Angry football fans converge on the Algerian embassy in Cairo. Photo: madmonk

Hoda Osman, a special correspondent for Worldfocus and an Egyptian-American, writes about the diplomatic crisis that followed a World Cup match between Egypt and Algeria on Saturday. She explains the intense emotions surrounding the sport and how the rivalry reflects the strains in pan-Arab relations.

It’s hard to believe, but yes a soccer match is straining relationships between Egypt and Algeria. Unfortunately, I believe this time around the animosity and hostility between the countries’ 115 million people are here to stay.

A bitter history

Egypt and Algeria have a history of soccer-related violence. In 1989, Egypt qualified for the World Cup after winning over Algeria. Riots erupted. The Egyptian team’s doctor lost an eye after being attacked with a bottle by an Algerian player.

Fast forward to 2009. Keywords: the Internet and satellite television channels.

The two countries were preparing for a crucial match in Cairo. Egypt had to win by a three-goal difference to qualify for the 2010 World Cup next summer in South Africa — and by a two-goal difference to secure a rematch.

Emotions were running high ahead of the match. Special songs and commercials were produced specifically for the game. The media in both counties was obsessed. There were some who even blamed the media for inciting hatred.

The Internet also played a big role. It was used intensively by fans of the two teams to attack each other. Edited videos and altered pictures were posted on several websites with the intention of humiliating the other team.

Upon the arrival of the Algerian team to Cairo, Egyptian fans allegedly threw stones at their bus and injured a number of players. FIFA opened an investigation into the incident.

The U.S. warned its citizens in Cairo against being on the streets on the evening of the match.

To calm things down, an Egyptian and an Algerian pop star organized a joint concert.

Egypt won the Nov. 14 match 2-0, thereby securing a rematch with Algeria in Sudan a few days later.

Millions of Egyptian celebrated on the streets across Egypt till the early hours of the following morning. If you saw the pictures you would think the whole country won some global lottery that would solve all their problems.

Violence in Khartoum

Violence was expected in Sudan. Security was intensive. Egyptian interests had already come under attack in Algiers after the first match and the Egyptian government summoned the Algerian ambassador in Cairo over it.

Algeria won 1-0 and secured its place in the coming World Cup. Life goes on, right? It’s just a game.

Unfortunately not. Algerian fans attacked their Egyptian counterparts in Sudan following the game. Some of the Egyptian fans and celebrities who were attending the match called into television programs and said they were trapped and hiding in Sudanese houses. I also got first-hand reports of the violence from people who were in Khartoum.

The Egyptian government reported 21 were injured and recalled its ambassador to Algeria for “consultations.” The Egyptian media also pointed the finger at Sudan, claiming it was unable to protect the Egyptians after the match. Sudan summoned the Egyptian ambassador in Khartoum to object.

In Cairo, security forces clashed with Egyptians who rioted and burned Algerian flags in front the Algerian embassy there.

Arab unity – an unrealistic dream

The events are unfortunate but also interesting on several levels. They elucidated the fragile relations between the two countries on the popular and the state level.

The head of the Egyptian Artists Union announced on television that he would call for canceling Algeria’s membership in the union because its artists were silent about the offenses. Numerous Egyptian celebrities called into a television show Wednesday evening calling for cutting cultural relations with Algeria, announcing they were giving back prizes they won in Algerian festivals and asking that their work not be aired in Algeria. Some media personalities were even suggesting stopping Egyptian investments in the country.

The animosity runs so deep now, that I can’t see how this can be repaired.

Arabs have always dreamed of Arab unity. Although the match was between only two of the 22 Arab countries (Sudan also got caught in the middle), to me, it’s still proof of how difficult accomplishing that goal is. Egypt and Algeria may have been frail to begin with, but relations between most other countries are not that much better.

The power of soccer

If you saw the pictures of the celebrations by the fans of the two countries you’d be amazed. Soccer is big in the Arab world.

I’ve read a lot about the game and found that nobody explained the role soccer plays in the Arab world better than the manager of a Cairo restaurant interviewed by Time Magazine. “Soccer provides an outlet for emotion, both positive and negative, that so many Egyptians so desperately crave, says Maher Gamel, manager of one of Cairo’s most popular restaurants, al-Omda.”

