Egypt: Demise of Academic Intellectual Integrity

A professor at the Faculty of Arts and Letters in Alexandria University used a formal course on Human Rights that he has been teaching in order to foment fear and spread misinformation on the Baha'i Faith to his students.

For his course he had published an 84 page textbook in which he attacked the Baha'i Faith in four of its pages under the disguise of human rights education.

In his introduction on this specific subject, he used the following chapter title in order to introduce his learned opinion on the Baha'i Faith: "The rights of humans to freedom of belief and religion protected by the Administrative Court."

The opinion and stand of Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court on the Baha'i Faith is very well-known by now and is clearly understood by all who have been following this case closely.

However, one is at a loss to comprehend how this professor appears to succeed in convincing himself--and perhaps his students--that the Supreme Court's opinion had indeed ruled in favor of protecting the rights to freedom of belief and religion in denying them the right to obtain ID cards!

How could he use this as an example of the protection of human rights in Egypt?

In his four pages (out of 84) he repeats the exact disinformation, now familiar to many, and propagated by the supreme court as well as the extremists in Egypt. When he administered the final examination to his students (see copy at the end of this post), one out of the total three essay-type questions asked the students the following:

"The Supreme Administrative Court's ruling [16 December 2006] which happened during the course of our lectures on the status of the Baha'iyah in Egypt affirmed the old judicial direction that you have studied. Describe your understanding, from the lectures, of its judicial rulings and the principles applied by the administrative court in that regard. You should then expose the consequences of these judicial decisions influencing it [Baha'iyah]; mentioning examples of the protection provided by the court; concluding your answer by specifying when and where it [Baha'iyah] originated and what its goals are according to your understanding of the lectures."

This professor, under the guise and protection of academic freedom, has been teaching a course on human rights. He has been providing misinformation to his students on the history, the principles and the teachings of the Baha'i Faith. He informed his students that the Baha'is are a threat to the "public order" and the security of the country.

He published this information in his course-book and had copied several statements from previous court rulings and fatwas that have been propagated by the media for several decades. He had not exerted any discernible effort to investigate the truth for himself or for his students. By doing so, he presented his students with one-sided and clearly biased view of a supposedly academic subject, thus violating the principles of the Institution's intellectual integrity.

The students were not well served by this for two reasons: 1) they were not exposed to any scientific methodology in their research and education, and 2) they were taught falsehood that might remain with them for the rest of their careers. Additionally, they knew that in order to avoid failing that examination they were under the obligation to present their answers in accordance with the misinformation given to them by their professor, reinforcing the falsehood and ignorance.

Alexandria University was known to be a highly respected institution. In the ancient days, it was the world's first educational institution of its kind and was linked to the famous Alexandria library. It ceased to exist for several centuries until it was re-opened in the 1940s and has been a leading educational institution for several decades afterwards.

It may be time for the leaders of this respected institution of higher learning to have a close look at their teaching faculty to ensure their proper qualifications and proper motives to teach young minds and to maintain its scientific and intellectual integrity it has been well known for.