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Georgetown Invites Member of Egypt’s Nazi Party

Event is sponsored by school’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding

by
Yair Rosenberg
November 20, 2013
(Wikipedia)
(Wikipedia)

On December 5, Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding is set to host an all-day event discussing “Egypt & the Struggle for Democracy.” As befits one of America’s top foreign service schools, Georgetown invited many heavy hitters to the conference, including keynote speaker Rep. Keith Ellison, and former Obama adviser Dalia Mogahed. Somewhat less befittingly, they also invited a prominent member of Egypt’s Nazi party, Ramy Jan.

Jan, in addition to being a rare Coptic Christian supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a card-carrying member of Egypt’s small neo-Nazi contingent, as evidenced by these videos. (In one, a colleague of Jan’s explains, “We have nothing to do with Hitler. The one and only thing we have adopted from Nazism is racial supremacy.”) Soon after Georgetown’s event announcement hit the internet, Jan’s affiliation was exposed by Egyptian scholar Samuel Tadros, a fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity. One prominent Egyptian pro-democracy activist pronounced herself “speechless” upon learning that Georgetown had invited Jan. Dalia Mogahed, a scheduled speaker at the conference and former adviser to President Obama, wrote, “I can assure you the organizers had no idea about his ‘other baggage’.”

After the news broke, Jan’s name was quickly scrubbed from the event’s publicity, though it can still be seen on the original advertising pictured below. Presumably, he will not ultimately appear at the conference, though this has not yet been confirmed, as the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center has not offered comment.

Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Subscribe to his newsletter, listen to his music, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.