“Friends, the ancient word is dead; the ancient books are dead; our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead; our poems have gone sour; women's hair and nights have gone sour; my grieved nation, in a flash, you turned… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“The country's literary and intellectual luminaries were marginalized in the same way. Naguib Mahfouz's23 novels were no longer serialized in Al-Ahram. Tawfik Al-Hakeem's last two novels were published in Paris and Beirut, but not in Cairo. Ihsan Abdel Kodous, Egypt's… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“Even the weighty Salafist voices (for example, Mohamed Seleem Al-Awaa,19 Mohamed Al-Ghazali,20 Fahmi Howeidy21 and Gamal Al-Banna22) were sidelined as ‘too intellectual’.” — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“Between 1991 and 1993, the militants had virtually taken complete control of Imbaba, replacing the government as the social arbiter. The situation reached a… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“At that time, a grand Arabic project emanating from Cairo had credibility. That is not true today. The relative standing of Egyptians (the country,… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“There was a major demographic boom in Egypt from the 1980s, in which the population almost doubled from around 45 million to 80 million,… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“the factor that really cemented the Brotherhood's social re-emergence, and founded the Islamic movement's social base, was its highly efficient services infrastructure.” — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“Luxor attack in 1997 in which Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya killed fifty-eight tourists and four Egyptians outside a pharaonic temple. In the same year, an ambush… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“Cairo itself was founded under their rule in 969, as was Al-Azhar (whose name is derived from that of Al-Zahraa). The dynasty also inaugurated… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“But the society became characterized by a unique mix of Sunni theology and Shi'ite social traditions. Al-Azhar evolved and consolidated its unique status; and… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“The Alexandria Bourse (the fourth largest worldwide) and the Cairo stock exchange were sizable, international markets. In fact, the story of the Alexandria Bourse… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
“In general, the liberal experiment seemed to have failed to put forward a development programme for the country's poor, who continued to constitute more… — Tarek Osman Copy Share Image
