On the tenth anniversary of the Arab uprisings of 2011, the BBC’s The History Hour program devoted an entire episode on Saturday, 30 January 2021, to the event. Here is the BBC’s blurb: In the early months of 2011 a wave of social unrest swept across the Arab world as people protested against repressive and authoritarian regimes, economic stagnation, unemployment and corruption. It began with reaction to the self-immolation of a young market trader in Tunisia, but soon became an outpouring of resentment after generations of fear. On The History Hour, Professor Khaled Fahmy of Cambridge University, helps us unravel…
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Article written by Jack Shenker and published in Vice on 25 January 2021 Ten years after the revolution, Tahrir Square is sanitised, the dictatorship in place harsher than the one it replaced. But while the revolutionary generation came from ruins, it is not ruined. “Is this intensive care?” someone shouts, as the hospital corridor convulses with panic. Medics rush from room to room; crowds of concerned relatives begin to gather; an equipment trolley has spilled to the floor. Amid the commotion, some patients are bent over, seemingly gasping for breath. Others are surrounded by hospital staff, who are desperately attempting…
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N.B. This article was written in May 2011. An Arabic translation was published in Majlallat al-Dirasat al-Falastiniyya, v. 86, Spring 2011. On January 25, I had my first encounter with tear gas. Answering many calls on Facebook and other social network media, I went to Tahrir Square to join my sister and her son who had already been there for a few hours. As soon as I entered the square I realized that something big was happening—the last time I saw such a large crowd in Tahrir was in 2003 during the demonstrations against the US invasion of Iraq. The…
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Published in Al Jazeera on January 25, 2017 By Khaled Diab Khaled Diab is an award-winning Egyptian-Belgian journalist, writer and blogger. He is the author of Intimate Enemies: Living with Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. He blogs at www.chronikler.com With the world’s attention on Washington and the new administration’s open assault on the media and journalists, whom Donald Trump described as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth“, few eyes are turned to Egypt, where “alternative facts” have been a reality for some time, and its continued clampdown on the press and civil society. Among the recent…
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An article by Nick Robins-Early published in The Huffington Post on January 29, 2016 Khaled Fahmy shares his memories of Egypt’s uprising, five years after Tahrir. After over a decade of teaching in the United States, Professor Khaled Fahmy arrived in Cairo a few months before the Egyptian revolution. A leading historian of modern Egypt and an expert on the Middle East, he would find himself unexpectedly at the center of one of the most pivotal moments in the region’s history. Fahmy joined thousands of others in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where 18 days of intense protests finally caused Egyptian…
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Published in Aeon on November 3, 2015 This is an historical perspective on the Arab Spring – particularly in Egypt, but generalisable to some extent to other Arab countries – from a historian by education and practice. A peculiar personal experience drew me from being another Egyptian protesting in Tahrir Square in Cairo to the state historian of the Egyptian revolution. Only one week after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president, the head of the Egyptian National Archives together with the Minister of Culture appointed me as Chair of an official committee empowered to document the momentous popular uprising of…
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A lecture delivered at MIT on January 23, 2015
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I was interviewed in this PBS Frontline documentary titled “Egypt in Crisis: The inside story of a revolution gone wrong“. Here is the press release of the documentary : Less than three years after the popular uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, and just one year after Egypt’s first free and fair elections, the democratically elected government has been overthrown and the Egyptian military is running the state. And the Muslim Brotherhood—the secretive, long-outlawed Islamist group that came out of the shadows to win the presidency in June 2012—is once again being driven underground, its members killed and…
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Published in Ahram Online on July 4, 2013 The revolution aimed to change the rules of the game, not just its players. When it was clear that Mohamed Morsi was picking up the mantle of Mubarak, he had to go I did not vote for Mohamed Morsi in the previous presidential elections. I invalidated my ballot in these elections because I realised that Egypt deserves better than either Morsi or Shafiq. Yet when the results were announced, I was glad because I realised that we had managed to carry out the first free and fair elections, and I considered Mohamed…
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Published on May 25, 2013 Incompetence and inefficiency are not enough to annul the mandate of the ruling president, gained at the ballot box. But continuing the system of torture used by the former regime is Before midnight on Friday, 17 May 2013, I decided to go to Tahrir Square to sign the “Rebel” campaign’s petition, which asks for the withdrawal of confidence from President Mohamed Morsi El-Ayat. This was not an arbitrary decision, nor was it a product of the moment. It was the result of deep reflection as well as an appreciation for the importance of this campaign…
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