I remember a sociology class I took at the American University in Cairo years back. We were discussing patriotism and agreed it becomes most vivid during soccer matches.

When seeing the pictures of the Egyptian celebrations following the first match and the Algerian celebrations following the second, you might wonder why the people of those countries don’t do the same to remove their dictators or gain more rights. Is it fear? Is it lack of hope? I don’t really have an answer.

But as I was watching the story develop, I wondered about something else. How can this enormous energy be used positively. The people of the two countries are at this moment united around one issue. What if this energy was used to produce something, to build, to educate or to clean the cities? How can they be mobilized that same way, with the same enthusiasm? If we find the answer, we may find the solution to problems many countries around the world.

- Hoda Osman

For more on Sufism in Morocco, read about the music, mysticism and moderation.

Worldfocus special correspondent Hoda Osman attended a briefing with Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in New York this week. She blogs about the experience.

Qaddafi: The Self-Proclaimed Philosopher

As I watched Muammar al-Qaddafi walk into the meeting room at the Council on Foreign Relations, I remembered my shoes getting stolen.

The first (and only other) time I saw the Libyan leader was in N’Djamena, Chad, in 1999. Libya had arranged for a plane to take journalists from Cairo to Chad’s capital for the day to cover a speech he was giving. Tens of thousands of people gathered to watch him speak and security was very tight. The media area was right in front of the stage, but we had to take our shoes off as it was also an area where people were going to pray.

Once he finished his speech, the security was gone in the blink of an eye. We suddenly heard gunshots, people were running all around — and there went my pair of shoes. My cameraman’s shoes were also gone. Bad luck didn’t end there; it suddenly started to rain. We walked with wet, dirty socks until one of the locals guided us to a place where we could buy new Chadian shoes.

Back here in New York, 10 years later, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) event was about to start. The meeting was arranged for CFR’s members and was going to be based on an open question-and-answer format. We were warned that if we couldn’t stay for the whole duration of the meeting, which was scheduled to end at 2:00 p.m., we should move to another room where it was being transmitted to a big screen.

I was sitting in the fourth row and had a live report to do at 4:00 p.m. Qaddafi spoke for an hour and 36 minutes at the United Nations the previous day, instead of the proposed 15 minutes. I contemplated leaving, but decided to stay, knowing that CFR meetings usually started and ended on time regardless of who the speaker was.

Isratine

Qaddafi is sometimes described as a madman. His eccentricity — and especially his unusual choice of words — may have something to do with that. At the United Nations the day before, he tore up a copy of the organization’s charter and called the Security Council a “terror council.”

He seemed sane to me that day, if his word choice remained eccentric.

One of the terms Qaddafi uses is Isratine, a combination of the words Israel and Palestine. At CFR, Qaddafi explained the reasons behind his support for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He argued that the geography and the demographics of the area make a two-state solution difficult. The Libyan leader pointed out that the Palestinian state was split between Gaza and the West Bank, with Israel in between them. He added that settlements in the West Bank were too intertwined into Palestinian lands, which makes creating a Palestinian state there unrealistic.

Qaddafi suggested creating a “multicultural, multi-religious, multiracial state,” arguing that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians already depend on each other, with many Israeli factories employing Palestinian workers.

Although the one-state solution is not an option being considered in official discussions and negotiations, the idea is not new and there are those who support it. But it’s Qaddafi’s choice of the name of the country, Isratine, that makes his proposal more amusing.

“It Was A Different World Then”

Explaining why in 2003 Libya suddenly decided to give up its nuclear and chemical weapons program after investing so much in it, Qaddafi said things have changed. “At the time, all nations took pride in developing weapons of mass destruction. We were young and excited about the revolution,” he said in his very calm voice, one empty of any excitement.

He went on to argue that this phase has ended. A “strategic assessment” of which countries Libya would use those weapons against made them realize, he said, that the weapons represented more of a danger to Libya itself.

So far, so good, I thought.

“I Am Not An Authority”

Libya has no government and the press belongs to the people. That’s how Qaddafi, who is one of the longest serving leaders of the world, tried to evade giving a sincere answer to a question about Libya’s human rights practices. He said the questioner from Human Rights Watch wouldn’t understand this because she hasn’t read the Green Book which contains his theories about society.

