Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

World Policy Institute and Idealist present:

Religion and Politics in Post-Mubarak Egypt

A Political Salon with Monique El-Faizy
Moderated by Patricia DeGennaro

March 14, 2011
This event is by invitation only.

With special thanks to the Heinrich Böll Foundation for supporting the Political Salon.

Millions of peaceful protesters took to the streets of Egypt and overthrew a dictatorship that had stood for nearly three decades. In doing so they earned themselves the right to reinvent their political system. Egypt could move toward becoming an open democracy or, as many in the West fear, it could become an Islamist state. In this great civic experiment, perhaps no group has more to gain or more to lose than Egypt's Copts, the Orthodox Christian minority that makes up an estimated 10 percent of the population. If Egypt becomes a fully secular society, Copts could become fully enfranchised citizens, enjoying the same rights as the Muslim majority for the first time in well over a century. If things take a different turn, though, they could find themselves living in an overtly hostile environment.

In this Political Salon, Monique El-Faizy, who is working on a book that will follow the country's renewal through these two discrete lenses, will talk about the rebirth of Egypt as perceived differently depending on religious views and identity.

This Political Salon will be on the record.

About the Speakers:

Monique El-Faizy is a journalist who has worked at the New York Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Associated Press and the Bergen Record. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Marie Claire, GQ, Glamour, Moscow Magazine, and the Moscow Guardian, among others. She is an occasional columnist for the Egyptian website, Bikya Masr, and was last in Egypt in May. She is the author of God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America's New Mainstream.

Moderator
World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Patricia (Tricia) DeGennaro is an adjunct assistant professor at New York University's Department of Politics where she teaches a course on international security. DeGennaro capitalizes on over fifteen years of experience as an independent analyst and consultant in international security, civil-military relations and transitions from war and to equitable representation of people. Earlier this year, she visited Iraq where she analyzed the military transition to civil authority. She has also spent much of the last five years working in Afghanistan on provincial governance and capacity building, parliamentary reform, public policy development in the Office of the President of Afghanistan and joint interagency, intergovernmental and multinational coordination. Her regional areas of expertise are the Middle East and regional Arab States, South Asia, and the Balkans.

About the Sponsors:

The Political Salon - organized by Steve Sokol since 2003 to promote dialogue among the next generation of leaders in business, policy, and the media - regularly convenes a diverse group of young professionals to discuss a range of foreign policy issues and global affairs. Attendees are diverse in terms of nationality, profession, and political persuasion.

Idealist is a project of Action Without Borders, a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 with offices in the United States and Argentina. Idealist is an interactive site where people and organizations can exchange resources and ideas, locate opportunities and supporters, and take steps toward building a world where all people can lead free and dignified lives.