Tahawolat Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin: Tafakok Al-Ideologia Wa Nehayet Al-Tanzeem (The Transformation of the Muslim Brotherhood: Disintegration of Ideology and the End of the Organization) by Hossam Tamam Madbouli, 2006
In this collection of essays, Hossam Tamam, a journalist who specializes in covering Egypt's Islamist groups, attempts to deconstruct the conventional image of the outlawed but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood. By dissecting the group's internal structure, he argues that the nation's oldest Islamist opposition group is on the verge of a significant overhaul that may ultimately end in its transformation into a modern political party. The book includes several detailed interviews with the group's Supreme Guide, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, as well as Abdel Moneim Abouel Fottouh, who leads the group's reform camp, and Abu El-Ela Madi, who broke ranks with the group and is trying to form Al-Wasat Party, the Islamist-leaning would-be party trying now to attract Coptic and secular members. The book was released before the conclusion of the parliamentary elections that witnessed the group's rise as the biggest opposition bloc in the People's Assembly. Bani Bagam (Speechless People) by Belal Fadl Dar Merit, 2006
Belal Fadl, who established himself as one of the nation's top comic screenwriters, has taken the nation by surprise with his weekly full-page column titled "Qalamein" (The Arabic word for 'two slaps') published in the independent El-Destour newspaper. For more than a year his satirical column has broken all political taboos, and Bani Bagam is a collection of sketches and short stories which highlight the concerns of the average Egyptian in a satirical tone. His book carries political undertones and draws on the same spirit as the cartoons. Keep an eye out for the striking sketch that envisages former President Anwar Sadat surviving the assassination attempt and delivering a speech celebrating the occasion at the People's Assembly. Khorafat al-Taqaddum wal Ta'akhor (The Myth of Development and Underdevelopment: Arabs and Arab Civilization at the Turn of the 21st Century) by Galal Amin Dar el-Shorouk, 2005
AUC economics professor Galal Amin raises a very interesting question in this new and highly controversial book: Who has the right to decide whether a country is advanced or backward? According to Amin, nobody. "True, some nations may have success in certain fields while other nations fail to do the same," he writes, "but the term commonly used to describe some nations as advanced and others as backward does not apply to one specific field or fields, but is used generally and without discrimination, as if progress is all-encompassing and backwardness applies to everything." The myths the writer tries to dispel is the idea that progress moves linearly — and that human history is connected like a flight of stairs, in which each step is better than the preceding one. This ultimately leads to the belief that the modern is better than the traditional, and consequently that some nations are better than others, which in turn leads to an inferiority complex whereby 'less advanced' nations look up to and want to emulate 'more advanced' nations. The notion of progress is a relatively new one, Amin postulates. "I have no doubt that my grandfather did not suffer from this complex at all, and neither did my mother. But this disease did affect my father in some degree, and he passed it on to me and the rest of my brothers. Maybe it passed from me to my children as well." The book casts doubt on the viability of using economic and technological growth indexes as suitable criteria for dividing the world into advanced and backward, and looks at concepts including freedom, democracy and human rights; concepts that we import and adopt as our own, thus falling deeper and deeper into our inferiority complex. Amin also takes a look at the issue of terrorism, suggesting that it is nothing but a ruse to enable the 'advanced' nations to gain control over the resources of the 'backward' nations. What we need, the writer believes, is to differentiate between the terms modernization and reform. Yes we need reform, but that does not necessarily mean that we must adopt the Western ideal of modernization. "The best solution, or the reform we seek, [involves] trying to adopt the good new [concepts] while keeping the good old [values] as well, those which have not lost their meaning and their viability with time," he writes. According to Amin, many obstacles stand in the way of adopting this kind of reform; the modernization that comes to us hiding in the guise of reform comes under the threat of military power. This modernization is supported by those who hold the power inside the Arab countries, and who stand to gain by adopting the model dictated by the powers that be. Nubian Ceremonial Life: Studies in Islamic Syncretism and Cultural Change Edited by John G. Kennedy AUC Press, Cairo, New York, updated 2005 edition
