The Arab West Report/Dialogue Across Borders database aims to document social and political developments in Egypt and the wider Middle East with a specialized focus on inter-communal relations. Since religion plays such a great role in the Middle East, our database focuses mainly on religious communities. Since data were collected and compiled in Egypt, the data provide a unique insight into Egyptian/Middle Eastern views on the role of religion in their societies, as well as frequent frustrations about Western reporting about their societies, that are rarely reported in Western media.

Arab West Report/Dialogue Across Borders seeks to challenge biased and uninformed reporting that often exacerbates existing conflicts and tensions between people of different convictions. Formerly operating under the name Religious News Service from the Arab World since 1997, in 2003 renamed Arab West Report has been providing media critiques and reviews on journalism covering inter-communal incidents and placing them in context to dispel harmful rumours. With the retirement of founding editor-in-chief Cornelis Hulsman in September 2022, the name changed with the new editor Dr. Matthew Anderson to Dialogue Across Borders; Emerging Perspectives on Intercultural and Interreligious Relations.  The editorial policy since September 2022 has been focused on quality media summary translations. 

Our articles/reports fall into various main categories (see text types in search):

Summary Translations/Reviews (1997 - Present) Summary translations/reviews of Arabic media reporting on the role of religion and religious communities in society. Since work was carried out in Egypt, one finds a strong focus on Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt. 

Reports (1998 - Present) include our analysis of current events of inter-communal incidents and societal developments placed in context 

News clippings and other English language media –  In 2000 and 2001 we included media from the Al-Ahram Weekly, Jordan Times and other English media since we believed that through adding tags and related searches we would not only improve the insight for researchers in the wide range of views expressed but also be able to show differences between Arab language and English language media, accuracy and ideological influences. In 2001, a staff member of the Al-Ahram Weekly asked us to stop adding more texts from the Weekly for copyright reasons. We only continued placing texts from English language media if their editors had given us explicit permits such as Watani did. Between 2016 and 2018 we decided to add excerpts from different English language media about Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt, repeatedly adding our commentaries based on our experiences in Egypt, in line with copyright laws. Editors have also classified other texts from English language media although those were full texts and not clippings. 

Arab West Report Papers (2007 - Present) are in-depth unique reports on subjects rarely covered elsewhere.

Newsletters - (2007 today) – highlighting activities and articles/reports placed in Arab-West Report/Dialogue Across Borders

Text categories with a start and end date

Datasets consist of raw data sheets with Arab-West Report data (reports and papers) compiled by staff and interns in 2016 for storage at the Data Archiving and Networked Service (DANS) of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) under the title: Thematic Collection: Data from the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation (CIDT) and Stichting Arab West Foundation (AWF), https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-22k-22dc. The Royal Academy is the forum, the voice and the conscience of science in the Netherlands. Its institutes lead the way here and abroad with their research and collections. Its activities are based on the conviction that knowledge and creativity are the most important ingredients for well-being and prosperity.

Weekly editorials (sometimes called Recent Developments) (2002-2010) include comments on the media covered, current events, and activities in which Arab-West Report was involved.

Projects – including the Biographies Project (2007-2010), a student project funded by the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute aimed at clarifying the actors and institutions involved in policymaking and shaping Egypt and the Middle East; Interviews with representatives of Islamist movements and their opponents (2013-2014) carried out by student interns and resulting in two academic books published by Tectum (2017); the Siwa Sustainable Watermanagement Project (2017); Summer school reports (2018-2020) with lectures and discussions by Muslims and non-Muslims for students from Egypt and the West with very different religious backgrounds; Journey to the Christian Heritage of Egypt (2019) with Dutch theologians of various backgrounds and student interns who joined; the refugee leadership training project (2020-2021) and Refugee Education (2022), related to the CAWU learning Centre for refugees we established in 2018.

Overview of texts about Coptic Statistics

Coptic Statistics – The Egyptian 1952 revolution with far-reaching nationalisations ruined the economic basis of the then Coptic and Muslim elite. Copts hardly played a political role in Nasser’s project. Coptic political activists started to insist on higher Coptic population statistics with very flimsy arguments, some claims even wilder than the other, ranging between 10 and 25 per cent of the population but all substantially higher than years of Egyptian census reporting and that were not disputed by the Coptic elite before 1952. During the Coptic Congress of 1911, Coptic politicians asked for a greater role in Egyptian politics and presented population statistics that differed only marginally from census figures.  Since the 1970s exaggerated claims have become more persistent. With Pope Shenouda (ruling 1971-2012), also leading church leaders started to present exaggerated figures which influenced U.S. government figures of Coptic Christians.  Since neither Coptic Church leaders ever presented any evidence that could be verified and U.S. government reporting appears to be giving in to Coptic lobbying, these exaggerations appear to be politically motivated. Many academics and media did not know how to handle conflicting claims and either presented the often-used ten per cent of Egypt’s population or gave a range. The database until 2007 contained a systematical overview of all articles and reports (both translations and own work) that dealt with statistics. We hope that with the transfer to Drupal 10, this overview will be returned to the upgraded database.

Searching for context is key

Too often researchers and media focus on one item. We believe that Muslim- non-Muslim relations need to be understood in the wider context. Our tagging is designed to assist researchers in finding context. Context without pick-and-choose for ideological reasons shows issues are rarely black and white and show complexity.

Country focus 

With the start of our work in 1997, we aimed to cover more Arab media and translate from Western media into Arabic. In 2004, Kerk in Actie, Missio and Misereor supported our work, hopes to achieve our bridge-building database were high and we were encouraged to develop our work in this direction. We built a unique database but our ambitions were larger than available funding. The Egyptian system shows that costs do not need to be high with a qualified and dedicated editor supervising the work of students. We have had discussions with academics in Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan, about adding data from their countries whereby local academics would take responsibility for the non-partisan selection and editing of translated articles and use the same tagging system which could have shown similarities and differences in cultures and countries responding to issues.  Expanding to other countries is still possible if local universities are willing to fund their own editors and provide credit to their students for quality student contributions.

The Arab-West Foundation, the publisher of this database, is seeking a transfer of the database to a university since this is believed to give better exposure to these data, as well as for generations to come and promote education for peace.

Cornelis Hulsman, founding editor and Dr. Matthew Anderson