http://washin.st/17MiK7E
The paper’s new Egyptian columnist has repeatedly appeared on Arabic media outlets expressing the kind of circular, paranoid reasoning normally confined to fringe blogs in the United States.
Alaa Al-Aswany is Egypt’s preeminent novelist. His 2002 best-seller “The Yacoubian Building” highlighted the political corruption, moral duplicity, and economic inequality of contemporary Egypt, and established him as one of the most influential critics of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. His star grew brighter following the 2011 uprising that ousted Mubarak, when Aswany became an oft-quoted voice of the Egyptian opposition — “The Face of Egypt’s Uprising,” as the Wall Street Journal put it — and he is generally regarded in the Western press as an authentically “liberal” Egyptian intellectual. It is likely thanks to this reputation that the New York Times announced earlier this month that it was giving Aswany a monthly column as part of its newly expanded opinion section.
It is a choice that the Times will regret, however, because despite his brave stance against Mubarak and his broadly progressive pronouncements in English, Aswany is hardly a liberal. He is, in fact, among Egypt’s most prolific conspiracy theorists, and he often uses his very public platform to reinforce some of Egypt’s most popular bigotries — and he typically does this when speaking or tweeting in Arabic, which is why the Western press often misses this aspect of his public persona. Aswany said on Egyptian television, for instance, that a “massive Zionist organization rules America,” which is why “Obama is not able to go against Israel’s desires.”
