Telecoms mogul and Coptic Christian Naguib Sawiris re-posted the images on Twitter last June.

The tweeted images showed Mickey Mouse wearing a traditional Islamic robe with a full beard, while Minnie Mouse is wearing a niqab – a full-face veil – with just her eyes showing.

Sawiris subsequently apologized on twitter (see below), saying he meant no offense but a formal complaint against him has now been referred to court.

I apologise for any who don’t take this as a joke , I just thought it was a funny picture no disrespect meant! Assef!!

— Naguib Sawiris (@NaguibSawiris) June 24, 2011

Tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and minority Christian community have worsened in recent months.

Anchor Marco Werman talks with correspondent Noel King in Cairo.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: In the uncertain cultural terrain of post-revolution Arab nations, a tweet can land you in deep trouble. A prominent Egyptian media mogul found that out the hard way. Naguib Sawiris tweeted a picture of Minnie and Mickey Mouse last June, but it wasn’t just any picture of the two Disney characters. Minnie is wearing a face veil, and Mickey sports a beard and traditional Islamic robe. And the mogul behind the tweet? Naguib Sawiris is a Christian. Egyptian authorities have charged Sawiris with contempt for religion. He is due to appear in court this Saturday. Correspondent Noel King is in Cairo. Noel, describe these Mickey and Minnie pictures for us.

Noel King: Well, they’ve been described as a cartoon, but if you see the image online you’ll see that they almost look like a painting with a little bit of a cartoonish aspect. Mickey Mouse is wearing Islamic robes and he has a long beard, and Minnie Mouse is wearing an niqab, the black face veil. And you can tell that it’s Minnie Mouse because she’s wearing the pink bow that we all know so well from the Disney character.

Werman: We’ll have a link to the pictures at theworld.org. I’ve got to say that Mickey Mouse with blue eyes seems unconventional, but the rest of him looks like Mickey as a Madrasah student, perhaps. These pictures were already out there online, Noel, and who knows where else. How are Caireans reacting to this? Because Sawiris is getting charged and getting tried for tweeting something that was already out there on the web.

King: That’s right, and that’s been one of his main defenses from the beginning, since he tweeted out the picture in June. Look, the cartooon has been out since 2008; it was out there; I thought it was funny. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. It was supposed to be a joke. But when he tweeted the picture, a couple of prominent Islamists picked up on the tweet and they said to their followers, we’re going to boycott this man’s business. He’s a very wealthy man. He’s got his fingers in every pie from construction to tourism to science and technology. But the biggest hit that he took was with his mobile phone company. The numbers that we have seen so far suggest that about three hundred thousand subscribers ditched his company Mobinil and went to other companies as a way of expressing their outrage. So he did take a pretty big hit in his business. His stocks did fall. That said, three hundred thousand people out of an estimated maybe 55 to 60 million cell phone users isn’t an overwhelming number, but there is some displeasure there.

Werman: Sawiris is a Christian, as we’ve mentioned, and Christians are a minority in Egypt and there have been attacks on Christians since the ousting of Mubarak last year. Did Sawiris have another agenda by tweeting this image or was it just a case of poor judgment?

King: There are two things here. It was likely a case of poor judgment, of a joke gone wrong. At the same time, Sawiris has clashed for years and years with Islamists in Egypt. He’s a very outspoken critic of anything that to him smacks of religious conservatism. He has said in the press and publicly again and again that he despises the idea of Egypt moving toward a conservative religious society. So this is a man who, in a sense, has been a flash point for many years now.

Werman: Are Egyptians saying this is a sign that the country is moving toward a more conservative society?

King: If you ask me, Marco, that’s really the whole story here. Here’s what’s happening. Egypt Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the more conservative Salafi parties are doing very well, as we all know, in the parliamentary elections. Egyptian liberals, Christians, and secularists have said for the past couple of weeks, this is something to really be concerned about. This country is moving in the wrong direction. Their critics, including many ordinary Egyptians have said: Look, Egypt is not Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood are not mullahs, they’re dentists; they’re businessmen. They’re not going to change Egypt in any great way. What the liberals and Christians and secularists are pointing to since Monday is, they’re effectively saying this is the writing on the wall. If you want an example of how this country is moving in the wrong direction, look to this, the fact that a prominent businessman made a joke and now is being hauled into court. So for many people here in Egypt, this is a disturbing sign that things are moving in a conservative direction.

Werman: Correspondent Noel King in Cairo. Thank you, indeed.

King: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Religious freedom versus the right to a fair trial – that’s one way to summarize a case heard today by the Supreme Court of Canada. At the center of the case is a Muslim woman. She is the accuser in a sexual assault case and she wants to testify while wearing a niqab, an Islamic face veil that covers the entire face but the eyes. But the defendants assert that it’s their right to confront their accuser and observe her facial nuances as she testifies. University of Ottawa law professor, Carissima Mathen was at the Supreme Court hearing in Ottawa today. Carissima, this case has been ongoing for a few years. What can you tell us about it and how it’s kind of ebbed and flowed?

Carissima Mathen: Well, in this case, what happened was that at the preliminary enquiry accused counsel requested that the complainant remove her niqab. The judge performed an ad hoc questioning of the complainant and determined on the basis of some of the things she said that the religious beliefs was not sincere or valid and was prepared to order her to remove the niqab. It then went on appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal which said that there needed to be a framework to govern these kinds of decisions. So it’s really about the larger question that would arise in any case where you have a witness who comes to court wearing a face covering that is worn for a religious reason.

Werman: And, the woman at the centre of this case says she is going only by the initials N.S. If N.S. is not permitted by the Supreme Court to wear a niqab when she faces the defendants, will she drop the case?