When the High Dam was built in the 1960s, it changed the geography of some of the richest areas of Egyptian land. With this change came the disintegration of old Nubia. John G. Kennedy (professor emeritus of anthropology and psychiatry at the University of California), together with a group of contributors including Hussein M. Fahim, Armgard Grauer, Fadwa El-Guindi, Samiha El-Katsha, and Nawal El-Messiri, document and explain aspects of Nubian culture before its disintegration. The study, which took place 40 years ago, tries to trace the changes that took place in a Nubian village that was relocated in 1933, which Kennedy anonymously calls Kanuba, 30 years before the building of the High Dam, in order to predict the changes expected to take place in the rest of Old Nubia post-Dam. In the foreword to the 2005 edition, Robert E. Fernea writes: "The subtitle of this book has new significance today, as the fundamentalist movements (which Kennedy mentions) in past decades have now taken a more dominant role in modern Egyptian thought. Tolerance for any beliefs or behaviors not deemed to be part of a strict understanding of the Islamic faith has certainly declined since this book was written." Kennedy shows how many of the old Nubian ceremonies held elements of ancient culture in them, and discusses what he calls "the syncretistic combinations of non-Islamic and Islamic elements found among Nubians." The interesting chapters of the book include a study of zar as psychotherapy, circumcision and excision ceremonies, and dhikr. Today, as Nubian culture is slowly threatened by dissolution, this new edition of the 1978 book serves as a reminder to those interested in ethnic cultures of the beauty and the uniqueness of Old Nubia. Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur'an Translated into Arabic from French by Mohamed Salmawy Dar El-Shorouk, 2005
Both the original versions of the book and the film have gained critical acclaim (300,000 copies sold and translated into 20 languages, in the book's case) and acclaimed translator and author Mohamed Salmawy's faithful translation retains the same nostalgic but surprisingly detached tone that author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt so ingeniously managed to pull off. Written in the first person, Monsieur Ibrahim records the teenage troubles of Moses, who makes ends meet by stealing from Ibrahim the storekeeper, while at the same time trying to come to terms with his raging hormones. When the boy is suddenly abandoned by his lawyer father, Ibrahim becomes a surrogate parent of sorts, plying Moses with gentle snippets of advice concerning the inextricable threads of life: love, happiness, money, women and God. As Salmawy writes in the afterword, the novella is a marriage of extremes, attempting to bring together East and West in an eternal embrace. Its strength, however, lies not on the important information dropped in the cultural exchanges between the two protagonists, but in the simple relationship that they share as old man and young boy. The contrast between a life just begun and one waiting to end is sobering, as each slowly realizes how to attain true happiness. Just like the story, the language Salmawy uses is simple and uncomplicated, and any reader will make fast work of the slim 70-page publication. One gripe: Salmawy not only summarizes the events of the book in the foreword, he gives away the highlights and the events, including the ending — rather irritating for any reader, even those who have already seen the film or read the book. Coral Reef Guide Red Sea: The definitive diver's Guide to over 1,200 species of underwater life By Ewald Lieske and Robert F. Myers HarperCollins/Osiris, 2004
When I took my first plunge in the Red Sea back in 1988, there was very little in the way of guides to tell you what you were actually seeing. The only book that was locally available was the Red Sea Fish Guide by Roupen Deuvletian, which boasted 205 full-color photos, but the photos were poor in quality and in reproduction. A weightier alternative was John Randall's Red Sea Reef Fishes, but in this book, and in the subsequent edition printed on waterproof paper, the fish were photographed as specimens, dead, out of water on plain backgrounds. While they sufficed as scientific plates, the patterns and colors of the illustrations often bore little resemblance to the living creatures seen underwater. How things have changed. In Lieske and Myers' Coral Reef Guide Red Sea, we have an exquisitely produced guide not only to the fish of the Red Sea, but to the mammals, reptiles, invertebrates and even the plants. I have long used Collins Pocket Guide: Coral Reef Fishes by the same authors on diving and snorkeling trips. Covering over 2,000 species from the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean, all illustrated in color, it has been an invaluable, if slightly unsatisfactory, companion, for, in including such a huge number of species from such a vast area, the authors have inevitably covered them all too briefly. On several occasions I have made an identification only to find out on further research that my 'new' fish has never been recorded from the Red Sea. The author's current work solves this by covering only the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and South Oman. As the authors themselves acknowledge, it is the photographs that "make this book beautiful and useful." This is an understatement. They are, without exception, stunning. Every fish, coral, sponge, sea pen or urchin et al is illustrated in full color, alive and in its natural habitat. The level of technical proficiency is excellent and demonstrates how far underwater photography has come in recent years. The coverage of flatworms and nudibranches deserves special mention. Both groups are noted for the stunning coloration of many of their members, and the photographs of a wide range of flatworm species, many from Jeddah, are simply stunning. In perhaps the ultimate test of a field guide, I managed to put a name to a flatworm species I had sketched after a dive on Yolanda Reef back in 1998. Gone is the question mark that accompanied the sketch and in comes the legendary Gold-spotted Flatworm Thysanozoon. It is