An economics professor spoke Monday about the political turmoil throughout Arab nations, including his native country of Egypt.

Ahmed Abou-Zaid, who has lived in the United States for eight years, gave a presentation including a short film about the revolutions happening across the Middle East.

He said his whole family is from Egypt and that he visits frequently during the summer.

“It makes me very aware of what is going on (in Egypt,)” he said. “I talk from the perspective of an insider that has been in the United States for eight years.”

The video, which featured clips from TV stations across the world, showed the revolts and protests across the eastern hemisphere beginning with Tunisia in December 2010. Abou-Zaid said the first protester in Tunisia was a man named Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire.

“All of this happened because of the brutal actions of the police forces,” he said. “People were being oppressed because of the Tunisian regimes.”

Abou-Zaid said seeing videos of Bouazizi made people across the Arab region realize they could rise up against their government.

He said people had demands, and they wanted their demands to be met by their government.

When the revolution ended after 24 days, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

“Less than a month after that, a revolution in Egypt was sparked against Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak,” he said.

Abou-Zaid said he knew of an Egyptian dentist who lost both eyes during the revolution through demonstrations.

“He’s one of the people who will probably be on the committee to write Egypt’s new constitution,” he said.

Among the countries impacted by the initial Tunisian revolt were Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Bahrain.

“Mubarak was strongly supported by the U.S. at the beginning, but when they found out there was a lot of people going out in the streets and they want to topple down the regime, they changed their moves,” he said.

Abou-Zaid discussed the importance of religion and its impact on the revolutions, including the disputes between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

He also asked his audience if they thought the conflict would spill over from African countries into the Middle East.

“Some say it will not spill over because the circumstances in the Arab region are not at all in these regions, even though there is definite corruption,” he said.

One of the problems Egypt faces is the lack of unification among young people, especially on the Internet, Abou-Zaid said.

“The youth movement was supported by all the elite,” he said.

The government ignored much of the writing done during the time period because officials saw it as a way for the people to blow off steam without having to do anything about it, Abou-Zaid said.

Cell phone service, access to websites like Facebook and TV networks were shut down for four days during the Egyptian revolts in an attempt to keep the rest of the world in the dark about what was going on.

“They tried everything, but people still slept in the streets and said ‘we’re not going home,’” he said.

Abou-Zaid said the case in Egypt right now is not what people expected when they were revolting. The election of a new Egyptian president will take place in three months, but citizens are hesitant to give him power, he said.

“There is always a cost,” he said.

Abou-Zaid compared Egypt’s situation to cancer, saying Mubarak was part of the cancer, but some of the cancer cells are still there in the country.

“It will be interesting to see what the next few years will bring,” he said.

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].