Spring has arrived in Washington DC, and a sure sign of the change in seasons is the annual parade of Islamist lobbyists who come to the US capital in March and April to advocate, under the guise of human rights, for Islamist causes and to misrepresent the beliefs held by ordinary Muslims. Just a week before American Islamists descended on Washington to push for Islamist-friendly policies during the fifth annual National Muslim Advocacy Day, their Egyptian Islamist allies did the same. On 24 and 25 March, “Egypt Advocacy Day” took place in Washington, when, sponsored by Democratic Party congressman Tom Malinowski, Egyptian activists and Western lobbyists came together to warn policy-makers against Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and encourage the US government to ensure Egypt works “to uphold the democratic principle of peaceful transfer of power,” according to a statement.

The Arab world is again in the midst of major upheavals that none can say with certainty will lead to a restored state of normalcy. Less than two weeks after the Algerian army brought former President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika to submit his resignation, the Sudanese military were faced with a similar dilemma.

The three previous referendums may determine the 2019 referendum, which is likely to be held during the last third of April. Like any vote in any political system, the nation’s political environment will be reflected by the participation rate in the next referendum.

The failed Muslim Brotherhood organisation is attempting, through its tentacles in Qatar and Turkey, to make former Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir a scapegoat in order to save the organisation s face and pull off a grand escape from bearing responsibility for the failure of the state in Sudan. This state was marketed by the Muslim Brotherhood for two decades as the first experiment to achieve empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation to rule a state the size and significance of Sudan. Attacking President Al-Bashir with such cruelty, especially from Muslim Brotherhood leaders and instruments who escaped from Egypt, recalls a complicated case of betrayal, treason and void of ethics. Because Al-Bashir s regime had sacrificed the entire history and deep relationship with the Egyptian state and sided with the Muslim Brotherhood since 25 January 2011 until its downfall.

If I were one of those who prepare the President s travels, especially within Africa, I would have recommended two leading scientists accompany him on the presidential plane: the first is Magdi Yacoub, dean of cardiologists, and the second is Hani Azar, one of the world s top engineers. I d even like to add two more; Mohamed Ghoneim, the famous Egyptian urologist, and Mohamed Abdel Wahab the famous liver surgeon.

Dr. Roshdi Rashed is one of the world s great philosophers and science historians. He worked as a professor in the universities of Paris, Berlin and Tokyo. He has received many international accolades and prizes. Rashed was born in Cairo and settled in Paris. Between his study of philosophy at Cairo University and teaching the history of science in the world s universities, his is a fantastic story of one of the grandest Egyptian intellects in modern history.

Investing in green turns out to be a good deal as well as a good deed. China, which has now become one of the world s largest markets for green finance, is showing how investing in sustainability is not only important for saving the earth but can bring about excellent returns for the investor. As Egypt seeks to “clean and green” the country while promoting economic growth, China s example offers some insight into a path forward for Egypt.

No one could have imagined while celebrating New Year 2019 that Algeria would face a very grave political crisis that would cost President Abdelaziz Bouteflika a forced resignation three months later. The same situation had been witnessed in Egypt eight years earlier, when nobody had anticipated the forced departure of former president Hosni Mubarak from power.

There is a growing view that after seven years of multi-faceted wars, the Eastern Mediterranean is returning to stability. Four factors lend credibility to this view, but their impact will be merely in the short-term. What will really shape the future of the Eastern Mediterranean are two realities that are also major harbingers of conflict. Let s begin with the factors that imply upcoming stability.

George H. W. Bush visited Egypt when he was US Vice President for President Ronald Reagan when former President Mubarak set up a dinner for him at the Koubbeh Palace. My seat was beside a US national. I began to get acquainted with him, and he told me he was a federal judge practicing as the acting administrator of presidential oaths. He said that his job is to accompany the vice president wherever he goes so that if the US President is exposed to sudden danger that prevents him from exercising his responsibilities, the vice president will take the oath before the judge. His post eliminates the risk of constitutional vacuum or a break in the presidential post–even if for a few minutes–as it is the president who holds the nuclear codes and serves as the highest decision-maker in the country.

When the hall is crowded and attendance is high, you can t miss the way to advocate of Islam and peace Sheikh bin Bayyah. You ll find him wearing his chic white jalabiya and carrying his famous stick. You ll know him by these crowds of disciples and admirers surrounded. In Abu-Dhabi, the sheikh founded the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies (FPPMS), which is a global foundation viewed with great international respect. The sheikh and the forum succeeded in imposing the peace discourse in Islam on several venues in the East and the West.

