Category Archives: Egypt

Egypt Week in New York

Conferences and Talks, Egypt, Film and Video, Music and Dance


Egyptian pianist, Mohamed Shams

EGYPT MINI-SERIES FEBRUARY 2013 
LINCOLN CENTER

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
BRUNO WALTER AUDITORIUM
(entrance @ 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 64th street)



PROGRAM

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 2 @ 2.30 PM
Opera in Arabic:
On translating opera into classical and colloquial Egyptian Arabic, with Baritone Raouf Zaidan, Bass Baritone Ashraf Sewailam and Kamel Boutros, piano – moderated by Nimet Habachy of WQXR Classical Music Station New York



SUNDAY FEBRUARY 3 @ 2.30 PM
Music for Piano and French Horn:
Recital by Amr Selim (winner, Northeast Horn competition 2012), and Seba Ali, both winners of the 2012 Ackerman Chamber Music competition 2012 at Stony Brook, NY
And a choreographic offering specially created for Seba and Amr by Cherylyn Lavagnino with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance (CLD) dancers Ramona Kelley and Justin Flores


MONDAY FEBRUARY 4 @ 6 PM
Music of Arab American composer Mohammed Fairouz
With the Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Ensemble 212 and the Mimesis Ensemble
Curated by Katie Reimer

 Continue reading Egypt Week in New York →

Tabsir Redux: The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East

Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia


BY Karim Sadjapour, Foreign Policy, June 15, 2011

How a couple of cows explain a changing region: equal opportunity offender edition.

In the early years of the Cold War, in an effort to simplify — and parody — various political ideologies and philosophies, irreverent wits, in the spirit of George Orwell, went back to the farm. No one really knows how the two-cow joke known as “Parable of the Isms” came about, but most students of Political Science 101 have likely come across some variation of the following definitions:

Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbor.

Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.

Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes the cows.

Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Over the years, the parables gradually expanded, using the two-cow joke to explain everything from French unions (You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.) to the Republican Party (You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?). While in its original iteration the cows were a metaphor for currency, capital, and property, they later began to take on different meanings.

Today, the Middle East has replaced the Cold War as America’s primary foreign-policy preoccupation. As opposed to the seemingly ideologically homogenous communist bloc, however, the 22 diverse countries that compose the modern Middle East are still confusing to most Americans. Why can’t the Israeli and Palestinians stop fighting already? What’s the difference between Libya and Lebanon again?

Herewith then is a satirical effort to simplify the essence of Middle Eastern governments so that, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, “the boys in Lubbock” can read it. And, rather than symbolizing property, the cows here symbolize people, which — funny enough — is how most Middle Eastern regimes have traditionally viewed their populations.

Saudi Arabia
You have two cows with endless reserves of milk. Gorge them with grass, prevent them from interacting with bulls, and import South Asians to milk them.

Iran
You have two cows. You interrogate them until they concede they are Zionist agents. You send their milk to southern Lebanon and Gaza, or render it into highly enriched cream. International sanctions prevent your milk from being bought on the open market.

Syria
You have five cows, one of whom is an Alawite. Feed the Alawite cow well; beat the non-Alawite cows. Use the milk to finance your wife’s shopping sprees in London.

Lebanon
You have two cows. Syria claims ownership over them. You take them abroad and start successful cattle farms in Africa, Australia, and Latin America. You send the proceeds back home so your relatives can afford cosmetic surgery and Mercedes-Benzes.

Hezbollah
You have no cows. During breaks from milking on the teat of the Iranian cow you call for Israel’s annihilation. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East →

