Egypt
Police Impunity in Imbaba
A string of tiny lights bows from the awning of the Star of Freedom café across an unpaved plaza to the globe of the municipal lamppost, whose light the government has not turned on in years. Tabletops of tea and dominoes spread from the café’s cramped interior and fill the horseshoe-shaped plaza, rimmed by a hardware store, a bright yellow barber shop and a mosque with an optometry office for the needy. A zigzagging tuk-tuk blares spastic pop music over the din of evening conversation.
Why the Egyptian Army Didn’t Shoot
The armed forces were a central part of the Egyptian regime from 1952 onward. They supplied the Free Officers who toppled the monarchy and replaced it with a republican order. All four presidents of the era hailed from the military’s ranks. The army was known to control a large economic empire, and senior officers regularly went on to lucrative careers after retirement. Unlike in Tunisia, where the army was kept marginal under Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt was widely considered to be an officers’ republic. Why, then, did the military not intervene to save President Husni Mubarak when Egyptians rose up against him in early 2011? Why did the army decline to crush the uprising, when its Bahraini and Syrian counterparts tried to do so?
The Writing on the Walls of Egypt
Whoever has something to say in Egypt these days can write it on a wall. Ahmad loves Rasha; the revolution continues; build unity between Christians and Muslims; make Egypt an Islamic state. Private garage, no parking; we are all Egyptians; don’t forget the martyrs of the revolution; apply for a job; those looking for marriage, call this number. ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards). Fuck the Muslim Brothers; I’m a Muslim Brother and proud. Invoke God; the ultras rule Egypt; call Hasan for television and other electrical repairs.
Establishment Mursi
On June 29, 12 days after he was elected president of Egypt, Muhammad Mursi ascended a Tahrir Square stage and issued a dramatic pledge to guard the revolution launched there the preceding spring. Mursi opened his jacket, revealing that he wore no bulletproof vest, thumped his chest and yelled, “I fear no one but God!”
Reflections on Two Revolutions
Interpreting a revolutionary event is a contentious undertaking. Why it began, how it unfolded, to whom its legacy belongs — these are questions of enduring debate. The mass protests in Egypt that deposed Husni Mubarak and continued for months in 2011-2012 still generate divergent narratives and competing claims. In the struggle over meaning, reality and possibility are continuously measured against one another. Questions abound as to how much the country should change, and how much it actually has. A tension between continuity and change occupies a central place in political discourse and is manifest in the simple use of language.
From the Editor (Winter 2012)
The course of the Egyptian uprising offers reason for both optimism and pessimism.
On the down side, the post-Mubarak system, such as it is, exhibits plenty of characteristics of the old one. As Ahmad Shokr and Joshua Stacher detail in this issue, Egypt’s new civilian government, drawn from the ranks of the Society of Muslim Brothers, has advanced no comprehensive reform vision adequate to address the country’s deep-seated inequality and poverty. The Brothers rather seem stuck in “Washington consensus” nostrums of the 1990s and 2000s. They are asking Egyptians simply to trust them to execute “structural adjustment” in ways that ameliorate social injustice, rather than exacerbate it, as Husni Mubarak’s programs did.
Sudanese Echoes
In Egypt’s constitutional crisis today, there are echoes of the rise of the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Sudan.
Why the Anti-Mursi Protesters Are Right
Perusing US media coverage and analysis of the crisis in Egypt over the last two weeks has been quite disappointing. As the protests against the elected president Muhammad Mursi escalate, the main players in the struggle and the stakes involved are often mischaracterized. Some might ask: Why does this matter?
Liberalism vs. Democracy in Egypt
President Muhammad Mursi’s Thursday night address did not mollify protesters, but it clarified the stakes in any dialogue between his supporters and the National Salvation Front led by Mohamed ElBaradei, Hamdin Sabbahi and Amr Moussa.
Five Notes on Egypt’s Crisis
Hani Shukrallah, the distinguished former editor of al-Ahram Weekly, laments the “decline and fall” of the Society of Muslim Brothers from a partner in a diverse Egyptian nation to a narrowly partisan faction willing to beat up opponents, “the very caricature of itself as painted for years by its bitterest enemies.”
Men Behaving Badly
Here we go again. A preposterous provocation easily manages to ignite fevered protests in Muslim-majority countries around the world, and everyone is worse off as a result. The episode is playing like a sequel to the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy, but with bigger and better explosions than the original.
Copts Denounce Islamophobia
In the wake of the lethal rocket attack on State Department personnel in Benghazi, and salafi protesters’ assault upon the US Embassy in Cairo, Egyptian blogger Zeinobia draws attention to “the protest that everyone ignored.” (Thanks to Zeinobia for the images below.)
Egyptian Politics Upended
When he took office on June 30, President Muhammad Mursi of Egypt looked to have been handed a poisoned chalice. The ruling generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had tolerated a clean presidential election but then had hollowed out the presidency, saddling Mursi with an executive’s accountability but little of the corresponding authority. The country resigned itself to the grim reality of dual government, with an elected civilian underdog toiling in the shadow of mighty military overlords. Then, just over a month later, Mursi turned the tables, dismissing Egypt’s top generals and taking back the powers they had usurped. The power play crystallizes the new dynamic of Egyptian politics: the onset of open contestation for the Egyptian state.
Brownlee, Democracy Prevention
Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Lessons from Egypt’s Tax Collectors
In December 2007, employees from the Real Estate Tax Authority in Egypt staged the largest occupation of a downtown Cairo area prior to the uprising that unseated Husni Mubarak. Angry about their working conditions, 8,000 tax collectors slept in front of the Ministers’ Council building on Husayn Higazi Street, a short walk from Parliament, for 11 consecutive nights. Like their successors in Tahrir Square in 2011, the Authority employees pitched tents and brought in gas stoves to sustain them as they chanted anti-government slogans. They won an impressive 325 percent wage increase, and their efforts laid the groundwork for the creation of Egypt’s first independent trade union.
Ordering Egypt’s Chaos
To the left of a makeshift stage in a Cairo five-star hotel, the waiting continued. Ahmad Shafiq, the last prime minister of the deposed Husni Mubarak and one of two remaining candidates in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential race, was three hours late. Fewer than 60 hours were left until voting was to start in the June 16-17 runoff. But the atmosphere, beside the burgundy backdrop with its decorative maple leafs flanking the podium, felt more like a garden-variety junket than a last-minute campaign stop. It was not clear why Shafiq would choose on this of all days to address the Egyptian-Canadian Business Council.
A Revolution Is Not a Marketing Campaign
A revolution is not a marketing campaign or a digital social network.
The People Want
Many of the slogans of the Egyptian revolution have been poetry, and as compositions with rhyme, meter and purpose, they resonate with very old conceptions of lyrical form. But slogans are not literary texts whose meanings can be reduced to a purely semantic level. Most often, they are part of a performance — embodied actions taking place in particular situations. This fact opens up avenues for thinking about literary aesthetics and political practice, and it shows the relevance of cultural analysis for the study of revolution.
Despair and Continuity
Actions always speak louder than words, even if words also act.
