Mubarak Regime Research Articles

Social movements in Egypt and Iran

The contemporary movements seen on the streets of the Middle East today have their roots in a rich history of social and political struggle in the region. Since the 1990s, large-scale social movements have mobilised millions in opposition to authoritarian regimes often backed by the West. In Egypt, diverse movements opposed the Mubarak regime and its dependence on the US, and have gone on to fight for further transformative change. In Iran, an Islamic reform movement, women's movement and democracy movement has challenged the undemocratic and exclusivist nature of the Islamic state since the 1990s. This book analyses the reform movement in Iran and the groups and organisations that form the basis of the Egyptian opposition movement in their historical contexts. It argues that the contemporary movements have not arisen out of a vacuum but represent the culmination of over twenty years of mobilisation by social movements. This mobilisation is itself part of a history of struggle for democracy, social justice and freedom in the region that dates back over a century.

Upended Path: The Rise and Fall of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood

This article examines the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the 2011 uprising. It analyzes the Brotherhood's behavior and strategy since taking power in June 2012, exploring the underlying factors leading to their downfall in 2013. The article argues that the short-lived Islamist government's fall can be ascribed to three key factors: its lack of a revolutionary agenda, the Brotherhood's organizational stagnation and inertia, and its leaders' incompetence and inexperience in governance.1The abrupt rise and fall of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to power took many observers, commentators, and policy-makers by surprise. After only one year at the reins of government, the Muslim Brotherhood's path was upended and its future has become uncertain. While the Brotherhood leadership and sympathizers blame the old regime forces (i.e., the deep state) for their failure, the Brotherhood's own blunders and miscalculations cannot be disregarded. Their impetuous rush to power, the stagnant and rigid decision making-process within the movement, and the incompetent and weak leadership of President Mohamed Morsi all contributed to their fall. After the ouster of Husni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the Brotherhood emerged as one of the key political forces in Egypt. Its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won the first parliamentary elections after the January uprising and party chairman Dr. Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's first free and democratically elected president. However, after only one year in office, Morsi proved unable to run the country effectively or to achieve the objectives of the January uprising, leading the military to take control in a coup on July 3, 2013, following an eruption of mass protests against Morsi on June 30.This article begins by tracing the debate over how to explain Islamists' behavior and strategy. It critically discusses the key theoretical trends dominating the terrain of Islamism over the past three decades. The second section probes the Brotherhood's role before and after the January uprising. It examines the ability of the Brotherhood to survive and endure under the Mubarak regime and how it became Egypt's key player in the post-Mubarak era. The third section focuses on the Brotherhood's downfall and explores the key factors behind it, particularly those related to the group's internal dynamics. The final section discusses the current crisis facing the organization and how it has thus far dealt with the post-coup regime, which has designated it as a terrorist group.DEBATING ISLAMISMOver the past few decades, Islamism has been a subject of inquiry and debate within academic as well as policy-making circles. Despite a plethora of literature on Islamist movements, capturing the essence of Islamism as a sociopolitical phenomenon is still an enigma. Scholars are not only puzzled by the changing faces of Islamism but also by the lack of methodological and theoretical tools that could help analyze and explain Islamists' discourse, behavior, and strategy.1 Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, two influential bodies of scholarship have dominated the study of Islamism. The first is the essentialist or culturalist approach, which treats Islamism as a rigid and immutable phenomenon. The advocates of this approach tend to view Islamism as nothing but a reactionary response to the crisis of modernity that has challenged Muslim societies since the early 20th century. This trend falls short in explicating the complexity and multifaceted character of Islamism, and tends to consider it within a reductionist, ahistorical, and culturist view of Islamic societies.2 Moreover, to prove their views, essentialists tend to conflate Islamism with Islam as a whole, focusing particularly on more conservative and violent forces that follow a rigid and regressive version of the religion. For these scholars, Islam is not a faith but rather an anachronistic ideology that does not cope with modern ideas. …

