Why Egypt Fell Apart

by Juan Cole

Resorting to violence is a long-term, deeply-ingrained habit in human history, and is not easily discarded.

Christian Donath: Egypt -- Making Sense of the Senseless

After weeks of pro-Morsi demonstrations, the Egyptian military has now chosen to use force to end the sit-ins. With fatigue and anger toward the demonstrators high in Cairo, General al-Sisi and his allies believe that they have another 'popular mandate' to reassert control. Appalling and unnecessary violence has been the predictable result.

The Intricacies of Egyptian Coup d'États

by Daniel Pipes

Was Morsi the democratically elected president of Egypt? Every press account affirms he was but that is wrong. 

The Danger in Egypt is Real

by Juan Cole

Egypt’s future stability and prosperity now depends on whether the officer corps and youth are mature enough to return to pluralist principals and cease persecuting the Muslim Brotherhood just because Morsi was high-handed.

Mark LeVine: Who Will Control the Egyptian State?

Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, and distinguished visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh.After 887 days of protests, tear gas, tanks, camels, horses, tent cities, marches, birdshot, live ammunition, ultras, great music, torture, rape, disappointments, spears, knives, Facebook campaigns, undercover thugs, military detentions, men with scimitars, show trials, elections, referendums, annulments, arson, police brutality, negotiations, machinations, committees, strikes, street battles, foreign bailouts, extreme theatre, revolutionary graffiti, television drama, Leninist study circles, and Salafi sit-ins, Egypt's young revolutionaries have managed to do the near impossible: force the “nizzam” - the system - to restart a deeply flawed transition process in a manner which, at least at the surface, puts civilians in charge of a fraught transition process that was likely doomed the first time around the moment SCAF took control....

Abdullah Al-Arian: Egypt's Democratic Outlaws

Abdullah Al-Arian is an Assistant Professor of History at Wayne State University, where he specialises in the modern Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood has been here before.In the fall of 1954, the Muslim Brotherhood put its faith in the revolutionary transition in place after the 1952 military coup, backing the wrong horse in General Muhammad Naguib, and was ultimately outmaneuvered by Nasser. In one fell swoop, the organisation was outlawed, its offices burned down by angry mobs, its newspapers shut down, and its leaders imprisoned, executed, or exiled....But if Mohamed Morsi’s rise to the presidency was a remarkable achievement for a once outlawed opposition movement, his sudden fall at the hands of a military coup backed by a mass revolt in some ways signifies an unprecedented low point in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood. Not only does it face the prospect of enduring banishment at the hands of a cold and calculating military regime yet again, it will do so to the thunderous applause of millions of Egyptians.