Reflections on Egypt, the Middle East, and history
An interview with BBC Radio 4 “The World Tonight” program on Sisi’s declaration of the state of emergency in the wake of the IS terrorist attacks on churches in Tanta and Alexandria. You can listen to the program HERE (Egypt section starts at 20:39, my section starts at 23:40).
Published in Ahram Online on April 30, 2013 Is Egypt about to see a turn to fascism? If recent statements by self-proclaimed religious figures are an indication, the prospect isn’t entirely out of the question This is what a group of friends and I debated in a heated discussion last week. One of them was a British friend who teaches history and politics at a major US university, and who reminded us that a key feature of European fascism of the 1930s was a strong alliance between industrialists and the state, whereby the latter was willing to pass draconian anti-labour…
Posted on Facebook on April 9, 2013 This is the official comment from Essam el-Haddad, President Morsy’s Assistant on Foreign Affairs. It is a flagrant expression of how the President and his Muslim Brotherhood completely misread the dangerous situation in Egypt now, and how their discourse (and this statement is a good example of it), is biased and indeed incendiary. First, they are not even getting their facts right: al-Khosous is not in Giza, it is in Cairo next to Shubra. Second, the original incident had nothing to do with Christian symbols. Rather, it involved painting a swastika on a…
A radio interview with America Abroad Media on the eve of the November 2011 parliamentary elections