Egypt’s Socio-Political Profile Revisited

More than 30 years have passed since my essay in the early eighties sketched out Egypt’s sociological profile at the time. On looking at the Egyptian scene now one is struck by the transformational changes, especially in the political sphere, that witnessed armed insurgency and the economic crises of the 1990s and, with almost no predictions, the eruption of mass popular uprisings in which two presidents were toppled in 2011 and 2013. The Egypt of 2015, with its bursting population of nearly 90 million, has shown that it can surprise the world; today’s political and social dynamics give promise of fundamental new directions, and some worrying continuities. Many of the basic problematic features of the social structure which prevailed in the 1980s have indeed intensified; rapid demographic growth slowed for a decade but has now returned to a worrying 2.6 percent annually. The resulting pressure on services has severely strained the economy, leaving little for state investment in development. The infrastructure in which Hosni Mubarak invested heavily over 30 years has deteriorated due to lack of maintenance and renovation. Inflation since 2011 has risen steeply to over 15 percent, and a violent war of attrition is being waged by some Muslim Brothers (MB) and militant Islamist allies based in the Northern Sinai. The rate of terrorist attacks in Egypt’s cities is increasing with a devastating impact on tourism, one of the pillars of the country’s economy. The high rate of unemployment, which troubled the later years of the Mubarak regime, has also intensified (reaching almost 25 percent), particularly among youth. A bureaucracy already bloated in the 1980s has now developed into a giant body of 7 million underpaid employees, fostering a culture of bribes and inefficiency which constitutes a major impediment to economic development. In short, the quality of life has deteriorated for most Egyptians, and little of the zeal and optimism that suffused the spirit of Egyptians following Mubarak’s downfall can now be detected (although the opening of the new Suez Canal extension in summer of 2015 has renewed pride and patriotism). After four years of upheaval and Since the original article was written, the author has served in many capacities, as Secretary General of the Arab Thought Forum, and founder of the Arab Human Rights Organization, as well as Egypt’s leading prisoner of conscience during the Mubarak regime. He is currently Chairman of the Ibn Khaldun Center

Protests, Islamism and the waning prospect of revolution in Egypt

Popular uprisings across the Arab world from late 2010 soon transformed its political geography. Authoritarian regimes were confronted with challenges from their citizens. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's security forces, epitomised by the Interior Ministry, had formerly managed to contain outbreaks of protests in the opening decade of the twenty-first century. However, the organising and mobilising of protests by groups such as Kefaya led to a wider social awareness of the looming prospect of the political inheritance of the office of president from father to son, cultivation of democratic ideals and values, and cross-ideological links expressed in a coalition of different political actors. The arrival of the Arab Spring in Egypt was inflected in this dissenting context. Broader regional trends held the promise of democratic transitions, at least persisting in Tunisia, which was somewhat dashed in the commotion generated by the rise of a secular-Islamist divide in Egypt's political scene. Familiar objections were raised against the very processes pushing forward the transition of democracy centred upon Islamist electoral successes. Secularism was contrasted with theocracy in the contest over who was the authentic guardian of the Egyptian revolution. Political acumen acquired in the struggle against the Mubarak regime, espousal of the norms of democracy and the transcending of ideological affiliations among Egypt's intelligentsia and activists appear to have been forgotten in the staking of political territory.

Country Focus: Egypt

In 2011, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak's regime fell amid the region-wide Arab Spring. More than four years later, Egyptian hopes of democracy and prosperity have yet to be realised. Ahmed Abd Rabou reports.

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa

When international media were broadcasting live video footage of Tunisians gathering in hundreds of thousands in front of the central office in Tunis of the long-terrifying ministry of home security, chanting in one voice "the people want to bring down the regime," something had already changed: ordinary people realized they could make huge changes. Weeks later, the Egyptian uprising removed the Mubarak regime that had been entrenched in power for over thirty years…. The neoliberal forms of imperial rule that had destroyed the hopes of the liberation movements were under attack. In order to counter the possibilities for a massive breakthrough at the popular level, the Western forces mounted an invasion of Libya using the mantra of humanitarianism to disrupt, militarily, political and economic life in Africa. Later in collusion with the counter-revolutionary forces in the Egyptian military, Western imperialism sought to roll back the gains of people in the streets of Tunis and Cairo.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-3" title="Vol. 67, No. 3: July 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

English

The principal objective of this paper is to describe and analyze the failure process of democratization in the Egypt after Mubarak regime. The article continues to give an overview over the current situation inside Egypt after the revolution and collects some evidence for a changed relationship between democracy and stability inside the country. In this context, when Mohammad Morsi won the presidential election in June 2012, On 3 July, 2013, a coalition led by the Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed the President of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi, from power and suspended the Egyptian constitution, as a conscious response to Egyptian protesters who demanded the end of Morsi's administration and the initiation of early presidential elections. This vicious cycle repeats itself is authoritarian survival of the political regime, which is an intrinsic tendency in Egyptian politics. As Egypt’s flawed transition after the Arab Spring requires a comprehensive analysis, this brief aims to discuss the complex nature and practice of authoritarian survival in Egypt and to offer realistic policy alternatives in dealing with this structural problem. Therefore the Egyptian revolution created a situation of transition which is by definition a period of instability and limited prediction. This is a crucial issue because the direction and orientation of a deep societal democratization process are still unclear. Key words: Egypt, democracy, revolution, authoritarian, Mubarak regime.

