Following a tour of England to promote his new book, Winds of Change.NET Cairo correspondent Tarek Heggy (A Culture of Compromise | The Institutions of Democracy are More Important Than Democracy | Islam: Between Copying and Thinking | Tolerant and Intolerant Islam | Conspiracy & Response | Egypt & Democracy | Why I Write) is back with a new article.

The tour was apparently quite a success, and I heartily endorse his book "Culture, Civilization and Humanity". I was also more than pleased to hook him up with the Oxblog crew, who promptly featured him at a special Oct. 16th Oxford Democracy Forum event. Thanks, Josh!

Women & Progress
by Tarek Heggy

Although my writings have covered a wide range of subjects since my first book was published in 1978, the central theme that links them all together is the issue of progress. The seemingly unrelated topics to which I have devoted numerous articles in various publications and entire chapters in my books, ranging from educational development, to the need to adopt modern management techniques in all fields, to defects in our thought processes, are all tributaries of a single river flowing in the same direction: towards defining the elements of progress and removing the obstacles impeding its achievement.

One of the most important indicators of a society's progress is the status it accords to women and how they are perceived in the prevailing cultural climate... [more]