Mathen: We don’t know what the complainant would do in that case, but if you have a reluctant witness, ultimately the witness would be subject to a contempt of court order. That came out in the hearing today that the ultimate result could be that someone could in fact be jailed for their religious beliefs if the Crown determined that it wanted to go ahead. The more likely outcome in these kinds of cases is that the case simply would not proceed.

Werman: One of the Tenets of Islam is a requirement for modesty. Is this being seen as a lack of religious tolerance to ask this woman to remove her veil?

Mathen: Some members of the Muslim community in Canada argue quite strenuously that the Koran does not require veiling and so to see this as a question of religious belief is a bit of a red herring. That’s inconsistent with Canadian law on the scope of religious freedom. You know, there is an undercurrent in Canada, like the U.S. and other Western Nations, has been undergoing some debate about the role of Islam in public life and in society. But here, because it deals with the criminal justice system and the particular rights of the accused, there’s a little bit of a different aspect I think to some of the arguments.

Werman: In the United States a couple of years ago a case – Mohammed v Paruk, a Michigan District Judge dismissed a Muslim woman’s lawsuit against a car rental company because she refused to remove her niqab in the courtroom. Any sense of how this is going to play out at the Supreme Court in Ottawa?

Mathen: It’s really hard to tell at this point. The court was pressing hard about the accused rights here. The court was also wrestling with the aspect of how useful is demeanor evidence in any event. You know, there are studies that cast some doubt on that but, on the other side, we have an entire adversarial system that is predicated upon testimony from witnesses given in the ordinary courts which, of course, is that in our society people generally don’t cover their faces. So, there’s some really deep-seated societal beliefs at play here. To many people too, this is about a sexual assault complainant’s access to justice and while the niqab may make this seem a very exotic case, it’s actually consistent with other kinds of tactics that are sometimes used in a sexual assault trial to discomfort a witness, to make it less appealing for her to go forward. So, certainly, we think that that’s the important perspective.

Werman: It’s pretty complex. Is this a can of worms that Canada’s justice system would have just assumed to have kept sealed?

Mathen: I like to call it ‘a perfect storm’ of issues. I don’t think there would be a way to avoid this though, because, at some point when you have a more multi-cultural diverse society, you will have people who do observe certain cultural manners that will come into conflict with some of our criminal justice traditions.

Werman: Carissima Mathen, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, thanks so much.

Mathen: My pleasure. Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The answer is the Malay Peninsula. It’s the long finger of land that includes parts of Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

In southern Thailand, conflict has killed more than 4,700 people over the past eight years.

In this region, most people are ethnically Malay Muslims. And Malay militants are fighting to separate from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state.

The militants target Buddhist civilians. Meanwhile, the Thai government is accused of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Muslims.

Andrea Wenzel of WAMU went to the southern Thai province of Pattani to see how people there are dealing with the violence.

Abbot blessing SUV (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

In this part of the country, people need all the protection they can get.

Anand, a local Buddhist visiting the temple, said that not long ago, the temple was hit by a bomb but nobody was hurt. Anand said the temple has a kind of spiritual protection. But Anand’s not taking any chances; he wears Buddhist amulets around his neck — and a revolver on his hip.

A conflict in Thailand’s Deep South has killed nearly 5,000 people since 2004. In this part of the country, most people are ethnically Malay Muslims. Malay militants are fighting to separate from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state. The militants target Buddhist civilians, as well as Muslims working with the government. At the same time, Thai authorities are accused of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Muslims.

“I can’t see that it’s going to get any better. I can only see it’s going to get worse and worse,” said Prakru Sopitpotikhun, the abbot of the Buddhist temple. He said the minority Buddhist community is under attack and people are leaving.

“A number of them think they don’t really have much future here so they move out. They don’t feel very safe,” the abbot said.

The Buddhists who remain have curtailed their activities. On Fridays, the Muslim holy day, everyone has to stop working. The abbot said rubber tappers who don’t, risk having their ears cut off by Muslim militants.

At the Ban Samyord mosque, the imam, Yako Minha, preaches about Muslims living together with people of other faiths. He’s lived in the area with Buddhists his whole life.

The imam said this area was the birthplace of Malay separatist movements in the 1960s. Back then the fight was against the Thai military, but now, the imam said he doesn’t understand why militants kill so many civilians. He compares the current conflict to the regional dish, khao yum, a colorful rice salad served with many types of finely diced vegetables. Only instead of carrots, chili and cucumber, the conflict is a mix of things like history, politics, illegal drugs, and land disputes.

A short drive from the mosque, the imam points out a Muslim cemetery that now sits in a Buddhist village. The imam said he himself has negotiated land disputes over the years. He used to be in local government.

He said the conflict here would be a lot worse if it weren’t for personal connections between Buddhist and Muslim leaders like himself. One of his old friends is the abbot, Prakru Sopitpotikhun, who was blessing the SUV earlier in the day. They used to play together when they were kids.

Imam Yako Minha and Abbot Prakru Sopitpotikhun (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

“He said I’ll leave there within three days,” the imam said. “Now it’s 30 years. So I asked him when will your three days be over?”

The imam said the first time he teased his friend about it, the abbot responded with a four-letter word. But he’s laughing now.

Their friendship is about more than childhood nostalgia. It’s also about protection. The Buddhist abbot said he relies on the imam and other local Muslims for intelligence to keep his monks safe.

“People warn us about places we shouldn’t go because of the situation,” the abbot said. “For older generations, there’s still interaction between Buddhists and Muslims who’ve been living here for long time.”

The abbot adds that younger generations also need these kinds of networks to protect them from the violence, but they don’t get to interact with one another because of security problems. And it’s these same young people who are recruited to take part in the violence.

