Mahmoud Amin El Alem

Mahmoud Amin El Alem (1922-2009[1]) was an award-winning Egyptian cultural critic and leading Marxist theorist.[2] He is considered to be the most prominent socialist writer and public intellectual in Egypt.[3] El Alem was also the head of the administrative board of Akhbar el-Yom[4] and an editor of several newspapers and magazines, including Rose al-Yūsuf, ar-Risala al-gadida, Magallat al-musawwir, and, Qadaya fikriyya.[5]

Career

In the 1940s El Alem became one of the most famous Egyptian communist leaders.[6] However, due to his political activism, he was convicted and persecuted on numerous occasions. Consequently, El Alem was expelled from the King Fuad University in 1954 for his political positions and prevented from supporting his doctoral thesis.[6][5] Thereafter, he became a political prisoner from 1959 until 1963 because of his refusal to dissolve the Egyptian Communist Party into the Socialist Union set up by President Gamal Abdel Nasser.[6] El Alem, alongside Ismael Sabri Abdallah and Fouad Mursi, later gave greater support to Arab nationalism by building an alliance between communists and nationalists to face the economic and political challenges of the Arab world.[6]

El Alem was later appointed head of the National Theater Committee and then became the Director of Akhbar el-Yom Press Company.[6]

Once Anwar Sadat became the President of Egypt, El Alem strongly opposed the "Infitah" (policy of economic liberalization), moreover, he also opposed the peace policy with Israel. Consequently, El Alem was once again imprisoned. Upon his release, he moved to Oxford where he taught at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University. Then, he accepted the invitation of his friend Jacques Berque to take charge of a chair on contemporary Arab thought in Paris where he was a lecturer at the University of Paris VIII (1974-1985) and at the École Normale.[5] In Paris, he also launched "The Arab Left" newspaper which hosted debates of left-wing activists.[6]

Awards

Return to Egypt

El Alem returned to Egypt after President Anwar Sadat died in 1984.[5]

References
  1. Halabi, Zeina G. (2017), The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual: Prophecy, Exile, and the Nation, Edinburgh University Press, p. 10, ISBN 1474421393
  2. Khouri, Malek (2010), The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema, American University in Cairo Press, p. 64, ISBN 9774163540
  3. Haeri, Niloofer (2003), Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 134, ISBN 0230107370
  4. Talhami, Ghada Hashem (2007), Palestine in the Egyptian Press: From al-Ahram to al-Ahali, Lexington Books, p. 173, ISBN 0739158635
  5. Mahmoud Amin El Alem, Ibn Rushd Fund, retrieved 18 July 2018
  6. Slim, Ben Taleb (2009), Mahmoud Amine El Alem : théoricien de la gauche arabe, Attariq Al Jadid
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