Youssef was also rather critical of the cultural bureaucracy of the Mubarak regime and of the Arab League's cultural bureaucracies when the Arab World was Guest of Honor at the International Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004.[39] He has generally been critical of dictatorships, including that of Mubarak. His commitment to democracy motivates him to comment regularly on the state of affairs in Egypt in the Arab version of the Egypt Independent, i.e. in Al-Masry Al-Youm.[40] Some of his articles in Al-Masry al-Youm aroused controversies in the Arab-Egyptian media, for instance in the weekly journal al-Qahira. Here, one of the most renowned Egyptian and Arab columnists, al-Sayed Yasin, commented for instance on Oct.