This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
Egyptian university professor and political activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been sentenced to two years in jail for “tarnishing the reputation of Egypt. ”
Story from the BBC
More on Professor Ibrahim
Translation of an article that helped get Ibrahim in trouble.
Tensions between Muslims and Christians in Egypt are worsening. Christians (mostly Copts) account for ten percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million. The government is inclined to deny the problem is sectarian.
See: Michael Slackman, “As Tensions Rise for Egypt’s Christians, Officials Call Clashes Secular,” New York Times, August 2, 2008
Renowned Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine has died.
Story at the BBC
Another story about Chahine from the BBC
A new film comedy in Egypt that challenges religous prejudice has the country buzzing.
Story at the BBC
Story at the BBC
The phrase “inshallah” (”If God has willed it,” or, more simply, “God willing”) has long been a part of sentences virtually every time a speaker of Arabic uses the future tense. These days, with religious piety (genuine as well as affected) on the rise in Egypt, it is being employed when people use the present tense as [...]
Dinitia Smith reviews a new translation of Naguib Mahfouz’s 1945 novel Cairo Modern. The story is set in the 1930s as Egypt moves into its final decades of monarchical rule and British meddling before the revolution of 1952 that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. It chronicles the challenges to traditional and religious life in the [...]
When you ask for directions in Egypt, people will enthusiastically try to help, even if they haven’t a clue where to tell you to go.
See: Michael Slackman, “Memo From Cairo: Don’t Leave Home Without a Cultural Compass,” The New York Times, June 11, 2008.
Egyptian novelist (he is also a dentist in Cairo) Alaa al-Aswany, author of the best selling 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building (on our reading list in the syllabus), is profiled in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine in an article by Pankaj Mishra (”Where Alaa al-Aswany is Writing From”). Among the comments al-Aswany made to Mishra: [...]
Currently, there is serious labor unrest in Egypt, a country where strikes are against the law.
Story from the BBC
See also: Michael Slackman, “In Egypt, Technology Helps Spread Discontent of Workers,” New York Times, April 7, 2008, A6
See related story on rising prices in Egypt.
BBC Middle East