I have spent four of the last five days inside this imposing structure.  I hope that sometime in the future I will be in a position to discuss why I was there.  In any case, as I entered the courthouse this morning, I happened to notice a series of four inscriptions, three with quotes of former justices of the United States Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,  Justice Louis Brandeis, and Justice Felix Franfurter, and the fourth for the US’s first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.  I think these quotes sum up the best aspirations of our legal system.  I earnestly hope that the judges and lawyers who ply their craft on a daily basis inside the imposing halls of the John Joseph Mackley Federal Courthouse honor those quotations.

This site, of course, takes its name from a pre-Islamic poet, Shanfaraa al-Azdi.  Part of the reason that led me to choose the name of an Arab poet is to honor my love of Arabic literature, something that I don’t have much time these days to pay appropriate homage to.  In a similar vein, however, I was able to put together a nice play list of classical Arab songs, much of the lyrics of which consist of classical Arabic poetry sung by various Arabic singers, some of whom began  their careers in the first-half of the twentieth century, e.g., Umm Kulthum, Layla Murad, Salima Murad, Asmahan, and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, to contemporary singers, e.g., Fairuz (although she is now approaching the age, one would surmise, of a great-grandmother), Amina Aloui (Morocco), Sonia Mubarak (Tunisia), Lutfi Bushnaq (Tunisia), Fadia al-Haj and Wa’d Bouhassan (both from Lebanon, I believe).  I hope you will enjoy these songs as much as I do.

Arabs do not have surnames.  Instead, their names consist simply of their given name, followed by the given name of their father and then the given name of their grandfather.  They may also have a family name which indicates an affiliation, either to a common ancestor, e.g., al-Husayni, a common group, e.g., al-Qadiri, or institution, e.g., al-Azhari, or a common place, e.g., al-Subki. To further complicate matters, at some point in time, people began to name their sons double names, the first being a name of the Prophet Muhammad, i.e., Muhammad, Mahmud or Ahmad, followed by a second name.  The person would only be known by the second of the two names, but legally he was known by both. Egypt prohibited this practice of “double-naming” in the 80s for administrative reasons.

This system, although confusing from the perspective of westerners who are accustomed to each person having a given name, a second “middle name” and a surname which is unchanging over generations (at least for males, usually, although the same now is also true for a growing number of females), works reasonably well in the Arab world where it would be relatively unusual for two people to share all three names, i.e., given name, father’s name and grandfather’s name.  When Arabs such as myself take a foreign passport, e.g., the US, however, naming conventions collide, and confusion sets in whenever I enter an Arab country.  When a passport officer in an Arab country reads my US passport, he reads “Mohammad Hossam Fadel.”  This is my legal name in the US, but it confuses him or her because the officer cannot determine my Arabic name, i.e., father’s and grandfather’s name.  Hence, the ubiquitous question always directed to me when crossing an Arab border with a US passport: what is your father’s name? And even the last time I went to Egypt, “What is your grandfather’s name?”  Increased stress at entry points is the downside of multiculturalism and dual nationalities.

Yesterday I attended a forum sponsored jointly by “Muntada Ibn Rushd,” roughly “The Averroes Society,” and the Iranian Cultural Center, the title of which was “The Cultural Consequences of the Arab Revolutions.”  Clearly, there was a disagreement as to what “Cultural” meant between the speakers and the audience, many of whom thought culture was narrowly limited to the arts.  Fortunately for me, however, the speakers and I were on the same page, namely, the Arab revolutions, and the future of political culture in the Arab world.  The speakers were, Abu Yarub al-Marzouqi, a Tunisian philosopher, who recently published a philosophical commentary on the Quran, Maryam Azzouz, a youth political activist, Radwan Masmoudi, a Tunisian-American director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, headquartered in Washington, DC, Amal Balkhairi, a youth activist in one of the Tunisian political parties whose name escapes me but claims the political “center,” and last but not least, a representative of the Iranian government, Muhsin ‘Iraqi.  ‘Iraqi is a religious scholar who studied in the Hawza at Qum.  The clip of the event that I have included is limited to some of Balkhairi’s remarks.

Mona Eltahawy rejects Sarkozy but accepts the niqab ban, as she has expressed both in print and on tv.  I agree with Mona that the niqab is not an Islamic requirement; I also agree that many Muslims have a destructive conception of gender roles, and am sympathetic to her claim that many Muslims who encourage women to wear the niqab in fact propagate a version of Islam and religiosity that distorts Islam’s capacity to make us the kind of broad-minded individuals that God intends.  Nevertheless, I don’t think niqab bans are an effective way to fight the narrow-minded theology she rightfully rejects.

Some Egyptians are beginning a campaign to urge international creditors to forgive some of Egypt’s indebtedness on the grounds that it was used to benefit the previous ruling elite rather than the Egyptian people.  Debt relief for Egypt in these circumstances, however, would be a bit like giving more crack to an addict.  Certainly, some debts were questionable, but the real problem facing Egypt is structural: an inability to improve long-term domestic efficiency. Steps need to be taken to create a more equitable and efficient taxation system, and to develop and implement a realistic plan for investment in the capacities of the Egyptian people.   If that were achieved, Egypt’s debt position would not be so burdensome. In fact, Egypt is not a particularly over-leveraged country, with its overall debt representing 80.5% of its GDP, but its external debt amounting to only $30.6 billion, which puts it 65th in the world in terms of external indebtedness.  (To put it differently, that means that Egypt’s external debt to GDP ratio is about 15%, so the prospect of Egypt facing an immediate balance of payment crisis is remote.)  Egypt faces a long-term problem arising out of a chronic current account deficit which can only be remedied by increasing the productivity of its population.  This will require substantial long-term investments, however, and I hope that the new government turns its attention to figuring out how this can be accomplished.  Debt-relief at this stage, I fear, would only defer the pressure to make the needed structural reforms.