Revolution or crisis? Framing the 2011 Tahrir Square protests in two pan-Arab satellite news networks

Abstract This study used framing analysis to unpack framing devices employed by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya in their reporting of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Three key days of the uprising, representing a range of political events, were analysed. Results suggest that Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya presented very different versions of the revolution. Al-Jazeera’s coverage, which was dominated by a ‘revolution’ frame, was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the protesters and antagonistic to ousted President Hosni Mubarak, while Al-Arabiya’s coverage, which was dominated by a ‘crisis’ frame, was generally much more sympathetic to the Mubarak regime and critical of the anti-government protesters. Al-Jazeera’s reportage did not attempt to provide voice to the Mubarak government or its supporters, while Al-Arabiya’s reportage did offer a platform for some anti-Mubarak voices.

Mubarak’s Fall in Egypt: How and Why did it Happen?

After nearly 30 years in power, the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt, considered by many to be the strongest in the Arab world, collapsed suddenly in February 2011 after a mere 18 days of street protests. In this article, we try to explain the puzzling collapse of the Mubarak regime using regime transition theory. We argue that the Mubarak regime’s collapse came about as a result of four key developments, none of which were sufficient to cause the regime’s collapse, but when coalesced together exposed the regime’s lack of coercive and persuasive powers, thereby hastening its demise. We conclude that regime transition theory, developed to explain the third wave of democratisations in the 1970s and 1980s, is still relevant in explaining transitions from authoritarian rule.

The Egyptian workers' movement before and after the 2011 popular uprising

In January and February 2014, about 100,000 workers participated in strikes and other collective actions. The pace of protest escalated further in March when thousands of public sector doctors, dentists and pharmacists declared a full strike, as did thousands of Alexandria Public Transport workers. During the year’s first quarter there were a total of 240 labour actions. Projected to an annual basis, this is a significant decline from the high point of 2011-12, but still far more than any year during the decade before the demise of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Perhaps unsurprisingly in the era of global neoliberal hegemony, the significance of the workers’ movement has been underestimated in both Western and Egyptian explanations for Mubarak’s overthrow. Egyptian workers had participated significantly in the burgeoning culture of protest that delegitimized the Mubarak regime during the decade before his ouster on 11 February 2011. The recent upsurge followed a relatively quiescent six-month period after the ouster of President Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brothers-sponsored Freedom and Justice Party. Morsi was removed by a combination of massive popular demonstrations on 30 June 2013 – even larger than those that had led to the demise of Mubarak two and a half years earlier – followed by a military coup on July 3 after serving just one year in office as Egypt’s first democratically elected president. The essay will explore the roots of the 2011 popular uprising and chart the cycle of contention over economic demands that began in the late 1990s. Egyptian workers have sharply escalated the pace of their strikes and collective actions, a movement that has been in large measure a response, albeit for the most part not articulated in these terms, to the neoliberal transformation of the Egyptian economy.

Bread (Rawls) + Freedom (Sen) = Social Justice? Religion and Economics in the Egyptian Spring

Many observers were surprised when Egyptians took to the streets first to overthrow the Mubarak regime, in early 2011, and then to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood government, in mid 2013. Bayesian Network analysis of public opinion surveys is used to uncover dependence structures in respondents' attitudes. The analysis shows that the revolutionary moment leading up to 2011 was characterized by confounding of Islamism with redistributive egalitarianism, which was at the heart of Nasserist rhetoric that led to a failed experiment in Socialism. Muslim Brotherhood leaders had subscribed to this form of Islamism in the early twentieth century, but embraced less egalitarian models in later decades. Therefore, they pursued the same neoliberal economic policies of the Mubarak era, and thus demolished the 2011 Islamist-leftist coalition. Unlike in Turkey and Malaysia, theories of justice enshrined in today's neoliberal economic policies were strongly rejected in Egypt, where the middle class has fallen behind, and the public demanded greater redistribution. Moreover, Egyptians' apparent acceptance before 2011 of a variation on Washington-Consensus II policies plus redistribution was no longer in evidence by 2013. A viable social contract may be exceedingly difficult to find under these circumstances.

