The Culture of Politics: a Roadmap to Unesco!

Is Faruk Hosny’s name famous? At least, the recordman minister of Culture of the Arab Republic of Egypt (21 years in office!) has got a rather good fame locally as somebody who played a leading role in putting his country back to the limelight on the arab cultural stage.

His next challenge is to run for the coming election at the head of the Unesco, and to become the first Arab in charge of this international institution.

Head of the Egyptian cultural policy for such a long time, Faruk Hosny does not have only friends in his country! Indeed, the “minister of crises” as he is often called in the Arab press has survived many problems, thanks to his ability to get rid of some of his best friends at hard times, and to the backing of some powerful people like Mrs Mubarak.

Regarding the freedom of expression, M. Hosny’s file is so-so: yes, he acted rather strongly against hard-line Muslim during May 2000 crisis about the publication in Egypt of a novel by Syrian writer Haydar Haydar (حيدر حيدر), no, he did not show the same strength during other attacks, one year later for instance when works by the famous Iraki poet of the 8th century Abu Nuwas were burnt for “immorality”!

Faruk Hosny’s main trick has been to “bribe” a helpless intellectual class who “stayed in the sheep-fold”, to put it in the Egyptian minister's words.

It is not an easy job to be elected at the head of the Unesco, especially if you are an Arab may be… Thus, Faruk Hosny needs some extra backing.

This could explain why he announced, in November 2007, that he was working on the project of a museum dedicated to the history of Jews in Egypt.

Certainly a “positive gesture” but not a definitive one as the key issue is probably the “normalisation” of the cultural relations with Israel, something the Egyptian intellectuals and artists strongly resist since Camp David agreements.

Nonetheless, a step toward “the good direction” was recently done when the cultural attaché at the Israeli embassy in Cairo was invited to atend a performance at the National Theater.

Halas! Sometime ago, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gave some publicity to a declaration given by the Egyptian cultural minister saying to some local politician that there was no Israeli books in his the national libraries and that “he would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian libraries”. Of course, the Israeli authorities officially protested to such a declaration.

Apparently, Faruk Hosny knows what he has to do if he wants to succeed in his project and he has recently tried to correct his image saying that (cultural) normalisation with Israel was “a dream”.

All the more, such a dream should not be broken by foolish decisions. Thus, complete normalisation would be the result of a peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

Knowing the difficulties of the famous “roadmap” for peace between the two nations, the road to the Unesco offices in Paris could also be a long one!


Here to read the original and more detailed post in French.

Fatwas for Mr President

For decades, and even centuries, fatwas have been delivered by religious people in order to help ordinary people to find solutions for their day-to-day problems. Of course, fatwas also have been requested for more important matters, and then subjects of many disputed political debates.

In modern times, the muftis have to compete with new voices which appeared with the modernization of the Arab world, namely voices of the intellectuals (muthaqqafun) and thinkers (mufakkirun) and, today, the stunning voices of the media stars (anchors, actors and so on...) who speak more and more in the name of religion.

It could be an explanation for the extraordinary mess of crazy fatwas which make a wonderful target for western media in times of muslim bashing, even if other religions probably provide similar examples of isanity.

The fact is that the mushrooming of (often so-called) religious programs, all of them competing for fame, opens the flow to "scandalous" fatwas. Egypt has seen for example the revival of an "old" one, initialy given in Saudia, which forbides the shooting of weddings and divorces on screen, as they are thing "not to play with"...

Of course, issuing a fatwa also has something to do with politics. It is obviously the case when Egypt official mufti said that religion punishes the spread of “false information,” a clear allusion to the trial of various important journalists.

Worst, the same mufti, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, declared that he had nothing to say against the succession of Gamal Mubarak to his father Husni, should the son been correctly elected.

He did not mention the case of of president George W. Bush but he should have!

French readers are reminded that their own president, Mr Sarkozy, at a time he was "only" one of Chirac's ministers, paid a visit to Dr Tantawi in order to get a fatwa to legitimate the prohibition of the Islamic scarf in French (governmental) schools.

To read the original post in french

Enrico Macias back to Algeria? The Hight Price of Friendship

Finally, French singer Enrico Macias, born in Algeria in a Jew family from Constantine some 68 years ago, will not go to Algeria with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Such a visit, already planned many times, rised too many issues, either rooted in the past (the Liberation War and the role played at that time by some Jewish families according to different voices in Algeria) or connected to the present problems, mainly because of Macias's repeated declarations in support of Israel.

Knowing that Sarkozy is expecting big profits, at least on the economic side, from his trip to Alger, the price of his friendship for Enrico Macias was indeed to hight.
Algerian voices, in the press or on the Internet, suggest Macias to do what many others "pieds noirs" (black foot, for the French who left Algeria at the Independence of the country) have done before him : to take a ticket, by plane or by boat, and to visit his native country without any official frame and game...

As a matter of fact, the best thing to do for him could be to join the great El Gusto band, which associates musicians coming form North and South of the Mediterranean, and from mixted generations and religions.

To read the original post in french
And to listen a nice presentation of El Gusto, in the Buena Vista Social Club mood, this video