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Quote by Mindy Baha El Din

“Tourism is very important for Egypt as fewer tourists means fewer jobs! Of course there are positives and negatives from tourism... Tourism is a type of use, if not properly planned and managed it can destroy the very resources that brings the tourists. No reefs equals no diving, it's a simple equation. Tourism development has to be appropriate.”

Quote by Mindy Baha El Din

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Mindy Baha El Din

Mindy Baha El Din is an individual who passed away on March 18, 2013. The specific profession and category are unknown at this time. more

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“There are a lot of Egyptians who live below the poverty line and are preoccupied with meeting basic needs. Therefore, we have to create tangible benefits from nature conservation. Only through economic incentives will we convince people to protect habitats, wildlife, geological formations, cultural heritage sites, etc. We need local communities to cooperate with us, not against us!”

“I didn't quite know whether I was writing for the non-Muslim or the Muslim, and at the end of the day I'm writing, I hope, for people who are interested, whatever their faith. Even if they don't have any faith. As a barrister I had certain advantages - I could think like a lawyer and I knew how all the laws were fitted together and all the rest of it. One of the things I realized pretty early on while I was writing book about Shari'a was that that was as much a hinderance as it was a help because the Shari'a isn't just a system of rules.”

“If we can successfully lift the stranglehold of bureaucracy and old ways of thinking, we can see some real innovation in biodiversity conservation in Egypt as has occurred elsewhere in the world. It's the government's call. If they continue to put people in high-level positions that have no knowledge, experience or even interest in environment, Egypt will not advance. The country has very good national experts so why not use them?”

“There's crucial distinction that has to be drawn between the Shari'a, which is this hugely expansive vision of cosmic order that I've been describing, and principles of Islamic law, known in Arabic as "Fiqh" - a word that means understanding. If you're a devout Muslim, you don't argue against the Shari'a; the Shari'a is the path that God has laid down. But what you can do, and what people are doing all the time, is arguing over the correct interpretation of the Shari'a, arguing over the Fiqh. That's something that has been going on throughout Islamic history.”

“The first rules about Islamic law weren't even written down for a century and a half after the Prophet's death, and it was another five centuries, half a millennium, before they assumed anything like a definitive form. So there have always been huge arguments over what Islamic law actually requires. There are four main schools of law in Sunni thought and there's a separate school of law in Shia thought, so these arguments do take place.”

“With better education and affluence there have been more Egyptians interested in nature. There are now more Egyptian divers, desert safari enthusiasts and ecotourists - I know Egyptian who have traveled to Antarctica, Tanzania, South Africa and climbed the Himalayas. Now Egyptians are talking of wanting to explore and see more of their own country. I believe they too will fall in love with Egypt and will want to protect it. The revolution is a process, it will take time, but at least there is hope now!”

“The politicized version of Shia Islam that we see in the Islamic Republic post-1979 clearly is very conservative, but, there are other things one could say about Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of a Shia state because that in itself is a blasphemy as far as most Shia clerics are concerned. There's a theory that he developed in the early 1960s in the town of Najaf talking about - well not liberalism, necessarily, but flexibility though.”