of freedom is present there as well.
Amanda Schnetzer is the director of the Human Freedom Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 