w.en.28-2-2016 - media2.wataninet.com

Watani
Chairman of the Board
and
Editor-in-chief
28 February 2016
20 Amsheer (Meshir) 1732
19 Gamada al-Awwal 1437
Issue 785
Year 16
Editorial
Problems on hold
Youssef Sidhom
Print vs digital: Battle for survival
Today’s print media the world over is battling for survival
before the deluge of digital media swamping the Internet.
The issue arouses heated debate among specialists and the
public alike. Views vary according to age group, level of
involvement in the publishing and production business, and
even according to the emotional attachment of an individual
to printed paper. Those for the survival of print journalism
argue that reading papers is an unparalleled experience; the
sitting back to indulge in reading, the feel of the paper, the
turning of the pages, all form a cherished experience. Others
sing the praises of electronic press, its technological tools,
its remarkable capacity to report news and events as they
happen, and the round-the-clock updates.
Supporters of each camp cling to arguments which they
consider decisive. Fans of printed papers boast that print still
garners the major volume of the advertising market which
represents the lifeblood of the media. Those who believe in
the digital press argue that this will not last long and is bound
to crumble before the wonders of digital advertising, the
audiovisual and video effects, and the potential to carry visitors
to new horizons. Add to this that online content is more often
than not accessible free of charge, whereas readers have to pay
for printed papers even if meagre amounts of money.
It is undeniable that age is among the crucial factors that
divide the two groups. Those who defend print versions
mostly belong to the older age groups; the younger
generations constitute the majority readers of online papers.
This issue seems not to interest public opinion in Egypt;
yet it strongly bothers those in the media. Most concede
that it is a matter of time before print gives way to online
publishing. They believe that printed papers would be
wise to get ready for the day when they would have to bid
their readers goodbye. They should seriously invest their
professionalism, techniques, human resources, technology
and funds to develop a digital substitute that would carry
their readers to new horizons.
In fact followers of the international press know that some
renowned international papers have foregone their print
versions in favour of online versions. The prestigious UK
daily The Independent and its sister weekly Independent
on Sunday are the most recent in the list. The owners
announced their decision to stop publishing the 30-year-old
print version after its circulation retracted from 500,000
daily issues in the 1990s to 40,000 - 60,000 issues today.
The owners announced their decision to focus on their
widely-spread online version. “Readers nowadays would pay
more than the double of the paper’s cost for a cup of coffee,”
The Independent’s editor-in-chief commented.
Youssef Sidhom
Insiders with the British press say that The Independent
is neither the first nor will it be the last among the papers
that turn digital; other renowned papers are likely to follow
suit owing to declining circulation and advertisement
revenue. They mention such names as The Guardian, The
Telegraphand The Financial Times. Even the most widely
read British papers will not be able to escape this fate.
Here in Egypt readers and media specialists cannot
accept the concept of discontinuing print papers despite the
shrinking circulation figures and advertisement revenue.
Talk of shrinking figures abounds behind closed doors
and reflects a headache for the owners and staff of printed
papers. The unspoken question is how much time before the
closure of print media? And are papers preparing themselves
for the inevitable online era, or will it have to kiss its readers
goodbye?
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal
(1923 - 2016)
The
ultimate
journalist
Journalists see him as the ‘ultimate journalist’, the epitome in the field of
Egyptian journalism. His name graced Egypt’s topmost, State-owned daily
Al-Ahram as Editor-in-Chief from 1968 to 1974. When he left Al-Ahram and
became a freelance journalist and writer, his articles and books commanded
deep public interest and, predictably, controversy. He gained fame as an insider
in the world of political decision making circles, and his superb political
analysis was delivered in a writing style that was elegant yet straightforward
and piercing. His enemies claim that this gifted journalist, writer, and analyst
used his prowess to make or break reputations of friends or adversaries. This
near-legend in the circles of Egyptian journalism, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal,
passed away in Cairo on Wednesday 17 February at age 93.
