Current Analysis Egypt Struggles to Control Anti-War Protests For the second consecutive Friday, thousands of Egyptians gathered at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque on March 28, 2003 to voice their opposition to the US-led invasion and bombing of Iraq. But it was immediately apparent upon arrival at al-Azhar that the March 28 demonstration would be Paul Schemm • 8 min read
MER Article Unsettling the Authorities Nowhere has the belittling designation “the Arab street” been more overused than in descriptions of Egypt, the most populous and politically central Arab state. Egypt’s richly textured history of political opposition, one of the lon¬gest in the region, is inevitably reduced to images of livid young men brandishing Mona El-Ghobashy • 18 min read
MER Article Two Miles into Limbo As many as five million Sudanese displaced by the country’s 19-year civil war live in Egypt, many on the urban margins of Cairo. Mostly poor and unemployed, the Sudanese displaced get by in an environment where no one -- the Egyptian government, civil society or the UN -- seems willing or able to he Pascale Ghazaleh • 15 min read
MER Article Solidarity in the Time of Anti-Normalization The 1979 Camp David peace treaty may have brought an end to formal hostilities between Egypt and Israel, but their peace is a cold one. Moreover, there has always been a wide gap between how this treaty shapes Egyptian foreign policy and popular Egyptian sentiment toward Israel. Since Camp David, Eg Elliott Colla • 16 min read
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 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 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' 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 Vickie Langohr • 6 min read
