Tarek Heggy

Tarek Heggy (born October 12, 1950, Port Said, Egypt) is an Egyptian liberal political thinker and international petroleum strategist. His extensive writings advocate the values of modernity, democracy, tolerance, and women's rights in the Middle East – advancing them as universal values essential to the region's progress. As one of the contemporary leading Egyptian liberal theoreticians, he has lectured at universities throughout the world, including Oxford, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Princeton, Columbia, Maryland, and the University of California Berkeley. Due to his knowledge of the Middle East, he has also been called upon to speak at various institutions and think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the National Endowment for Democracy, the American Enterprise Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Tarek Heggy's main themes are the need for economic, political, cultural and educational reforms in Egypt and the Middle East. His liberal voice is part of the small but growing minority that calls for self criticism and massive reforms and that frankly admits the failures of the political ideologies/dogmas dominating Egypt and the Arab world. Moreover, this voice calls the conspiracy theories and overblown rhetoric that pervade the region signs of a cultural crisis that needs resolution. Finally, this voice advocates the imperative need to develop a genuine ending to the Arab-Israeli conflict and therefore establish a true peace between Egypt, the Arab countries and Israel. Tarek Heggy castigates a large portion of Egyptian and Arab media for their promotion of a hate culture and criticizes this media for reintroducing the radical rhetoric of the 1960s that led many Arab countries to catastrophe.

Biography

Tarek Heggy was born in 1950, into the Egyptian upper-middle class and hometown of his parents, Port Said. Both his father and mother were fortunate enough to be highly educated, intellectual people who had been widely exposed to Western culture and civilization. They inculcated within him a love of reading and an appreciation of languages at a young age. As citizens of Port Said, Heggy’s parents were the offspring of the Suez Canal community and of an otherwise unique openness to the outside world.

Tarek Heggy studied law at Ain Shams University in Cairo, followed by Modern Management in the International Management Institute of Geneva University. From 1971 until 1979, he taught at the law schools of a number of North African Universities (Algeria and Morocco).

In July 1979, Tarek Heggy joined “Shell International Petroleum Company” as Oil and Gas Attorney (1979-1985) and Deputy to the Chairman of Shell Egypt (1985-1988). In 1988, he was the first Middle East person to be appointed as Chairman of Shell Companies in Egypt and an assistant/advisor to “Shell International” for the Major Resource Holders (MRH). After eight years of holding these positions, Heggy resigned from “Shell International” on 1st July 1996 to devote his efforts to a wide range of intellectual/cultural activities and in parallel to manage his private company “TANA Petroleum”.

Affiliations

Advisory Board of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Washington D.C.(USA).
Advisory Board of the RAND Organization "Centre for Middle East Public Policy" of the initiative for Middle Eastern Youth (IMEY)
Advisory Board of Just Journalism (UK).
Egypt Supreme Culture Council (Management Sciences Committee).
The Egyptian Society for Historic Studies.
MSA University (Cairo , Egypt ).
The Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences of Cairo University.
The Middle East Research Centre of Ain Shams University (Cairo)
The Arab Management Society.
Egypt Bar Association.
Egypt Writers Association.
Heliopolis Library Chairman.

Honors

University of Toronto scholarship established in the name of Tarek Heggy for post graduate studies in Comparative Jewish/Muslim relations.

Selected Articles

Democracy

Beyond the Ballot Box

Political Islam

On the U.S./Islamists Dialogue

Brotherhood With Ambitions

The worst-case scenario

The Arab Mindset

Islam Between Copying and Thinking

The Seven Pillars of Terrorism

No More Than A "Refuge"

Religious Education in the Balance

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Between Reason and Hysteria

Our Need For a Culture of Compromise

On Lebanon

Once Again: On Hizbu'Allah

Hamas and Hizbu'Allah: Sub-Contractors

Filled With Grief

Saudi Arabia

The King and the Sword

Let The Sane of Saudi Arabia Unite

If I Were A Shi'ite From Saudi Arabia

Egyptian Christians

The Suffering of the Copts in Egypt

Reflections on the Coptic Question

Interviews

Egyptian Reformist Thinker Tarek Heggy on the Importance of Arab-US Dialogue

The BBC/Doha Debate on the Separation of Mosque and State

Extracts from numerous television interviews (mostly in Arabic)

Published works

Since April 1978, Tarek Heggy has written 21 books in three languages. In addition, some four hundred published articles in English, Arabic, French, Russian & Hebrew are posted as essays on his website. Heggy's latest book in English "Culture, Civilization & Humanity" was published in the UK and USA by Frank Cass in 2003.

Books in English:

On Management and Petroleum Industry. 1991
Egypt 's Contemporary Problems. 1992
Critique of Marxism. 1992
Egyptian Political Essays. 2000
Culture, Civilization & Humanity. 2003

Books in Arabic:

Marxist Ideas In Balance. 1978
Communism And Religion. 1980
My Experience With Marxism. 1983
What is to be done? 1986
The Four Idols. 1988
The Trinity of Destruction. 1990
Egypt between two Earthquakes. 1991
The Fateful Transformation. 1993
Reflections on Egypt 's Realities. 1995
Critique of the Arab Mind. 1998
Culture First and Foremost. 2000
The Values of Progress. 2001
On the Egyptian Mind. 2003
Margins on The Egyptian Mind. 2004
Modern Management in the contemporary Arab Societies. 2006

Books in French:

L'inéluctable Transformation. 1991

What Others Say

"A courageous and distinctive voice from Egypt." Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

"Tarek Heggy's book is one of the most interesting and important works to come out of the Arab world in a long time. At the very moment when the debate over change or continuity, democracy or dictatorship is at its height, Heggy brilliantly analyses the causes and solutions of Arab problems and paradoxes". Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs Center and Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs

"Tarek Heggy is one of the most creative and prolific writers in the Arab world. His writings probe the political and social limits and present a refreshing message of self-reliance that challenges the prevailing sense that regional ills are largely made abroad". Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and development at the University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution

“Having discovered that there is no equivalent in the Arabic language, classical or colloquial, for the word “compromise”, Tarek Heggy invented his own “cultural compromise”. This led him to advocate cultural tolerance and acceptance of the “Other”, and to argue for progress as a human product, modernity, the universality of science and knowledge, democracy and civil society. An academic, intellectual, economist and one of the world's top petroleum strategists, he is also a managerial wizard. Many consider his books on management a recipe for curing the ills of Egypt". Adel Darwish