The abbot and the imam say they want to show teens that the fighting is not about religion, and that political conflicts are better solved through dialogue. They two men plan to bring teens together to learn about each other, and to play sports.

The morning after the imam and the abbot met for a chat, there was a drive-by shooting nearby. A 62-year-old Buddhist truck driver was killed.

No one thinks a few games of soccer will be enough to repair damaged community relations. But the abbot and the imam hope their conversations can at least offer a starting point.

Srimahapo Temple (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

Standing on the front steps of a Cairo courthouse, her round face wrapped tightly in a fuchsia headscarf, Ibrahim admits she is nervous. But there is something that gives her confidence. That is the group of about a dozen Egyptian friends, activists and lawyers who came to court to support her.

A young bearded Egyptian engineer named Hossam al-Din introduces himself to me as a Salafi, an ultra-conservative branch of Islam.

Al-Din says he met Samira Ibrahim in early February in Tahrir Square. He has gotten to know her since then and he’s here on Tuesday because what happened to Ibrahim could happen to any Egyptian girl – Christian or Muslim, he says – under this military government. He says, that is not acceptable.

Ibrahim has described what happened to her – in detail – in a video posted online (below in Arabic with English subtitles). But the broad outline of her story goes like this.

Ibrahim, along with 16 other women, were detained during a demonstration on March 9th. She was held for four days. During that time, she says soldiers beat her repeatedly. They subjected her to electric shocks. They screamed at her and threatened her. Then, worst of all, they made her strip so that a man in military clothes could check to see if she was a virgin. She felt like she had been raped.

In June, Ibrahim filed a criminal case against the army. But that case has gone nowhere. So, she is also pursuing a case in civil court, with the help of several human rights groups. They are asking judges to rule on the legality of Ibrahim’s treatment by the military. If they win the case, it could amount to a most serious legal blow to the Egyptian military’s supreme political control over Egypt.

Ahmed Hossam is Ibrahim’s lawyer. In a smart grey suit, he stands outside the courtroom smoking one cigarette after another. He says this case is incredibly sensitive politically. Hossam is not sure which way it will go.

Observers say it is hard to overstate just how much courage it takes for Hossam’s client to go through with her case. Ibrahim is not the only woman who has been subjected to forced “virginity tests” while in military detention. But the subject of sexual abuse carries a powerful stigma, says Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch.

“Egypt remains a very conservative society and even talking about the fact that these virginity tests took place is very difficult for young women, in fact most of the women who’ve been subjected to these forced virginity tests have not wanted to come forward.”

Tuesday in court was a big disappointment. The judge did not make a ruling. Instead the case was postponed until late December. After the announcement, Ibrahim was visibly frustrated.

“I’m not angry,” Ibrahim says. “They’re just stalling, trying to kill my case. But I’m not going to give up.”

Ibrahim’s lawyer said the case is probably being held up because the political atmosphere is so sensitive right now, with the recent violence and ongoing parliamentary elections. “There’s not much to do now,” he said. “Except to wait.”

As for Samira Ibrahim, she will be not waiting for anything. Minutes after the disappointing announcement in the courtroom, she joined a small group of demonstrators and together, they marched straight back to Tahrir Square.

It’s the fallout of a NATO airstrike on a Pakistani border post near the border with Afghanistan on Saturday which killed at least 24 Pakistani troops. Pakistan says the attacks were unprovoked, while coalition forces say they are investigating the incident.

It has brought the already strained relations between the US and Pakistan to a new low since they became in the war against terror after 9/11.

“Those who are friends of America and NATO are traitors.”

That’s the rally cry here at this protest demonstration in Karachi organized by the officially banned Jamaat ud Dawa Islamist group.

The turnout isn’t huge, just a few hundred people waving black and white Jamaat ud Dawa flag. But it’s just one of several such protests across the country on Monday, and follows a larger rally in front of Karachi’s US consulate on Sunday.

They are seething against Saturday’s NATO airstrike on Pakistani soil. And speakers like Navid Qamar are calling on the Pakistani government to take a stronger response.

“If US or NATO helicopters event enter Pakistan then they should be shot down even if that means following them back into Afghanistan, to take revenge for your martyrs,” Qamar said.

The participants at this demonstration are all associated with Pakistan’s Islamist parties, and do not represent the bulk of society. But this specific issue of cross-border attacks does resonate across much of the political spectrum in the country.

Many Pakistanis have long been uncomfortable with their government’s alliance with the US in its War on Terror.

“Today, NATO forces are spilling the blood of oppressed Muslims in Afghanistan,” demonstration speaker Nasrullah Shaji said. “We shared air bases and our intelligence with them. Today those same NATO forces are attacking the Pakistani military.”

Many of those at this rally, this is the last straw, and are just as angered by the Pakistani government’s weak response as they are by NATO’s attacks on Pakistani soil. Abdul Rehman, a spokesperson for the Jamaat ud Dawa, says the killing of uniformed Pakistani troops makes matters even worse.

“If your borders are being breached, your soldiers are being killed then there is no reason to apologize. You just go scramble your jets and raid their posts. That is the basic thing you have to do. Temporarily settlements like asking them to apologize or closing supply lines is not the solution. So there is no point in saying we have our sovereignty. Either give them everything you have, or defend it,” Rehman said.

Others, like Asadullah Bhutto of the mainstream Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, want the government to take this up with the international community.

“I think it is the right of Pakistan to take this matter to the UN security council and other international forums,” Bhutto said. “Because it is a violation of international conventions. They have violated our geographical territory. Govt of Pakistan should take it seriously.”

The immediate popular anger in response to this airstrike is likely to eventually die down, as has been the case with previous incidents like this. But what is unclear is what the incremental impact of all of these incidents will be on Pakistani-US relations in the long term.

