The cultural body may be set to elect an Arab boss. But has he alienated too many people, asks MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
SHOULD AN Egyptian culture minister who once threatened to burn Israeli books and, according to several Arab critics, has presided over the cultural stagnation that has marked Mubarak’s Egypt, be appointed head of the UN’s agency for learning and culture?
That is the question currently exercising intellectuals in both the Middle East and Paris, where the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is based.
The agency started voting for its new director-general yesterday in secret balloting that could last for days.
Farouk Hosni, a septuagenarian artist who has served as culture minister in Egypt for more than two decades, is considered a frontrunner for the post, despite several controversies at home and abroad which have raised doubts over his suitability.
If his bid is successful, Hosni will be the first Arab head of Unesco since its founding in 1945. It is hardly surprising then that the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference have all backed his candidacy.
But in recent months, remarks Hosni made in the past have come back to haunt him, prompting headlines like that emblazoned across the front page of French left-wing daily Libération yesterday: “L’homme qui veut brûler les livres” (The man who wants to burn books).
The headline is a reference to a heated exchange last year between Hosni and an Egyptian parliamentarian who claimed there were Israeli books in the Alexandria Library. Hosni reportedly countered: “Burn those books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you.”
In May, Le Monde published an open letter signed by filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, in which they decried Hosni’s bid for the Unesco job, and accused him of denigrating Israel. The letter argued Hosni was the “opposite of a man of peace, dialogue, and culture; [he] is a dangerous man, an inciter of hearts and minds”.
It urged “all countries dedicated to liberty and culture to take the initiatives necessary to avert this threat and avoid the disaster that would be his nomination”.
Hosni subsequently expressed regret for any remarks that may have caused offence, arguing they should be viewed in the context of his anger at the plight of the Palestinians. In an interview on French TV this week, he rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, citing his efforts to restore Egypt’s synagogues.
In the Arab world, criticism of his candidacy has hinged on his record of censoring books and films in Egypt, which, many argue, has contributed to the degradation of what was once considered to be the Middle East’s most vibrant cultural landscape.
“Hosni has alienated many Egyptians by suffocating cultural and intellectual freedom while giving a leg-up to religious zealotry,” argued Egyptian commentator Mona Eltahawy. Alaa al-Aswany, an Egyptian author whose book, The Yacoubian Building, became the biggest-selling Arab novel of recent years, has expressed similar opinions.
Writing in Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper, Sudanese intellectual Abdel Wahab al-Effendi sniffed: “In a dictatorship, the role of the minister of culture isn’t to protect culture, but to stifle it to protect the regime.”
There are eight other contenders for the four-year term, including EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Israel has apparently withdrawn its objections to Hosni’s bid, but the US is reportedly opposed to his candidacy.
For his part, Hosni, who in 2006 caused outrage among conservative Egyptians when he described the growing popularity of the hijab as a “step backwards”, says his candidacy could be ground-breaking.
“Someone like me will build extraordinary bridges, luminous bridges between the East and the West,” he said recently. “I’ll be the remedy to the questions that concern the Middle East and Europe.”