For the past 21 years the government of Saudi Arabia has been sponsoring the annual Janadriya Heritage Festival, a two week cultural event featuring regional artisans, food, costumes, architecture, wedding rituals, and traditional music and dance. The festival, normally held between November and March when the heat is less extreme, takes place at a large center built specifically for the event about 45 kilometers north of Riyadh. The Janadriya village is laid out as a mini replica of the Kingdom, thus visitors walk along an area representing the Hijaz western coast viewing the folk life...

Since this is my first contribution to e-cmes, I would like to introduce the basic ‘philosophy’ of the Arab Education Forum (AEF) before I describe some concrete manifestations of its approach.

AEF brings in another window, another perspective, through which people can see the Arab world. It deals with perceptions, not only of the Middle East but also of self, of one’s relation to the world, of culture, learning, and knowledge. It starts with, and builds on, what is beautiful, inspiring, healthy, and abundant in people, communities and cultures. It uses these as a...

A nation is known by its heroes. And in the Egyptian case there can be no doubt that the choice of Muhammad Ali Pasha as the founder of modern Egypt says many things about how Egyptians chose to understand themselves in the twentieth century. Although neither born in Egypt nor a speaker of Arabic, he can readily be identified as someone who strove to defend the country against outsiders, to build up its power and to develop its economic and administrative resources.

As a result, and regardless of how the enterprise may be judged, the Pasha can rightfully be identified as the...