It all started because of the police’s brutality. And that’s no surprise, say human rights experts and former policemen. In addition to the removal of Hosni Mubarak, one of the key demands of Egyptian demonstrators ten months ago was the reform of the police.

In one shocking video that has circulated widely online, policemen are seen dragging what looks like a dead body and piling it on the curb alongside garbage.

A police officer who is a member of a small reform-minded group called The Honourable Policemen – and who prefer to remain anonymous – said in a telephone interview that the police view the protesters as their enemies.

“Those who supported the old regime dominate the police force,” he said. “They see the revolution as a catastrophe. It’s against their interests. Many of them are corrupt and many of them could end up in jail for their human rights abuses.”

Over 800 people were killed and 11,000 wounded in the January uprising. Only one low-level policeman has been convicted – in absentia.

Officers accused of killing dozens of people have simply been transferred to new positions. Recently, a policeman on trial for killing protesters showed up in court with armed supporters who clashed with families of the dead victims.

Ghada Shahbander is a human rights activist who has been pushing for police reform.

“High-ranking police officers are responsible for serious crimes, ranging from torture to killing to withdrawal from their positions and the opening of prisons and killing of prisoners,” Shahbander said. “No one has been held accountable. Their trials and taking forever and they are still in place.”

The police force long functioned as the Mubarak regime’s enforcers. It participated in election fraud, spied on and intimidated the regime’s political opponents, and tortured citizens. It was also notoriously corrupt.

Observers say low-level policemen are poorly paid, poorly trained and threatened with severe punishment if they disobey orders. Meanwhile, the higher-ups — not just in the police but in the military and government — cling to their impunity.

The Ministry of Interior needs to clean house, says the police officer, and get rid of those who are corrupt and who committed human rights abuses.

“Leaving these people in their positions was the biggest mistake we’ve made since the revolution,” he said. “If they’d been delivered to justice, the people would have felt the police and the government are serious about reform and accountability. The fact that it didn’t happen has led to the current explosion.”

Weeding out corrupt and abusive cops won’t be easy, but it’s the only way to regain the public’s trust, he said.

But clearly, until now, the ruling military council is reluctant to hold anyone accountable.

One week before the Egyptian elections are set to begin, deadly clashes between demonstrators and security forces have broken out in Cairo and other cities. The death toll in the Egyptian capital on Monday was at least 23 people.

Protestors re-occupied Tahrir Square in the heart of downtown, angry about what they see as intransigence on the part of Egypt’s military rulers.

Violent scenes from the square and surrounding areas over the past three days are giving many Egyptians a feeling of deja vu. The smell of tear gas is in the air. People have been injured by the hundreds. Scenese of riot police battling crowds of rock-throwing young men fill TVs and newspapers.

These are all reminders that the Egyptian revolution has reached a critical moment.

In the middle of it all is a group of young citizen journalists calling themselves Mosireen. The name is a play on the Arabic word for Egypt. And it means determined. Mosireen is made up of a group of film makers and activists, working out of an office in downtown Cairo. They aren’t getting much sleep these days. 27 year-old Omar Hamilton is a British-born Egyptian. He sits in front of an iMac editing some video.

“This is kind of a quick chronicle of what happened yesterday,” Hamilton said, wearing a black and white kaffiyeh around his neck. “I was out filming from two in the afternoon to seven in the morning.”

“I want to put together a very quick 7-8 minute video, kind of showing what happened.”

Hamilton and his colleagues are unapologetic supporters of the Egyptian revolution and they use cameras to try to make an impact on events. He says the role of the civilian journalist has been hugely important since the start of the uprising in January.

“There’s a huge propaganda war being fought. Most of the country only watch state television and state television are pouring out sort of merciless lies.”

“We know that this isn’t going to be on the news,” Hamilton said of his latest video. “But we know also that if we get something good and true on the Internet and it’s out quickly, then a lot of people watch it and a lot of people talk about it and it does actually influence the way the debate is framed.”

That debate could not be more important right now for the future of Egypt. Elections are scheduled to start a week from today. But the re-occupation of Tahrir Square and the ongoing violence in Cairo and other cities is putting everything into question. And that has a lot of Egyptians worried.

If there’s a message that many people around the country – especially those in Tahrir Square – seem to agree on, it’s that Egypt’s military leadership is dragging its feet.

Speaking from the square on Sunday night, Ghada Mohamed Naguib says, “we have one demand, handing over power to a civilian government.”

“We want presidential elections by next April and the military council doesn’t want to hold those elections till 2013.”

Naguib goes on to say she was surprised to see the Egyptian army beating people in the square.

“We used to say the people and the army are one hand. But it turns out that’s not the case.”

Egyptian general, Saeed Abbas told reporters on Monday that the troops’ mission was to protect the Interior Ministry building near Tahrir Square from demonstrators.

“The armed forces were dispatched following a request from the interior minister,” Abbas said.

“It was approved by the head of the Military Supreme Council to assist the security forces in protecting the Ministry of Interior, nothing else. They did not come to disperse protesters, or to remove them from Tahrir Square. They didn’t leave the vicinity of the Interior Ministry.”

The idea that the people and army were ever united as one is laughable to Khalid Abdullah. Back at the office of Mosireen, he says this is a key moment. Demonstrators in the square are not going to be intimidated, Abdullah says, and neither are he and his fellow activists.

“Within our close circle of friends are people who are prison, are people who’ve been tortured, are people who have lost their eyes,” he says. “What they never seem to get is the fact that that is what keeps us going. It’s not what stops us.”

A few minutes later, someone in the office gets word soldiers are moving into Tahrir Square.

“The army are down,” Abdullah asks?

Everyone then grabs their jackets and their camera bags. And they head back out to the square.

