The first edition of a new quarterly publication, Ma Bad or BEYOND, has appeared in the market in Egypt. Ma bad is a new format for open, democratic and public dialogue that reaches out to all. It’s reporters are simply those who contribute to the newspaper, and it has so far no paid staff. Everybody on the board is a volunteer. The first edition speaks about religion and civilization and tries in a modest way to bridge the gap between Islam and other religions and civilizations in a manner that would promote the notion that Islam is a civilized religion, not a religion of terror.
Ma Bad also displays the very positive contributions of Islam to humanity among them women’s rights and individual rights. It also discusses the relation between the one and the other, meaning the outlook of different cultures and civilizations.
Ma Bad also published a substantial portion of the UN report on the Alliance of Civilizations. The newspaper is issued by the Association of Former International UN Civil Servants in Egypt (AFICS) whose chairman is former ESCWA Executive Director Mervat Tallawy. The CEO of the AFICS publications is Seheir Kansouh. The editor-in-chief is our colleague at the Palais in Geneva, Hedayat Abdel Nabi, KUNA correspondent. The second edition of Ma Bad will appear in September under the banner: The Arab World: Dream or Reality….Destruction or Development
