Download or read book Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism written by Dalia F. Fahmy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The liberatory sentiment that stoked the Arab Spring and saw the ousting of long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak seems a distant memory. Democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi lasted only a year before he was forced from power to be replaced by precisely the kind of authoritarianism protestors had been railing against in January 2011. Paradoxically, this turn of events was encouraged by the same liberal activists and intelligentsia who’d pushed for progressive reform under Mubarak. This volume analyses how such a key contingent of Egyptian liberals came to develop outright illiberal tendencies. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together experts in Middle East studies, political science, philosophy, Islamic studies and law to address the failure of Egyptian liberalism in a holistic manner – from liberalism’s relationship with the state, to its role in cultivating civil society, to the role of Islam and secularism in the cultivation of liberalism. A work of impeccable scholarly rigour, Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism reveals the contemporary ramifications of the state of liberalism in Egypt.
Download or read book Liberalism without Democracy written by Abdeslam M. Maghraoui and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-04 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Western intervention in the Middle East stretches from the late eighteenth century to the present day. All too often, the Western rationale for invading and occupying a country to liberate its people has produced new forms of domination that have hindered rather than encouraged the emergence of democratic politics. Abdeslam M. Maghraoui advances the understanding of this problematic dynamic through an analysis of efforts to achieve liberal reform in Egypt following its independence from Great Britain in 1922. In the 1920s and 1930s, Egypt’s reformers equated liberal notions of nationhood and citizenship with European civilization and culture. As Maghraoui demonstrates, in their efforts to achieve liberalization, they sought to align Egypt with the West and to dissociate it from the Arab and Islamic worlds. Egypt’s professionals and leading cultural figures attempted to replace the fez with European-style hats; they discouraged literary critics from studying Arabic poetry, claiming it was alien to Egyptian culture. Why did they feel compelled to degrade local cultures in order to accommodate liberal principles? Drawing on the thought of Lacan, Fanon, Said, and Bhabha, as well as contemporary political theory, Maghraoui points to liberalism’s inherent contradiction: its simultaneous commitments to individual liberty and colonial conquest. He argues that when Egypt’s reformers embraced the language of liberalism as their own, they adopted social prejudices built into that language. Efforts to achieve liberalization played out—and failed—within the realm of culture, not just within the political arena. Opinions voiced through literary works, cartoons, newspaper articles on controversial social issues, and other forms of cultural expression were ultimately more important to the fate of liberalism in Egypt than were questions of formal political participation and representation. Liberalism without Democracy demonstrates the powerful—and under appreciated—role of language and culture in defining citizenship and political community.
Download or read book Questioning Secularism written by Hussein Ali Agrama and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.
Download or read book Egypt written by Azmi Bishara and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Azmi Bishara's seminal study of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution chronicles in granular detail the lead up to the momentous uprisings and the subsequent transition and coup. The book critically investigates the social and economic conditions that formed the backdrop to the revolution and the complex challenges posed by the transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Part One, 'From July Coup to January Revolution', goes back to what is called the '1952 revolution' or the '1952 Coup d'état' and traces events until 2011 when Hosni Mubarak stepped down as the president of Egypt after weeks of protest. It highlights the relationship between the presidency and the army to show that, contrary to popular belief, the presidency grew gradually stronger at the expense of other institutions, especially the army, and reached its apogee under Mubarak. Part Two 'From Revolution to Coup d'Etat', covers the critical stages from when the military junta took over the governing of Egypt as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), and the election of Morsi, up until the coup to overthrow his presidency. Using a democratic transition theory perspective, Azmi Bishara explains the failure of the democratic transition and how it has impacted on Arab revolutions ever since. Written while the revolutions were taking place, this book conveys a sense of immediacy and urgency as Bishara makes wide-ranging assessments with many of his forecasts corroborated in later years. The book is renowned for its use of primary source material - including interviews, statistics and public opinion polls – thus preserving the memory of the revolution and remaining one of the most comprehensive reference books on the subject to date.
