Farouk Hosny

Farouk Abd -El - Aziz Hosny (long version of his name; Arab فاروق حسني, Faruq Husni DMG, German and Farouk Hosni, Farouk Hosni, born 1938 in Alexandria, Egypt) is an Egyptian painter and from 1987 to 2011 Culture Minister of his country.

Policy

Hosny was in 1987 appointed Minister of Culture. Previously he was Director of the Egyptian Academy in Rome. He remained Minister of Culture until March 2011. During the revolution in Egypt, he was dismissed by the transitional government and appointed Emad Abu Ghazi, a professor at Cairo University as his successor.

In questions of traditional interpretation of Islam - as in the headscarf issue - Farouk Hosny belongs to the moderate forces of his country, which earned him the enmity of conservative and Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Candidacy for UNESCO Director-General

The Arab States in early 2009 agreed to Farouk Hosny as its candidate for the post of UNESCO Director-General. Following the announcement of candidacy Hosnys 1 March 2009 Bernard- Henri Lévy, Claude Lanzmann and Elie Wiesel published a statement in the newspaper Le Monde in which she spoke out as a new UNESCO Director-General Farouk Hosny against. Background of the Declaration are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements that are attributed Hosny:

• "Israel has never made ​​a contribution to civilization, in any era; it has only the goods of other appropriated. "
• "Israeli culture is an inhuman culture, an aggressive, racist, arrogant culture that is based on a very simple principle: to steal what does not belong to it then as something of their own to spend. "
• "Bring me the books, and if they do, I will burn before your eyes. " Hosny wants to have expressed the idea that " Rage" against an Egyptian parliamentarian who is concerned about alleged anti-Arab Israeli books in the library of Alexandria have expressed.

Some of the authenticity of his statements is questioned. After the declaration Lévy, Lanzmann's and Wiesel's Hosny Le Monde sent a statement with the words: "Nothing is further from me than the racism, the negation of others or the desire to express themselves hurtful about the Jewish culture or another culture. "

For the first quote Farouk Hosny said: "You can see these words only in their context in order to understand their meaning. I said this in response to someone who claims without any scientific proof that the Jews have built the largest pyramid. There is no structure and no evidence that they have somewhere built a similar building. "

Israel withdrew its objections to the appointment Hosnys on May 27, 2009. For the new Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova from Bulgaria ultimately was chosen.