Saad Eddin Ibrahim ( arz, سعد الدين إبراهيم, ) (born 31 December 1938) is an Egyptian
sociologist and author. He is one of Egypt's leading
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
and
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
activists, and a strong critic of former Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in t ...
.
Biography
Born in Bedeen,
Mansoura
Mansoura (' , rural: ) is a city in Egypt, with a population of 960,423. It is the capital of the Dakahlia Governorate.
Etymology
''Mansoura'' in Arabic means "victorious". The city is named after the El Mansoura Battle against Louis IX of Fr ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
, Ibrahim is credited for playing a leading role in the revival of Egypt's contemporary research-based
civil society
Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.[American University in Cairo
The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs ...]
's (AUC) Department of Sociology, having previously taught sociology at Indiana's
DePauw University
DePauw University is a private liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is a member of both the G ...
from 1967 to 1974. He was a visiting professor at UCLA in Los Angeles in spring of 1979, and on leave from AUC to serve as Secretary General of the Arab Thought Forum, chaired by Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan from 1984 to 1989. He founded both the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
and the
Arab Organization for Human Rights
The Arab Organization for Human Rights ( ar, المنظمة العربية لحقوق الإنسان) is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that works on human rights issues in the Arab World. It was founded with a resolution agreed on in Hamm ...
. He is married to
Barbara Ibrahim
Barbara Lethem Ibrahim (born March 21, 1949) is the founding director of the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo. Internationally recognized as a prominent sociologist of the Arab world,
...
, the director of the Gerhart Center for Civic Engagement and Philanthropy in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
; they have two children, Randa and Amir Ibrahim, and four grandchildren, Lara and Seif (through Randa) and Adam and Gebriel (through Amir).
Well before his confrontations with the Egyptian government in the early 2000s, Ibrahim had become a controversial figure in Egypt. He reversed his earlier criticism of
Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat, (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 ...
for his peace initiative with Israel. He gained the respect of Egypt's human rights and civil society community for championing different causes, including
Copts
Copts ( cop, ⲛⲓⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ; ar, الْقِبْط ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group indigenous to North Africa who have primarily inhabited the area of modern Egypt and Sudan since antiquity. Most ethnic Copts are C ...
,
Baháʼís. and other minorities at a time of rising sectarian tensions.
Ibrahim was arrested, imprisoned and prosecuted in 2000 for using
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
funds for
election monitor
Election monitoring involves the observation of an election by one or more independent parties, typically from another country or from a non-governmental organization (NGO). The monitoring parties aim primarily to assess the conduct of an electi ...
ing, and for allegedly defaming Egypt's image abroad. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. His defense team countered that the real motives behind the government's prosecution of Ibrahim and his assistants was his outspoken criticism of President Hosni Mubarak and his administration. He was tried twice on the same charges in State Security Courts, winning each time on appeal. During a third trial before the highest civil court in 2003, he was cleared of all charges and released, but not before a storm of international protest had put the Mubarak regime on the defensive.
The High Court ruling was 35 pages long and makes for important reading. It stated that as a public intellectual, Ibrahim's writing and other civic activities were protected. It also ruled that the executive branch of Egypt's government had overstepped its bounds in repeatedly prosecuting the case.
As an independent-minded intellectual, Ibrahim has supported fair elections when they were viewed as incompatible with Egyptian politics, promoted international democratic alliances, and accepted NGO funding from any source that shares peaceful and democratic values, including those in the US. He was attacked in the official press for calling on the U.S. Congress to condition its military aid to Egypt on improvements in the country's human rights record and the freeing of political prisoners.
In 2006 Ibrahim was awarded the Ion Ratiu Democracy Lecture Prize at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he previously had been a public policy scholar. He has won over 20 other international and regional awards for his scholarly and human rights work.
In 2007 Ibrahim went into voluntary exile when he learned of Mubarak's renewed fury over organizing a regional Conference on Arab Democracy in Qatar, and for speaking briefly about Egypt to President George Bush when both addressed a conference of global Freedom Fighters organized in Prague by Vaclav Havel. He lived and taught abroad from 2007 until Mubarak's fall from power in February 2011. In exile, Ibrahim was invited to teach graduate courses for two semesters at Istanbul Culture University, then in 2008-2009 he was a visiting professor at Indiana Law School and then a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Center for Middle East Studies. Drew University hosted him as Visiting Wallerstien Scholar at the Center on Religion, Culture and Conflict from 2009 to 2011.