All over the world, anything related to the government is hated and despised, “so we annulled the government,” he said. “I am not an authority,” he claimed. “Whether I am president or not, it doesn’t matter.” It was here that I felt Qaddafi was really insulting my intelligence. He’s been in power for 40 years now and it would be naïve to believe his utopian portrayal of Libya.

“I was a philosopher before I was an officer…I have a philosophy,” he went on.

Qaddafi argued that the system followed by Libya is the ideal one for governance and anticipated that the whole world to eventually evolve and adopt it.

And Finally….

The last question from the audience was about whether the President of CFR, Richard Haass, a Jewish-American, would be as well-received in Libya as Qaddafi was in New York.

“I am surprised by this question,” responded Qaddafi. “Did somebody tell you we discriminate against religions?” Qaddafi half-jokingly said that the question indicates that this must be an issue here in the U.S. or else it wouldn’t have been asked.

At the end, I was thinking: Is he really a madman? Putting aside his eccentric looks and strange choice of words, he seemed like just a typical Arab dictator, but a more irrelevant one. And maybe that’s why Qaddafi feels the constant need to attract attention.

It was 2:00 p.m….and guess what, the meeting did end on time. So, any new information, new impressions? Not really. Was it entertaining? No question about it.

Worldfocus correspondent Hoda Osman and producers Rebecca Haggerty, Megan Thompson and Reda Fakhar traveled to Morocco to explore how these mothers are coping.

For more coverage of women in Morocco, visit our Women in Islam extended coverage page.

Daisy Khan of The Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality and the American Society for Muslim Advancement joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss social taboos for women in Muslim societies.

Hoda Osman reports from Morocco. Photo: Hoda Osman

Egyptian-American reporter Hoda Osman reported from Morocco on the Worldfocus signature story “Moroccan single moms cope with hostility, shame.” She writes about her own perceptions of equality and Islam.

As we prepared to air our piece on single mothers in Morocco, the case of the Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein caught world attention and once again raised the issue of the treatment of women in Islam. Hussein was facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers, which was supposedly in violation of the country’s so-called “decency law.” On Monday, she was fined but given no lashes — probably as a result of the international attention the case received. Sudan claims to be following “Islamic Law.”

To many in the West, the case is another example of how Islam promotes subjugation and repression of women. To me it’s yet another example of something I’ve long concluded was Muslim women’s main problem, especially in the Arab world: Men’s manipulation of the interpretation of the religion and their abuse of it, as well as societal and cultural norms dictating what women can and cannot do

For centuries, Islam was used as an excuse to stop women from entering certain fields, to suppress them and make them believe they were inferior to men. It worked. Many Muslim women I’ve met throughout my life actually believed they were less important than their male counterparts and obligated to serve them.

I’ve read the Qur’an numerous times and spent time studying different interpretations of its verses. To me, the spirit of justice and equality are clear throughout its 114 chapters. Reading it always made me feel powerful, not helpless.

In the 1990s, small groups of Muslim women in different countries started fighting for rights they believed where given to them under Islam, but taken away by society. They decided to use the same weapon used against them. They went back to the religious text and reinterpreted it to prove that their religion honors and respects them and sees them as equal to men. The movement is sometimes referred to as “Islamic Feminism,” but the term is controversial.

Small accomplishments were achieved across the Muslim world. In Egypt, women were at the mercy of men to get a divorce and some spent years in limbo if the man refused to grant a divorce. In 2000, women finally got the right to divorce. Last year, Egyptian women who have children outside of wedlock also won the right to register them under their own name and without a marriage certificate, which is also the case in Morocco. In Kuwait, four women were elected to parliament for the first time last year. And in Bahrain, feminists are planning to debate the interpretations of Qur’anic verses for the first time.

While working on the stories for Worldfocus in Morocco, I was impressed by the tolerance and openness of the society — a result of the influence of Sufism on the culture, we were told by some.

But the status of women who had children outside of wedlock was no different than in any other Arab country. They were a source of shame, often outcast by society. You can’t blame religion or the law for that.

Whereas women and men are seen on equal foot by Islam when it comes to fornication, societies seem to be much more forgiving of men. Women who have sex outside of marriage, especially those who get pregnant and have children, face a myriad of problems and dangers as you will hear from them in the piece first hand. Even the woman who dedicated her life to helping those single mothers was the subject of a death threat by religious extremists.

