Egypt’s Revolutions

Over the past two years, Egypt has been neglected by the “Sublime Planetary Historic News Event,” to use Milan Kundera’s expression.¹ Tahrir Square in Cairo, once celebrated as the emblematic site of an “Arab revolution” propagated through the Internet and social media, has been vacated by its globalized youth. We no longer understand what is going on in the biggest Arab country in the Muslim world—with a population of over 90 million—as if everyone had the vague feeling that they had been misled by the spinning wheels of image and commentary.

December 2012: In a little street in Faisal, a working-class neighborhood in the city of Giza, an office decked out in the colors of the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) Freedom and Justice Party catches the eye—the blue-and-white sign bears the name of the then manpower minister, Khaled al-Azhari, elected to parliament for this district in winter 2011–2012, and also announces that this is the place where food and other aid is handed out. It is 8 p.m. and the metal gate is drawn across the door. The street’s inhabitants say the office hasn’t been opened since the end of the presidential election in June 2012: “Yet they say that the minister still comes to the apartment he owns here, but no one has run into him.”¹

Revolutions have many battlefields, and the Egyptian uprising of 2011 was no different: it took place most famously in the streets and public squares of Egyptian cities, but it also played out inside public buildings, on the airwaves, on television talk shows, and within homes.¹ In this sense, for all its drama, the uprising was not unusual. But its aftermath was more atypical because of the rapidity with which post-uprising politics moved into court rooms, generated lawsuits, expressed itself in legal forms, and indeed quickly took the shape of complex legal and constitutional knots. The fate of two deposed presidents was handed to ordinary criminal courts rather than any revolutionary tribunal; major decisions about the course of political reconstruction were made by the administrative courts and the Supreme Constitutional Court. When in July 2013 the military deposed the president elected by the people a year earlier, the figure placed temporarily in his stead—acting, the military claimed, on popular demand—was the chief justice of the Constitutional Court. Throughout the tumultuous events, leading political positions—the vice presidency, the chairmanship of the Constituent Assembly—were awarded to former judges. A critical political relationship—between the presidency and the military—was managed by dueling constitutional declarations and texts (in which the presidents’ text trumped that of the generals in 2012 only to be overturned in 2013) until a freshly retired general finally assumed the presidency in June 2014.

Much highly politicized commentary has been made about Egypt’s 2014 constitution. Its proponents argue that the text is the best that Egypt has ever seen; detractors tend also to exaggerate its flaws. The text itself certainly includes a number of important improvements in comparison to past Egyptian constitutions. It contains clear la nguage on the issue of discrimination and violence against women; it grants significant rights and affords protection to children and to the disabled; the list of socio-economic rights has been lengthened and is more detailed than it has ever been. Efforts have been made to close some of the loopholes in the system of government that had been created in the 2012 constitution, and the useless Shura Council was eliminated, therefore simplifying the legislative process. Finally, more secular-minded Egyptians will be comforted that many of the references to religion that had been included in 2012 were eliminated. Most importantly, the infamous article 219¹ from the 2012 constitution was removed, allowing a large number of nervous Egyptians to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Looking beyond topical political events in Egypt, initiation into a new practice of citizenship through elections has emerged as one of the main achievements of the revolution. Since the fall of Mubarak in February 2011, Egyptians have been called to the polls seven times (two legislative elections—one for the People’s Assembly, the other for the Senate—two presidential elections, and three constitutional referendums). After the removal of former President Morsi in July 2013 and the election of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as head of state in June 2014, another round of legislative elections remains to be held to complete the establishment of Egypt’s new political order.¹

After the Camp David Peace Accords (1978) and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty (Washington, 1979) were signed, Egypt regained sovereignty over most of the Sinai Peninsula.¹ Israeli withdrawal from the peninsula was completed on April 25, 1982—since then commemorated annually as Sinai Liberation Day—while the Taba border dispute was settled by the International Court of Justice in Egypt’s favor on September 29, 1988. Policies implemented by the Mubarak regime as of 1982 sowed the seeds for a violent reaction in the border areas of al-Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah and their environs. The situation in the Sinai thus marks an exception to the peaceful revolution that took place in the rest of Egypt in January 2011. The revolution aimed to put an end to three decades of injustice, marginalization, and repression. In the Sinai, however, it ushered in a new and unanticipated cycle of hardship.

In the two years that followed the January 25, 2011 revolution, the number of labor protests in Egypt was still on the rise. There were 1,400 in 2011 and 3,400 in 2012, compared to an annual average of 600 in preceding years.¹ Moreover, from 2004 to 2013, more than 1.7 million Egyptians protested in the workplace by resorting to strikes, sitins, or other types of collective action.²

A relatively small number of Copts appear to have participated in the first week of the Egyptian uprising in January 2011. Christians did participate in the revolution however, despite warnings from the Coptic Pope Shenouda to avoid Tahrir Square.¹ Most of the Copts who chose to join the action in the streets did so as Egyptians without openly displaying their Christian identity. Some of those present in the square did proclaim their Christian identity, however, using symbols and engaging in collective prayers and religious chants. The unity of the two religions in Tahrir Square became a frequent topic in the press and on the Internet, fueling hopes that a new Egypt was in the process of being born.

