Welcome to the Electronic Network for Arab-West Understanding (ENAWU), an ambitious project to establish a self-sustaining, specialized information network that will link together, through a multi-lingual web-based portal, a worldwide network of knowledge institutes and information repositories, with the following purposes:

• Fostering relations and dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims,

• Providing access to accurate, credible and reliable information for use by scholars, diplomats, journalists, students, other researchers and general users;

• Improving public understanding of the contemporary Islamic world in non-Muslim countries and, similarly, improving public understanding of the contemporary non-Muslim world in Islamic countries.

• Strengthening, improving and expanding reporting and analyses of Arab-West cultural, religious and other key issues involving civil society, both in the Arab world and in the West;

• Changing the ways in which we speak and write about people belonging to other cultures or religions, and in particular refraining from polemics, exaggerations and other forms of distortion.

Through the ENAWU project and its strong Egyptian, Arab, European and other partnerships, we hope to develop powerful tools that will lead to a well informed public in Arab countries whose populations are often ill-informed or misled about Western and Judeo-Christian cultural traditions, and Western publics who are ill-informed or misled about Arab and Muslim cultural traditions, especially through articles and reports that are biased or based on inaccurate reporting or misinterpretation of facts.

The ENAWU Project is a collaborative activity involving a growing number of organizations in the Arab world and Europe, coordinated by the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation in Cairo, Egypt.

As you explore this website we encourage you to consider how you, your university or organisation could benefit from connecting with us to share the resources that are becoming available through the ENAWU project and/or how you could participate, in particular by helping us grow the network of organisations involved.

If you would like to know more or want to contact us, please do so through our contact page .

Kees Hulsman & Sawsan Gabra, Project Directors