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal was born in 1923 in the district of al-Hussein in
Islamic Cairo. His father, a grain trader, hailed from Dairut in Upper Egypt. Heikal
obtained a secondary school certificate in commerce and decided to do studies at
the American University in Cairo. As fate would have it, he was there introduced
to Scott Watson, a journalist who worked with the English-language Egyptian
Gazette. Watson helped Heikal join the Gazette in February 1942 where he was
assigned to covering local news and crime. It was WWII, and the young reporter
was 19. [Heikal: al-Hayat, al-Harb, al-Hubb, Adel Hamouda, al-Forsan publishing
house, 2000]
Tough assignment
Heikal enthusiastically embarked on what was to become an illustrious career.
At the time, Cairo teemed with WWII Allied soldiers. Egypt had a ‘prostitution
law’ which licensed prostitutes. Needless to say, the soldiers were among their best
customers. But when several cases of sexually transmitted diseases were discovered
among the soldiers, Egypt’s Interior Minister Abdel-Hamid Haqqi issued a decree
annulling licensed prostitution. The move infuriated the soldiers as well as the
prostitutes. The soldiers were vocal in their opposition, but no one heard the voice
of the prostitutes. This is where Heikal entered the scene; he was assigned by the
Gazette to conduct a poll among 100 prostitutes.
Heikal wrote of his experience later in the Cairo weekly Akher Saa, No 546.
“It was a challenge that would prove my journalistic capacity, I was told by my
supervisor.
“I went to Cairo’s red light district and visited one after another of the houses
there in an attempt to get answers to my questions. Once the women discovered I
was merely asking questions they threw me out to the accompaniment of a string of
abuse damning me and my forefathers all the way up to the time of the pharaohs.
Downhearted and frustrated, I walked into a nearby café to think what to do. I noticed
that in one corner there sat an older woman who appeared especially important; she
was treated with exceptional respect by everyone around. Impulsively, I approached
her and told her of my predicament, explaining that my entire professional career
hinged on that assignment. She gave the matter some thought then asked me to sit
down. She began calling the women one by one to answer my questions and by the
time I was through I had the ‘mission impossible’ all done.”
Exceptional reporting
With his reputation as an able journalist secure, Heikal was given several
assignments as a war correspondent. He reported on the battles in Alamein
Mervat Ayoub
Injy Samy
and Malta, and on the independence of Paris. While in Paris he ran into Fatma
al-Youssef, owner of the widely read Cairo weekly magazine Rose al-Youssef,
who invited him to be on her staff. Heikal joined Rose al-Youssef in 1944 but
did not stay long; he moved to another prestigious Cairo weekly Akher Saa.
In 1947, Heikal reported on the Upper Egypt serial killer Khutt al-Saeed in a
feature which made him a household name in Egypt. This he followed, again
in 1947, with a field report from the village of al-Qareen in which a cholera
epidemic had broken. His work earned him the prestigious King Farouk award
in journalism.
More success followed throughout the following five years. Heikal covered
the Palestinian Israeli war in 1948; the coups d’état that took place in Syria; and
that which overthrew Mohammad Mossadagh in Iran; the assassinations of King
Abdullah in Jerusalem, Riad al-Solh in Amman, and Husni al-Zaeem in Damascus.
In June 1952 he was made editor-in-chief of Akher Saa; he was 29.
It was in 1952 that Heikal became friends with Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the army
officer who led a coup d’état that came to be famously known as the 23 July 1952
Revolution. The Revolution ended the monarchy in Egypt and, in 1953 turned it into
a republic. Nasser became President of Egypt in 1956 and until he died in 1970. The
friendship between Heikal and Nasser was to last till the end of the former’s life,
and lent Heikal the aura of being the insider in Egypt’s top political circles.