Watch videos put out by Mosireen

Video: The BBC’s Lyse Doucet reporting from Tahrir Square

Read tweets about Egypt

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Robert Springborg is an expert on the Egyptian military. He’s a professor at the Naval Post-graduate School in Monterey, California. Robert Springborg, what’s going on in Cairo? Why is the military council using such force?

Robert Springborg: Well, the military council embodied in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the SCAF, has been seeking to engineer a transition in which the end result would be the protection of its rights and privileges, which are extremely expansive. And so as it has sought to do that, so has it alienated more and more of the both unorganized political forces in Egypt, as well as public sympathies. So, basically the SCAF has overplayed its hand.

Werman: Hm, I mean the military has said that they want to keep real political power in any new Egypt. Why does the military feel entitled to such a stake in the government there and will they continue to push for a new stake in the government given everything that’s been happening the last few days?

Springborg: Well, the military has essentially been the backbone of the state since 1952. They cannot imagine an Egypt in which the military does not play a dominant role. They are virtually synonymous in their mind. There is contempt among military officers who are civilians, so the idea that they would be subordinate to civilian authority is unknown to them. They simply cannot imagine that this would be the right and proper thing. And so they are doing everything possible to wall themselves off, and by that I mean their economic interests, their internal organization and their control over the country’s foreign policy. To wall all of that off from any sort of civilian oversight, and the possibility of junior officers, more professional, more aware of sort of global military relationships, might finally decide that the staff is just simply overplaying its hand and is you know, too old school to be besmirching the military’s reputation, which it is not doing. So I think there is serious questions now about the capacity of the military to carryon as it has been doing since February 11th.

Werman: I gotta say, it feels like a long way from the headiness of the revolution in February, which you know, succeeded in large part because the military was largely neutral. What’s changed Robert Springborg, in the strategic thinking among the military?

Springborg: Well, the military thought at that time, that they could get rid of Mubarak, get rid of his son and his cronies, and then essentially manage a process of transition in which all of its rights and privileges would be protected, but what they failed to calculate was the strength of the reaction against authoritarian control. And that as they tried to orchestrate all of this they would inevitably meet reaction. So as that reaction has intensified, then so has the sort of out-of-date thinking of these officers. Don’t forget, General Kankawi is somewhere in his upper 70s, but no one knows exactly how old he is. And so it’s calling into question then this whole generation, the military institution, and no one really has the answers because it’s not as if the civilian politicians want to get rid of the military. That’s not the point. What they want to do is get rid of the staff and that sort of thinking. They want to preserve and possibly even enhance the capacity of the military. But they don’t want the military dictating the process of transition to anyone else.

Werman: Robert Springborg with the Naval Post-graduate School in Monterey, thanks very much.

Springborg: Thank you, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Joumana Haddad (Photo: Joumana Haddad/Wiki Commons)

She’s the founder of a print and online magazine called Jasad (“Body”).

It’s the first erotic magazine published in Arabic for women in the Islamic world.

Haddad now has a new book out with a very provocative title.

It’s called I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman.

The book is part autobiography, part political diatribe.

Haddad says it’s a call to Arab women – and the entire Eastern and Western worlds – to rethink their idea of what an Arab woman is.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks with Haddad.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Lebanese poet and writer, Joumana Haddad is used to controversy. She’s the founder of a print and online magazine called “Jasad” or “The Body”. It’s the first erotic magazine published in Arabic for women in the Islamic world. Haddad has now written a new book out with a very provocative title. It’s called “I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman”. The book is part autobiography, part political diatribe. Haddad says it’s a call to Arab women and the entire Eastern and Western worlds to rethink their idea of what an Arab woman is.

Joumana Haddad: The first motivation behind this book has been an interview that a Western journalist was doing with me. You know, two years ago I started doing a cultural magazine called “Body” which is an erotic, quite controversial magazine and this particular journalist asked me a question which made me feel frustrated. She said, “I didn’t imagine that there were women like you in the Arab world,” and so I…

Mullins: Do you know how common that that thought would be?

Haddad: I know. I know. Whenever you say “Arab woman” what’s the first image that pops in to mind? You know, veil, subdued, oppressed, etc, and I’m not saying that’s not true. The cliche is always true, unfortunately, and they do represent the majority. This is one of our biggest problems, but what I wanted to say here is that it is incomplete and that there is a difference Arab woman and that she deserves to be heard and seen especially in the West, but also in the Arab world, because, in my opinion, she represents hope just by being there, just by staying there.

Mullins: What about when you make the distinction between yourself and the other women who, for instance, wear the veil? Just to put it very basically, inherent in that argument is the idea that they are trapped, that they cannot think for themselves, that they don’t think for themselves, that they don’t choose to wear the veil when you know that there are women who do.

Haddad: I’m quite convinced and I can say it in a very extreme way that I know they don’t because either it’s the result of a brainwashing that makes them think it is their choice or they have so much, you know, dignity that they don’t want to admit that it has been forced on them, but you can only talk about choice and freedom of choice when you have alternatives. You cannot talk about freedom of choice when, if you don’t wear the veil, you’re going to be either harassed or beaten up or killed or whatever.

Mullins: Although, you know, there are young people even, who have grown up when they have not had the veil imposed on them and, again, we’re just using this as one example, who have chosen now to wear if for whatever reason. I mean you’ve, you know these people. I’ve met some of them myself.

Haddad: I know.

Mullins: They’ve had the freedom to not do it and they choose to.

Haddad: I know and this, many of these cases are, in a way, a reaction to what they perceive as an invasion of the West, of Western values on their lives and they do it as a self punishment I think without realizing it and when I talk about patriarchal societies, I’m talking also about women, because many women have patriarchal values. I know many women until now even in the West where they are pregnant are happier when they have boys than girls. I know many women who still raise their girls to dream ultimately of the rich guy or the husband that the, the good husband that will save them. So this is where it has to change at first.

