Music is a powerful means to stimulate the memory. Certain songs take me back to specific moments in my childhood, university years, and adulthood.

Egypt’s media have been in campaign mode leading up to Monday and Tuesday’s vote. Official, quasi-official and the social media are dedicating their undivided attention to the presidential elections with reports, interviews and analyses that tackle the two candidates’ platforms, credentials and implausible promises. Yet, an Egyptian Nobel laureate and former presidential hopeful, who, respect him or despise him, helped ignite the 25 January 2011 and 30 June uprisings, is taciturn. Why aren’t the Egyptian media interviewing him?

The two candidates in Egypt's presidential election as voters decide on the nation's next leader in two-day elections that end Tuesday.

This Egyptian presidential election will be fair and run by the rules. It will include an opponent. You could call it a transition to democracy, even … what with Germany sending in its election monitors. And Sissi undoubtedly has the support of a large portion of the Egyptians. But how can it be democratic when the largest opposition party has been jailed and supposedly non-political state institutions are supporting Sissi. The Ministry of Information sends out email blasts for the Sisi Campaign, foreign journalists were flown to city of Assiut on a petroleum company jet, the enterprise 70% owned by the government. State television airs Sissi’s speeches while ignoring Sabahi’s.

For more than 20 years, I have tried to build bridges between Islam and Christianity and to dispel ignorance and misunderstanding between them. Islam is the second-largest faith community in the world and the second-largest in Britain, and so bridges between Islam and Christianity are something that must concern every responsible person. That is one of the reasons I have been happy to be involved in many faith bridge-building projects, including helping establish the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and setting up the Prince’s School for Traditional Arts in 2004. In 2008, I was honored to be the first Westerner and Christian to receive an honorary doctorate from the 1,000 year-old Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and will continue, God willing, to build bridges whenever possible.

Anacardium represents a mental/emotional state described in alternative medicine, especially homeopathy, as one of intense inner conflict and double will. It's a condition most close to schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders and signifies a shattered self and all the suffering that it brings therein. It is thus one of the most debilitating states where one is in conflict most with a tormenting self. Anacardium is the botanical name for cashew nuts and the schism in the plant, as in most cashew nuts, symbolises this theme of duality, inner conflict or divided self.

It is no longer necessary to wait for the actual voting process to determine whether the upcoming elections will be free and fair. The idea of fair elections has been dispelled by the manner in which the current regime has operated on a variety of issues. While the counting itself may eventually be free and transparent, it is clear that the idea of fairness has been completely undermined. There is no need to falsify election results through fraudulent elections if Egyptian public opinion has been manipulated and its dissenting voices suppressed.

Whenever the anniversary of the Zionist rape of Palestine comes, Arab memory in general, and Egyptian memory in particular, recalls images of Palestine under occupation or the British Mandate letting hordes of rapists of all nationalities pass to its lands. Nothing unified those hordes except the Zionist dream of raping Palestine. The British Mandate gave them public lands and granted them all forms of assistance with the consent and support of the US and the West in general. It allowed them to have the most advanced weapons to form criminal gangs for intimidating and expelling the Arabs and committing heinous massacres against them.

Mass protests against Brazil’s hosting of the World Cup, Turkey’s loss of opportunities to host sports events and controversy over 2022 World Cup host Qatar’s labour system are impacting the global sports world’s thinking about the requirements future hosts will have to meet. The impact is likely to go far beyond sporting and infrastructure concerns and raise the stakes for future hosts.

Over the past few days, I have been monitoring reactions to the first television interview of presidential hopeful Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

For seven years, I lived three floors above a main bridge in central Cairo that connects the two branches of the Nile. I would wake up in shock on average three times a week to the sound of squealing brakes, followed by a crash

On 22 January 2012, two days before the then MB-controlled parliament convened for the first time, I hosted a party at my house. The moment you enter the door of the apartment, you face a big banner that said: “The Muslim Brotherhood are coming… quickly grab a drink or two”. Needless to say, the guests heeded the advice, and the rest was a glorious entry into the history of drunken debauchery and a great source of pride for me. Two years later, and on the day of my 33rd birthday, I am writing this article instead of a banner, with a similar message: “President Sisi is coming… Let’s party!”

For seven years, I lived three floors above a main bridge in central Cairo that connects the two branches of the Nile. I would wake up in shock on average three times a week to the sound of squealing brakes, followed by a crash.

When he is (eventually) elected to Egypt’s Presidency, former Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi knows the Everest of his policy goals will be restoring the country’s floundering economy. But before he can take on the monumental task of ensuring food and petrol stability to a largely impoverished country of over 85 million, Sisi must first eradicate what has become the most serious Islamist insurgency in Egypt’s history.

Coptic Christians have, since 1952, lived according to what might be considered a tacit agreement between the church and the state, one whereby the state committed itself to the protection of Copts, the principles and rules of equality before the law, and equal opportunity, and the church reciprocated by absorbing the activities of Coptic Christians within its walls. The state considered the confinement of Copts inside the church a way to distance these individuals from oppositional political activity, which the state had criminalised. Clergymen at the time welcomed the overwhelming presence of Copts inside their churches, and the phenomenon was linked to the general religious wave that took hold in both Egypt and the outside world beginning from the end of the 1960s and peaking in the mid-1980s.

I saw a couple of friends recently – both of them had been reasons I loved the “City Victorious”, but who had lately moved away from Cairo. We hadn’t met up together in a very long time, and we were talking about how so many of our friends had since left Cairo, for various reasons. Our point was simple – if they all leave, then what is this grand city anymore? If they are all gone, then what does this city mean to us, personally, anymore?

Once the former Soviet Union was dismantled, Russia — which was its brain, beating heart, spine and the main source of its resources and power — chose capitalism and flagrantly followed the West under Yeltsin, before the incumbent Russian president restored his country’s independence and power, even while it continues on the path of capitalism. When the Soviet Union collapsed, some believed the West would welcome Russia with open arms into political, economic and security organisations. Instead, the West — which had worked diligently overtly, covertly, politically and conspiratorially to dismantle the USSR — shunned Russia.

The world celebrated “Press Freedom Day” 3 May. Yet, are the Egyptian journalists, reporters and media personnel joining their peers worldwide in celebrating the day? I highly doubt it.

With Egypt's presidential campaign entering its second week, rival candidates — former military chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi — have spent the last seven days unveiling their electoral platforms, hoping to widen their public appeal and win over converts from the opposing camp.

Bahrain recently hosted an international conference entitled "All civilisations in service to humanity," where hundreds of participants from all over the world and different religious and belief systems came together to find ways to talk and achieve peace through debate, dialogue and understanding.

The outrage is palpable across the centuries. In the first issue of his provocative newspaper The North Briton, John Wilkes championed the “liberty of the press”. It was “the terror of all bad ministers; for their dark and dangerous designs, or their weakness, inability, and duplicity, have thus been detected.”