Egypt

A Cairo conference on how to prevent female circumcision concluded that it takes more than a law to stop the physical violation of girls.

Egypt: Egyptian civil society organisations condemn the treatment of Egyptian human rights NGOs

Egyptian Human Rights and Civil Society Organizations express their protest regarding the Ministry of Social Affairs' rejection of the registration of two Egyptian human rights organizations: the Land Center for Human rights and New Woman Research Center.

Egypt: Second anniversary of the Queen Boat case

Urge Egypt to Release All Those Imprisoned on the Basis of Their Sexual Orientation.

Egypt: Saad Eddin Ibrahim and all Ibn Khaldun co-defendants are acquitted

Egypt's Court of Cassation has twice overturned the politically motivated sentences handed down by the State Security Court against Saad Eddin Ibrahim and other Ibn Khaldun co-defendents.

Egypt: Convictions for alleged homosexual conduct

An Egyptian court has jailed 21 men for three years each for practising homosexuality in a retrial after their original sentences were quashed on presidential orders.

Egypt: Egyptian anti-war activists arrested and tortured

Emergency legislation used to suppress free expression.

Dossier 19: Contemporary Islamisms and Feminisms in Egypt

Islamisms, or diverse representations of political Islam, have become very difficult to ignore and even more difficult to categorize and explain satisfactorily. This is particularly the case when addressing a western audience, which is unfamiliar not only with the multifaceted aspects of Islam, but also with the crucial role Islamic faith plays, in the everyday lives of Muslim people.

Willy Claes, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), gave Western misperceptions and misrepresentations of Islam and Islamisms a new twist.

Dossier 14-15: From Confiscation to Charges of Apostasy

Freedom of Academic Research

CHRLA is greatly alarmed by the Cairo Court of Appeals ruling of June 14, 1995, which ordered the divorce of Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid (the Cairo University professor) from his wife, Dr. Ibthal Younis, on the grounds that he was an apostate because of the opinions contained in his published research.

The argumentation of the ruling raises problems related to freedom of thought, religious interpretation and belief, and the privacy of family relationships.

Dossier 5-6: Impact of Fanatic Religious Thought: A Story of a Young Egyptian Muslim Woman

An Egyptian man had been very strict with his daughter, only permitting her to work outside the home on condition that she be completely isolated from men. She found that ‘ideal’ job. Many months later, in the spring of 1988, this same man brought his daughter to the office of Nawal Al Saadawi to see her in her capacity as a psychiatrist. The following is based on the young woman’s true story.