While living in exile he retired from 34 years on the Sociology faculty at American University in Cairo and was made Emeritus Professor. He continues to write a widely syndicated weekly column for El Masry el Youm newspaper and to host a weekly open seminar in Cairo at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.(IKDS)
Sentence
On 2 August 2008, an
Egyptian court sentenced Ibrahim to two years of prison for 'defaming Egypt'. He was granted a bail of
£E10,000 (US$1,890) and his lawyer expressed his will to appeal. He was reportedly living in exile outside of Egypt, to avoid probable arrest upon his return.
Sources close to Ibrahim reported a further 17 court cases were filed against him in 2008 and therefore he faced certain arrest if he returned to Egypt. On Wednesday, August 5, 2010, Ibrahi
returned to Cairo for a visit with his family. He was allowed to enter and leave, while many of the spurious court cases against him had been dismissed in court. He returned permanently to Cairo on February 12, within hours of Mubarak's departure from office and to celebrate the short-lived fruits of the January 25th revolution.
See also
*
Asmaa Mahfouz
Asmaa Mahfouz ( arz, أسماء محفوظ, , born 1 February 1985) is an Egyptian activist and one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement. She has been credited by journalist Mona Eltahawy and others with helping to spark a mass uprising ...
*
Kefaya
Kefaya ( arz, كفاية ''kefāya'', , "enough") is the unofficial moniker of the Egyptian Movement for Change ( ar, الحركة المصرية من أجل التغيير ''el-Haraka el-Masreyya men agl el-Taghyeer''), a grassroots coalition ...
*
Ayman Nour
Ayman Abd El Aziz Nour ( arz, أيمن عبد العزيز نور, ; born 5 December 1964) is an Egyptian politician, a former member of the Egyptian Parliament, founder and chairman of the El Ghad party. Nour was the first man to ever compet ...
- an Egyptian opposition leader, founder of the
Tomorrow Party
The el-Ghad Party ( ar, حزب الغد ', ; "The Tomorrow Party") is an active political party in Egypt that was granted license in October 2004. El-Ghad is a centrist liberal secular political party pressing for widening the scope of politi ...
*
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance (NVR), or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, cons ...
*
2011 Egyptian Revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January revolution ( ar, ثورة ٢٥ يناير; ), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police ho ...
*
April 6 Youth Movement
The April 6 Youth Movement ( ar, حركة شباب 6 أبريل) is an Egyptian activist group established in Spring 2008 to support the workers in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial town, who were planning to strike on 6 April.
Activists calle ...
References
External links
UNESCO profileDemocracy Now! program20-minute broadcast interview by
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman (born April 13, 1957) is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Her investigative journalism career includes coverage of the East Timor independence movement, Morocco's occupation ...
; audio and video files plus print transcript (October 2007).
"Campaign Against Torture"*
Long interview of Ibrahimby Professor Alan Johnson of Edge Hill University conducted in February 2007
*
''Drew Magazine'' profile of Saad Eddin IbrahimDrew University Center on Religion, Culture & ConflictReceives Honorary Doctoral Degree from DePauw University; May 23, 2004Saad Eddin Ibrahim ''
Freedom Collection
Freedom Collection is a digital repository sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Southern Methodist University's campus in Dallas, Texas. The collection documents major players in human rights and ...
'' interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibrahim, Saad Eddin
DePauw University faculty
Egyptian democracy activists
Egyptian dissidents
Egyptian human rights activists
Egyptian emigrants to the United States
The American University in Cairo faculty
Indiana University faculty
Harvard University staff
Free speech activists
Egyptian writers
Egyptian sociologists
1938 births
Living people
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
Egyptian revolutionaries
2011 in Egypt
2011 riots
Politics of Egypt
People from Dakahlia Governorate