All Stories Archive

The last time I visited Tunisia's capital over a quarter of a century ago, we behaved like the criminals in detective movies. In order to visit Sheikh Rashed al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's Islamic movement which had just been established and was being pursued at the time, we had...

"The revolution wasn't an event, it's a process." For some this is Egypt's post-revolutionary mantra, to be whispered in the middle of the night with clenched fists and gritted teeth, easing the disappointment of what came next. Others – like Tamarod ("rebel") campaigners – are still working tirelessly in...

Two proverbs are worthy of our consideration: "A king can only prevail with his soldiers," is one, and "the heart of authority is the ability to determine and implement punishment" is the other. Where does Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi stand a year into his rule with regards to authority...

Was the opposition demonstration in Cairo huge on Sunday? Yes, it was; but so was the crowd supporting the president, although scanning the media you would be hard-pressed to know this. As such, it is worth looking at the conflict in Egypt from the other side, so to speak....

The public and political rise of the Islamists in the Arab world did not begin with the Arab Spring. In fact, the shift in their favour started in the early nineties in Algeria. The electoral success of the Islamic Salvation Front was met with repression, exclusion and a rebellion...

Things are not looking good for Mohamed Morsi. Egypt's president – the first to be democratically elected in six decades – is floundering after days of mass protests have rocked the country. Protesters, dissatisfied with the president's rule, took to the streets on 30 June, exactly a year after...

Interesting times to be in government. In Egypt at least. There have been resignations and walk-outs. There might be a military coup. First the army, now Egyptian government officials have started issuing their own communiques, hurried sub-clauses for hire-and-fire job contracts, miniature love letters dedicated to the Egyptian street....

Some friends were angry at me when I said the following in an article yesterday: "Those who do not want to see that the current violence is between Mubarak's state and the January 25th state are free to see and embrace what they choose. But the mind refuses to...

The military coup in Egypt had a number of results, the most difficult of which for a nascent democracy is the return of the military to the political scene. It created events which the people of Egypt will not forget in a hurry: The Egyptians will not forget the...

Media reports in Israel suggest that the government there would be very happy to see the back of Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi. One Israeli commentator on Arab issues told Israel Army Radio this week that it doesn't take a genius to see that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "looking...

After the military coup against elected President Mohamed Morsi, we can say that the January 25 revolution has ended. The blood and sacrifice of that revolution appear to have been wasted. Egypt suffered 60 years of oppression and poverty under army officers and yet they have been returned by...

I write this piece after all that was hidden was disclosed. It is a piece not addressed to political opponents or those who I thought were political opponents; it became clear that they were allied with the people of religion, the military and the people of the Gulf States....

Despite the internet age and the global village, as well as Facebook and Twitter, it is hard to know exactly what is happening in Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda Squares in Egypt. Everyone has a horrific tale to tell. Thanks to the closure of the opposition media by the military-backed...

Egypt's Minister of Defence, Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi, and the leaders of the National Salvation Front underestimated the strength of the Islamic current, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, when they instigated the military coup against elected president Mohammed Morsi. Egypt will pay the price of such misjudgement with a breakdown...

Many people attribute the ongoing crisis and the coup against Morsi and his government in Egypt to the Brotherhood's failure in running the state. They also attribute this failure to their lack of political experience in governance. Yet, by taking an objective look at what is going on in...

The leaders of the Egyptian army have taken Egypt back nearly a 100 years…. they have taken it back to the era of military coups, which were prevalent in the fifth and sixth decades of the last century. They gave the region's people a taste of torture through Egypt's...

It doesn't really matter if you are for or against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi; nor is it important for you to be convinced of the integrity of the Muslim Brotherhood and its government. What is important, though, is for you to determine whether you are for or against democracy....

In Robert Ludlum's The Aquitaine Progression, the story begins with protagonist Joel Converse meeting a man he has not seen in 20 years, dying violently at his feet whispering his final words "The generals…they are back". These dying words seem to be a fitting tagline to the tumultuous events...

We can debate whether the incident in Egypt was a popular revolution against Muslim Brotherhood tyranny or a military coup against its democratic legitimacy, but in my view the bad news is that it was not a military coup, it was worse than that. What occurred was not a...

Part-time comedian Bassem Youssef is the kind of Egyptian that liberals in the West can relate to. He was feted in Western media as a cause celebre for freedom of speech after an arrest warrant was issued against him during March in the wake of numerous libel suits brought...

The matter at hand during this difficult time, which began with the events on June 30 2013 and culminated in a military coup on July 3 2013, is not the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and whether or not they will remain in power. It is in fact a...

Although the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his ministers not to make any statements regarding the Egyptian army's overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the elite Zionist security viewed this measure as a reduction of the negative effects of the Arab revolutions. The term "seminal act" has been...

Conspiracy theories are quick to circulate in the Arab world. Often, they are just that – theories – but often, they are ultimately proved to be correct. The geopolitical importance of countries such as Egypt means that they are, indeed, often subject to interference by international powers. The recent...

Post-military coup, the political reality has changed in Egypt. Newspapers and television stations have been closed down; the legislative council has been dissolved; Islamic leaders have been arrested; and pro-coup journalists have been tasked with demonising the legitimate president of the country and the Islamic movement. One of the...

Why were the Gulf States of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia so unhappy at the success of the January 2011 revolution in Egypt and so passionate about the June 30 coup? The revolution had, after all, removed one of Israel's "strategic treasures". Why are these states...

When a journalist sets out to defame a political opponent, whoever it may be, finding the reasoning behind it will not be difficult, whatever the motive may be, whatever interests are involved and whichever group foots the bill. Those prone to jumping from one ideological box to another, or...

