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Dear Friends

A great deal has been happening during the past four months and we hope you will read through this newsletter to find out all the details! We have had project meetings in Egypt and Jordan; we have recruited and hired new staff; we have made important developments in our IT systems; collaborative relationships have been established which will help achieve our long term goals; and there have been visits to our Cairo office by representatives and delegations from Europe.

Unfortunately during this period I (Kees) have also experienced reoccurences of the health problems related to my circulatory system. This has once again kept me out of the office and away from my work for extended periods, which has been very frustrating. It has at times seemed so overwhelming but nonetheless it has been a very satisfying and fulfilling time and both Sawsan and I remain excited and confident about the future.  

Sawsan and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly express our gratitude for our team - they do a great job in sometimes difficult circumstances, and often to very tight deadlines. Without their continued support and efforts our work would not be possible. In particular I would like to mention Melanie Erlebach, Nevine Sawires, John Issac, Sami Ahmed, Mohamed Salah and his team of translators, Sue Benson-Richards and Clare Turner (English editors), Chong Ha from Korea for her excellent work translating texts and articles into Korean, Dietrich Mueller-Erhard in Germany and Nick Truscott in Dubai. I would also like to thank Henny Zijlstra of Road 9 Design for his team's excellent work in redesigning the ENAWU website.  Thank you all so much. You are all deeply appreciated!

We also had the opportunity to get on Egyptian satellite television!  A short piece was aired on the Haya channel on May 5.  It focused on CIDT's dialogue related work and included brief interviews with Clare Turner (English editor and ex-intern), Mohamed Salah (Senior Arabic Translator / Editor) and Abrar El-Ghannam (our Egyptian intern sponsored by the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institure).  We will be uploading this video to YouTube in the coming days, and you can find it by searching for "Arab-West Understanding".

We hope that you enjoy sharing our news and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Amman, Jordan on June 5 for the launch of ENAWU!

Kees Hulsman & Sawsan Gabra

ENAWU Project

We are very pleased to inform you that the basic structure of the Electronic Network for Arab West Understanding (ENAWU) project is about to be completed. As we have mentioned in previous newsletters, this has been made possible primarily by financial support received from the Anna Lindh Foundation and Misereor. 

The official launch of ENAWU will take place in Amman, Jordan on June 5 under the auspices of HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal. Representatives of all the ENAWU partner organisations will be present and we very much hope that former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt - a long time supporter of our work and prominent international speaker on the importance of dialogue between the Arab world and the West - will also be able to attend.  We would also like to invite YOU to attend!

We are very fortunate to have been given a highly reduced room rate at the 5 star Kempinski Hotel in Amman for anyone making a booking to attend the ENAWU event (only valid as long as the Kempinski has room availability). The programme for the event is still being finalised but the outline is:

• 10am to 12 noon: Official launch with speeches by HRH Prince Hassan, former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt, ENAWU Project Director Drs Kees Hulsman and other dignitaries.

• 12 noon to 1pm: Official Reception

• Afternoon: Technical meeting to discuss follow-up of ENAWU project (closed, for representatives of partner organizations only) We also hope to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Princess Sumaya University for Technology for collaboration on stage two of the ENAWU project.

• Evening: Panel discussion about Arab or Islam-West relations with Professor van Agt, Drs Kees Hulsman and other Jordanian and Egyptian experts.

During this period we have also had ENAWU project meetings at Cairo University (January 22), and in Amman (March 17-19, March 31 and April 4 ). Reports and photographs from these meetings can be found here on the ENAWU website.

As part of the project we have set up a discussion forum and chat room on the ENAWU website.  A few threads have been started but we would really welcome your participation - especially if you are a student, whether in Europe, North America or the Middle East - to try and get some lively discussions going.  Thank you!

Geert Wilders

The meetings in Amman were immediately followed by the preparations for and visit of a delegation from Dutch churches and Muslim organizations to Egypt (March 20-28) in advance of the release of the film of Dutch MP Geert Wilders about Islam.  Wilders' film is doing injustice to Muslims because it suggests that much of the violence carried out in the name of Islam is the consequence of just five verses in the Qur'an.

