Nada -- if you're still reading this thread, there are a couple of questions I'd like to ask:
1.
I don't have a strong opinion either way about the pictures themselves, and I really understand why they shock muslims. But more to the point, I think everyone sees that this story has "legs", both in the middle east and in the west.
In the middle east, a lot of people would be interested (if that's the right word) to know that wikipedia has published not only these pictures of muhammad but also the danish cartoons. The story's obviously more sensational if it's given the false spin that wikipedia is deliberately *trying* to anger muslims, but it's a compelling story to middle easterners even if that spin isn't there (I think).
In the west, the story of the *reaction* to the pictures is compelling. Incredibly compelling -- seriously. The alexandria angle occurred to me as soon as I heard about the petition against the pictures -- I could have written a "wikimania in egypt, free speech vs. religion" blog post and it would have gotten a gazillion page views.
This is the type of story that goes right to the top of digg and reddit, and then hits the new york times and CNN -- and that's without any protests in egypt. Hell, it's already gone to the top of reddit (the guardian article) without anyone even realizing that wikimania's in egypt at all. The only reason I didn't write it was that I wasn't sure it would be a good thing for ... well, for anyone, really (except me) if the story actually took off. (Because if the story takes off in the west, it'll probably take off in the middle east, and vice versa.)
At this point I'm not sure the story is containable, though -- you can't count on everyone to keep quiet about it. If you do that, then all the reasonable people will keep their mouths shut and the people who eventually break the story -- the people who set the initial tone and are responsible for framing the issue -- are the unreasonable or excitable ones, or the ones who understand the situation less well.
Seriously -- I won't blog about this if people ask me not to, but in my professional opinion (or whatever), there is basically no chance that this won't be a big news story, one way or another, even if I never mention it.
Case in point: when Fox News covered the "Muslims Protest Wikipedia Images of Muhammad" story -- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328966,00.html -- guess which image they led with. Yes: the picture of muhammad. That's not responsible journalism; unlike wikipedia, they really *were* trying to inflame muslims, or at least taking glee in not caring whether they inflamed them.
The *only* reason the fox reporter didn't mention the alexandria/wikimania issue -- which opens a whole huge can of worms from a journalistic perspective -- is because he didn't know about it. Fox trims its news staff to the bone; they do very little original research and mostly just duplicate pre-existing reports with their own spin. If he had read the lists, like a couple other reporters do, then fox news would have been the outlet to break this story. (Needless to say, that would have been terrible.)
I know basically nothing about egypt, but I really think you ought to plan for this story getting big instead of counting on it not getting big, and maybe taking some steps to make sure that the story is framed the right way -- i.e. *not* as a "free speech vs. religion" story in the west, and not as a "the arrogant west disrespects us one more time" story in egypt; both of those framings are totally false and misleading. But you're the one who lives in egypt, and you're the one who knows what the best steps to take might be. (Someone suggested that we start an information resource, which seems like a great idea. It's the one thing wikipedians are better at than anyone else.)
In a nutshell: there's a very easy and convienient framework of religion vs. free speech and islam vs. the west that not only masks the actual complexities inside the west and inside islam but also serves the interests of extremists on both sides. This way of looking at the world is very common pretty much everywhere and it's very important that this story *not* be seen this way. Indeed, I thought that part of the point of holding wikimania in egypt was to spread knowledge and undercut this way of thinking.
2.
Okay. So I came across this article -- "Egypt Bans Four Foreign Newspapers Over Republication of Anti-Prophet Cartoon" -- http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content...
The quote that struck me was this one:
* * * The re-emergence of the cartoon issue also prompted thousands of students to demonstrate in the southern conservative university of Assiut against the insults to Islam's most revered figure.
"Anything but our prophet," students led by their dean and professors chanted while marching around campus. "Jews, Jews, watch out, the army of Muhammed will return," they also said. * * *
It's a little difficult for me to express my emotions reading that. First: although the newspaper doesn't provide much context, it seems to indicate that these students think the printings of the cartoons are somehow organized by, or connected with, a group of jews. As a westerner, I can recognize this attitude as astonishing and baffling.
For example, because there are very few jews remaining in western europe. And because none of the influential politicians or entertainers in denmark are jewish. And because none of the cartoonists are jewish, and none of the newspaper editors. Jews, in fact, seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with this.
Because the cartoons are not connected with judaism in any conventional way, the fact that the students are bringing up jews seems to indicate one of several things:
1. The students think jews control the european media.
2. The students think that any perceived insults to their religion must originate with jews.
3. The students identify anything negative with jews, or are using the word "jews" as a general purpose pejorative (in the same way that some french youth use the the word feuj, an inverted form of the french word for jew, to mean "broken" or "bad" and some american youth use "gay" to mean "weak" or "corny".)
I'm not religious, but I'm jewish by ethnicity, so reading that made me feel (apart from wanting to cry, or scream in frustration, or crawl into a hole somewhere) deeply disillusioned with any egyption wikimania.
As I said, the newspaper didn't provide much context, so I'm hoping you can clarify what that protest means in terms of the more general social climate in egypt. How different are attitudes in Alexandria from attitudes in Assiut? This wikimania was presented as a cross-cultural sharing of ideas, but if the gulf is this vast, will wikimania just be held in a foreigner-friendly government-supported bubble? It's all very well to have a conference at the library of alexandria, but I was under the impression that the venue had some purpose other than symbolism and enjoying the beach.