we had some more interesting guest speakers during our last few weeks in cairo. we heard from a guy from the world bank, which is funding some great work and is quantifiably financially beneficial for all involved which is unique among international organizations. we also had young guy come show us a documentary he is making about the situation in the gaza strip which was very interesting. the Palestinians there are basically contained with zero economy and it is a time bomb waiting to explode.
we went to the arab league the other day, which is headquartered here in cairo, and met with the chief of staff for the secretary general. he is very important, we had to dress executively and all stand up when he came into the room. the arab league is basically like a miniature united nations just for the arab world, although that analogy could be strongly argued against only many levels – but i digress. it was interesting to hear him talk candidly about his recommendations for u.s. foreign policy – wouldn’t be too hard to satisfy actually. but if there is one thing to know about this region it is that nothing is ever as it seems.
we were reminded of that truth when we went to al azhar university to hear one of the deans there lecture to us about the tolerance of islam. al azhar is known as the most prestigious islamic school in the world and is quite fundamentalist but of course they put a positive spin on everything when we are there. we would ask direct questions and the guy would avoid them every single time. there was one point when the director of our program got really angry with the guy because he was continually flat out lying about how islamic leadership often treats people who convert away from islam. we were all sitting there just hoping this wasn’t the start of world war three. a while ago we also had a whole day where a bunch of coptic christian youth came to our villa and we talked faith and that was really informative. we also had a big discussion with some journalists from a religious news website called islam online. so we have been busy!
our islam and arabic classes are finished! arabic was really tough. islam was quite interesting, although our professor (a muslim) certainly glossed it over for us. but i guess we would likely do the same if we were teaching a class on christianity.