Mullins: I want to ask you about something that you were also identified with because of your writings, because of your writings, because of your influences, and certainly because of the website. How has sexuality and eroticism become part of what defines you and your mission?

Haddad: It was a very spontaneous rebirth for me because ever since I started reading on my own, and I mean by that not reading the books that my father used to bring me because my father was an intellectual and he used to read a lot and bring me books.

Mullins: Like what?

Haddad: And then I started, book from my age, you know, books for kids like, especially from the French and Arabic literature, but then at the age of eleven, twelve I started searching in his library for the books he had hidden and this is how I read [xx], Miller, Nabokov, [xx] etc, etc.

Mullins: Were they in the back of the shelf?

Haddad: Exactly. They were hidden. I always see myself up on a chair trying to reach…

Mullins: Such a troublemaker.

Haddad: …trying to reach for the hidden books. So I think it’s not something you choose. I think it’s something that chooses you. I mean I don’t know why I’m interested in erotica and sexuality, but I know I am and I know that when I write, I feel like I’m writing with my body. I feel like I’m writing with my fingernails, with my flesh, with my blood. It’s a very sensual and a very physical act for me.

Mullins: But this is political as well?

Haddad: It’s very political, especially in a country like mine. Like, for example, when I started writing, my first book was in French and I thought, “Well, it’s because French is our mother tongue in Lebanon and it’s fine. This is why I chose French.” But then I realized in my twenties that no, that it was because of cowardice. I was afraid to confront the Arabic language and to say the things that I say in that language and this is how I switched. I started writing my poetry in Arabic and my first poem in that are like scenes of war. You could see even the dead and the wounded on the floor.

Mullins: One of the things you say in the book is, “I’m not the Hugh Hefner of the Arab world,” but I wonder, but you definitely, I can vouch for that because you’re sitting across for me, but I’m still curious as to how writing about it and writing about in such a provocative way or even talking about ancient Arab writers who have written about sexuality, why that is an useful tool?

Haddad: I think because the taboos that have been imposed on the Arabic culture and language are insulting for us. It means that we are minors. It means that we can not discuss these things.

Mullins: You mean women or Arabs?

Haddad: Everything that I talk about becomes, the dose of it becomes even higher when we’re talking about women. All the constrictions and the chains, they become even worse, but they are imposed on the Arab human being in general. I’m fed up with the castration of my language and my culture. We, in the Arab world, live in a certain denial of our body and sexualities and it is generating lots of, you know, complexes and unhealthy relationships with ourselves. It’s as if we have to be ashamed of having those bodies and this cannot be a good way to live your life.

Mullins: OK, but again, let me just ask this: Why the body?

Haddad: Why not? Because it’s a total part of who we are. It’s an important part of who we are. I’m not one of those who separate between the body and the spirit and the mind. It’s a whole for me. If I’m not connected with my body, then I’m not connected with my mind and vice versa. So if I’m just deleting that part of who I am, I’m a stranger to myself and I don’t think it’s, this is how I want to live my life at least.

Mullins: Joumana Haddad, Thank you.

Haddad: Thank you so much.

Mullins: Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese writer and poet and the editor of the cultural erotic magazine “Jasad” or “Body”. We have a link to her website at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

A lot of these young men were reportedly soccer ultras. These obsessive and aggressive fans – who have experience clashing with the police – were also at the vanguard of a lot of the revolution’s fighting. In fact, I heard so much about them that I sat down with one, a Zamalek White Knight, a few months back.

A self-described anarchist, “G” has shoulder-length hair, and a sweet, shambling manner. I wouldn’t have guessed his long and deep familiarity with violence. Police beatings broke one of his eardrums, afer a soccer match, and his jaw, after a demonstration (he is a rare ultra/activist – most fans are not overtly political, with the exception of the Palestinian cause). He also got shot in the leg on January 28. He says ultras are “freedom fighters” and “against everyone” – especially any figure or sign of authority. The revolution, in its early days, “was a fight with the police, and that’s our fight.” Ultras, he says “don’t give a [expletive] about politics or the stability of the country. Zamalek is our country and Al Ahly is their country.”

It’s thanks to him that I know that the acronym A.C.A.B. — which I know notice everywhere on the walls of Cairo — means “All Cops Are Bastards.”

Zamalek and Al Ahly — the two Cairo teams whose rivalry in Egypt is historic and identity-defining — came together Friday to take on the police (who seemingly decided to skip the date) after huge clashes a few days ago following a soccer match at the end of which the police reportedly shut off the lights and charged the stands. What drove them to it? Apparently, this chant by Ahlawy ultras:

The incredibly disciplined and terrifying hyped-up fans are chanting:

“He was always a loser, a jest/he barely got 50 percent on his high-school test/with a bribe the rich kid’s a fool no more/got 100 diplomas hanging on his door/You crows nesting in our house/why are you ruining all our fun? We won’t do as you tell us/Spare us your face/Cook up your case/That’s what the Interior does/I’m arrested and charged as a terrorist/Just for holding a flare and singing Ahly.”

The chant is one long taunt of police officers, the “losers” who have to bribe their way through life and who fabricate charges against anyone they lay hands on. This follows on a much more foul-mouthed gem of a chant from the Zamalek White Knights, performed shortly after the revolution.

The words are: “We haven’t forgotten Tahrir, you [expletive]! The revolution was your naksah [catastrophe], we’ll tell anyone, officers, pimps, you took a beating like you haven’t had in years.”

In the end, most of the ultras’ violent energy got focused on the Israeli Embassy on Friday. Which seems pretty convenient for the authorities (although now, as diplomatic and political repercussions make themselves felt, they may think so less). If the embassy hadn’t been there, what might they have torn down?

