Minister of Social Solidarity Nevine El-Qabbaj will attend the discussion. The event will be held at the Cultural Salon in Plaza 2 with the participation of senior experts and researchers from the team involved in the project.

The two-year project was carried out jointly by the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the ECSS.

In a statement on Sunday, the ECSS said that the research project seeks to provide an alternative to the dominant western narrative about terrorism, religion, politics, and culture in Islamic societies, stressing that many western studies on terrorism are based on “western assumptions and visions.”

“While many of the [western] studies have a high scientific value, they are frequently based on western assumptions and visions,” the ECSS said, noting that these studies, therefore, may result in “misinterpretation and serious injustice to Arab countries.”

The ECSS stressed that the majority of rigorous studies on terrorism has been conducted by western researchers and that the project hence seeks to redress the balance, especially given the fact that it is Muslims and Arabs who suffer most from terrorism. The ECSS further explained that the project provides an Egyptian perspective on the phenomenon.

The narrative provided by the research project can be used to connect with academics, researchers, and decision-makers from various backgrounds, the ECSS noted.

This narrative will seek to initiate a “rational and fact-based conversation about terrorism, rather than passing judgment and levelling accusations based on preconceived notions,” the statement added.

The project sought to quantify the political, economic, and social impacts of terrorism on Egypt while identifying the mechanisms and dynamics of its production. It also sought to suggest policies to control and limit terrorism based on a thorough understanding of the surrounding context, the ECSS explained.

In a symposium on the project in April last year, El-Qabbaj said that the project was being implemented under a mandate from President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to conduct research on the economic and social impacts of terrorism in Egypt and Islamic countries.

The president also instructed that the research results should be made public so that people become aware of the facts and the magnitude of losses incurred by the state and citizens as a result of the various waves of terrorism, the minister added.

The project encompasses four key axes— political, economic, social and cultural — with each axis examined in terms of the cost of terrorism, its causes and ways to counter it.

The project is the first research, and academic initiative in Egypt that opens a scientific dialogue about the phenomenon since the 1970s, ECSS General Manager Khaled Okasha said during the symposium.

It offers a comprehensive Egyptian approach to reducing the repercussions of terrorism on the social, economic, political and cultural sectors, he added.