MER Article Giza Spaces “Itfaddalu ma‘ana,” Umm Ibrahim shouts across the alley to the next roof, “please eat with us.” “Shukran, Allah yikhalliki,” promptly comes the answer from Abu Samia and his wife, “thank you, may God keep you.” It is a sunny Friday afternoon in December, and both families have decided to eat lunch o Petra Kuppinger • 7 min read
MER Article An Expensive Toy Flanked by the Cairo citadel and the Nile on its eastern and western sides, respectively, Sayyida Zaynab, a neglected neighborhood, is but a stone’s throw away from the city center. Inhabited by poor families, its old buildings are rapidly deteriorating, while new owners haphazardly add extra rooms and extensions Fayza Hassan • 3 min read
MER Article Urban Planning and Growth in Cairo Descriptions of Cairo are dominated typically by the stark imagery of an extremely concentrated population mass near asphyxiation. From this perspective, one need look no further than its inhabited rooftops, its streets choked with traffic and pollution and its crowded cemeteries, where the living r Eric Denis • 12 min read
MER Article Facts and Figures on Cairo Despite the attention focused on the problems of cities around the world -- most recently at the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul -- surprisingly little comparable data on urban centers are available, as was found by the World Resources Institute in preparing their 1996-1997 World Resources report. Population figures, for Sally Ethelston • 2 min read
MER Article Cairo's Poor The proliferation of more than 100 squatter communities with some 6 million inhabitants signifies only one, but perhaps the starkest, component of the growing socioeconomic disparity [1] in Cairo since Sadat’s infitah (“opening up” or economic liberalization) in 1974 and the more recent implementation of the IMF’s structural Asef Bayat • 12 min read
MER Article Al Miskin International/Tainted Love What is up in Egypt? In Cairo, Mustafa Bakri, was deposed as editor-in-chief of al-Ahrar following the failure of the mutiny he led in the halls of the Liberal Party to depose of its leader, Mustafa Kamal Murad. Bakri stormed the party headquarters with 600 armed followers and had himself voted pres Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Nasrallah, On Boys, Girls and the Veil Yousry Nasrallah’s new documentary film, On Boys, Girls and the Veil, touches on a paradoxical aspect of Egyptian filmmaking. Despite the ubiquitous hijab -- the neo-Islamic “veil” -- in Egyptian life, covered women are quite rare in the cinema. The reason for this is that both filmmakers and Islami Walter Armbrust • 6 min read
MER Article Copts in the "Egyptian Fabric" To talk about Egyptian Christians as a “minority” is to open a can of worms. The sensitivity of the relationship between Egyptian Muslims and Christians was evident in 1994 when a conference on minorities in the Middle East, supposed to be held in Cairo, included the Copts of Egypt on its agenda. [1 Karim El-Gawhary • 6 min read
MER Article "We Are a Civil Party with an Islamic Identity" It came as a surprise to many when, in January 1996, a group of young Egyptian Islamists, mainly from the cadres of the outlawed but still active Muslim Brothers, announced the formation of a new Islamist party in Egypt. Al-Wasat, the founders claim, is a civil party with an Islamic Karim El-Gawhary • 7 min read
MER Article What Does the Gama'a Islamiyya Want? Tal‘at Qasim got his start in al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya [1] (the Islamic Group) in the 1970s when it took control of many student organizations in the Egyptian universities. He led the student union in Minya, a hotbed of the Islamist movement, and later was a founding member of the majlis al-shura (gov Hisham Mubarak • 18 min read
MER Article Shari'a of Civil Code? Egypt's Parallel Legal Systems Egyptian courts have increasingly become a site of political struggle between Islamists and secularists. In a state that restricts political parties and open political debate, courts are now one of the main venues for political expression for groups such as the Muslim Brothers. In the last few years Karim El-Gawhary • 7 min read
MER Article Sex Tourism in Cairo She doesn’t look like a classic madam. About 50 years old, Hagga lives in a simple flat in the chic Cairene quarter of Muhandisin. Her black abaya (cape and headscarf) evince a more traditional outlook. Even her language is full of religious references. “Tomorrow you can have two girls, God willing. Karim El-Gawhary • 5 min read