Effect of Information Technology on Social Movements: A case study of Arab countries

Social networking websites are: face book, twitter, beebo, orkut etc. The fact is that this technological advancement is changing the urban sociology drastically. Its effects range from personal friendships to political movements.
 The demonstrations in Iran were mainly organised through face book and twitter. They had a major role in the overthrow of Tunisian president. There are wide spread protests in Egypt also. People of Egypt were demanding the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime and Egyptian government has banned both face book and twitter because people were demanding that president Hosni Mubarak should resign.
 These websites don't start any movement but people who start movements use them to contact public. Previously it was difficult to arrange demonstrations and political parties had to announce in advance, which gave the government the chance to put a ban or just block the area where demonstration was to be held but now what they do is they just announce it one hour before the actual time and the government has no time to control it, that is why these websites have made political demonstrations more effective.
 On the personal level they have made it easier to maintain contact with your friends but the level of close friendships is reduced. Previously we used to have few friends and one or two were very close friends but now we have hundreds of friends but no one is close. Besides dedicating more time to online activities means we have less time to actually go out and meet friends. This phenomenon is very common in the developed world. It is a major change and we still don't know where this change is leading.
 The other aspect of technological advancement is that now knowledge is not restricted. Everybody and anybody can learn whatever they want all they need is an internet connection. The fact is nobody can close the internet. So internet in effect is the new super power in the world. America is not the super power internet is because America cannot close the internet but internet can close America.

Embodying Tahrir: bodies and geopolitics in the 2011 Egyptian uprising

The 2011 Egyptian uprising, which brought an end to Hosni Mubarak's 30‐year presidency, focused attention around the world on Cairo's Tahrir (‘Liberation’) Square. This became a focal point both for demonstrators and the Mubarak regime (not to mention media and commentators worldwide), and the ‘vital signs’ of both the uprising and the regime were frequently read through the events taking place in Tahrir at any given moment. Three years later, any ‘revolution’ remains far from complete, but I suggest that the occupation of Tahrir during 18 days of January and February 2011 can teach us a great deal about the revolutionary potential of the body and the importance of public space in producing new social and political structures through embodied practices. Feminist geographers have illustrated how geopolitical conflicts at the national and international levels create crises for bodies on the ground, and in the context of the Egyptian Uprising, anti‐regime protestors indeed faced manifestations of the same violence on which the regime long rested its security, embodied by security forces and their instruments of inflicting harm and limiting mobility. At the same time, however, we can see in Tahrir the body's potential for creating crises for the state. In this article, I examine the ways in which the body, and groups of bodies, resisted the Mubarak regime and produced Tahrir as a revolutionary space, relying on media accounts, including media live‐blogs that incorporated protestors' reports from the square, and a ‘how‐to‐revolt’ guide circulated by activists.

Mubarak Framed! Humor and Political Activism before and during the Egyptian Revolution

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 that lasted 18 days brought to an end President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year reign in Egypt. It brought to fore a variety of protest materials ranging in content from strict condemnation to comedic creativity, and ranging in form from hand-held banners during protests to Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and digital jokes online. However, criticism of Mubarak’s character and regime predates the protests of the Arab Spring. The people of Egypt have developed a tradition of expressing their dissent against all political regimes, including Mubarak’s, through the use of humor. This study analyzed the use of humor both during the Mubarak regime (including before the protests) and during the protests of the Arab Spring. Although the Egyptian people used humor-based strategies liberally both before and during the protests, it appears that the type of humor used and the functions it served were different. This study analyzed the political climate’s influence on using humor as an overt and covert dissent strategy. The functions of different types of humor, both online and offline, and the specific advantages they offer in expressing political dissent are also discussed.

Effect of Information Technology on Social Movements: A case study of Arab countries

Social networking websites are: face book, twitter, beebo, orkut etc. The fact is that this technological advancement is changing the urban sociology drastically. Its effects range from personal friendships to political movements. The demonstrations in Iran were mainly organised through face book and twitter. They had a major role in the overthrow of Tunisian president. There are wide spread protests in Egypt also. People of Egypt were demanding the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime and Egyptian government has banned both face book and twitter because people were demanding that president Hosni Mubarak should resign. These websites don't start any movement but people who start movements use them to contact public. Previously it was difficult to arrange demonstrations and political parties had to announce in advance, which gave the government the chance to put a ban or just block the area where demonstration was to be held but now what they do is they just announce it one hour before the actual time and the government has no time to control it, that is why these websites have made political demonstrations more effective. On the personal level they have made it easier to maintain contact with your friends but the level of close friendships is reduced. Previously we used to have few friends and one or two were very close friends but now we have hundreds of friends but no one is close. Besides dedicating more time to online activities means we have less time to actually go out and meet friends. This phenomenon is very common in the developed world. It is a major change and we still don't know where this change is leading. The other aspect of technological advancement is that now knowledge is not restricted. Everybody and anybody can learn whatever they want all they need is an internet connection. The fact is nobody can close the internet. So internet in effect is the new super power in the world. America is not the super power internet is because America cannot close the internet but internet can close America.

