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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Library reopens 1,700 years on |
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| Fatimah |
| 10/16/02 at 11:22:06 |
| [slm] Just wanted to post this article since I'm right down the street from the library. Security is REALLY tight these days.. I can't wait to check it out. :) [img width=450 height=200]http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38345000/jpg/_38345577_eg_library2_ap300.jpg[/img] Wednesday, 16 October, 2002, 01:16 GMT 02:16 UK Library reopens 1,700 years on A new library is to open in Alexandria, built on the site of the original destroyed by fire in the Fourth Century AD. A ceremony is set for Wednesday, to be attended by the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, and some 3,000 foreign dignitaries, before the library opens to the public on Sunday. The new library - officially called Bibliotheca Alexandrina - took some 12 years to build and cost $220m - half spent by Egypt, half by other nations. It was originally to have been opened last year, but the Egyptian Government feared that a lavish ceremony would not have been appropriate while the Palestinian uprising was at its height. Now there is a rush to inaugurate this historic site before an expected US-led war with Iraq. Celebrated centre A library originally stood in Alexandria some 2,500 years ago and, until destroyed by fire, it was the ancient world's most celebrated centre of learning, used by Archimedes and Euclid among others. The project to rebuild it has been dogged by controversy, from claims that valuable antiquities were destroyed during construction to criticism that it is an expensive gimmick which will do little to improve education in a country of 68 million people. The founding declaration of the library speaks about encouraging a new spirit of critical inquiry. The Egyptian Government has awarded the library special status which makes it answerable only to the president. Censorship fears That is an attempt to assuage fears about censorship in a country where the religious authorities have banned a number of books, even including one by the Egyptian winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Naguib Mahfouz. The director of the library assured me that this book would be available, but when I looked, I could not find it in the Mahfouz collection. Privately, senior officials admitted that such "difficult" books would be acquired only slowly. The library would, they said honour the principle of freedom of expression, but a degree of pragmatism - even of stealth - was required so as not to offend increasingly radical Islamic sentiment. |
| 10/16/02 at 11:29:30 |
| Fatimah |
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board |