Download or read book Quest for Democracy written by Line Khatib and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the uprisings of 2010 and 2011, it has often been assumed that the politics of the Arab-speaking world is dominated, and will continue to be dominated, by orthodox Islamic thought and authoritarian politics. Challenging these assumptions, Line Khatib explores the current liberal movement in the region, examining its activists and intellectuals, their work, and the strengths and weaknesses of the movement as a whole. By investigating the underground and overlooked actors and activists of liberal activism, Khatib problematizes the ways in which Arab liberalism has been dismissed as an insignificant sociopolitical force, or a mere reaction to Western formulations of liberal politics. Instead, she demonstrates how Arab liberalism is a homegrown phenomenon that has influenced the politics of the region since the nineteenth century. Shedding new light on an understudied movement, Khatib provokes a re-evaluation of the existing literature and offers new ways of conceptualizing the future of liberalism and democracy in the modern Arab world.
Download or read book Elite Origins of Democracy and Development in the Muslim World written by Michael T. Rock and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using an elite consensus/conflict analytical frame, this book examines why some majority Muslim countries perform so much better at democracy and/or development than others, questioning received wisdoms that Islam, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment go together. Identifying four distinct democracy and development outcomes in the Muslim world, four case studies are interrogated to show that there is more variability in democracy and development outcomes in Muslim majority countries than macro-historical studies and aggregate data have shown. By demonstrating that democracy and development outcomes in Muslim countries are the consequence of elite conflict and elite consensus, rather than the precepts or institutions of Islam, the book places the competition for power among contending elites, rather than Islam, at the center of the story of democracy and development in the Muslim world. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political development/development studies, democratization and autocratization studies, democracy promotion, and more broadly comparative politics.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Classical Liberal Thought written by M. Todd Henderson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polls suggest up to twenty percent of Americans describe their beliefs as 'libertarian', but libertarians are often derided as heartless Social Darwinists or naïve idealists. This illuminating handbook brings together scholars from a range of fields (from law to philosophy to politics to economics) and political perspectives (right, left, and center) to consider how classical liberal principles can help us understand and potentially address a variety of pressing social problems including immigration, climate change, the growth of the prison population, and a host of others. Anyone interested in political theory or practical law and politics will find this book an essential resource for understanding this major strand of American politics.
Download or read book Coups and Revolutions written by Amy Austin Holmes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, Egypt witnessed more protests than any other country in the world. Counter to the received narrative, Amy Austin Holmes argues that the ousting of Mubarak in 2011 did not represent the culmination of a revolution or the beginning of a transition period, but rather the beginning of a revolutionary process that would unfold in three waves, followed by two waves of counterrevolution. This book offers the first analysis of both the revolution and counterrevolution in Egypt from January 2011 until June 2018. The period of revolutionary upheaval played out in three uprisings against three distinct forms of authoritarian rule: the Mubarak regime and the police state that protected it, the unelected military junta known as the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, and the religious authoritarianism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The counterrevolution occurred over two periods: the first under Adly Mansour as interim president and the second after El Sisi was elected president. While the regime imprisoned or killed the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and many secular activists during the first wave of the counterrevolution, it turned against civil society at large during the second: NGOs, charities, media, academia, and minority groups. In addition to providing new and unprecedented empirical data, Coups and Revolutions makes two theoretical contributions. First, it presents a new framework for analyzing the state apparatus in Egypt based on four pillars of regime support that can either prop up or press upon whoever is in power. These are the Egyptian military, the business elite, the United States, and the multi-headed opposition. Secondly, the book brings together the literature on bottom-up revolutionary movements and top-down military coups, and it introduces the concept of a coup from below in contrast to the revolution from above that took place under Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Download or read book Arab Spring written by Eid Mohamed and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides systematic, integrated analyses of emergent social and cultural dynamics in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, and looks closely at the narratives and experiences of a people as they confront crisis during a critical moment of transition. Providing an interdisciplinary approach to interconnections across regional and communal boundaries, this volume situates itself at the intersection of political science, cultural studies, media and film studies, and Middle Eastern studies, while offering some key critical revisions to dominant approaches in social and political theory. Through the unique contributions of each of its authors, this book will offer a much-needed addition to the study of Middle East politics and the Arab Spring. Moreover, although its specific focus is on the Arab context, its analysis will be of issues of significant relevance to a changing world order.
