Word: arabize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...idea might have seemed funny at the time. Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim wrote a magazine article on what he sarcastically called "the Arab world's contribution to political science." He dubbed it gomlokiya, squeezing together the Arabic words for republic and monarchy. His point was how the new President of Syria had assumed office automatically after his father died, even though the country hadn't been a hereditary kingdom for centuries. Readers also chuckled at the pun: it rhymes with molokhiya, a word for a vegetable soup that Egyptians use with comic effect to describe a mess...
Ibrahim's supporters contend that the trial's aim is to end his 25-year-career as one of the Arab world's leading democracy advocates. The charges, including those brought against 26 Egyptian and one Sudanese co-defendants, stem from work carried out by Ibn Khaldun, a research center founded by Ibrahim in 1988 and supported by a board that reads like an Egyptian Who's Who. Prosecutors say its projects were illegally funded by foreign sources, and that by alleging election fraud and discrimination against minority Coptic Christians, they undermined Egypt's standing. A press campaign smeared Ibrahim...
...People are afraid to be forward now," says veteran Egyptian commentator Salama Ahmed Salama. "They do not want the same thing to happen to them." Activists say the message that Egypt tolerates liberals little more than it does Islamic fundamentalists may dim the prospects for democracy elsewhere in the Arab world...
...whether coziness with powerful people, combined with a jocular streak and a touch of intellectual arrogance, led Ibrahim into trouble, across so-called red lines set by Egypt's security establishment. Before his arrest, he liked to jet around to global conferences and sound off in the Western and Arab press. A friend recalls once recoiling when Mubarak arrived late for a meeting and Ibrahim demanded to know why he had kept them waiting. His first defense lawyer quit after Ibrahim detailed his detention in a public lecture dubbed, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." "He has guts," says Egyptian...
...Congress, there's a great degree of skepticism in Washington - particularly in the Pentagon - over whether they're even a serious irritant to Saddam's regime, let alone its nemesis. And while Washington's hawks will want to see more action on the "regime change" front, most of his Arab neighbors are opposed to the very principle of the U.S. trying to overthrow the Iraqi dictator. Thus the three-dimensional chess game of Washington's Iraq policy...