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 moral principles or 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 certain standards of hu ...

and

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...

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 ...

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 Medit ...

, 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'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 ...

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 city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

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

; 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, 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 de ...

funds for election monitoring, 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.

References

External links

UNESCO profile

Democracy Now! program
20-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 Ibrahim

Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict

Receives Honorary Doctoral Degree from DePauw University; May 23, 2004

Saad Eddin Ibrahim
'' Freedom Collection'' 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

Egyptian revolutionaries 2011 in Egypt 2011 riots Politics of Egypt People from Dakahlia Governorate

Biography

Sentence

See also

References

External links