Re: Egyptian Antiquities and Academic Exchanges

Submitted by Raymond Stock (Egypt), Apr 14, 2006 at 10:49

Dear DP:

If memory serves, the targeting of tourists that featured in the Islamist uprising in Egypt over the last two decades began with a (luckily) small explosion in Luxor Temple in 1991. At that time, Islamist groups in Egypt spoke openly of destroying all Egypt's pre-Islamic antiquities as remnants of the old Jahiliyah and as symbols of the purported new one, as well. When I have pointed this out to friends over the years, they have downplayed this aspect of the Islamists' program. Yet I am convinced that even the Muslim Brotherhood--so often portrayed as the only "democractic" opposition to the government--would possibly try to pull down even the pyramids of Giza if they actually took power. Qaradawi, after all, is one of their own.

As for the value of foreign exchange programs in combating Islamism, it is said traditionally that one third of foreign students in the U.S. enthusiastically adopt the local culture, another third completely reject it, and a third selectively adopt that which is most compatible with their original culture and leave the rest. Sayyid Qutb belonged to the second category. It is not clear if the present, highly polarized climate has increased the percentage who fall in that group or not, or if the formula still holds at all. (I speak as the former Middle East committee chairman of the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs, 1988-90.) Yet even those in the other two are not necessarily free of radical political influence--as the case of the recent North Carolingian vicitim of "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" attests. He seemed outwardly to be very westernized, as do most of the foreign students on American campuses who view the United States as evil even for her 2001 war against al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. Foreign exchange programs have many values, as it is vital for people of different cultures to know each other, even if a percentage of them learn the wrong things in the process. But they are not, and probably could not be, set up to combat extremism very efficiently.


All best,

Raymond

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