The political economy of the Egyptian revolution: Mubarak, economic reforms and failed hegemony

Introduction - Bread, dignity, social justice and economic reforms 1. A Gramscian approach to the study of the political economy of reforms 2. The Egyptian way to neoliberalism? IMF, World Bank and reforms in Egypt 3. Of success and greed: the new business class turns into capitalist oligarchy 4. Ideology resurgent? Neoliberalism as economic-corporate project for the few 5. From hubris to debris: global crisis and the end of the Mubarak regime Conclusion: Gramsci, failed hegemony and the fall of Mubarak Postscript: Back to square one? Considerations on Egypt's uncertain future

God and State in Egypt

God and State in Egypt

Towards (De-)legitimation Discursive Strategies in News Coverage of Egyptian Protest:VOA & Fars News in Focus

This article aims at conducting a critical discourse analysis on discursive strategies of legitimation applied in VOA and Fars News, two news agencies with fundamentally distinctive ideologies, to represent the single event of Egyptian protest as a legitimized action and Hosni Mubarak's regime as the delegitimized other. In order to represent how these two news agencies employ the legitimation discursive strategies, including four main strategies of authorization, evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis to legitimize Egyptian revolution, Van Leeuwen's (2008) model of legitimation strategies was applied. This article also delves into how these two opposite news networks tried to delegitimize Mubarak's regime by using Van Leeuwen's legitimation strategies. The research will discuss how employing certain discursive strategies of language can be used for the purpose of brainwashing. The study shows that VOA emphasized mainly on delegitimizing Mubarak's regime, whereas Fars News put more emphasis on legitimizing Egyptian revolution than delegitimizing Hosni Mubarak's regime. As well this study investigates to what extent these two news agencies try to show Egyptian nation's revolution as an Islamic movement or economic movement. This article also investigates how the guidelines and interests of the news networks can affect their approach in using different legitimation strategies.

Mubarak’s Promise. Social justice and the National Housing Programme: affordable homes or political gain?

Even in the absence of a constitutional article declaring the right to adequate housing – first introduced in the 2012 constitution – the Government of Egypt has taken it upon itself to build subsidised housing, which has made up nearly a third of all housing production in its heyday (World Bank 2007). But despite the billions in public funds spent on such programmes, hundreds of thousands of people risked their lives to overthrow the Mubarak regime in early 2011, mostly on grounds of unmet social goals. If these large investments in public housing programmes did not achieve their advertised social goals, were there other unadvertised goals that they did achieve? This paper assess the most recently “completed” programme, the National Housing Programme (NHP), or “Iskan Mubarak” ( 2005 to 2012), in light of the track record of clientelism that post Infitah regimes have been known for, using pragmatic parameters such as the International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ seven mandates on adequate housing (ICESR Article 11 and general comment no. 4/1991), to find out whether the NHP was indeed meant for the poor, or if it was another large High Modernist project ‘designed to deceive’, where its importance for the regime lay more in starting it rather than in completing it (Deputy 2011).

Urban Backlash against Democracy: Battling the Tyranny of the Majority or the Rise of Rural Power?

During the 29 months between the overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship and the military coup against the democratically elected government of Muhammad Mursi, about thirty million Egyptians voted in four major national polls – the constitutional referendum of March 2011, the parliamentary elections of November 2011-January 2012, the presidential elections of May-June 2012, and the constitutional referendum of December 2012. Despite the shifting alliances and counter-alliances that characterized these electoral battles, voting patterns reveal a consistent nationwide dominance of the Freedom and Justice Party that was rooted in the provincial capitals and villages of the Nile Delta with particularly enduring strength in Upper Egypt. Eventually, holdovers from the Mubarak regime allied with local elites (‘ayan) connected to the Wafd Party and with Christian groups tied to the Egyptian Block in mobilizing an opposition coalition that was centered in the more prosperous districts of Cairo and a handful of neighboring governorates in the southern Delta. Although the opposition managed to enlist the military in removing the elected government and repressing its followers, we can expect to see similar voting patterns if free elections are held again even if the competing parties adopt different names and slogans.