In Egypt, since 2011, the “formal city,” the areas of the city designed and planned by public services, has been partially obstructed. The revolution appears to have brought to a standstill the urban projects that had been negotiated between the highest offices of state and an oligarchy of businessmen controlling real estate. This was the case, for instance, of the “Greater Cairo 2050” plan from the Mubarak era, which had been created in the spirit of international competition and the conquest of the desert. In addition to the postponement of major projects, every institution involved in their development became lethargic, including those responsible for planning, who were threatened with layoffs, local authorities who did not get involved, as well as public and private real estate developers paralyzed by their financial difficulties. The army still controls access to city centers—where protesters assemble—by building walls, verifying the identities of pedestrians and drivers, or impeding road maintenance.

He avoids being seen. His communication strategy consists of describing himself as an “anonymous servant of the great people” while allowing others to portray him as a hero or even a savior: “Don’t elect somebody who aspires to it” or “The army should not be in the front lines.” He meets with a large number of journalists, colleagues, and leaders, but he rarely opens up. Does this reveal his classical Muslim education or is it the product of a carefully considered political choice? Probably a bit of both. What are his political views? He is said to be religious and to know the Quran by heart, having won prizes for recitations of the holy text. This diagnosis has never changed—the man works, goes jogging, and prays. As for the rest, two competing narratives coexist. The first narrative indicates that he is an Islamist and was the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) man inside the armed forces; the thesis that he wrote during his study tour in the United States is said to prove that he is at least culturally a religious conservative. According to the second narrative, he was supposedly once a member of the young Nasserists and remains close to their political views. His favorite author—and one of his advisers—is Mohammed Hasanayn Haykal, Nasser’s former confidant. A synthesis seems possible that suggests that, like many Nasserists of his generation, he is much more attached to highly visible markers of religiosity.

Hamdin Sabbahi, who, with nearly 21 percent of the vote, amazingly came in third in the first round of the 2012 presidential elections, is part of the so-called 1970s generation that was strongly influenced by the activist protests that opposed Islamists and leftists at Egypt’s universities.

The Morsi biographies circulating on the Internet all emphasize the modest rural origins of this son of a farmer, born in 1951 in a village in the Sharqiya governorate in the Nile Delta, and his brilliant academic career that took him from the engineering faculty at Cairo University to the University to California, where he earned a PhD. His degree enabled him when he returned to Sharqiya to become chair of the Zagazig University Physics Department from 1985 to 2010. This rags-to-riches story, although tarnished by accounts of his difficulty making friends in California, is rounded out on various Brotherhood websites by an “official story” that glorifies his excellent reputation and heroism in combating the former regime. His role as a former member of Parliament is often highlighted in this narrative, as it is in the biography on the organization’s English-language website: “In Egypt’s Parliament in 2000, Dr. Mohammed Morsi played a prominent and influential role as leader of the parliamentary bloc. He was one of the most active members of parliament, responsible for the most famous questioning sessions in Parliament—for the train crash incident—in which he held the government responsible for the tragic accident. Internationally, he was chosen as the best parliamentarian in the years 2000–2005 due to his effective parliamentary performance.”¹³

Khairat al-Shater was born in 1950 into a middle-class family in Daqahliya province. As a teenager, he was influenced by socialist ideas and joined the secret “al-tanzim al-tali‘i” organization, which apparently landed him in prison for several months at the age of 18.²¹ An engineering student at Alexandria University in the early 1970s, he showed increasing religious fervor and was close to the first Islamic student association, the Religious Association.²² On graduating from university in 1974, he settled in the city of Mansoura, where he met members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had just been released by Sadat after being sentenced under Nasser for belonging to the Organization of 1965, accused of plotting a coup d’état against the head of state. Under their influence, he joined the Brotherhood.

Sheikh Yasser Borhami was born in 1958 in Alexandria. In 1977–1978, he was one of the early figures of the Salafi Call (al-da‘wa al-salafiyya), along with Mohammed Ismail al-Muqaddim and Ahmed Farid. A physician by training, he owns a clinic in Alexandria where he regularly sees patients. He also teaches and preaches at the “rightly-guided caliphs” (al-khulafa’ al-rashidun) mosque in the Abu Suleiman district of Alexandria and has written numerous religious works. He is considered a specialist on the creed (‘aqida), an important discipline to the Salafis.