Building up Al-Ahram
In 1957, Heikal accepted an offer from Al-Ahram to be both chairman of the board
and editor-in-chief. He retained these posts till 1974, and worked to transform AlAhram into the biggest news establishment in the Arab World. He spearheaded the
foundation of specialised research centres, among them a centre for journalistic
studies and another for the documentation of Egypt’s contemporary history, and the
famous Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
Under his tenure Al-Ahram became a newspaper of record for the Arab World,
and turned into a vibrant printing and publishing house which issues numerous
specialised papers such as the economic Al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi, the Englishlanguage Al-Ahram Weekly, and the French language Al-Ahram Hebdo. Heikal set
a tradition of upholding the highest production standards.
Heikal’s first weekly full-page editorial under the title Bi-Saraha (Candidly
Speaking) appeared on 10 August 1957, his last on 1 February 1974. The
editorial was a skilful analytical piece but, given the relationship between
President Nasser and Heikal, it was seen as Nasser’s mouthpiece and as such
was awaited eagerly by the public every Friday morning. These were times of
opacity and obscurity in politics and news reporting in Egypt, and Bi-Saraha
was seen as a rare glimpse by an insider into that intricate world. Yet the public
was adept at reading the meanings hidden between the lines; they knew Heikal
wrote what the political leadership wished to relay.
On the political level, Heikal rose to be a member of the Central Committee of
the Arab Socialist Union from 1968 to 1974 and Minister of National Guidance
from April to October 1970.
Critics say that Heikal harnessed his speech-writing skills and his job as the
nation’s top journalist during the 1950s and 60s to promote Nasser’s ideas,
sometimes at the expense of what was real and fair.
Losing favour
Anwar al-Sadat became Egypt’s president in 1970 and, despite initial support
for him by Heikal, the two men disagreed and Heikal lost the advantage of being
a presidential insider. He criticised Sadat and his decisions which he saw as taking
Egypt outside the Russian orbit and into the arms of the US. When in October 1973
the Egyptian army succeeded in the near-impossible task of crossing the Suez Canal
into the six-year Israeli-occupied Sinai, opening a breakthrough for regaining the
full Sinai and making peace with Israel, Heikal criticised Sadat for his handling of
events. In 1974, Sadat issued a presidential decision removing Heikal from his posts
at Al-Ahram. Enmity between the two men set in; it was no secret. Incidentally,
Egypt did sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, and regained Sinai in full.
Heikal continued to live in Egypt as a freelance journalist and writer. He authored several
books which he printed outside Egypt and which got translated into many languages.
Among them were: Nasser: The Cairo Documents (1972), The Road to Ramadan (1975),
Sphinx and Commissar (1978), and Autumn of Fury (1983), the last a damning criticism of
Sadat. Daniel Pipes, an American historian, writer, political commentator, and president of
the Middle East Forum, offers a full analysis of the book on
http://www.danielpipes.org/7998/autumn-of-fury
He sums it up with: “A polemic written with the single-minded purpose of
destroying a man’s reputation cannot be relied upon as biography. Parts of
Autumn of Fury may be true, to be sure, but how can the reader tell which ones?
Rather than guess mistakenly, it would do better to ignore Mohamed Heikal’s
angry testimony and await a more solid account.” Not surprising, given that
Heikal was among the 1536 men imprisoned by Sadat in September 1981 on
account of allegedly opposing him.
Final years
On 25 November 1981, Heikal was among the ‘September Detainees’ pardoned
by President Hosni Mubarak who succeeded Sadat—Sadat had been assassinated
by Islamists on 6 October 1981. Heikal hailed Mubarak’s pardon and offered to
support him, but the President apparently could not put his trust in a man who had
scathingly and non-objectively criticised his predecessor. Mubarak had previously
described the Autumn of Fury as inaccurate and in specific instances positively
untrue. The relation between the two men remained no more than lukewarm, and
Heikal frequently criticised Mubarak.
In his later years he became an attractive figure on satellite TV. From 2007 Heikal
hosted a series of lectures on world events entitled Ma’a Heikal (With Heikal)
which was broadcast on Al Jazeera. He was hosted by Egyptian TV talk shows,
the most recent of which was the series Misr, Ila Ayna (Where to, Egypt) hosted by
Lamees al-Hadidi on CBC channel.
