Interviews with Namees Arnous

Actually some people against the Islamists, against the Islamist thinking and their goals – thinks that democracy is not good to bring some people against freedom of expression, against freedom of religion and maybe against some rights of human rights. But I think that because they come by democracy, they will gone by the democracy. They will left the power by the democracy. I believe in it.

Maybe I have very different point of view between my political point of view and the Islamists, maybe I believe that Islamists not support the freedom of religion. They believe just – the Islamists believe Egypt is Islamist state and not support the freedom of religion if someone wanted to turn his religion or something like that – he – they don’t support that. Maybe he – they don’t support the freedom of expression, maybe they don’t support the human rights situation. But I believe that the people who bring them by democracy, by fair election, they will choose others have another point of view, respect their humanity by democracy.

And actually this election happened before a couple of months. In my opinion it’s not will take a long time. It will not stay the five years, the whole period, because, you know, we have presidential election in – maybe in June and after presidential election, after we have a president, the parliament will break out or they can – no parliament anymore and they can repeat the parliament election. And this enough period to test the Islamists if they support the freedom, if they support the human rights or not.

So I think people in the upcoming election of parliament election will choose very carefully to who protect the rights inside the parliament, maybe Islamists, maybe liberal, maybe leftist. In this period in Egypt, people don’t care about the ideological, just care about the people who raise their life, raise their economic life and their humanity because in past 30 years we had a lot of violation against our humanity. So Islamist, liberal, leftists – people in the streets, the Egyptian don’t care about it. They just care about someone who protect the rights in expressive themselves – freedom of expression and the rights – their human rights, their humanity.

Namees Arnous is a well-known television reporter and civil society activist in Egypt. During the Egyptian Revolution, Namees was asked to spread inaccurate stories by El Mehwar Television, her employer. When Namees used social media to publicize the channel’s stance against the Revolution, she was characterized as being a foreign agent and receiving money from foreign governments. She resigned from El Mehwar.

Namees then founded a new media production company which includes television, radio and social media outlets. She aims to promote human rights and democratic principles by training individuals in new media. She is currently working on a project to produce a new television program aimed at Egyptian women, focusing on issues of concern to them.

Namees has worked on a number of civil society campaigns. These include the Change Your Life Campaign, which aims to encourage women to be independent and the Be Free Campaign, which addresses young Muslim women extremists.

She worked on a civic journalism campaign to cover youth participation in elections in their respective regions. The campaign was broadcast on her NGO’s radio station and website.

Namees was among the inaugural group of the George W. Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative Fellowship Program in 2012, a leadership program designed to empower and equip women to catalyze change.

Namees has her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with a focus on Television and Radio.