Fieldnotes on Humanity

The 'Egyptian Shakira (Suha Mohammed Ali) and her recent album is call " al-Kamoun " In Egypt, freedom of speech has been worsening since the military has taken over control of the country after it ousted President Morsi, in 2013. Recently, an Egyptian court sentenced two women to six months in prison . The two performers are famous belly dancers and known as Bardis and Egyptian Shakira (Suha Mohammed Ali and Dalia Kamal). Their charges are committing debauchery and promotion of immorality through their videos. If carefully watched, neither of the two videos contains nudity or promotes immorality. So, why the court has charged the two singers into six months prison? What is in the video that could be assumed offensive to Egyptians? For Egyptian Shakira, the video clips starts with a scene where a dancer swings her hip while clinging to the wall. Then, the scene leads to a decorated room, more looks like a bar, or a nightclub, than a studio. The main character of...

Daunting news from Egypt in post-mubarakism surprised the world by jailing a blogger for three years . It shocked people because even in the Mubarak era, jailing bloggers was not as common as these last two months after Mubarak was forced to leave the power. The only and the first case during Mubarak was K areem Amir who was sentenced to 4 years in jail because of allegedly insulting Islam and Husni Mubarak. According to BBC , Maikel Nabil was arrested last month for blog posts where he criticized the role of the Egyptian Army during anti-government uprising. Based AFP , a military court sentenced him to three years in prison. The Maikel Nabil case harks back to Mubarak era; it seems the Army is still remaining in its authoritarian nature and it would likely be hard to expect changes in institutions like the military. It clearly tells us that Egyptian Army does not tolerate criticism and it raises lots of unanswered questions about whether people’s efforts would finally succeed to a...

I have been following the Egyptian uprising closely, and besides blogging I have been tweeting constantly. One would ask why I am so curious and care about Egyptian events, which have seemingly nothing to do with my country. Well, the answer can be anything, particularly including the fact that Egypt is influential on regional level and, more importantly, in Muslim world. It is not clear yet whether these upheavals will put Egypt in a crisis or lead to a prosperous situation However, in any case, changes in Egypt will impact the Muslim world in general and Afghanistan in particular. According to the BBC , since the 1950s, Afghanistan and Egypt have had a long cultural relationship; there has been a formal educational exchange contract between the countries. Since that time, thousands of Afghan students have been sent to Al Azhar University to learn religious subjects. The most obvious impact of Egypt is the birth of the Afghan Muslim Brotherhood party, which was founded by those studen...

Of course everyone is in a state of bewilderment, especially those who follow the news on Egypt's upheavals. For the last hours I have been reading some confusing opinion which were saying that Egypt will meet the same fate that Iran did. It is simply an assumption that doesn't necessarily represent or relate to the major theme but it can be counted as a concern. We should not be confused or naively believe in what we hear from news channels. They are still struggling to realize what to do, how to frame their news, what their narratives should be regarding to Egypt upheavals. But one thing is clear to us that all these news channels are trying their best to cover the uprising. One thing has been vexing me for the last few hours that the Western media are trying to portray the Egyptian uprising as a pro-democracy movement. Of course it's up to them what kind of narrative or interpretation they give out to their audience but if we carefully look at those placards and slogans...

As Egypt uprising enters its seven day and makes its way to the entire Middle East, some countries already shocked and have fears that their citizens might be provoked against their governments. Chinese government has already started blocking micro-blogs that talk about Egyptian unrest. At the same time, Iranian government enforced censorship of the news from Egypt on its news channels. Not only news channels forced to censor news from Egypt, the Iranian regime also blocked he BBC and social networks Facebook and Twitter . For the last days, hundreds of Iranian bloggers were also complaining about news channels that they abstained publishing images of protesters in Egypt. They also have been saying that the Iranian news channels incessantly called the Egyptian uprising an Islamic movement against corruption, secularism and against the government which was pro-Israel and the United States. On popular community website " balatarin " Iranian bloggers discuss that for the last 48...

For the last days, I have been kept saying that uprising became a trendy in the entire Middle East. The Tunisian revolution emulated by Egyptian protesters and today the Egyptian unrest is entering to its fifth day. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak sacked his government after four days of street protests. Today, he named the intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as his first ever vice-president in order to control the situation. As pressure is mounting for President Mubarak due to widespread demonstrations against his government, perhaps, the Western world would ponder and wonder what is next and what they would expect out of all these upheavals in the Middle East. We should keep in mind that we will be witnessing lots of changes in the Middle East in new future. Today, the Tunisian uprising not only inspired Egyptian citizens but also Yemenis. Yemenis already started a similar act against their government, according to New York Times, thousands of people rallied on the streets against ...