Tag: egypt

Egypt poet refuses to pay court fine

Egypt poet refuses to pay court fine:

A renowned Egyptian poet, Abdel Moati Hegazi, has refused to pay a court fine of US $3,500 following his conviction for insulting a religious extremist, Yusuf al Badari, depicting him as an enemy of freedom of thought, expression and thought.

His colleagues at the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (Hrinfo) salute him for standing firm on his principles. They also call on all advocates of free speech in Egypt to extend solidarity to Hegazi and at the same time resist actions by the likes of Badari.

Following his refusal to pay the fine, a court in southern Cairo set aside 8 August as the date when Hegazi’s home furniture will be sold.

The renowned poet’s case is among a string of insult lawsuits brought against writers, thinkers and poets by al Badari. Ironically, the religious extremist would sometimes sue people for insulting God.

If there is any kind of collection to help out Abdel Moati Hegazi pay his fine (or replace his furniture), I would like to donate to it and publicize it. And if there is a fund to get lawyers to go after al-Badari in any way possible, or simply make his life a living hell, I would like to donate to that, too.

I am not sure what Hegazi called al-Badari, but surely a public figure like al-Badari is exempt from the protection given ordinary people. Or is that not the case in Egypt?

Napoleon’s Egypt

Uber-blogger and Middle East historian Juan Cole has a new blog on Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt, the first modern invasion of the Middle East by a Western power. It’s called Napoleon’s Egypt and goes along with Cole’s new book, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East. Cole is appears to be going through the invasion chronologically, quoting from memoirs and and biographies written at the time — in the excerpt below, from an eye-witness account of how Napoleon came decide on invasion:

‘In the month of August 1797 he [Bonaparte] wrote “that the time was not far distant when we should see that, to destroy the power of England effectually, it would be necessary to attack Egypt.”

In the same month he wrote to Talleyrand, who had just succeeded Charles de Lacroix as Minister of Foreign Affairs, “that it would be necessary to attack Egypt, which did not belong to the Grand Signior [Ottoman Emperor].” Talleyrand replied, “that his ideas respecting Egypt were certainly grand, and that their utility could not fail to be fully appreciated.”

More from that except here.

Napoleon Nb

Moustache vendetta

Am in calm, clean Morocco for the summer, but this story made me miss Egypt:

When an elder was kidnapped in a clan dispute in conservative southern Egypt, the al-Arab family’s worst fears were soon realised — they received a package containing his moustache, local media reported on Sunday.

The man himself was returned uninjured, but the use of the new shaving tactic sent shockwaves through the town of Mahrusa, near Luxor, 650km south of Cairo, where a man’s honour is measured by the size of his moustache, the al-Gomhuria daily said.

Return to semi-regular blogging schedule soon.

WWII mines Egypt

I have this article on qantara.de on the WWII mines and other ammunition left behind on Egypt’s North coast. The Egyptian government wants to re-launch its efforts to clear the zones that are affected, but wants to have it all paid for by its international donors.

As Egypt has brought to perfection the art of donor-shopping probably more then any other nation, I guess in the end they’ll find someone stupid enough to pay the bills submitted by the Egyptian army.

In contrast to what appears to be common in other countries, the Egyptian army maintains its monopoly over mine-clearing. Which is why not much has happened until today and which is why most donors rightfully so are reluctant to contribute.

Excerpt from the English translation:

It was not until 1982 that the Egyptian government acknowledged the problem. “It was a question of costs and priorities,” Fathy El Shazly, director of the national northwest coast development program, frankly admits.

He refers to the history of his country, which after the Second World War was first busy gaining independence and then tied up in four wars against Israel. A bit more haste would have been advisable, though.

According to the NGO “Landmine Monitor,” there have been 8,313 mine-related casualties in this region since 1982, including 619 deaths. As can be observed again and again whenever natural disasters or accidents occur, however, the Egyptian government evidently does not place much importance on its own citizens. It has done little to help the victims to date.

The Egyptian army did clear some 3.5 million pieces of ammunition out of the desert between 1982 and 1999, but since then a lack of funds has slowed down their efforts – at least that’s the official line.

Since things are moving much too slowly for the private sector, which has great plans for the region, some hotels and oil companies have begun to remove buried ammunition at their own expense in order to build access roads to their projects.

Alain Roussillon died yesterday

The French scholar Alain Roussillon, an expert on Egypt and the director of the CEDEJ in Cairo, passed away yesterday from a after suffering from a brain hemorrhage. He will be buried in Egypt, where his mother came from.

I last saw Roussillon on March 5, when we had a long chat about the constitutional amendments and current political situation in Egypt. I remember him being concerned about the rising social tensions in Egypt, seeing in them both an opportunity for the expression of genuine grievances and the return of la question sociale in Egyptian politics and a potential danger. He compared the present situation to the atmosphere of the year preceding the July 1952 coup — the Cairo fire and ensuing riot, the political intrigue, the massive social disaffection and rejection of the government. Some of the large-scale strikes we had seen at the time made him suspect that the legendary patience of long-suffering Egyptians was wearing thin.

“Street protests in Egypt are dangerous – you will have thousands of deaths in case of a riot. Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the regime really control the street,” he said. “The January 1952 model is reproducible.” We differed somewhat on that point, but agreed on one thing: the greatest threat to the regime is not the Muslim Brotherhood or some other political group, but popular attitudes towards it, and there are few countries where the state lacks as much legitimacy as Egypt.

