Even the most anti-democratic election can reveal much about the system.
Tag: egypt
As the state’s efforts to secure churches become more centralized, church scouts play an increasingly pivotal role.
The president thinks it’s time to ‘revolutionize’ Islam. But to do so, he needs help from the country’s oldest, most prestigious Sunni university.
Set for a second term, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has evolved in tone and substance over the past four years: from soft-spoken insider to all-powerful leader.
CAIRO — Over the course of the past two months, since Ghad Party head Moussa Mostafa Moussa decided to run for president, the party and its relatively unknown candidate have found themselves suddenly wading into uncharted waters. Before he submitted his papers to the National Elections Authority on January 29, only minutes ahead of the […]
CAIRO — There are “forces of evil” that control Egypt’s media outlets, according to a statement issued last week by Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek. To protect “national security” and prevent “spreading fear throughout society,” Sadek instructed public prosecutors and regulators to monitor media outlets and arrest anyone who disseminates or broadcasts false news. However, it […]
CAIRO — I was four years old when, while visiting a relative at his home, he urged me to eat some food. He told me playfully, as children are often told: “Eat, you donkey.” But, according to my mother, I refused. It bothered me that he was asking me to eat in this way. I […]
CAIRO — “Angry” was the way many described President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s improvised speech during the inauguration ceremony of the Zohr natural gas field on January 31. The president declared that the only way Egypt’s national security could be compromised was over his “dead body” and the “dead body of the military.” But with whom […]
Egypt’s Zohr gas field is the largest ever natural gas find in the Mediterranean. But reshaping the global energy balance of power must factor in other equations.
MINYA — Anba Makarios, a bishop in the governorate with Egypt’s highest number of violent sectarian incidents, does not employ the usual appeasing rhetoric of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox church. He is a man who makes his voice heard but avoids being seen, expressing himself through official statements and brief phone calls to television talk shows. […]
Egypt’s St. Catherine’s Monastery holds a treasure trove of ancient texts. But spectral imaging technology shows there’s even more there than meets the eye.
In villages in Minya, Christians and Muslims are confined to separate districts, a condition that feeds into sectarian dynamics.
BIR AL-ABED — “For 20 minutes, they kept firing at us. We couldn’t hear anything else because of the sounds of the gunfire. Everybody was running. Some were trying to escape and others were looking for their children — no one was spared, young or old. When the militants were done firing, one of them […]
In the gruesome attack in Egypt on Nov. 17, 1997, three key elements came together that have driven Islamic terrorism over the past two decades.
-Essay- CAIRO — I had never really thought much about my position on the death penalty. After I watched the film The Life of David Gale, I started to ask myself how one might possibly work on an issue as difficult as this. I don’t remember if I watched the movie before or after going […]
In light of the devaluation of the Egyptian pound and increasingly difficult visa processes, more and more Egyptians are turning to domestic tourism. Yet, while tourists continue for the most part to visit South Sinai, there are still widespread security concerns over travel in the rest of the peninsula, particularly areas of North Sinai, where […]
An Egyptian writer shares her struggle with keeping bipolar disorder from invading everything she does and everyone she knows.
The restaurant ‘Garemt Akl’ (eating crime) aims to tap into Hunger Games morbidity and real-life curiosity about incarceration among Egyptians. But it is chillingly insensitive to real inmates and their families.
The absence of Christian players at the professional level can be traced to discrimination that begins young.
CAIRO — Just north of the Egyptian capital, a short ferryboat ride will take you to the southern tip of the Nile island of Warraq. It has patches of agricultural land and scattered houses and deeper in, the island resembles a typical Cairo neighborhood with tightly-stacked buildings and narrow streets packed with motorcycles and tuk-tuks. […]
CAIRO — “It’s a hobby, but it’s also more than that,” Ahmed Shaloufa says, as we climb the final ladder to his pigeon coop in the working-class district of Sayeda Zeinab. “It’s a passion.” Once inside the coop, the labyrinthine streets and megalith apartment blocks of the old city disappear from view. If you jump […]
CAIRO — The Egyptian government has blocked access to a total of 21 news and information websites since last Wednesday, including the original publisher of this article, Cairo-based Mada Masr. A security source cited by MENA, the country’s official state news agency, said that the blocked websites were disseminating “content that supports terrorism and extremism […]
The deadly Palm Sunday attacks in Egypt are just the latest example of a steady effort to remove Christianity from the Middle East. It is long past time to take action.