The Vice President of Egypt's Al-Wasat Party has claimed that President Morsi's support for the Palestinian cause "fuelled" the coup against him. The result, said Dr Essam Sultan, is that he has been accused of "extreme conspiracy". In an exclusive interview with Alresalah, Sultan confirmed that despite the wishes...

Shortly before riding into the vice-presidency of Egypt on the back of military tanks, Muhammad el-Baradei told Foreign Policy "You Can't Eat Sharia" in a criticism of the policies (or apparent lack of) of the previous Morsi presidency. The comment appears to have been throwaway humour intended to impress...

One of the characteristics of military coups is that the forces which carry them out rarely know much about the objectives of their actions. Indeed, this is true of many military manoeuvres. The soldiers act without knowing which political objectives will be achieved because of their actions; nor do...

Although I heard General Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi call on the people to take to the streets and squares on Friday to give him a mandate to deal with the violence in the country, I still can't quite believe it and am not alone in my feelings. Several people called...

My biggest fear is that the uprising Egypt witnessed on June 30 2013 will be utilised to attack the revolution of January 25 2011 in a manner that makes aligning with Mubarak and his regime an option. It is as if we are in the process of re-writing the...

It is not often that the international community gets ample notice and an invitation to stop atrocities before they begin. This is precisely what happened earlier this week in Egypt. General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, leader of the coup-that's-not-a-coup, gave a speech that has to be read as paving the...

For the wide-eyed reporter looking for a dramatic opener to a piece on Egypt, the pro-Morsi sit-in at Rabea al-Adaweya can look like a war-zone. There are barbed-wire barricades and army APCs. Days ago, 51 people were gunned down in the street here. With a supposedly impartial inquiry underway,...

The military coup in Egypt this month and the bloody attacks since, perpetrated by the military and police against supporters of constitutional legitimacy, will form an important turning point in the political history of the Middle East. Its impact will be felt beyond Egypt, marking a decisive moment between...

I have a number of questions regarding the current events in Egypt. The most notable of which are as follows: On July 23, Al-Ahram newspaper published a headline noting that the Attorney General ordered the detainment of Dr. Mohammed Morsi for 15 days on charges of collaborating with Hamas....

I criticised a group of Sudanese who reported that Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi collapsed in front of investigators. They also said that Khairat Al-Shater, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, responded to Morsi's boast that he is the president of the Republic of Egypt by screaming, "Egypt is...

After the events of the Arab Spring, observers in Europe and America turned to watch Tunisia's development. The consensus was that if Tunisia could make a successful democratic transition from Ben Ali's autocracy then it would be a model for the other "Arab Spring countries". Indeed, over the past...

In 2011, protests in Egypt felled a military dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The mass protests of the 25 January Revolution were a rejection of the corruption and repression engendered by six decades of military rule. Two years later, and a second wave of protests have felled a very different president....

For the first time since the coup, the US administration has taken a clear position towards the situation in Egypt. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the army is "restoring democracy", which means that he backs the military action very clearly. Kerry's declaration came amid increasing tension...

Ever since the huge June 30 protests, Egypt has been running on its own time zone. The new military-led government has issued a series of 48-hour warnings aimed at moving things along, speeding up the takeover. The first was for President Morsi and the political establishment to sort out...

I have spent many hours of the last week in conversation with Egyptians, both with supporters of the removal of the elected Islamist government of Mohamed Morsi and his supporters gathered in their tens of thousands around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo. This follows a similar visit in...

A fool may throw a stone into a well but 100 sane people cannot remove it, says the proverb. To paraphrase its sentiments, a few crazy people can put Al-Sisi at the top of the tree but who can bring him down? This is a complex and serious question,...

Not in their worst nightmares could the coup leaders have imagined that events would have unfolded as they did. They had carefully drafted each detail and planned the coup diligently. They started by dissolving the General Assembly, while planning for the dissolution of the Shura Council, and they worked...

In January 1924, Saad Zaghloul became the Prime Minister of Egypt after the Wafd Party won the parliamentary elections. This victory came after the birth of a new Egypt and the adoption of a new constitution declaring the country to be a sovereign state on February 28, 1922. The...

Egypt's coup appears to be surrounded by protest sit-ins. Just as the military is suppressing civil unrest, with the backing of a compliant media, so too are the coup authorities facing a barrage of ethical and humanitarian questions over its actions. This has led to them seeking help from...

Over the past few weeks, I have been dismayed by the degree of intolerance and rigidity of the quarrelling parties in Egypt; both have been on the defensive, unwilling to listen to the other. Hearts have hardened and minds have closed, causing further deterioration in the situation. I am...

On Friday, in Egypt's largely lawless Sinai Peninsula, a drone strike killed at least four suspected Islamic militants and destroyed a rocket launcher. The attack, which came one day after Israel temporarily closed its airport in the holiday resort of Eilat, near to the Sinai, is widely believed to...

The analysis of the events in Egypt after the military coup remains of vital importance, especially for those interested in political affairs. This not only includes those within the Islamic movement itself, but also every nationalist who cares about the wellbeing and future of this country. In his interview...

Palestinians know that if Cairo sneezes then Palestine, especially Gaza, is first to get the flu. Indeed, Gaza often serves as a tool of regime policy, as was the case during the Mubarak years and during the short-lived government led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, and...

It goes without saying that Egyptians are divided. They were divided before the January 25th revolution of 2011 and they were divided once again after the short honeymoon period following the revolution. The Egyptian people were divided before the coup against their President Dr. Mohammed Morsi and they were...