Comments on: Egypt: A Dog Named Anwar El Sadat

By: Ronnie

Ronnie — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:26:33 +0000

Here in Atlanta, Ga., USA, we use to have an ape at our zoo named Willie B. He was named after Willie B. Hartsfield, a former beloved Mayor of our city. It was done in honor of him. Our airport also bears his name. To call someone a dog in the Arab world is an insult, so I can understand why they would take it the wrong way. Here in the USA, to call someone a son of a bitch is an insult because a bitch is a female dog. We still name our dogs after people we like or maybe we just like the name. I was given a puppy years ago that I called Charcoal because he was mostly black He was a mix of Pitt Bull, Rottweiller and German Shephard. My cousin who was a fan of Kadaffi began using that name when referring to my puppy. Guess what? Everyone else, including myself began referring to my puppy using that name. I was not a fan of Kadaffi, but to me that name referred to someone who was fearless. When we name mascots for our sports teams it is considered politically incorrect these days to use names like Braves or Indians because some Native Americans are offended by these terms. We choose mascot names of people or animals we view as brave and/or beautiful. I am a Black man in America. I would not be offended if someone named their dog Mandingo or Mandinka after a tribe of valient warriors from Africa. Or how about calling a sports team by one of those names? I would feel honored.

By: Joseph Mayton

Joseph Mayton — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:46:27 +0000

feel free to check out my opinion piece on this: http://bikyamasr.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/bm-opinion-anwar-sadat-reference-insults-but-what-if-it-was-mubarak/

By: Steven Mansour

Steven Mansour — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:19:43 +0000

I still find it amusing that there’s this disconnect in the Middle Eastern mindset – well reflected in the blogosphere, which is really just a cross-section of actual citizens – between outrage over actual, pressing issues and outrage over imagined attacks on a misplaced sense of ill-deserved pride.

It speaks volumes of the sorry state of our nations now, and makes plainly self-evident the sideshow-esque image of ourselves we show to the world, when we spill more ink (or bytes) about a glancing reference to a dead president’s name in some romantic comedy than about the stack of humans rights violations our unelected ‘leaders’ are committing in our name.

If we’re too sensitive and overly proud, it’s only because we’ve become sensitized to the fact that we don’t really have all that much to be proud about.

By: Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:59:54 +0000

There is a serious cultural disconnect here. Most dogs in the US are given ordinary names: Max, Joe, Bella, Mary…. and no one ever takes offense at the fact that a dog and a person share a name. I’ve bred working dogs in Egypt and we were always very careful to give them English names: Vinnie, Al, Groucho, Fred, Ginger and so on. Occasionally I’ve managed to give a dog a name that someone then informs me is an Arabic name, as in the case of my Dane who I called by a Welsh name Morgana, only to be informed that this was the favourite wife of Haroun el Rashid. Mea culpa, but it also fits her on that score as she’s a pretty pampered lady. I get totally ticked off with foreigners who come to Egypt and expect to find the same customs and traditions as the USA, France or Germany. In this case, I have to find fault here in Egypt. Relax a bit. Nothing at all was intended. I have a donkey named George W. and no one from the US Embassy has filed a complaint although plenty have visited the farm and met him.