Weekly Report 6

April 10, 2016

Who is Alaa Al Answany?

Alaa Al Aswany is the bestselling author of three previous books published in Arabic. He is a journalist who writes a monthly opposition newspaper column, and he makes his living as a dentist in Cairo, Egypt, where his first office was in the Yacoubian Building (.  Al-Aswany was born on 26 May 1957 in Egypt.  He attended Le Lycée Français in  Cairo and received a bachelor's degree in dental and oral medicine at Cairo University in 1980. He went on to pursue a master's degree in dentistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1985. He speaks multiple languages, which includes Arabic, English, French and Spanish (Qualey, 2015).

Role in Egyptian Revolution  

Alaa Al Aswany is one of the few prominent faces of Egypt's so-called leaderless revolution, a Vaclav Havel for this Arab Spring. The was in Tahrir Square each of the 18 days before Hosni Mubarak fell from power two months ago (Rustin, 2016). In January 2015, the Gingko Library published Democracy is the Answer: Egypt's Years of Revolution, a collection of newspaper columns written by Aswany for  Al-Masry Al-Youm between 2011 and 2014. He believes that democracy is what Egypt needs and the only way to get it is to take action.   

For years before the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 Al Aswany, had been a critic of the Mubarak regime. As mentioned earlier, when the revolution broke out he was among those in Tahrir Square calling for democratic reform and demanding that Hosni Mubarak stand down. Since then Aswany has continued, through his popular weekly column for the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, to propound the ideals of the January 2011 revolution, embodied by the young protestors that risked everything to occupy Tahrir by his side. In his many columns over the ensuing three years collected and translated here for the first time Al Aswany confronted the crucial issues of the day head-on as an increasingly stratified and divided country sought to agree a constitution and elect a democratic government (Qualey, 2015).

Interesting facts

According to the article, In October 2010, The Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI) said it was offering its Hebrew  readers the rare privilege of reading the best-selling Egyptian novel  The Yacoubian Building. While Alaa Al-Aswany refused for the book to be translated into Hebrew and published in Israel , a volunteer had translated it and the IPCRI wanted to offer it for free to expand cultural awareness and understanding in the region. Al-Aswany was deeply frustrated by this, as he rejected the idea of normalizing with Israel, and accused the IPCRI and the translator of piracy and theft. For this, he complained to the International Publishers Association.  

 http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jan/23/alaa-al-aswany-interview-politically-egyptian-revolution

https://books.google.com/books?id=ndHqoQEACAAJ&hl=en

Reflection 6

Reflection 6

April 7, 2016

Dr. Leahy’s Lecture

Dr. Leahy is a Political Science and International Relations professor here at McDaniel College. Today, Dr. Leah came to our class to talk about the USA involvement in Arab countries. In here lecture, she talked about the USA support toward Israel and how it affects the Arab world in many ways.  Israel is small state with a super power.  As Dr. Leah mentioned in her lecture that Israel only represents thousandth of the world population and receive about 3.1 billion dollars from the United States each year. This itself says a lot about America’s relationship with Israel. This kind of money should be going to third world countries and as we know Israel is not one of those countries. Israel uses money given by the US to buy weapon and kill innocent Arabs and the US is doing nothing to stop them from doing so.

And then they are asking this question: “Why do they hate us?”. According to the book Understanding the Arabs, Arabs do not hate America nor do they hate American people. They are just anger because of the US is too involved in the lands. Dr. Leahy made some important points about the US involvement in the Arab World. Number one the US support for dictators in Arab countries and violating human rights in those countries. Number two, the US military base in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War in Mecca. They promised Saudi government that they were going to remove their military base after the war for failed to do so. They are still there today. All of these are some of the reasons why most Arabs are anger at American government.