To clarify, having sex outside of marriage is considered a sin in all Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. According to the Qur’an, the punishment for both man and woman is flogging. In my opinion, many of Islam’s harsh punishments are meant as deterrents rather than for actual implementation. For example, to prove that a man and woman had sex, you need four witnesses to step forward and say they actually saw the act, which is obviously nearly impossible.

Unfortunately, whereas the “Islamic feminists” have a tool –- the reinterpretation of the text -– that they use to try and free themselves of unwarranted restrictions, this story will show how much harder it is to change societal attitudes and cultural norms.

- Hoda Osman

For more coverage of women in Morocco, visit our Women in Islam extended coverage page.

One of the estimated 160,000 Egyptian bloggers shares his perspective in our Web exclusive video: Egyptian bloggers cite censorship, arrest and torture.

Special correspondent Hoda Osman and producer Sally Garner report on the state of journalism in Egypt from Cairo.

The video below is an exclusive Web interview with blogger and activist Hossam el-Hamalawy.

For bloggers and mainstream journalists, Egypt is far from free. Both Hossam el-Hamalawy and Nora Younis blog using their real names. Both write about protest rallies, politics and the growing — but still small — labor movement in Egypt.

Watch the video interview of el-Hamalawy, who says he’s been arrested, questioned and tortured several times during his career. He describes the blogging community in Cairo as having one foot in cyberspace and the other in the street.

It’s that activism that makes them targets for state security police.

Blogger Nora Younis told us about knowing she was being watched but choosing to continue to live and work without trying to hide.

“I never lock my door; I just leave my apartment and pull the door shut,” she said. “I never lock my door. I don’t care if they’re tapping the phone; I have to continue living as if this is safe. I have the right to do it. I should continue to do it.”

Reporters without Borders ranked Egypt 148th out of 169 countries in its annual press freedom survey.

The organization specifically cited the jailing of two bloggers last year as evidence of Egypt’s continuing crackdown on journalists. The report also pointed to the use of the Internet as a powerful tool that resulted in the “unprecedented arrest and imprisonment” of two government officials when a blogger posted video of them torturing prisoners at a local police station.

- Sally Garner

Worldfocus contributing correspondent Hoda Osman speaks with women from different walks of life in Egypt, each with surprising revelations about why she has taken the veil.

Below the video, read what bloggers — including an Egyptian woman living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — are saying about the veil, and its varying perceptions.

Hoda Osman, who spent the first 26 years of her life in Cairo, goes back to that city for a sampling of opinion.

Read Producer Sally Garner’s blog post: Sailing along the Nile in Egypt.

View the story here: Egyptians express views on America

Nile River boatman Hussein Ahmed. Photo: Sally Garner

When I first saw Cairo from an airplane window it seemed to be a vast sea of brown, with three tiny triangles poking up from the monochromatic landscape. Tiny from the air — but you know you’re looking at the Giza pyramids.

Once you’re on the ground and actually at the pyramids, you realize that Cairo is pressing its irrigated edges right up to the those amazing monuments. The brown desert landscape gives way to green only because of the Nile. Egypt gets only two or three days of rain a year, so the river is what provides 95 percent of the water for the whole country.

We got a close-up view of the world’s longest river on a quick trip on a felucca [a traditional wooden sailing boat]. The striking thing about sailing along the Nile in the heart of Cairo is how suddenly quiet it seems. The river is at one of its narrowest points here, but it’s so wide and gentle that you never hear the roar of traffic from the main roads just alongside.

One of our assignments was to try to get a glimpse of what Egyptians think about America, so we took the opportunity to interview our boatman, Hussein Ahmed. While the current and the breeze were calm, he had plenty to tell us, volunteering his affection for “Ameryka” but his disdain for President Bush and the policies of the current administration in the Middle East.

As we sailed along past the former home of late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, we heard about the “good” Presidents Carter and Clinton and how the “Bush family should go.” As we got off the boat, he said sadly that American tourists don’t come to Egypt as often anymore. He hoped we would come back because even though he was angry about U.S. political policy, he truly liked Americans.

It was a refrain we’d hear over and over and over during our trip…at the fancy indoor shopping malls…and in the street markets.

It’s clear that while Egypt might be mysterious to Americans, America is a daily presence in the lives of Egyptians.

- Sally Garner