Eid feast in Osh, Kyrgyzstan (Photo: Aibek Abdyldaev)

Slideshow: Celebrating Eid in the Arab World

Slideshow: Celebrating Eid in Indonesia

In fact it is a lot emptier than usual tonight but not because of the holiday. Shortly before Ramadan, witnesses say, municipal police brutally grabbed tables and chairs off the street while customers were still eating and drinking at them. The controversy is only the latest in Turkey’s perennial conflict between its Islamic faith and its secular government. Akyol says the restaurant owners accuse the city of forcing Islamic morality on the public.

“Some people say ‘well, they weren’t paying the rents and people couldnt walk on the streets, because there were too many chairs and there was a pragmatic reason to do that,’” Akyol says. “Others say ‘Oh, this is an Islamic minded municipality, so they’re trying to minimize the space where you can drink alcohol.’”

Akyol is a writer and columnist from an urban, educated secular background. He considers himself a believer in keeping with Turkey’s moderate Islamic tradition.

“I dont see that much of a Sharia-minded conspiracy,” Akyol says. “I think it’s more pragmatic.” After finding a quiet corner to sit in, Akyol makes the argument for his book “Islam without extemes: a muslim case for liberty.”

“When 9/11 happened, many people in west looked at the Arab world and Muslim world, and said oh, there are hardly any democracies, so Islam might must be producing non-democratic regimes,” Akyol says. “There’s a catch in this argument. Many of the dicators in Islamic world are secular, not Islamic. like the dictators in Tunis, the regime was banning the headscarf on the street, it was very secular-minded.”

A lot of the Muslim extremists developed their tactics because of political oppression from secular dictators, Akyol says. To blame Islam for the Middle East’s political problems is like blaming Christianity for the attack by Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, who killed innocent civilians to achieve his political goal.

“Of course this doesn’t make Christianity responsible at all,” Akyol says. “But I think it should be seen, he acted in the name of the western identity. He was a terrorist who in his own way was protecting the west from Islam. With Al-Qaeda you have a similiar picture, you have people who think they are protecting the Muslim identity against the west.”

The sad irony of that act in Norway, Akyol says, is that there’s currently a worldwide movement toward Islamic liberalism. And it’s being led by Turkey, since the Islamic AK party won power 8 years ago playing by the rules of the democratic game.

Akyol says: “Turkey emerged as a very successful Muslim nation, succesful in terms of economy, diplomacy, prestige in the world. Also, it emerged as this country in which Islam and democracy really go together.”

Turkey is now an example of a successful country by any standards, he says. It’s a rising regional power with one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
“And that’s why Turkey is becoming more interesting for the average Muslim in Tunis, in Cairo, in Bosnia, everywhere,” Akyol says.

But Turkey is also inspiring for religious reasons, he says. Islamic parties from Egypt and Tunisia are studying the governing AKP to understand how an Islamic party governs a secular state. “And I think in Turkey there’s a silent Islamic reformation going on,” Akyol says. Akyol doesn’t expect a Muslim Martin Luther to post a thesis on the door of a mosque, but rather a growing bottom up demand for Muslim liberalism from society.

Experts aren’t convinced that there is a worldwide Islamic reformation. And if there was, whether it would come from Turkey. Gareth Jenkins is an analyst and author of the book Political Islam in Turkey: Running West, Heading East? He says it’s unlikely that Turkish religious initiatives would find much traction outside the country.

“Turkey traditionally has not created any great Islamic theologians,” Jenkins says. “I think, the real change in terms of Islamic theology will come from Arab world or from Southern Asia.”

But even without theological influence, Jenkins says that Turkey can enjoy respect across the Muslim world by being both pious and modern. Jenkins says: “If Turkey is to serve a role for the Islam world it won’t be in terms of re-interpreting Islam as a religion. It will be more in terms of how they live Islam in the modern world, and I think that’s quite an important difference.”

Back in Asmalimescit, Akyol says Turkey’s growing middle class will be leading the changes. Ten years after 9/11, a globalized Turkish and world economy may help increase the spread of moderate Islam.

“I think, in a decade from now, we will have an even more modernized Turkish society, and a middle class which is very modern and religious as the same time,” Akyol says. “We are seeing the signs of that now. We are in Ramadan and there are advertisements of mini golf before the fast-breaking on Ramadan nights. So that’s the middle class culture thats coming up in Turkey.”

The Muslim yuppy might well serve God by fasting during the day at Ramadan and then enjoy a jazz performance at night. “So now that person is a person you can convince easier when you make the case for Islamic liberalism,” Akyol says. “I think, this trend will continue as Turkey continues its economic success and its integration with the world in general.”

At the same time, the tensions between Islam and secuarlism in Turkey don’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Among the bar-owners in Asmalimescit, rumor has it the tables will be back in the streets after Ramadan.

Video: Andrew Harding’s report from Mogadishu

Ken Menkhaus (courtesy of Davidson College)

The Islamist Al Shabaab group has been blocking aid, apparently because it’s seen as coming from “infidels.” There are also reports that Al Shabaab has been preventing starving people from fleeing the country. Lisa Mullins speaks with Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: There are also reports that Al Shabab has been preventing starving people from fleeing the country.  Ken Menkhaus is a political scientist at Davidson College and he is a Somalia expert.  Why would Al Shabab do that — essentially imprison people and let them starve instead of letting them go where the food is?

Ken Menkhaus: The famine and the massive flow of people trying to escape the famine is an indictment of Shabab, a reflection of the failure of the organization to provide even the most basic protection and services for the large area that it controls.  I think they’re also concerned about the prospect of losing a large number of people who are their tax base and the source of recruitment into the militia.

