Whenever the spectre of a new rupture between the Egyptian ‘deep state’ and the Islamists comes up, the Algerian comparison inevitably rears its head. On the surface it makes sense, especially this time round: a mass Islamist movement is deprived of governing […]
More evidence that the Egyptian generals had been building a case against Mursi for a long time – and that their action last week was hardly a mere temporal response to the June 30 protests. A retired general told BBC World Service […]
Street politics is an inherently unstable and risky affair. Bypassing normal rules of political engagement, it can bring great dividends and or it can be an arena for sinister manipulation. Fortunately nothing has emerged from the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings of 2011 to […]
In a seminal work published in 1970, writer Alvin Toffler managed to capture the sense of a world of such immense change at the physical, economic, political and social level that all were afflicted in one way or another by what he […]
When Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s Hagarism was first published in 1977 it was immediately controversial. Hagarism argued that the problems with the historical material of Islamic tradition were so severe that it was worthwhile looking at what source material there is […]
With the fall of Hosni Mubarak, victory in legislative elections and the presidential vote, and now the approval via referendum of a new constitution, Islamists have begun the work of putting their renaissance project into practice. Unlike Salafism, which dreams of a […]
By Andrew Hammond DOHA | Thu Nov 15, 2012 11:36pm IST (Reuters) – The Muslim Brotherhood has no intention of monopolising the revolt in Syria, the group’s deputy leader said, despite fears its close ties with Qatar and Turkey would help it […]
By Rania El Gamal and Andrew Hammond DOHA | Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:38pm EST (Reuters) – Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood finally swung behind a new opposition unity deal in Qatar, but some Syrians fear it will work in the new entity to […]
Here is a chapter list and short bits of random text: Introduction “Given the brutal police states that some of the nation-state regimes in the Arab region became, Saudi Arabia could have been viewed as an indigenous model that survived colonialism: the […]