(also published on European Council on Foreign Relations website) Saudi liberals have been predicting for years that a decision to allow women to drive is imminent. The predictions started with Abdullah taking over the managing of state affairs as crown prince in the late 1990s and […]
Does Zionism explain the success of Israel? It might seem an odd question but it was raised by Israel Studies scholar Derek Penslar in a talk in Oxford this week which analysed the fates of several settler colonial movements. In a tour d’horizon […]
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent intervention in American politics with an article placed in The New York Times was possibly the most spectacular turn in an immense battle raging in parallel to the Syrian civil war over the past two years – a battle for control of […]
This article appeared on Lakome.com on 12 September and there is some speculation in Morocco that it was the spark that led to the arrest of journalist and editor Ali Anouzla five days later. Accusing Saudi Arabia of being the central force […]
One of the key themes the coup regime has developed in Egypt against its Islamist opponents is a rehashed version of the chauvinistic nationalism of the Mubarak regime. This involved an ‘Egypt First-ism’ vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict that gave a veneer of respectability for security paranioa […]
If there is any lesson to be drawn from the movement of uprisings unleashed in December 2010 it is that nothing is predictable. The Brotherhood is in a bad way, but neither it nor “political Islam” are spent forces (whether it’s in analysts’ and academics’ […]
Rabaa, the day after a massacre. The devastation at the site of the six-week long Brotherhood sit-in at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City was all the more jarring given the carnival that was going on there earlier the week. […]
The rehabilitation of Egypt’s police apparatus continues. The interior ministry and its numerous security and intelligence agencies were the backbone of Mubarak’s corrupt police state. But they suffered a severe blow during the uprising against Mubarak two years ago, and the story […]
The Rabaa al-Adawiya protest in Cairo was pretty festive this week, despite a government threat on Monday to clear it and the smaller one at Nahda square near Cairo University. Nobody there believed that the security forces – who were authorized by […]
I had an interesting conversation with Egyptian political analyst Hassan Nafaa the other day in which I heard one of the more convincing explanation of the coup against Mursi. His argument was that the Brotherhood presidency was becoming so well-ensconced that 1. […]