Algerian Minister of Culture Khalida Toumi has said that the Algerian authorities have banned around 300 books from Algeria’s Book Fair, which was inaugurated Wednesday, 19 September, for praise of terrorism, racism and the imperial era.
The Algerian minister said in a statement to Algerian Radio that the internal law of the fair allows the banning the books that praise terrorism, racism and imperialistic practices. “We applied the law to these 300 titles, because most praise the ideology that represents the baseline of terrorism,” she added.
Egyptian publishing house Al-Shorouk denied that the fair banned the books of Sheikh Youssef El-Karadawi, who is known for being an advocate of the Arab Spring revolutions, lest his books transfer the ideas of the Arab Spring to Algeria.
Shorouk told MENA, the official Egyptian news agency, that reports of the ban were false and all the publications of Shorouk entered Algeria without issue.
The 17th Algerian Book Fair, which coincides with Algeria's 50-year anniversary of independence from French colonisation,was inaugurated 19 September with more that 750 publishing houses from around the world — about 108 of them Egyptian — participating.
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