The School of Mamlūk Studies

Egypt, Islamic History, Scholars, Syria, Teaching Resources


The School of Mamlūk Studies (SMS) is administered by the Universities of Chicago (Ill., USA), Liège (Belgium), and Venice (Italy), respectively represented by Marlis Saleh, Frédéric Bauden, and Antonella Ghersetti. It is currently based at the University of Chicago, where Mamluk-related projects such as Mamlūk Studies Review, the Chicago Online Bibliography of Mamluk Studies, and the Chicago Online Encyclopedia of Mamluk Studies are managed. The mission of SMS is to provide a scholarly forum for a holistic approach to Mamluk studies, and to foster and promote a greater awareness of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517). It aims to offer a forum for interdisciplinary debate focused on the Mamluk period in all its historical and cultural dimensions in order to increase, address, investigate, and exchange information and knowledge relevant to Mamluk studies in the broadest meaning of the term. Conceived as a meeting for scholars and graduate students working on any of the many aspects of the Mamluk empire, without neglecting its contacts with other regions, SMS offers to everyone working in the field of Mamluk studies the opportunity to attend annual conferences organized in turn by each of the three collaborating institutions.

The annual conferences will be organized around a general or a more specific theme which scholars will be invited to address. In addition, proposals for panels on other relevant subjects may be submitted by individuals, research teams, or institutions. Accepted panels will be held at the end of the thematic conference. On an irregular basis, SMS will also organize seminars in various fields (such as diplomatics, paleography, codicology, numismatics, epigraphy, etc.) which will be aimed at graduate students. These seminars will be planned to take place prior to or following the annual conference in the institution where the conference is held.

Papers presented at each conference on the selected theme will be published as a monograph, while papers presented at the panels will be considered for publication in Mamlūk Studies Review.

The first annual SMS conference is planned for 2014 in Venice. A call for papers will go out in 2013.

Arab Constitutions and American Freedoms

"Arab Spring", Development, Egypt, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Morocco, Tunisia


Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom; source, Library of Congress

By Anouar Majid, Tingis Redux, January 8th, 2013

The deeply contentious referendum on Egypt’s new constitution last December 2012 gave me some hope that not all is lost to Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of the revolutions that toppled dictators in the last two years. Given the rapid Islamization of the public sphere in much of the Arab world in the last few decades, I was expecting something close to a landslide, not a small voter turnout and a modest 63.8 percent in favor of the charter. As it turns out, there are still pockets of resistance that oppose the Muslim Brothers and their agenda, even though, as the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman noted at that time, the divisions are not necessarily between Islamists and secular liberals. The fault lines in Egypt seem to be more varied than what is broadcast in the United States.

Be that as it may, the thing that concerns me the most is what the Western media is talking about, i.e., the clash between those who want a nation governed by divine law and those who don’t want religion to be the absolute reference in legislation. In November 2012, I had the opportunity to make the case for the separation of state and religion to people who participated or are actually participating in the drafting of constitutions in Morocco and Tunisia, a person who ran in the last presidential race in Egypt, members of the Tunisian parliament, a leader of a major Egyptian political party, and many others who are playing some role in the future of North Africa and the Middle East. I also explained why, at this crucial juncture in the region, Arabs and Muslims can’t do better than learn from the American constitutional process and especially the reasons for separating state and religion.

Fewer documents explain more powerfully the reasons for doing so than the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, first written by Thomas Jefferson in 1777–only a year after he drafted the Declaration of Independence–and enacted into law in January 1786, with the crucial help of James Madison. Jefferson was so proud of Virginia’s Religious Act that he wanted it noted on his epitaph. Continue reading Arab Constitutions and American Freedoms →

What do Ordinary Egyptians want?

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Egypt, Islamic Law


[Editor’s Note: The following commentary is a post originally submitted to the Sociology of Islam listserv about the current debate over the proposed new Egyptian constitution. There has been an active discussion of the pros and cons of the constitution, both in Egypt and among academics abroad, as evidenced in Dr. Bamyeh’s comments.]

by Dr. Mohammed Bamyeh

I think we have been constantly losing track of, or at least are not sure about, the right question to ask. For me, the primary question has always been: what ordinary Egyptians wanted? I know that “ordinary” is a construct, but there are ways to either measure that when you can, or at least sense with reasonable evidence where the prevailing sentiments may be heading. The revolution was made by those “ordinary people,” not by professional “revolutionaries.” It would never have succeeded any other way. But within the revolution there has always been a hardcore self-identified “revolutionary camp” (which in fact was the minority) that had an inflated sense of self-importance, and thus a propensity to be easily and deeply frustrated when it did not get its way (beginning with the March 19, 2011 referendum). Out of that they developed a strong suspicion of ordinary Egyptians, but outwardly that suspicion appeared as a strong resentment of what to them appeared as a monolith called the Brotherhood. The fact that they did not afterwards hesitate to use the Supreme Constitutional Court, that bastion of the counter-revolution, as their main weapon against popular will, and do so precisely in the name of the revolution(!) is simply shameless.