Mullins: Well, if they keep them there and don’t let any food in then people are going to be starving anyway, why are they holding on so tightly, especially they’re apparently letting some groups in to deliver aid, but not others, and not the majority…why does it cooperate with some aid groups and not others?

Menkaus: It has accused a lot of aid organizations of being spys for the west.  Those that they have allowed to remain are there at a very low level, not dealing in large scale food aid, but dealing with you know, small levels of medical supplies.  They’re certainly looking to increase the flow of food aid from Islamic charities, but I think at this point we’re looking at an organization that has leadership problems so profound that we have to consider the possibility that this could be the 21st century’s Cambodia’s killing fields, the Pol Pot kind of situation where a group is going to preside over the mass deaths of the people it controls.

Mullins: You mean by not letting aid in and not letting the people out.

Menkaus: Precisely.

Mullins: How does it have such control over this swatch of land, and maybe you can describe the area that it is in control of.

Menkaus: Shabab loosely controls all of the territory from the Kenyan border to most of the Mogadishu and up toward the Ethiopian border and into central Somalia.  So it controls over a third of the territory of Somalia, and it’s the most important, most populated part of the country.  It does not have a large number of fighters.  This is a group of a few thousand at most.  It does not constitute a state within a state like Hezbollah or Hamas has done.  Its control consists of a handful of young kids with guns, mines, towns, and villages.

Mullins: You mentioned Hezbollah and Lebanon, and Hamas and the West Bank, even those organizations provide some kind of service to the people, which is one way of getting in good graces with the people as a result.  Al Shabab, is it doing anything to ingratiate itself or win the hearts and minds of people aside from setting up these containment camps?

Menkaus: It won the hearts and minds of a lot of Somalis back in ’07 and ’08 when it fought against the Ethiopian military occupation, but now the Ethiopians are long gone.  What Shabab has done is it has provided better law and order, it’s a rule of terror, but it has made no attempt to create that kind of state within a state that we see in places like southern Lebanon with Hezbollah.

Mullins: One more question, what does the United States do in this case?  I mean it realizes as otehrs do in the international community that much of the aid that they give might be absconded with by Al Shabab or turned down by the organization.  What options then do we have?

Menkaus: Currently the aid is restricted because of the Patriot Act, which forbids material benefits flowing to a terrorist group.  The government understands that the Patriot Act was never meant to deny famine aid, and they are looking to initiate some sort of a waiver that would provide legal protection for the non-profits that would then try to get the food aid in.  So if that happens and if the NGOs are able to work out networks of security to get in, the only remaining impasse is Shabab itself.  And there I think what we’re gonna see is some Shabab leaders breaking and agreeing to get the food into their areas while hard liners continue to resist.

Mullins: That’s Ken Menkhaus who’s a political scientist at Davidson College in North Carolina.  He spoke to us from Washington.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

In a way, even though the child is different from famine to famine, be it Ethiopia in 1984 or Somalia in 2011 and dozens more besides, the picture of the child is always the same.

“These people have no names, they have no identities,” says Barbie Zelizer, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia.

“And we don’t know actually if the people we’re looking at are dying if they’re already dead by the time we look at their pictures.”

Zelizer says the image of the child is a symbolic proxy for the larger story of famine, in this case the famine in Somalia. It’s an image of what Zelizer calls ‘possible death’.

The power of the image isn’t really in what has happened, but in what will continue to happen as we look on.

And, says Zelizer, the fact that we’re seeing these images now–the same images that have haunted the West for decades–means things have already gotten desperate in Somalia.

“What this tells us is that these are delayed, they’re retrospective. They’re giving us visual information about stories that we’ve already read about.”

There have been news stories about the drought and security crisis in Somalia for some time.

And international aid agencies have been warning for months that drought, conflict and high food prices would likely generate a humanitarian crisis there. They use versions of the same image, too.

“Often images like these come to the forefront of public attention not only by journalists but also by non-journalists: through human rights organizers, through fundraisers, through celebrities, through relief workers who recognize that there is a need to push the visual dimension of these stories if there is going to be any kind of policy change” says Zelizer.

Indeed, images from news and aid organizations do have an impact on the willingness of governments to respond.

Philip Seib directs the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

He points out that it was TV reports from Ethiopia in 1984 that really got the relief effort going.

“Governments don’t react sometimes until they feel they have to, and that requires some political pressure from below, which means news coverage needs to alert the public to provide that pressure.”

And, however late it comes in the story, arguably no image produces more pressure–or more donations–than the one depicting a single emaciated African child. That’s why we keep seeing instances of it in famine after famine.

“They are used precisely because they remain powerful. Whatever the problems with them, they remain powerful for the purpose of fundraising.”

So said photographer and researcher David Campbell at a seminar on the imagery of famine in 2005.

In recent weeks Campbell has been arguing in discussions online that the powerful symbolism of the starved African child is a double-edged sword.

Looking at that picture alone, he says, Africa becomes a single entity, a single person even. It also becomes a child: the continent is infantilized.

Finally, Africa is reduced to the desperate and passive status of a victim. And while the image packs an enormous emotional punch, it blinds us to the structural issues that created the famine in the first place.

We don’t see pictures of al-Shabab fighters blocking water or diverting food away from people. We don’t see the difference between this famine and other famines.

We only see the final result.

And we need words – or more images -to fill in the gaps. Still, says Philip Seib at USC, that can only happen if the story has gained people’s attention in the first place, and that’s only getting harder.

“The biggest task is just getting through all the noise and letting people know what’s going on” he says.

The image of the emaciated child does that, time after time.

We want to know your thoughts: Does the use of imagery depicting emaciated children in Africa help or hinder the communication of the serious issue of famine? Post your thoughts below: