Lotus Magazine
[hr] By Nida Ghouse In the wake of Youssef El-Sebai’s death, the streets of Cairo swelled in protest. On 19 February 1978, as his body arrived from Cyprus to be wrapped up in a flag and readied for a state-sponsored service, the newspapers had spread a rumour that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was responsible and this, in turn, had […]
Trajectories of the Sudanese Gulf
By Michael Vasquez There is a lot of concern about how to narrate the history of the Gulf and the Sudanese. The sort of soft power of the Sudanese and their role in quietly and, in some ways, invisibly administering the state at the crucial moment of its first independent articulation is very little talked […]
Nasser and the African Revolution
Politically and socially Egypt is said to occupy three spaces as mentioned in President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s booklet Philosophy of the Revolution- Arab, Islamic and African( in that order). However this does not reflect the real priority Nasser gave to relations with other Independent African States and Liberation Movements during the fight against colonialism. The […]
Qibla
Qibla leader Imam Achmad Cassiem in conversation with Khalid Shamis. “When the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Robert Sobukwe, came to Cape Town, specifically to Kensington and Ndabeni, he said at the launch of the branches in those areas, that Muslims are sitting on the blueprint but they’re not implementing it. Now, this is the first […]
The Pharaoh’s New Clothes
By Sophia Azeb Scene I. Arabité and its discontents The first issue of Cairo-based magazine Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings featured an extended excerpt from Léopold Sédar Senghor’s 1967 lecture at the University of Cairo, “Négritude and Arabism” (Arabité in subsequent publications). In it, Senghor asserts that Arabic-speaking Africans – the “Arab-Berber” – played an essential role […]