International human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, cover a range of mutually complementary human rights values. However, rights advocacy organisations in Egypt seem to restrict their role to (...)
The year of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt not only exposed the group's racism and bigotry, together with its delusions of grandeur and megalomania, but it also revealed the ideological reach of the international organisation, with its branches in (...)
For almost a century now, Egyptian politics have been dominated by one party even when a multi-party system was in place. From 1923 until 1952, the Wafd Party eclipsed all others. From 1952 onwards, a one-party system was introduced, leading to the (...)
The methods the Muslim Brotherhood employs to attract and recruit the young may not always be clear to outsiders. But if we are ever going to understand the violent tendencies of political Islam, we must look closely into such matters.
Since its (...)
Is it by ineluctable fate that our societies are plagued by many conflicts? Most of these conflicts reflect the crisis of a particular religious mentality and its inability to come to grips with modernism. Leaps in the way we live and think have (...)
Is it not ironic that over the past 30 years the Iranian state, ruled by the clergy and fuelled by Persian nationalism, has expanded regionally at the expense, and on the ruins, of the nation state in Arab society?
Instead of religion becoming a (...)
It is far from a conventional war between standing national armies, or even a civil war between rival domestic militias contesting control over patches of land. It is a symptom of a conflict that begins in the mind and with ideas about imposing a (...)
Of all religions, only Islam has spawned an evil stream of terror and criminality that runs against everything Islam truly stands for. A religion that brought a message of peace and kindness to all people, without exception, is being used to justify (...)
The verdict acquitting former president Hosni Mubarak of a number of charges brought against him following the 25 January Revolution triggered widespread controversy in Egypt. In revolutionary circles the ruling came as a stunning blow, in view of (...)
In the streets of Cairo, Beirut, Amman and Istanbul you can appreciate the value of having a homeland when you look into the eyes of the Syrian children and mothers begging alms from passersby.
“Cruel and miserable life,” they tell you. “We once (...)
Ever since political Islam reared its head in 1928, the year in which the Muslim Brotherhood was created, it has offered more impediments to society than hope.
Its lack of substance didn't prevent it, however, from gaining recruits. And although at (...)
The mass death sentences handed down against a number of defendants from the Muslim Brotherhood and similar organisations that were tried on charges of mass murder triggered considerable controversy. Not only did they occasion harsh criticism of the (...)
As an inclusive framework in which individuals concede a portion of their will in order to realise their general interests, no better entity than the civil state has emerged. After all the ills and injustices inflicted by wars precipitated by (...)
When you look at the region today, how often do you see crimes against humanity? In Iraq and Syria, the answer is painful. The crimes are all too graphic and the inadequacy of international enforcement all too obvious.
One would have thought that in (...)
In his invaluable study, The Future of Egyptian Culture, Taha Hussein posed a question that helps shed considerable light on the Egyptian identity conflict that continues to rage today between advocates of progress and modernisation and the radical (...)
The Mediterranean basin, culturally and geographically, is a matrix for the collective memory of both ancient and modern civilisation. The peoples of this region held a virtual monopoly on human ingenuity and innovativeness, which radiated outwards (...)
Political life in Egypt is taking on a new shape and flavour as we approach the presidential elections that are now set to take place before parliamentary elections. True, Muslim Brotherhood agitation and terrorism is still in the picture in all the (...)
Was it a lifesaver for the leader of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) who could not believe his luck when he managed to scramble to safety from the waves of the Gezi Park protests and, moreover, just as he needed something to (...)
'Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity'
– William Hague
Recent terrorist attacks in Egypt and Tunisia confirm that jihadists (...)
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna in 1928, inaugurated the concept of political Islam as a movement opposed to the ruling authority, regardless of its stripe, which led it to clash with authorities on numerous occasions. (...)
Egypt is not used to having former presidents, or former presidents on trial for that matter. But it is developing the taste.
Within less than three years, we managed to oust and then put on trial two presidents for very much the same set of (...)
One of the tragedies of our time is that millions of people can turn into refugees within the span of weeks, if not days. Suddenly, people who had homes and jobs and cars, friends and things to share and enjoy, are left without abode. Brutally (...)
In mediaeval Europe, the clash between the Church and the Enlightenment was one between the religious establishment and the new ideas and perceptions espoused by philosophers and theologians. The conflict only assumed a broader societal form with (...)
We all grew up hearing words of haram and halal, or what is sinful and what is permissible, religiously speaking. We were asked to obey those edicts without questioning, even when these ran into the face of well-established manners and (...)
What bothers Washington most about the Middle East, and Egypt in particular, these days is the rapidity and fluidity of events. Over previous decades it built its policies towards this region on a number of seemingly immutable certitudes in the (...)