This weekend, over 1000 young people participated in a 2 KM run along the Luxor corniche, attended capacity building workshops and participated in an interactive theatre performance, as they rallied around population issues in Egypt. This came as part of UNFPA s Destination Egypt 2030 initiative, which is currently touring the governorates of Egypt in cooperation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and engaging youth to raise their awareness around different population issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM), early marriage and family planning.

The impossible is something that cannot be done logically and humanly, whether because the costs are inconceivable or because all options are out of the question or because they conflict with the laws of science and nature. But the impossible becomes a point of view when one appeals to another type of logic or calculation or when science comes up with opportunities and options that had not previously been available or when ambition and persistence make it possible to realise goals that had previously been unthinkable or that just to think them had been regarded as a stroke of madness.

Russell Bucklew is on death row in Missouri, and the United States Supreme Court just gave that state the go-ahead to kill him in one of the most torturous and cruel ways possible. Bucklew, who has a rare condition that leaves his body riddled with bleeding-prone tumors, will convulse, choke, and eventually suffocate on his own blood if he is executed by lethal injection, according to his lawyers. If this is true, his death will be slow. It will be brutal. It will be excruciatingly cruel. Jill Filipovic And according to Neil Gorsuch and the other right-wing members of the Supreme Court, it will be legal, even in the face of the Eighth Amendment, which says in full, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

On May 1, 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, President George W. Bush stood before a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished." But he had declared victory prematurely and subsequently lost the political battle over the war in Iraq. From that day on, every time Americans troops suffered a setback, critics would remark something along the lines of, Is this really what victory really looks like? In the rush to solidify a political gain, the Bush administration violated the first rule of political communications -- under promise and over deliver. In fact, it violated the second rule, too -- be humble in all victories. Joe Lockhart Compare that moment with the day President Bill Clinton was acquitted on impeachment charges in the US Senate. Did he hold a victory rally, praise his supporters and criticize those who had opposed him? No, he took the opposite approach. He was somber, fully taking responsibility for his role in the painful national controversy that was ended that day.

It is one of the bloodiest series of suspected murders in Pakistan. Eight people were already believed to be dead before the start of 2019, and last week a ninth was reportedly killed, in what have become known as the Kohistan Honor Killings. Afzal Kohistani was the man who had exposed a cell phone video that showed four women and two men singing and dancing. All four of the women and one of the men, along with three others who were not in the video, were all ordered killed once the matter came before a tribal jirga or council, according to Dawn, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan. Rafia Zakaria Kohistani s death in early March underscores the need for new approaches in the fight against honor crimes. It also provokes the question of why laws like Criminal Law Amendment 2016, which was passed in Pakistan to reduce the incidence of honor crimes, have not been successful in doing so.

It was a cold winter day when I arrived at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC on 4 January 1979 to begin my first diplomatic posting in the Egyptian embassy. Three months earlier, Egypt and Israel had signed the Camp David Accords, on 17 September 1978 in DC as a prelude to starting a diplomatic process to reach a comprehensive, total and just peace among the Arab countries, the Palestinians and Israel. It was to be based on UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted unanimously by the council on 22 November 1967.

ISIS has suffered a momentous blow with the defeat of its last physical stronghold, according to an announcement Saturday by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. At the height of its power four years ago, ISIS controlled an area in Iraq and Syria that was the size of Portugal and lorded over almost 8 million people -- a population larger than that of Bulgaria. ISIS also ran a quasi-state that taxed and extorted its millions of subjects, enabling it to field a terrorist army with a large war chest. While ISIS once attracted an estimated 40,000 people around the world to join its so-called caliphate, that number has since plummeted, as it seems no one wants to join the losing team.

Egyptian Political Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood often argue that Germany has a leading religious political party, the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), founded in 1945, and that Egypt could therefore follow suit and establish a similar religious party. They have been making this claim for decades in order to try to legitimise their status and present themselves as a non-violent pro-democracy movement happy to abide by Western democratic values.

When there was an outage of Facebook a few days ago, billions of people around the world came to a complete standstill. People in different parts of the planet were shocked, terrified and left in darkness, wondering about their lives without Facebook. A few days later, the same billions around the world were devastated to realise that terrorists had live-streamed a massacre they had committed at a mosque in New Zealand.

Europe and Africa are close neighbours. Both continents share the same geography, the same security context, and complementary challenges when it comes to migration. Over the last few years, the European perspective on the extent of our Southern Neighbourhood has evolved in the right direction: we are now well aware that our vicinity goes far beyond Northern Africa, encompassing instead the Sahel region and even Central Africa.