Fear and learning: Arab world not finished with democracy
A vibrant protest movement is visible in Iran and across the Middle East — but it isn’t calling for Islamic revolution, much less the tired misrule of the mullahs, The… Read more »
Category: Egypt
Egypt escalates pressure on last independent media voice
Egyptian security forces targeted one of the last remaining independent news outlets in the country on Saturday, taking a journalist from his home and detaining him in an… Read more »
Owners of the Republic: Can Egypt’s military counter authoritarian fragility?
Egypt’s military is consolidating its role as an autonomous actor that can reshape markets and influence government policy. But recent protests suggest that, rather than a model of stability, the… Read more »
Arab democrats need ‘realistic pathways for change’
As a fresh wave of protests generates speculation about an Arab Spring 2.0, the challenge for MENA democrats is to move beyond calls for regime change and focus on building… Read more »
‘Coups and Revolutions’: non-state actors, dysfunctional states impede Arab democracy
The slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi “has become the symbol of our collective moral conscience, the voice for the voiceless in the Middle East,” his fiancée Hatice Cengiz wrote in… Read more »
Renewing the promise of reconciling political Islam and democracy?
Jamal Khashoggi and I disagreed on almost all political issues, but we agreed on one thing: that the Arab world had profoundly changed in ways that rendered the old… Read more »
Egypt’s anti-corruption protests add to regional insecurity
Chaotic protests across Egypt this weekend — prompted by videos exposing corruption in President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s military-backed government — underscore the population’s weariness with economic hardship due in part to government austerity measures, according… Read more »
Anti-corruption protests ‘a turning point’ in Egypt
Egyptian security forces rounded up hundreds of people following small but rare anti-government protests, rights lawyers said Monday, as authorities moved to take harsh preventive measures against more unrest. Hundreds of… Read more »
Another Arab Spring? Not if, but when
The social history of the MENA region is a history of social mobilization and the emergence of civil society. Across the Arab world, ordinary citizens have collectively engaged in resistance,… Read more »
Constitutional chicanery: how Egypt’s ‘tyrant regime’ was legitimized
This spring, as Egypt’s parliament debated handing President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi greater power and allowing him to govern until 2030, speaker Ali Abdelaal declared the proposals were the will of… Read more »