Journal of International Studies

There is a temptation to suggest that political life in Turkey and Egypt are both being victimized by a similar deepening of polarization between Islamic and secular orientations, and to some extent this is true, but it is also misleading. Turkey continues to be victimized by such a polarization, especially during the eleven years that the Justice & Development Party (AKP) has governed the country, and arguably more so in the last period. In Egypt, so describing the polarization is far less descriptive of the much more lethal form of unfolding that its political cleavage has taken. It has become an overt struggle for the control of the political destiny of the country being waged between the Egyptian armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two organized political forces capable of projecting their influence throughout the entire country, including rural areas.  This bitter struggle in Egypt engages religious orientations on both sides, and even the military leader...

CAIRO, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A delegation of Russian officials arrived in Egypt Thursday to meet with top officials in a landmark visit that aims to boost military and political cooperation between the two countries. The visit comes at a time when traditional Egyptian ally, the United States, withholds the delivery of some military aid. On Thursday, Egyptian Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to discuss how to increase and develop military collaboration, state-run MENA reported. Sisi heralded the talks as a sign of a new stage of fruitful cooperation and a boost to the historic relation between the two countries, which dates back to the mid-1950s, emphasizing the partnership would help fulfill mutual goals and return security to the Middle East region. Egypt was one of Moscow's closest Arab allies for two decades, starting in the 1950s under the Egypt's late nationalist leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser, but relations between...

Egypt’s outdated laws and authoritarian institutions have fueled violence and discrimination against the Egyptian Orthodox Christian community.

Muslim Brotherhood members and ousted president Mohamed Morsi supporters shout slogans and light up flares during a demonstration against the military backed government on September 10, 2013 in Cairo, Egypt. (Mahmoud Khaled/AFP/Getty Images)

The downfall of Egypt’s elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013 has not resulted in the separation of religion and state in the country. Indeed, something quite different seems to be occurring: religion is being nationalized. Under the  leadership of al-Azhar —a complex of Islamic schools, university faculties, and research institutes—the country’s religious establishment appears to be coalescing internally, aligning itself firmly with the post-Morsi road map, and asserting its leadership of religious life throughout Egypt. That will be good news to many who view Ahmed el-Tayeb, the current grand sheikh of al-Azhar, as an enlightened figure, but it is already causing controversy among Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others in Egypt. In the past, al-Azhar’s struggles for centrality in Egypt’s religious life and for autonomy from the state have sometimes worked against each other. Over the years, pushing for greater influence has  entangled the ...

Challenging the falsehoods and simplifications that surrounded the so-called Arab Spring from the very start doesn't necessarily mean that one is in doubt of the very notion that genuine revolutions have indeed gripped various Arab countries for nearly three years.  The revolutionary influx is still underway, and it will take many years before the achievements of these popular mobilizations can be truly felt. One can understand the frustration and deep sense of disappointment resulting from the state of chaos in Libya, the political wrangling in Yemen and Tunisia, the brutal civil war in Syria, and of course, the collective heartbreak felt throughout the Arab world following the bloody events in Egypt.  But to assign the term "failure" to Arab revolutions is also a mistake equal to the many miscalculations that accompanied the nascent revolutions and uprisings from the start. Many lapses of judgment were made early on, starting with the lumping together of all...

Egypt's new de facto pharaoh, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, is a man of mystery.  Is he an Islamist, or a nationalist?  Is he a person of high principle, or a lowly opportunist? And in a land which has known five thousand years of mainly centralized, one-man rule, with limited experience of democracy, when have we seen his type before, and where will he lead the troubled, ancient nation now? These questions are crucial to knowing how the U.S. should react to al-Sisi's removal of Egypt's first “freely elected” president, Mohamed Morsi on July 3 in answer to overwhelmingly massive street protests demanding that he do so, and to the ongoing bloody crackdown on Morsi's group, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), that began on August 14.  Citing the ongoing, actually two-way violence in Egypt, President Barack Obama's administration has now suspended much of our annual $1.6 billion aid to the country, save for money needed to maintain security operations along the ...