Categories
Delivering Amazon To The Middle East
CAIRO — Amazon announced this week that it had acquired Souq.com, the major e-commerce website in the Middle East, in a deal that has long been speculated over and whose final value came in at $650 million. While Amazon described both companies as “sharing the same DNA,” the question remains as to how the company’s […]
Restrictive and sometimes contradictory rules continue to govern issues of marriage and — heaven forbid — divorce for Egyptian Christians.
CAIRO — After Asmaa Hamdy’s release from prison, where she spent three years, she began the desperate search for her fiancé who had disappeared shortly before she was let out. A dentistry student at Al-Azhar University, Hamdy was one of the students arrested by police following the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. […]
The promise of the Tahrir Square protests has been largely unfulfilled. Yet there is some progress in how Egypt faces harassment against women.
CAIRO — Strolling through Lisbon’s hilltop alleys in 2008, I came across a shop selling uniquely designed “upcycled” products, things made by reusing material that would otherwise be discarded. The items there included a milk-carton wallet, a liquor-bottle lamp and a cereal-box notebook cover. In my young, hopeful state, I felt right at home. It […]
-Essay- 1988 As usual I sat at the front, close to the blackboard because I’m short-sighted, and to the left, so the teacher’s body wouldn’t hide what he wrote. On that particular day the teacher was absent. I don’t remember what he taught us or even who he was, but I remember the substitute who […]
CAIRO — When one woman was sexually harassed this month in Cairo, she made an unusual move: she came to an informal agreement with her attacker’s family and juvenile prosecutors to drop charges on condition that the boy get therapy and do community service. Having caught the boy who groped her hard from behind, after […]
-Analysis- CAIRO — It’s delusional to believe that simply announcing the names of the perpetrators of the St. Peter and St. Paul Church attack, or that they’ve been sentenced, will prevent a repeat of the massacre. It’s delusional to think campaigns in the media, or an official funeral, will contain the anger that is rising […]
CAIRO — There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. There are four possible written forms for each letter, depending on whether it stands alone, or comes at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Then there are diacritic symbols, indicating the script’s correct pronunciation, which hover gently above or below each letter’s lines […]
Worshipers at the Coptic Church pray for the dead and lash out at both perpetrators and Egyptian authorities. ‘They always told us to pray for those who hate and kill us. But I can’t do that anymore,’ says one.
CAIRO — Wessam Said, 28, would have liked to breastfeed her child, but something was holding her back that had nothing to do with health or social norms: as the family’s main breadwinner, she was simply working too much. “What could I do, our conditions are dire,” she said. It’s medically advised around the world […]
The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States has prompted several reactions, with those who see his political ascension as the beginning of a new phase of political unrest — of which the Arab world is feared to carry the lion’s share — being gripped by panic. Immediately following the […]
-Essay- CAIRO — I better understood the tendency of the Egyptian state and security agencies to protect themselves after a few hours at the Stasi Museum in Berlin. It was there in the grim, soviet-style offices of the Stasi — the former East German Ministry for State Security — that I remembered another office in […]
Categories
Far From Pharaohs
Twenty-six years ago, cranes were busy working on brand new buildings in Cairo. The Egyptian capital was still some distance away from the Pyramids of Giza, though the modern neighborhoods are now slowly encroaching on the iconic structures.
Categories
On This Day – October 6
CAIRO — Two months ago I set out to reserve a hotel room in the Egyptian city of Minya for a work trip. A quick and easy task, I thought. I called more than 10 hotels but they all told me they were fully booked. I was surprised because Minya is not exactly Egypt’s prime […]