Current Analysis Antinomies of the Saad Eddin Ibrahim Case In the latest twist in the bizarre saga of the Saad Eddin Ibrahim case, on July 29 an Egyptian state security court sentenced the American University in Cairo (AUC) sociology professor to seven years in prison, and possibly hard labor, for the second time. Ibrahim, a dual Egyptian-American citizen well-regarded Mona El-Ghobashy • 8 min read
Current Analysis Sparks of Activist Spirit in Egypt For a few days in October 2000, near the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada, it looked as though Egypt's student movement had finally found its voice again after years of quiescence. Students at Cairo University and other schools demonstrated daily and even clashed with security forces dur Paul Schemm • 7 min read
Current Analysis Explaining Egypt's Targeting of Gays Note: Hossam Bahgat, author of this article, was dismissed from his position at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights two days after it was published. EOHR's secretary-general has commented in the Egyptian press that he won't defend the 52 men arrested on the Queen Boat because Hossam Bahgat • 6 min read
MER Article Downveiling Veiling, particularly youth veiling, has captured the rapt attention of the Western media and scholarly community. Whether in France, Iran, Turkey or Egypt, veiling -- the adoption by women of Islamic dress (al-zayy al-islami) -- is often represented in highly ideological terms. Veiling has been explained as an assertion of Linda Herrera • 9 min read
MER Article Take Them Out of the Ballgame On January 2, 2001, newly elected parliamentary deputy and Muslim Brother Gamal Heshmat submitted an inquiry to Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni concerning the publication by the General Organization for Cultural Palaces (GOCP) of three novels containing what the MP described as "explicitly indecent material amounting to pornography." Samia Mehrez • 15 min read
Current Analysis Frosty Reception for US Religious Freedom Commission in Egypt What if you had a party and no one came? On March 22, members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)—visiting Cairo on a fact-finding tour—waited in vain for members of Egyptian political parties and civil society groups to arrive at the commission's Vickie Langohr • 7 min read
MER Article Economic Reform in Egypt Texts Reviewed Ray Bush, Economic Crisis and the Politics of Reform in Egypt (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999). Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard, eds. Directions of Change in Rural Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998). Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State i Agnieszska Paczynska • 5 min read
Current Analysis Cracks in Egypt's Electoral Engineering November 8 marks the beginning of the third and final round of elections to the lower house of parliament in Egypt, the largest Arab country and the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid. With 282 of the 444 races now complete, results so far have included a strikingly poor showing Vickie Langohr • 6 min read
MER Article Policing the Illicit Peripheries of Egypt's Tourism Industry Tourist destinations are never simply reducible to the sun, sand and sea they offer. The lucrative international trade associated with Third World tourism involves packaging and marketing areas of the world that are most devastated by contemporary economic conditions, essentially creating landscapes Laleh Behbehanian • 9 min read
MER Article Egyptian Environmental Activists' Uphill Battle In 1990, citizens of Alexandria organized to fight the loss of public access to a street in a main downtown square. The city had given the street to the World Health Organization for a planned expansion of their local offices. In a landmark case against then-governor Ismail al-Gawsaqi, the citizen Jennifer Bell • 4 min read
MER Article Mining for Fish Around 10,000 of the estimated million people employed in Egypt’s fishing sector are based in ‘Izbat al-Burg, situated at the northernmost tip of the Nile’s Damietta Branch and bordered on the east by the vast Lake Manzala. As recently as nine years ago, Lake Manzala was a major fishing area and a co Amal Sabri, Ray Bush • 12 min read
Current Analysis Egypt Harasses Human Rights Activists Family and friends of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, chair of Egypt's Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies, breathed a huge sigh of relief on August 10, when Ibrahim was finally released on bail by prosecution authorities. The arrest at gunpoint of this internationally renowned pro-democracy activist Nicola Pratt • 5 min read