He was very well versed in the debates in the Egyptian press and intellectual circles — the way positions are taken and framed, the coded references and intellectual antecedents of the idées reçues of Egyptian discourse. He was also alarmed, as someone who has spent most of his adult life chronicling Egyptian society, of the ascendancy of shallow conservative and materialistic ideas in Egyptian life — the entire ecosystem of ideas and practices that has largely taken over this country in the past 20-30 years, ideas he explored by examining the new Islamic writings that were came out of the globalization of Islam.

He was a fascinating conversation partner, I regret that we will not meet again.

The announcement of his death, information on the church service, and a note from the CEDEJ staff follows after the jump in French and Arabic.
Continue reading Alain Roussillon died yesterday

‘The Source’ found dead

Ashraf Marwan, maybe the most colorful person of London’s Arab community, has died under unclear circumstances. Some believe him to be ‘The Source’ which tipped off Mossad prior to the 1973 war – others say he acted as a double agent misleading the Israelis.

From The Times:

Mr Marwan’s death will send shockwaves across the Middle East and among some of Britain’s wealthiest people. His associates included Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer, Ken Bates, the football club chairman, the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the late Tiny Rowland.

If found to be murder, his death will carry echoes of last year’s assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent.

In any case, he was close to Nasser and Sadat and must have made his fortune thanks to the connections he developed during that time, in particular when he overlooked the businesses of the Egyptian military in the 1970.

Algeria attacks Mother of the World

How dare they?

Amine Azaoui outrages Egypt
on Monday, June 25 @ 13:40:53 CDT

The head of the National library , M Amine Zaoui sparked a wave of controversy after his statement to one the Egyptian daily newspapers “Al Watani al yaoum” in which he reconsidered the idea of “Egypt, mother of the world” and the wagon of the Arab world.

M Zaoui went on, in his critics by declaring that the Egyptian cultural week in the event “Algiers , capital of Arab cultures” was the worst one so far. He added that “Egypt was no longer the hub of the Arab culture and that the Egyptian men of culture have no cause to defend, besides, the Arab language in Egypt is clumsy”.

These declarations, outraged many Egyptian literary men , among them the poet, Mohamed Ibrahim Aboussena , who replied to Amine Azaoui in these words” Egypt is still the mainstream , and Amine Azaoui has just to look at the reality”.

As to the Egyptian philosopher, Mahmoud Amine Al Alam, this one declared in response to Azaoui’s statement” Egypt is leading the Arab world in terms of plurality, and the fact of belittling this reality is a lie.”

So troublesome, these Algerians… when they’re not complaining about Egypt’s stranglehold over the Arab League (they are the only other country that seems to take the Arab League seriously) they try to belittle it. La h’shouma.

The Quranists

I haven’t had time lately to look into the arrests of several members of a “Quranist” group — people who reject the hadith and present a reformist practice of Islam based entirely on the Quran — but as well as being a blatant violation of freedom of belief, there seems to be several other overlapping elements here. One is that at least one of the Quranists, Amr Tharwat, is involved in the pro-democracy NGO Ibn Khaldun Center, run by the prominent Egyptian-American liberal Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Tharwat was involved in election monitoring.

The other is that the arrests could be a response to the Quranists’ mockery of al-Azhar recent fatwas about urine-drinkling and adult breastfeeding, which cause a furore here last month and put the august institution on the defensive. By al-Azhar’s Sunni standards, the Quranists’ beliefs are highly unorthodox if not downright sacrilegious (I don’t know enough about the Quranists to be sure). So what we are seeing here is yet another form of the state Islamism that has become rampant in Egypt since the 1970s. Who needs to worry about the Muslim Brotherhood when you already have bigots in power?

I’ve pasted some statements about this case below, with links to the Quranists’ website.

Continue reading The Quranists

Jim Crow tourism

The Sinai peninsula–sight of Egypt’s booming Red sea tourism, of presidential palaces and international conferences, of disenfranchised Bedouin tribes, arms and drugs smuggling, and several terrorist bombings–is a weird place. (Scott Anderson pointed this out in an excellent article in Vanity Fair a while back.)

Driving to a beach in Sinai last weekend, I ran the usual gamut of road-blocks and nosy police officials. I also saw something (to me, at least) new. At a gas station and road stop near the Suez Canal, I went in to use the restrooms. But I was shooed away from the WC inside–where Egyptians were going–and directed next door, where a large, gleaming building was labelled, in large gold letters, “Tourist toilets” (“Hamamaat El-Siaaha”). These toilets cost 1 pound (the Egyptian toilets cost 50 piastres) and were spotless, furbished with large gilded mirros, faux-jewelled hangers and plentiful toilet paper. Next to the signs for “women” and “men” there were also two technicolor portraits of Western movie stars, mounted in oval frames. I didn’t recognize the male actor, but the patroness of the women’s tourist bathrooms was none other than Charlize Theron.

Anyway, I’m all for clean new bathrooms but there is something deeply disturbing about the level of enforced segregation between Egyptians and foreigners that seems to be spreading across the tourism industry. An argument can be made for making foreigners pay a higher fee at the Egyptian museum or at the pyramids. But what argument can be made for having a two-tiered system in which foreigners and Egyptians are actually banned from using each other’s facilities?