Last May [1998], students in an American University in Cairo (AUC) course on Muslim politics complained about Maxime Rodinson’s biography "Muhammad". In less than 24 hours after a columnist decried its teaching as blasphemous, Ministry of Higher Education Minister Mufeed Shehab ordered the university to withdraw the book from its curriculum and collect copies already circulating.

In the aftermath of the Rodinson affair, in the past ten months censors have reviewed 450 books of the AUC library, of which approximately 60 have been banned.