[Editor: Ane Skov Birk, student at Copenhagen University, Denmark, stayed with us from 24 January 2007 “ 11 August 2007. She has done excellent work, much of which has been reflected in texts she has written for AWR. Her internship was founded by the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI). Ane worked parallel with Egyptian student Salmá Anwar with the same work description thus facilitating intercultural dialogue not only on the level of the product outcome, but also in the day-to-day dealings in the office.]
After finishing my BA degree and enrolling in MA studies, the option to take a break from the theoretical academic studies and getting some hands-on experience and applying what I had learned so far, through an internship, seemed useful to me.
My general career aim is to work within the broad and somewhat indefinable field of promoting political reform toward democracy in the Arab world. As much as theoretical studies may provide me with tools and knowledge to work in this field, genuine political reform also depends, to a large degree, on the specific local context, including prevailing public discourse, social, and economical structures and what might be termed ‘the feeling in the street.’ This mixture of cultural, political, and economic factors can only be sensed and taken in by living in a society and following the local debates and modes of life. I therefore wanted to do my internship in an Arab country working for an organization which would allow me to gain a deeper insight into local politics and public debates.
Now at the end of my internship period, I am happy that I decided to do this at an early point in my MA studies. This will allow me to use experiences I have gained through my internship to guide me when choosing courses and focuses in the last part of my MA program.
The experiences I have gained fall in two main categories, first an insight into Egyptian politics and public debates and, secondly, organizational experience of working in a small NGO.
Insight into Egyptian politics and public debates
With a BA in Arabic and Political Science from Denmark and about a year’s experience living, studying, and working in different parts of the Arab world, I felt that I had a good basic knowledge about history, religion, and some political trends in the region. However, as my studies had so far primarily been based on Western scholars’ analyses of the region and on my own somewhat random impressions from friends and colleagues in the countries I had lived in, I felt that the internship would be a good opportunity to gain a more thorough understanding of the internal debates in Egyptian written media.
AWR is a weekly digest of English translations of articles from the Arabic language media in Egypt, with a special focus or emphasis on Christian-Muslim and Arab-West relations. My work here, according to the vacancy announcement, would primarily consist of writing biographies for the online database about personalities who frequently appear in the Egyptian media. I expected that this would give me a deeper understanding of the nuances in the debates over contemporary issues and how different groups and personalities position themselves on these debates. It was my expectation that this deeper knowledge of the details of certain debates would make me better equipped for understanding broader, theoretical issues related to my studies of the Middle East, and for making my own analysis.
My work has mostly been to research and write biographies based on internet sources and, when possible, interviews with the individual. In view of my particular interest in political Islam, I have strived to write about specific personalities that would give me an understanding partly of the logic and ideology of Islamist figures, and partly of the wider political scene they operate within. These personalities have included present and former leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the terror-convicted radical Islamist ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, other political leaders in Egypt, and one Islamist feminist, Amina Wadūd.
By focusing on single personalities and the development of their involvement in the public sphere I have obtained a deeper insight into the motives of some of the players on the Middle Eastern political scene as to why they act and position themselves as they do.
I have tried to use a wide variety of sources, in both English and Arabic, as well as some German and Danish sources. The AWR archive of translated articles from the last 10 years has provided a considerable amount of information about these individuals’ public appearances in Egypt. This range of sources has allowed me to see different shades and positions in the controversies surrounding these figures. The broad background knowledge I have thereby attained about Egyptian politics and public debates will definitely be highly valuable in my future studies in this field.
Additional tasks have included writing reports from meetings and interviews and comments to be placed in the weekly Arab-West Report. At one point I was involved in investigating the case of a convert to Christianity who contacted the office and claimed he was in trouble as a result of his conversion. In addition to researching the background of this issue, I interviewed an Egyptian human rights lawyer (in Arabic) and produced a report on the case along with updates of other relevant materials.
Through conferences I attended and discussions with friends and colleagues, my interest in the Egyptian political scene gradually extended to include secular movements such as Kifāya and some of the leftist underground groups. I have therefore spent some hours conducting interviews with young activists from different political movements. This has so far resulted in a short introduction for the Arab-West Report and has encouraged me to want to further study the issue of political mobilization in the Middle East in the future.
Having access to (and the opportunity to read) a large number of the raw translations (i.e. un-analyzed or critiqued) from the AWR archive has allowed me to develop my own impression of the debates here. Through this, I have seen some patterns in the logic of day-to-day dealings of local politics of which I had not previously been aware.
I have become more aware of the lack of reliable and well-documented information in the general Egyptian media. I have heard this mentioned before, and seen political analyses referring to misinformation in the Arab media, but by reading on my own, I have become more aware of the extent of casual claims and unsupported accusations in the media here. However, some of the misperceptions expressed in these articles could also be the result of insufficient standards for summaries and press-reviews which causes the original idea to be exceedingly compressed.
I have become aware of some interesting and very well-spoken intellectuals whom I did not know about before and who, regardless of whether I agree with their points of views or not, describe and analyze their own society in a deep way and who contributes to enlightening the public debate with convincing arguments.
Through my work at AWR, the expectations I had before coming to Cairo have generally been met in that my knowledge about Egyptian society has been considerably expanded.
Organizational experience:
What I consider to be the most important lesson with regards to my future studies and career, however, has not so much been the information gained through the biography writing as it has been the experience gained by seeing how this organization work from within. I have become more alert to how crucial it is to have a good management structure and a clear vision in order to work efficiently and effectively. It is obvious how deeply it affects work on all levels when both of these conditions are lacking.
At a time when much well-researched and reliable information is available online for free, a small Web site that aims to rely solely on user payments through subscribers needs to be extremely focused on their aim and the needs of their audience. Indeed, it might be advisable to revise the vision and offer the information for free in order to reach a wider audience. This could in turn open doors to funding by donor organizations who support open access to information.
Aspects of the historical development of the AWR and following financial constraints over the years have contributed to some problems in the office. The current situation offers hope that some of these short-comings will soon be redressed.
Conclusion
Democracy depends on an informed public to participate in politics and thus efforts to promote democracy should also include an aspect of how to disperse information to the wider public. This is indeed the case in projects of such different proportions as the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI), who launched a tri-lingual Web site and the al-Hurra satelite channel financed by the U.S. Congress to present “accurate, balanced and comprehensive news” to the Arab world.
Since my general career goal is to work for political reform in the Middle East, considerations of how best distribute information to a wider public are highly likely to take up a part of my future career. In light of this, I have found it very rewarding to work in an office where I would naturally be engaged in discussions about not only the cultural but also the practical side of how to strategically target and market a Web site.
The experiences I have gained through my internship at AWR are widely ranged. With a new insight into the complexity of the public debates in Egypt and a deeper understanding of some of the organizational efforts needed to have an effective impact in the political sphere, I find myself much better suited for structuring the final year of my studies in order to qualify myself as a competent, well informed contributor to political reform projects.
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