Of his last years, Al-Ahram Weekly wrote: “In 2015, he chose to go on a long trip
with Hedayat, his wife—he always referred to her as his life partner—to visit all the
places he had loved and to see all the people he had cared for. He particularly spent
more time with his family. He was the proud father of three sons, Ali, a medical
doctor, Ahmed, an entrepreneur, and Hassan, a financier, and the grandchildren and
great-grandchildren they gave him.”
Above: Heikal with Nasser and Egyptian diva Umm Kulthoum; Below, from left: With the Weekly's Hosni Guindi, poet Abanoudi, in his office, celebrating a birthday at al-Ahram
28 February 2016
2
Watani International
Celebrating 800 years
of the Dominican Order
To praise, to bless, to preach
The 13th century saw the birth of a new monastic thought in the Catholic Church in Europe. Monks decided
Mervat Ayad venerable Islamic university of al-Azhar which dates back to the 10th century, and is a world-renowned capital of
Islamic culture. These three friars were Georges Anawati, Jacques Jomier and Serge de Beaurecueil; the best known
to leave the confines of their cloisters to serve the members of their society and preach the Word of God to a
of the three was Georges Anawati (1905 – 1994) because he was of Egyptian nationality.
larger audience.
This new reform implied that monks made a strict vow of poverty, renouncing the riches that believers donated to In 1953, the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) was established with the aim of promoting interfaith
the monasteries and which were considered the common ownership of the community of monks. The monks belonging dialogue and better understanding among Christians and Muslims.
to these new orders called themselves friars and were no longer bound to a certain monastery but travelled around to
teach and evangelise. They survived mainly on whatever people gave them as charity; hence their name, the mendicant Can you tell us about Friar Georges Anawati?
(begging) orders. The two main orders of mendicant friars which survive to our days are the Franciscan Order, founded Friar Anawati was an Egyptian thinker who specialised in Arab philosophy in the Middle Ages. The importance of this
period lies in the fact that it constituted the link between Greek heritage and European thought. Friar Anawati was born in
in 1209 by St Francis of Assisi, and the Dominican Order, founded in 1216 by St Dominic de Guzman.
1905, was a member of the Dominican Order and dedicated his life to building bridges between the Christian and Muslim
worlds. He was an advocate of interfaith dialogue and is credited with establishing the idea of holding a cultural dialogue
Order of Preachers
The Dominican Order was first established as the Order of Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum, O.P.) by St Dominic de Guzman with Islam away from any ideological debate.
(1170 – 1221), a monk known for his care of the poor and his in-depth study of the Holy Bible.
St Dominic first joined the order of the Canons Regular at the age of 25. During one of his travels to the south of France, Is IDEO engaged in any evangelisation activity?
he was appalled by the weakness of the Catholic faith in the region and the rise of heresy. He decided to dedicate his IDEO does not play any evangelisation role. It only aims at studying and researching the political and social aspects of
life to preaching the Word of God and educating the people into the true Catholic faith. He thus established the Order of Islam as well as the history of the Middle East without trifling with religious belief. This goes in line with the call of the
Preachers and was soon joined by other young men and women who believed in the importance of his message. The order Vatican to all Christians to engage in the study of Islam away from any evangelisation goals.
was based on two important principles which were the cornerstone for preaching: a common life of poverty and
What activities do Dominicans engage in?
dedication to learning. According to St Dominic, it was necessary that the friars achieve high levels of
We are interested in the study of philosophy and theology and grant special attention to the ecumenical
knowledge to better understand and teach the Word of God. He sent his friars to learn and preach
dialogue among the different Christian denominations. We are also interested in Islamic studies,
at the finest institutions at the time such as the University of Paris and Oxford; to this day,
archaeology, human rights and, of course, preaching in churches. We engage in specialised
Dominican friars must achieve highest levels of learning and knowledge.
studies of the Bible in a historical and geographical context.
