The issue focused on his choice to award citations for books and articles written about Islam, but Mr. Islam dismissed the criticism and insisted he had no political motivation in the matter.


Mr. Islam has declined to explain why he did not pursue the journalism academy in Cairo, where he studied in the late 1980s. He said he had studied law and mathematics at university in the U.S. before seeking a foreign visa for studying journalism in Egypt.


He graduated as a journalism student in 1988 at