Suchergebnisse

Pt. 1. The changing dynamics of Israeli political culture -- Pt. 2. 2000 to 2006 -- Pt. 3. 2006 to 2008 -- Pt. 4. Gaza in 2009-10

The majority of Egyptians are happy to be oppressed . . . They hated the revolution from the beginning because it embarrassed them in front of themselves . . . The Egyptians live in the Republic of False Truths . . . Everything in Egypt is a lie, except for the revolution. Only the revolution is true, which is why they hate it, because it shows up their corruption and their hypocrisy. (Republic, 386)Asmaa had hoped against hope, that the uprising would uplift the Egyptian people from their shackles. But as she bore the brunt of the counterrevolution's crackdown, enduring sexually humiliating virginity tests by the Egyptian state's "Apparatus", she eventually decided that Egypt was beyond saving. By the end of Alaa al-Aswany's latest novel, The Republic of False Truths, his revolutionary heroine has decided to leave Egypt and seek exile in the UK. In her final letter to her comrade and putative love interest Mazen, she begs her confidante to follow suit, and leave Egypt as soon as he has been released from state custody. Yet even as the uprising failed to supplant dictatorship, it remains sacred in the hearts of its supporters. This is evidenced by Madany, father of the fallen revolutionary leader Khaled, who exacts his own justice by arranging a hit on the police officer who murdered his son. The revolution lives on, but only when the revolutionaries take justice into their own hands.

Two years after the Arab Spring had transformed Egypt from a dictatorship under Hosni Mubarak to a democracy under the Muslim Brotherhood, there was a military coup that saw the country return being a police state. In a paradoxical turn of events, this move away from liberalism was aided by the same influential coterie of Egyptian intellectuals and activists who had previously been leaders of civic protest under Mubarak. With contributions from experts in Middle East studies, political science, philosophy, Islamic studies, and law, amongst others, this volume represents the first thorough examination of how Egypt's liberal intellectuals emboldened the return of authoritarianism. Together they form a holistic study of liberalism and modern Egypt, addressing the restrictions placed upon liberal opposition by the structural contours of the state itself, the role of Islam and Islamic activism, as well as issues of secularism, feminism and human rights more broadly following the overthrowing of Egypt's first democratically-elected president