Two significant anniversaries in modern Egyptian history recently coincided. 11 July was the bicentenary of an Ottoman firman appointing Mehmed Ali (more commonly transliterated from Arabic as Muhammad 'Ali) as governor of Egypt thus inaugurating (...)
The sound of the two explosions rocked the entire city. The smell of smoke wafted all the way north to Houston St, while the sound of the sirens of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars was deafening. People's gazes were unfocused and confused, (...)
One of the signs of the crisis that Egypt is currently going through is the gap between the vision of a large portion of Egyptians that revolted against Mohamed Morsi on 30 June and that of Western media coverage of Egyptian events.
Despite the fact (...)
It is often said that Egypt saw the first centralised state in world history. That may be very well true. However, the modern Egyptian state cannot be said to be more than 200 years old. It has nothing to do with the Pharaohs or the Ptolemy.
Two (...)
In March, I wrote an article here in response to an article written by Wael Abbas, author of the blog Misr Digital, in which he had warned of the threat of a spread of armed militias belonging to different groups, from the Brotherhood to the Ultras (...)
We were taught in schools that we were a patient and passive people, and for generations we accepted facile sayings about the genius of Egypt, its tranquil landscape, its gentle river and undemanding people. And yet here we are, proving to ourselves (...)
I did not vote for Mohamed Morsi in the previous presidential elections. I invalidated my ballot in these elections because I realised that Egypt deserves better than either Morsi or Shafiq. Yet when the results were announced, I was glad because I (...)
One is at a loss as to how to make sense of the most recent policies of the president, the government, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the latest gubernatorial reshuffle, I can understand that President Morsi would prefer to adopt the policies of the (...)
The current dynamics at the Egyptian National Archives are truly peculiar.
A few days after the minister of culture sacked a number of high-ranking ministry officials, and after he had involuntarily uttered telling words in his meeting with the (...)
Since the new minister of culture, Alaa Abdel-Aziz, took up his post, conversations about the attitude he has adopted to prove himself have not ceased within Egypt's cultural scene.
The minister commenced his work in the ministry with a series of (...)
Before midnight on Friday, 17 May 2013, I decided to go to Tahrir Square to sign the "Rebel" campaign's petition, which asks for the withdrawal of confidence from President Mohamed Morsi El-Ayat. This was not an arbitrary decision, nor was it a (...)
Suddenly, and in the same week, three of the largest Islamist movements started talking about transitional justice, demanding its implementation at once. Spokesman for the Salfist front, Hisham Kamal, asserted, "Mubarak should have been tried for (...)
The draft legislation on access to information ignores civil society recommendations and will lead to a toothless information watchdog that is beholden to ill-defined 'national security' interests
At a news conference on 2 April, Judge Wael (...)
On a trip to London last week, I visited the Royal College of Surgeons, which houses an impressive museum about the history of medicine and surgery from the 18th century to the present. As I have an interest in the modern history of medicine in (...)
This is what a group of friends and I debated in a heated discussion last week. One of them was a British friend who teaches history and politics at a major US university, and who reminded us that a key feature of European fascism of the 1930s was a (...)
Although the fact finding committee formed by Mohamed Morsi to investigate rights violations from January 2011 to June 2012 found horrid cases of abuse, the president and his backers appear disinterested in its findings
Three weeks ago, I briefly (...)
Last week, the Israeli newspaperHaaretzpublished an article about a confidential document written in 1973 recently released by Israel's Ministry of Defense. The document contains intelligence Israel received before the October War started. Along (...)
Scene I: Tuesday, 25 January 2011 at 7pm. Place: Tahrir Square.
I had gone to Tahrir nearly two hours earlier to check on my sister. She had beaten me there and had succeeded in foiling an attempt by security forces to arrest her 15-year-old son. (...)
In the past two months, circumstances allowed me to visit three royal palaces, two of which were abroad, and the third in Egypt. I found myself assessing comparing and lamenting the miserable condition of Egypt's palaces and museums.
Palazzo (...)
Patricio Guzman focuses on the past, on light and on hope.
Guzman is a Chilean documentary film director who over the past decade has directed many short films about astronomy, astronomers and observatories in Chile. His films are deep, intelligent, (...)
Last August, Wael Abbas, the writer of the well-known blog “Misr Digit@l”, wrote a perceptive article in Al-Badeel newspaper documenting the emergence of armed militias, whether Muslim Brotherhood or Ultras, or thugs or everything in between. He (...)
Last week, I was invited to attend an important academic conference in Dubai, UAE, and was looking forward to attending and presenting a research paper I had prepared about the key problems facing university education in the Arab world.
However, a (...)
In mid-1861, Saeed Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, issued a Sovereign Decree to all police chiefs replacing the penalty of beating with imprisonment. Accordingly, regulations were issued stating that since “penalties in the form of beatings of some (...)
In December 1877, a woman called Om Ibrahim went to the Alexandria police station to report that her son, Ibrahim Al-Masry, in his 30s, was missing. In her report, she said that she had accompanied her son to Alexandria a few months earlier when he (...)
On 26 January, a few hours before the sentencing of defendants in the Port Said Stadium case, Alaa Abdel-Fattah — one of the first bloggers in Egypt and courageous human rights activists who paid a high price for the triumph of truth and justice (...)