A reflection from Egypt, where a culture of warmth and feeling is suddenly shut down.
Source: MADA MASR
Mada Masr is an independent Egyptian online newspaper, founded in June 2013, with content in Arabic and English.
Egyptian students won’t attend in-person classes again until September. In the case of most private schools, there won’t be any refunds either to the mostly middle-class families.
CAIRO — Like many other laborers, delivery workers are not able to practice social distancing during the novel coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the service they provide helps protect customers — largely middle and upper-class citizens — by keeping those people out of busy shops where they might come in contact wth the illness. […]
The camera pans across families waiting around with their luggage and children. Men stand with rifles slung over their shoulders, ready to board the evacuation buses north. Migrating birds pass overhead. “Where are they going, do you know?” asks a voice, from the man holding the camera. “Every year, they go to their homes and […]
Egypt’s longest-serving president, ruling from 1981 until 2011, has died at the age of 91. From humble beginnings to iron-clad rule of the largest Middle East nation.
‘Where do we go to die, when we have lived thousands of lifetimes in a world that was not made for us?’
Nine years after the Jan. 25 popular revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, so much of the hopes failed to materialize. But not everything.
Throughout the country’s turbulent history, efforts to establish a government by and for the people have always come up short.
CAIRO — In Egypt, all imported meat must be certified as “halal,” meaning that it has been procured, stored and shipped in accordance with Islamic law. Obtaining this certificate is a crucial requirement for meat suppliers to be able to access the lucrative Egyptian market. The Egyptian government licenses a number of “certifiers’ around the […]
When reality transcends constitutional and legal provisions, you must be extra clever about social media use.
Changes are afoot, and yet writer Mohamed Naeem struggles to see light at the end of the dark tunnel into which Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has led the Egyptian people.
The editor of Mada Masr, a Worldcrunch partner publication based in Cairo, explains how they wound up making news itself last month.
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Inside Iraq’s Tuk-Tuk Revolution
What began as a slogan shared among Facebook users has since morphed into a full-blown, youth-led movement for deep structural changes in the war-torn country.
A Manifesto for Tali’at, a new movement seeking to put the feminist cause at the center of the battle for Palestinian rights.
CAIRO — Trapped in the ordinary life of waking up early to get on with daily housework or visiting with extended family, a group of young upper Egyptian girls had a simple dream: to play soccer. But they were uncertain whether the traditional society in which they live would allow them to realize their goal. […]
They have their differences, of course, but the interests of Egypt and Israel have increasingly aligned since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014.
Alaa was taken away by the Egyptian state. Mohamed al-Baqer, a human rights lawyer, was also detained when he showed up to attend Alaa’s interrogation.
CAIRO — Something big — that we do not yet fully understand — is happening in Egypt’s halls of power. Maybe we know some of it, and will get to know more with time. Perhaps we won’t learn more at any time in the near future. What we do know is that the build-up to […]
There are plenty of reasons for pessimism. But we also need to keep trying — and hoping — for ways to cooperate across continents.
BEIRUT — Located in the heart of Beirut’s vibrant Hamra Street, an area that served as a hub for intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, Metro al-Madina is an independent theater company and cabaret. The theater was founded in 2012 by Hisham Jaber & co. from the rubble of an abandoned theater with aspirations of […]
CAIRO — “Take care and hopefully see you soon. :)” I end the short letter to my family with a few requests for items to bring on their next visit, then hand it to one of my cellmates to give to his wife, who will pass it on to my mother the day after her […]
Hany Rashed’s Facebook-based Baba Museum displays personal objects of dead people and plays with nostalgic idea of the past.
CAIRO — Some people prefer working in the shadows. Egypt“s vast informal economy has drawn the focus of government officials in recent years. Authorities have been looking to merge the informal economy with the formal economy as quickly as possible in order to boost official economic figures, which have been marked by low rates of […]
After the death in prison of deposed President Mohammed Morsi, rights organizations accuse again Egypt’s authorities of medical negligence within prisons.
Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Salah has been turned into a symbol of pride, modesty, and good morals. But what is at the heart of the hero worship?
CAIRO — If Egypt’s daily newspapers are your only source of news, you might have woken up Tuesday to discover that a citizen by the name of Mohamed Morsi al-Ayat died yesterday during a court hearing on espionage charges. In actuality, the seemingly unremarkable 67-year-old was the first democratically elected, civilian president of Egypt. A […]
By distinguishing between refugees and migrants, international law underestimates the plight of people displaced by poverty and climate change.
CAIRO — Using sign language, Aya Mohamed, an ambitious secretary in a government-owned institution, explains that she is verbally bullied when she pursues simple daily activities, such as buying something. Mute and deaf, the 29-year-old has only her lips and hands to use to communicate her needs to a seller, and is often met with […]
CAIRO — Two years after Egypt joined other nations as a signatory of the 2016 Paris Agreement, many questions remain over what the Egyptian government is planning to do in order to adapt to some of the inevitable consequences of climate change. Egypt contributes only about 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions (the biggest contributors […]
Proposed changes to the Constitution could reshape the role of the Armed Forces, even giving them authority to annul unfavorable election results, experts warn.
CAIRO — On Oct. 1, 2017, the submarine S-42 set sail from the ThyssenKrupp shipyard in Kiel, northern Germany. The fourth of four submarines ordered by the Egyptian government since the start of the Arab spring — at a cost of 1.4 billion euros — quietly passed through the Kiel Canal to the port city […]
An art exhibition in Dubai depicts an alternative story of the Middle East, using oil as a starting point.
With its abundance of sunshine and adequate wind, Egypt is well suited to embrace green-energy alternatives. Instead it’s opting for old-fashioned coal.
Family and friends waited for incarcerated Egyptian blogger Shady Abu Zeid to be able to arrive at his father’s funeral.
Dubbed ‘the International,’ a young Egyptian computer programmer had built a program to scrape user data from Facebook. But the same practice is routinely done by the government and large corporations.
Egyptian society simply doesn’t recognize the reality of atheism, and often punishes anyone who declares it publicly.
CAIRO — The Democratic Party chalked up victories across the United States in the midterm elections on November 6, gaining control of the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. And even if the Republicans still hold control of the Senate, the outcome of the midterms breaks up the Republican monopoly in […]
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Stop Victim-Blaming Egypt’s Copts
-OpEd- CAIRO — Following last Friday’s attack on two buses and a microbus in Egypt’s Minya governorate, killing at least seven Coptic Christians and injuring 16 others, both domestic and international media have deployed subtle and not-so-subtle examples of “victim-blaming” in their coverage. Egyptian media highlighted the poor condition of the road on which the […]
CAIRO — “Wednesday isn’t blue?” Ayman looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Ok, what about your name. Isn’t it sort of reddish?” “Have you lost it?” he replied with a snort, sure I was joking. I enthusiastically started to explain the phenomenon which I’d just been reading about in a book exploring the secrets […]
Four years ago, then president Adly Mansour made sexual harassment a criminal offense. And yet, women who report such cases have been publicly shamed, demeaned and even fired.