A new center for free thought opens in Cairo

"On July 10th, the Institution of Doctor Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid for Islamic Studies opened in Cairo. A member of Reset-Doc’s scientific committee, Nasr Abu Zayd (1943-2010), was a prominent Egyptian philosopher who served as a Professor of Literature and Linguistics at Leiden University and held the Ibn Rushd Chair of Islam and Humanism at the University of Humanistics. He is an internationally recognized expert on modern Islamic thought, critically approaching classical and contemporary Islamic discourses. Nasr Abu Zayd received political asylum in the Netherlands in 1995, after several years of severe religious prosecution in Egypt and a formal court decision that led to a condemnation for “apostasy”. Reset-Doc introduced him to the Italian public with several articles, conferences and a book published in 2012, Testo sacro e libertà. The center has been created by his widow, professor Ebtehal Younes, who decided to follow her husband to the Netherlands, after refusing a to accept a forced divorce after Nasr Abu Zayd was declared an “apostate”.