The fact that they did not want to accept was that the Ikhwan won not because of any manipulation, nor because of a deal with the military, but simply because they deserved to win. I am certainly not an Islamist–in fact I would describe my political leanings as anarchist. However, the real question for me is not one of ideology, but of sociology. The force that will have most resonance after the fall of a dictatorship would naturally be one that is most organically embedded in the deep, deep fabric of society, that exists in every Egyptian village, that for more than 80 years has been doing what ordinary Egyptians have felt to be useful, practical, everyday, non-revolutionary work–mostly. In contrast, what have the leftists/secularist/liberals ever done other than issuing pamphlets and grand declarations? What have they ever done for anyone, so as to cultivate the conviction that they should be the natural leaders of a society in which they had little roots and to which they spoke as vanguardist strangers–and before the revolution, often with contempt? Continue reading What do Ordinary Egyptians want? →

America’s Failed Palestinian Policy

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Egypt, Israel, Palestine


Palestinian boy in Gaza

By YOUSEF MUNAYYER, The New York Times, November 23, 2012

MORE than 160 Palestinians and 5 Israelis are dead, and as the smoke clears over Gaza, the Israelis will not be more secure and Palestinians’ hopes for self-determination remain dashed. It is time for a significant re-evaluation of the American policies that have contributed to this morass.

The failure of America’s approach toward the Israelis and the Palestinians, much like its flawed policies toward the region in general, is founded on the assumption that American hard power, through support for Israel and other Middle Eastern governments, can keep the legitimate grievances of the people under wraps.

But events in Gaza, like those in Egypt and elsewhere, have proved once again that the use of force is incapable of providing security for Israel, when the underlying causes of a people’s discontent go unaddressed.

The United States government must ask: what message do America’s policies send to Israelis and Palestinians?

Washington’s policies have sent counterproductive messages to the Palestinians that have only increased the incentives for using violence. Continue reading America’s Failed Palestinian Policy →

Black Friday through Black Thursday over and over again

"Arab Spring", Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Syria


In the United States, after having given thanks for a turkey feast in which only one of the native birds has been officially pardoned and allowed to live a little longer, today becomes Black Friday. One official holiday (blessed by Lincoln, who is the star of a new Hollywood film) has ended and the shopping spree for the next official holiday (which officially keeps the “Christ” in Christmas) has begun. Actually in some places the shopping began last night. Whatever the real reason for the dubbing, it is obvious that this shop-to-you-drop mentality is meant to keep stores in the black rather than bleeding red. As a result, lots of gifts will be be bought to be placed under the Christmas trees of families who really do not need them. Meanwhile in the Middle East (and not just in the Middle East) Black Friday will be followed by a Black Saturday and the blackness will continue all the way through to a Black Thursday to be followed by yet another Black set of days on end.

In the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy I was without electricity in my home for 11 days. Apart from a few candles and flames in a fireplace, I was surrounded by darkness for more than a week. But there are different shades of darkness, despite the semantic homogenization in our concept of “black.” Being in the literal dark or in a situation where there is no light and thus everything is pitch black keeps us metaphorically in the dark as well. I lost power and a few tree limbs, but thousands of people during Sandy lost houses, possessions of all kinds, cars and boats. Some still remain without a home or power as I write this three weeks later. What makes today “Black Friday” here in America is inconvenience at the malls. It was inconvenient not to have electricity or hot showers and to cook on a Coleman stove for a few days, but the unfolding events in the Middle East go far beyond this kind of inconvenience. Continue reading Black Friday through Black Thursday over and over again →