By the time St Dominic died in 1221 at the age of 51, his mission had attained outstanding
success and the Order of Preachers had spread in many parts in Europe, in France, Italy and
What is the purpose of the Dominicans’ study of Islam and Islamic philosophy?
England. The friars of the order were later called Dominicans after St Dominic; they are
The main purpose is to establish mutual knowledge and interfaith and intercultural
also called the Friar Preachers or the Black Friars after the colour of their hoods since
dialogue. The IDEO studies Arab and Islamic heritage to gain a better understanding
they wore white habits and black cloaks,
of Islam drawn from its roots and original sources. On the other hand, we are not
interested in the modern Islamist currents or problems such as the rise of radical
With the year 2016 marking the 800th anniversary of the establishment of the
Islamist groups. We focus on digging in old heritage to help create a common
Dominican Order, Watani met Friar Jean Druel O.P., deputy to the abbot of the
ground and a meeting point that will draw religions closer and solve many of our
Dominican priory in Egypt, and Director of Dominican Institute for Oriental
modern world’s problems.
Studies (IDEO) in Egypt. Friar Druel earned a Master’s Degree in Theology and
Coptic Patrology from the Catholic Institute in Paris in 2002, a Master’s Degree
In this context, will you kindly explain to our readers the latest projects
in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language from the American University in
the Dominicans in Egypt are undertaking?
Cairo (AUC) in 2006, and a PhD in the history of Arabic Grammar from the
On 2012, an agreement was signed between the European Union and IDEO to
University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 2012. He is in charge of the
undertake the ‘200 Project’ which offers a “Historic contextualisation of 200
“200 Project” which offers a “Historic contextualisation of 200 authors of the
authors of the Classical Islamic heritage”. The project launches research in 200
Classical Islamic heritage”.
of the most prominent works of Islamic heritage, among them works by the
medieval scholars, philosophers, and scientists al-Farabi, al-Bairouni, AbuTo begin with, would you kindly introduce yourself to Watani readers?
Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn-Arabi, Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), Ibn-Rushd (Averreos), and
I am Jean Druel from France. I came to Egypt in 2002 to prepare for a
Ibn Khaldun.
Master’s Degree in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language at AUC. I am
Understanding the historic context in which the works of these great authors
currently preparing for a PhD degree in the Arabic language. I have been
was written serves to avoid misreading them, and also reveals the major thought
temporary procurator of the Dominican priory in Cairo for six years, and am
of the different sects in Islam.
in charge of all its financial and administrative matters. Less than a year ago I
was appointed acting director of the priory, since the director was on a mission
How do you see the conflict between the West and the Muslim world?
to teach philosophy at the Dominican University in Rome.
The problem is that the West views Muslims from a very narrow perspective. The West
sees them either as people who constantly create political and social conflict or people
When and how was the Dominican Order established in Egypt?
who must be preached the Christian faith in the hope that they will eventually convert to
The Dominican priory was established in Egypt in 1928 by Friar Antonin Jaussen,
Christianity. However, there is a third perspective that IDEO would like to highlight, which
O.P. (1871 – 1962). The aim of the Dominican friars at that time was to make the priory
is that Muslims are people who have their own belief, ideology, culture and heritage which
an extension of the Jerusalem French Bible and Archeaology School (Ecole Biblique et
Fr Druel
must be respected. We want to convey the message that it is possible for Christians and Muslims
Archéologique Française de Jérusalem). However, many events on the international scene did not
to live together in peace and harmony. This is very possible, provided there is no prevalent extremist
allow for the realisation of this dream. Then, in 1936, three Dominican friars decided to dedicate
Islamic thought.
their life to the study of Islam; Cairo seemed the best place for this goal because it is the land of the
Fr Anawati
Watani International editorial team: Dalia Victor, Donia Wagdy, Lydia Farid, Nivert Rizkallah, Sherine Nader
Copy editor: Jenny Jobbins
Layout editor: Heba Adel