Emerging Democratic Practises – Traditions of Local Participation in Rural Egypt

The project Emerging Democratic Practises – Traditions of Local Participation in Rural Egypt, is a one year research project funded by the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute, running for the year 2007. In the following articles, which are all a product of research carried out under the project and earlier research carried out in these areas, we present some of the results...more

Cartoons and the Challenge of Globalization

In a short essay the Director of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute, Rasmus Alenius Boserup, analyses the dynamics behind the controversy over the reprinting of the Danish cartoon of the prophet Muhammad by a number of Danish and international newspapers in February 2008…more

Religion, democracy and integration

In connection with the Danish elections which took place on the 13th of November 2007, Birthe Rønn Hornbech was appointed as Church Minister and Minister of Integration. On the 4th of November 2007, she wrote an article with the title: Democracy, religion and integration. Read the full article here.  

The Improbable Dane

But his name is Johannes, and that is a Christian name, isn’t it?” I heard my playmate whisper to another boy in our school in Beirut. “Yes, it is. His mother is Lebanese, but his father is Palestinian”. It is difficult to understand why my heart sank so abruptly then, just because I heard two boys exchange these banal facts about me...more

Johannes Østrup. Orientalist and commentator of foreign affairs

Towards the end of the 19th century the Danish orientalist Johannes Østrup (1867-1938) painted a quite gloomy picture of the future role of Islam in the Orient. The reasons for this were quite clear, according to Østrup: “The official, orthodox religion is in a terrible state of rapid decline; to most of the population it is a matter of habit and most of the intellectual elite take up a quite definitive and liberal stance, which they however usually keep to themselves. As a cultural force and basis for the fulfilment of human life, Islam does no longer exist” (Østrup, 1894: 136.)....more

Kifaya - The rise and fall

Who has not heard of Kifaya and seen the telling photos of demonstrators with yellow stickers on their mouth? In 2005 all news coming out of Egypt seemed to be about the expectations of change that this protest movement brought about. What, then, about today? What has happened to the movement and the demonstrations? Why this silence?...more

Taxi

Unable to account for the extraordinary success of his book which has sold some 35.000 copies in half a year, Khaled al-Khamisi is well aware that he has spoken to something deep in Egyptian society at the moment. In small reports from conversations with taxidrivers in 2005-06, Khaled shares some of the wry and burlesque humor of the drivers he has met. But he has a vision for a cultural renaissance of this country. That, he says, is the only way to save it...more

Who are the New Muslim Intellectuals?

In early July, Alain Roussillon, Director of the French Research Institute, CEDEJ, in Cairo, suddenly passed away. Roussillon, who had spent most of the last 20 years in the Arab World, mainly in Egypt and Morocco, was widely recognized as one of leading specialists in current Islamic thinking.

This interview was made with him in 2006, on the occasion of the publication of his book, La pensée islamique contemporaine.  In this book he sets out to give a portrait of a group of new Muslim intellectuals who are averse to Islamism, but also reject Western Secularism....more

An Arab Kingmaker in Danish Politics

On Monday, May 7, 2007, a new political party, the New Alliance, was launched in Denmark. It is headed by a Muslim, born of Arab parents in an Arab country. Not only popular, but also highly influential, Naser Khader has caused an upheaval in Danish politics by establishing a new balance of power right in the middle of the political spectrum...more

Johannes Pedersen in Cairo

On the occasion of the publication of three small books in Danish on the al-Azhar University, one of the authors, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, writes about another of the authors, the Orientalist Johannes Pedersen who studied in Cairo in 1920-21 and published his book on al-Azhar in 1922...more

The New Political Generations

For years, political leaders in the Arab World were growing ever older, while the populations were growing ever younger. This could not continue. And it doesn’t. Within a few years, a generation of powerholders who have been in power for decades, will withdraw or die. In most places they will be followed by their childrens’ generation, in some cases by their own sons who will bring in people of their own age, while a middle generation will never taste power. What will that imply for the middle generation – those in their fifties or early sixties? And what will be the consequences of the taking of power by a generation with very different historical experiences than that of its predecessor?....more