We worked with the Dutch delegation and organized meetings with leaders of Egypt's Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Churches as well as a press conference and a meeting with students at Cairo University. Dutch Muslim organizations had also organized the meetings with Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Tantawi and the organization for Islamic universities in Cairo. Through these events the Dutch delegation became more aware of sensitivities in Egypt and were able to express their opposition to Wilder's film.

On the evening that the delegation left Egypt, Wilders released his film. This could not have been better as this gave the delegation the opportunity to give a press conference upon arrival in The Netherlands.

Both before and after their visit the delegation attracted a great deal of media attention in both The Netherlands and Egypt and that in turn played a major role in convincing Dutch members of Parliament that Wilders' film was unfair, stigmatizing the adherents of Islam for the deeds of a relatively small number of extremists. We also organized a petition to the chair of the Dutch Parliament. We made our own research into how the five verses Wilders mentioned were used in ten years of Arabic media (our own archive), asked Muslim scholar Dr. Hassan Wagieh and Imam Fadel Soleiman to provide explanations for these verses.  Kees Hulsman also gave several interviews on the subject and participated with delegation member Jielis van Baalen in a discussion at Cairo University as well as appearing on Egyptian TV. Johan Hulsman (a High School student at the German School in Cairo) and Baher Dokhan (an intern at CIDT) made a short film 'Dialogue, not fitna,' which was uploaded on YouTube in which Kees Hulsman explains our involvement in person.

We are confident that we have helped to reduce the harmful effects of Wilders' film thanks to speed in providing factual information to a large number of people (through the delegation and media interviews) at the right moment in time (the time the film came out).

Our participation was only possible because of our extensive network in Egypt and our archive of over ten years of Egyptian media reports. This shows how important it is to be well prepared for people like Wilders who want to create wedges between peoples of different beliefs and cultures based on the ignorance that does exist among people in the West about the Islamic world and people in the Arab world about the West.

More photographs taken during the visit of the delegation can be foundhere and a lively discussion thread has already been started on this subject in the ENAWU online forum.

Connections & Interns

The success of our work in reducing the effects of Wilders' film were also noticed and complemented on by Kerkinactie, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and prominent Dutch Christian Democrat MP Kathleen Ferrier who received Sawsan Gabra during her visit to The Netherlands between April 15-23.

We also received the German Human Rights Commissioner, Guenter Nooke, on April 9 who met with our interns. During his visit one of our interns, Corin Kazanjian, who had just completed his study on church building in Egypt, explained to Mr. Nooke that the ambiguity of Egyptian law makes the personal relationship between local religious leaders and local authorities the prime factor in deciding whether churches can be built, enlarged, renewed or repaired.  Corin's work is based on our archive of over ten years of  Egyptian media reports as well as reports from two governors and visits to locations. There is, of course, much more work that can be done but Corin will soon be returning to Germany - we hope that another intern will pick up where Corin has left it. 

Other intern papers are in preparation and will be placed online at the Arab West Foundation website. These include a statistical study on the number of Christians in Egypt and a report on Arab media reporting of the West that took place in 2003.

Support our work!

Finally, the grants and donations we have received will only cover the costs of our work - in particular producing the weekly editions as well as developing the online presence of the Arab West Report - until July 1 this year. This is a very challenging situation for us personally as well as for our staff of over 17 people in our Cairo office. 

As you can imagine, we have made several applications to grant making and donor organizations, but at the time of writing we have no firm commitments. So we urgently need your support to cover expenses for the second half of 2008. No amount is too small and every contribution is greatly appreciated.  Please consider making a donation - right now - using your PayPal account or your credit card - just click the 'Donate' button on the left of this page.

Alternatively you can send funds directly to our bank account in the Netherlands: Bank Rabobank, Rotterdam - Account Name Stichting Arab-West Understanding - IBAN Account # NL35 RABO 0105 7799 62 (Euro) - Swift Code RABONL2UXXX. 

Thank you so much!