Happy moulid al Nabi

Today is Moulid al Nabi, celebrating the birth of the Prophet, and beside wishing my readers a happy Moulid al Nabi, i would like to offer you two very different writers on this subject, one being my favourite author, writing about celebrating Moulid during his late childhood and youth, some 85 years ago in Abbasiyya, a neighbourhood of Cairo, later immortalized while describing Kamal´s love for Aida on the pages of the second part of the trilogy(Palace of Desire). Of course i´m talking about the deeply missed Naguib Mahfouz.

The second writer is a female blogger, that i just discovered, that share my Saádi roots, and writes with wittiness. So let me leave you by introducing Fattractive, of Tales of a Fattractive Egyptian Woman , and her take on Moulid al Nabi!

Muhammed Adel ordered released

Word is out that Egyptian blogger and journalist for the English website of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammed Adel is to - or rather has been ordered released by the State Security Prosecuction.

He was originally arrested on November 20th, and held in incommunicado , his house searched without a warrant the day after, in what now seems to be a pattern, when dealing with the activists in the opposition movement in solidarity with Gaza. Both Philip Rizk and Diaa Eddin Gad has been subject to the same treatment.

Mabrouk!

More on this later.

UPDATE: Muhammed Adel was released today, Tuesday March 10th.

Dostour up and running again

The influential daily al Dostuor, the brainchild of Ibrahim Eissa , is back on the net. It´s website is up and running again, faster, and hopefully better than ever.

UPDATE:Dostour on Twitter

Following in the footsteps of major international news outlets , like CNN, BBC, Reuters, Der Spiegel and al Jazeera to name but a few.In what i believe is the first time a major newspaper in Egypt uses microblogging, al Dostour is now on twitter .

Boring speeches, opium of the people?

This is a photo taken by Hafez Diab during the inaugural session of the of the 21st international conference of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, taken while the floor was occupied by Minister of Islmic endowments, Mr Zagzoug, were the the two leading religious leaders in Egypt, Sheikh Tantawi and Pope Shenouda display the usual sign of national unity, in a rather unusual way.

Apparently it´s not only the debates in the Egyptian parliament that works as a sleeping pill..Perhaps it´s the boring speeches from the NDP Aparachiki that is the common denominator?