Download or read book Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution written by Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the two decades that preceded the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and Syria, animated debates took place in Cairo and Damascus on political and social goals for the future. Egyptian and Syrian intellectuals argued over the meaning of tanwir, Arabic for “enlightenment,” and its significance for contemporary politics. They took up questions of human dignity, liberty, reason, tolerance, civil society, democracy, and violence. In Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution, Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab offers a groundbreaking analysis of the tanwir debates and their import for the 2011 uprisings. Kassab locates these debates in their local context as well as in broader contemporary political and intellectual Arab history. She argues that the enlightenment they advocated was a form of political humanism that demanded the right of free and public use of reason. By calling for the restoration of human dignity and seeking a moral compass in the wake of the destruction wrought by brutal regimes, they understood tanwir as a humanist ideal. Kassab connects their debates to the Arab uprisings, arguing that their demands bear a striking resemblance to what was voiced on the streets of Egypt and Syria in 2011. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution is the first book to document these debates for the Anglophone audience and to analyze their importance for contemporary Egyptian and Syrian intellectual life and politics.
Download or read book The Arab Winter written by Noah Feldman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding Statebuilding and Peace Formation written by Oliver P. Richmond and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation offers an authoritative and comprehensive overview of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation. With contributions from over thirty distinguished and leading scholars, the Handbook provides a timely, engaging, and critical overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels. It examines the key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining various segments of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation both as discursive formulations and as policy practices. Organized around four major thematic sections, the Handbook offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the most pressing contemporary peace and conflict issues and charts new pathways for responding to transnational insecurities"--
Download or read book Political Islam Justice and Governance written by Mbaye Lo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that political Islam (represented by its moderate and militant forms) has failed to govern effectively or successfully due to its inability to reconcile its discursive understanding of Islam, centered on literal justice, with the dominant neo-liberal value of freedom. Consequently, Islamists' polities have largely been abject, often tragic failures in providing a viable collective life and sound governance. This argument is developed theoretically and supported through a set of case studies represented by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (under President Muhammad Morsi’s tenure), Hassan Turabi's National Islamic Front in Sudan and The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is ideal for audiences interested in Regional Politics, Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.
Download or read book Cairo Cosmopolitan written by Diane Singerman and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume explores what happens when new forms of privatization meet collectivist pasts, public space is sold off to satisfy investor needs and tourist gazes, and the state plans for Egypt's future in desert cities while stigmatizing and neglecting Cairo's popular neighborhoods. These dynamics produce surprising contradictions and juxtapositions that are coming to define today's Middle East. The original publication of this volume launched the Cairo School of Urban Studies, committed to fusing political-economy and ethnographic methods and sensitive to ambivalence and contingency, to reveal the new contours and patterns of modern power emerging in the urban frame. Contributors: Mona Abaza, Nezar AlSayyad, Paul Amar, Walter Armbrust, Vincent Battesti, Fanny Colonna, Eric Denis, Dalila ElKerdany, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Farha Ghannam, Galila El Kadi, Anouk de Koning, Petra Kuppinger, Anna Madoeuf, Catherine Miller, Nicolas Puig, Said Sadek, Omnia El Shakry, Diane Singerman, Elizabeth A. Smith, Leïla Vignal, Caroline Williams.
Download or read book The Late Ottoman Empire and Egypt written by Elizabeth H Shlala and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and identification transgressed political boundaries in the nineteenth-century Levant. Over the course of the century, Italo-Levantines- elite and common- exercised a strategy of resilient hybridity whereby an unintentional form of legal imperialism took root in Egypt. This book contributes to a vibrant strand of global legal history that places law and other social structures at the heart of competing imperial projects- British, Ottoman, Egyptian, and Italian among them. Analysis of the Italian consular and mixed court cases, and diplomatic records, in Egypt and Istanbul reveals the complexity of shifting identifications and judicial reform in two parts of the interactive and competitive plural legal regime. The rich court records show that binary relational categories fail to capture the complexity of the daily lives of the residents and courts of the late Ottoman empire. Over time and acting in their own self-interests, these actors exploited the plural legal regime. Case studies in both Egypt and Istanbul explore how identification developed as a legal form of property itself. Whereas the classical literature emphasized external state power politics, this book builds upon new work in the field that shows the interaction of external and internal power struggles throughout the region led to assorted forms of confrontation, collaboration, and negotiation in the region. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and readers of Middle East, Ottoman, and Mediterranean history. It will also appeal to anyone wanting to know more about cultural history in the nineteenth century, and the historical roots of contemporary global debates on law, migration, and identities.
Download or read book Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt written by Sara Salem and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through Gramsci and Fanon, Salem centers anticolonial politics by exploring the connections between Egypt's moment of decolonization and the 2011 revolution.
Download or read book Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia written by Vanessa Rampton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberalism is a crucially important topic today; this book adds the important yet neglected Russian aspect to its history.
