The network was launched on June 5, 2008 by Prince Hassan bin Talal in Jordan, with project directors Cornelis Hulsman and Sawsan Gabra Ayoub Khalil.
[2] ENAWU aims to foster relations and dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims by providing access to accurate, credible, and reliable information for use by scholars, diplomats, journalists, students, other researchers and general users.
ENAWU aims at changing the ways in which sensitive topics involving people belonging to other cultures or religions are discussed, stressing the need to refrain from polemics, exaggerations, and other forms of distortion.
The data include summary translations from Arabic media, investigative reporting, interviews with major actors.
The essence of having the portal as searchable as possible was to make it easy for the specific users to access, retrieve, and share information which would be contributing to better understand issues as reported in contemporary media.
The ENAWU project created a very elaborate tagging system to all data online, including names of authors, names of people and organizations mentioned in texts, references of authors to Bible and Qur’an, which helped organizations in Egypt to make a convincing argument against the film Fitna of Geert Wilders in March 2008.
Again later the Committee changed its name in Overlegorgaan Joden, Christenen, Moslims (OJCM), Consultation Jews, Christians, Muslims.
[6] ENAWU created a hierarchical system for location names (country, governorate, district and smallest administrative units) and linked this to articles in the Arab-West Report database.
This shows the influence Arab-West Report has on scholarly work related to the role of convictions (religious and secular) in society.
Many Muslim and non-Muslim organizations became increasingly interested in the improvement of knowledge-sharing and positive relations both in the West and the Arab world.
The newsletter was to cover topics that are central to Muslim Christianity relations in the Arab world, highlighting various student activities and would be used as a significant communication tool for ENAWU.
Financial restrictions made the three organizations concentrate on the Arab-West Report database that is now primarily focused on the role of religion in Egyptian society.
The mission statement, set of goals, and methods to be used were defined with support of Dutch consultancy bureau MDF and adopted and ratified into the Strategic Report of October 28, 2010.
The mission statement became “a non-partisan organisation that contributes to the peaceful coexistence of religious groups in Egypt,” which has remained unchanged since then.
As part of the political upheavals in Egypt that saw the ouster of President Morsi from power, the core databases of the portal were destroyed.
This resulted in three academic books (part of the series of Anwendungsorientierte Religionswissenschaften [application oriented religious studies] of Tectum Publishers in Germany) about the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath.
Practically all interviews could be recorded and have been fully transcribed for placement in Arab-West Report which is an absolute fascinating source of information for anyone who wants to understand the complexities of the revolution and its aftermath.
The forewords of the second and third book were written by ambassador Mona Omar and Amr Moussa in his capacity as former president of the Constituent Assembly of 2014.