refreshing to note that virtually all the plates in the book are of Red Sea species photographed in the Red Sea — the main exception being, oddly, the sea mammals. For most users, it is the fish section that is going to be of most interest and use. In any guide of this type, the choice of which species to include and which to leave out is going to be open to debate. To my mind, the selection is very fair. Each photograph is accompanied by a brief description including details on habits and habitat and, importantly, range. Many of these groups are complicated in that males and females can be strikingly different, as can juveniles. Some, such as the Clownfish and the Parrotfish, change sex as they grow, further confusing the picture. In these cases, thumbnail paintings often accompany the photograph to illustrate the alternatives. Similar and additional fish species are also illustrated, the co-author Ewald Lieske doubling up as artist (he took on the mammoth task of painting the 2,000 plus plates in the Collins Pocket Guide). Fish aside, this book is a celebration of the little guys, the supporting cast of molluscs, sea cucumbers, shrimp, crabs and sea squirts that divers looking for the bigger stuff too often pass. The incredible photographs of the reef's invertebrates will, I hope, inspire divers and snorkelers alike to look harder and closer at what is in, on and around the reef. On a practical note, Coral Reef Guide: Red Sea is a sturdy hardback that should survive the less than library conditions on dive boat, or the beach. Intafadhat 1935: Bayn Wathbat Al-Qahira wa Ghadbat Al-Aqaleem (The Uprising of 1935: Between the Leap of Cairo and the Wrath of the Rural Provinces) By Dr. Hamada Ismail Dar El-Shorouk, 2005
This is the fifth book in the comprehensive historical series entitled Al-Ganeb Al-Akhar: Ia'adat Qira'ah Lil Tareekh Al-Masry (The Other Side: Egyptian History Reinterpreted). It sheds light on the landmark — yet seldom remembered — nationalist movement of 1935. It was certainly landmark, having resulted in the resurrection of the 1923 Constitution, the disbanding of the Cabinet headed by Mohammed Tawfiq Nessim and, most importantly, the signing of the 20-year alliance treaty with Britain in 1936 that marked the end of the 50-year occupation and declared Egypt once again a sovereign state. Seldom remembered, perhaps, because it was ultimately overshadowed by being sandwiched between the 1919 and 1952 revolutions? Often referred to as the Intifadha (uprising or upheaval), the book focuses on the violent nature of the movement that sparked incidents from as far north as the cities of Alexandria and Port Said to as far south as Aswan. This provides the reader with an alternative perspective contrary to the customary staleness of 'Cairo-oriented' takes on the modern political history of Egypt. History buffs and newbies alike are bound to settle into it nicely as soon as they realize that it can be regarded as a 'behind-the-scenes' take on the events that ultimately led to negotiations with Britain. The book is simply split into three chapters, each relaying the events in chronological order, telling the intriguing story in the three different geographical sectors of Egypt: Cairo, the Delta and Upper Egypt. Readers are transported through time as most of the sources used are local newspapers published in the 1930s. Visual material of any form — mere newspaper clippings, for example — would have seen it sail to the next level. It remains to be mentioned that credibility is enforced by the fact that the editor-in-chief of this exciting series is renowned historian Dr. Yunan Labib Rizk, head of Al-Ahram History Center. Ru'yat Al-Rahalla Al-Orobeyyoun Le-Misr: Bayn Al-Naz'aa Al-Insaniyya wa Al-Isti'mariyya (The European Voyagers' View of Egypt: Between Humanism and Colonialism) By Dr. Ilham Zohny Dar El-Shorouk, 2005
European voyagers from France, Britain, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy and Russia have been visiting —and showing an immense interest in — Egypt since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Mixed feelings of genuine sympathy for the (relatively) downtrodden versus sheer colonial opportunism are put on display through the pages of this book. The first — and by far the most interesting) chapter, entitled, "The Voyage to Egypt," discusses the motives behind the European travelers' coming to Egypt to start with. The chapter in turn classifies these motives rather simply into three phases: curiosity and religious passion during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, academic studies during the eighteenth, and infatuation during the nineteenth century. The next chapter sees the European voyagers placed under the microscope. From religious figures, politicians and military leaders to academics, journalists and artists, the book nicely sums up the biggest names in each category giving a brief summary of each. The third and fourth chapters take you on a guided tour of an Egypt of the past with a special focus on the structure of the government and social aspects of the day, serving as a concise reference. Al-Rahalla has the added bonus of being well-organized, making it almost usable as a reference book that, luckily, lacks the dryness of the scientific approach to an academic paper. It is the sixth in the comprehensive historical series entitled Al-Ganeb Al-Akhar: Ia'adat Qira'ah Lil Tareekh Al-Masry (The Other Side: Egyptian History Reinterpreted) et Book Reviews are written by Noha El-Hennawy, Manal el-Jesri, Noha Mohammed, Richard Hoath and Karim Ezzeldin. | 
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