A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

First They Came For ... and Now, Hamzawy and Shahin

Just days after prominent analyst and former Parliamentarian Amr Hamzawy was charged in Egypt with "insulting the judiciary" (for a Twitter post!), comes word that AUC Professor of Public Policy Emad Shahin has been charged with, of all things, espionage. Apparently, just studying the Muslim Brotherhood as an academic is an offense now.

This is simply outrageous and is already stirring up a lot of social media response among academics. And rightly so.

Saturday is January 25, the third anniversary of the outbreak of the Egyptian Revolution; some of the activists involved from the start are now in jail.  January 25 is also Egypt's Police Day, so that's grimly appropriate.

1 comment:

David Mack said...

Good reminder of lesson from history.