The following are selections from articles which appeared in the Egyptian English weekly, “Al-Ahram” of Al-Ahram Weekly, 25th June – 1st July, 1998

[Column] Reflections
The Bureaucrats Behind the People
by Hani Shukrallah
Managing Editor
Al-Ahram Weekly

Last Week the Israeli Peace Now Movement underlined both its Jewish supremacist (i.e.racist) limitations and its political bankruptcy by issuing in Cairo, with not one, but apparently three distinct Egyptian groups, a “peace document”. While of considerably less authentic pedigree than their Israeli counterparts (after all, Peace Now, self-importantly described in the Cairo document as “the largest peace movement in Israel”, can at least lay claim to one great anti-war demonstration in 1982), the Egyptian groups offer a rather complex arithmetic. The Egyptian signatories of the “Cairo document” are presented somewhat confusingly as the “Egyptian Peace Movement” — a previously unknown entity — and the “International Alliance for Peace — Cairo Peace Society”.

…Now unlike many Egyptian and Arab critics of the 17 month-long Copenhagen saga, I do not believe that there is anything particularly threatening or even politically significant about the various spectacles put on by the alleged “popular alliance” established in the Danish capital with a lot of help from a host of “non-popular” — i.e. governmental — European agencies. Whether in Copenhagen, Jerusalem or Cairo, the “peace” divertissements have been invariably forced, their rhetoric contrived, their language insipid; the protagonists all “protest too much”, but their “passionate” appeals for peace ring hollow — tired, trite and, if anything, blatantly lacking in genuine feeling of any sort.

…All in all the [joint] document is even more skewed in Israel’s favor than its precursor, the so-called Copenhagen Declaration. In this, the Copenhagen “initiative” continues to ape the Oslo process, wherein each subsequent “agreement” is progressively worse than the one before it. Suffice it here to say that it rings very similar to the so-called Abu Mazen -Yossi Beilin final status agreement, the existence of which was denied by the Palestinians.

…Last week in Cairo, the official lineages of the “popular” participants were starkly revealed for all to see. The hidden agenda is not very well hidden, the gold cufflinks of the diplomat stick out a mile away from underneath the bush jackets of the “popular” representatives. Ultimately, the whole affair is a somewhat ridiculous attempt to “reawaken” the flagging fortunes of the Israeli Labour Party.

Mourned by Millions
by Khaled Dawoud

[Heading:] Egypt mourned the death of Sheikh Shaarawi, a man who devoted his life to the interpretation of the Qur’an.

Nearly a million people packed the streets of Daqadous on 17 June, grieving for the man they considered something of a saint. Many… tried to get close enough to touch his coffin, believing that his blessings would somehow be imparted to them.

…The 87-year-old Shaarawi, an Al-Azhar graduate, enjoyed unprecedented popularity which earned him the title “preacher of the century.” He was highly effective in using television….

…Time and again Shaarawi would proudly proclaim that, for the past 50 years, he had stopped reading all books save the Qur’an.

…Shaarawi…stunned many Egyptians a few years ago by confiding that he had offered a special prayer of thanks to God for the June 1967 defeat at Israel’s hands. “[The defeat] came about because we threw ourselves into the arms of communist Russia… so we were hit on the head and defeated. The defeat was a correction sent from heaven for mistakes made on earth,” Shaarawi said.

…Shaarawi’s views often clashed with those of proponents of science and rationality. He opposed organ transplants, arguing that the human body was a gift from God which should not just be used as man sees fit. He said that donating human organs was tantamount to opposing God’s will by seeking to make a human being live longer than he or she is destined to.

He was against women working, insisting that “home is the right place for women to look after their children.”

Once Shaarawi picked the wrong horse. He supported private investors who, in the early 1980s claimed they were establishing a new “Islamic economy” through so-called Islamic money investment companies. But the saving schemes were dubious and later collapsed. Thousands of Egyptians lost their life savings.