Arab Spring

(By Charles Kurzman via IslamiCommentary) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the military ruler of Egypt for the past nine months, is no ordinary candidate for president. He is a saint, or so say some of his supporters. A cleric at al-Azhar seminary likened him to ancient prophets. An eminent civic leader called him Egypt’s “savior from darkness.” […]

Arab Spring

Dear Arab Liberals: The Enemies of your Enemies aren’t Necessarily your Friends

contributors

(By Karim Emile Bitar) One of the principal reasons the revolutionary impulse unleashed in 2010 proved so inspiring was that it finally gave full voice to liberals, democrats and progressives of the Arab world, who rejected the idea that their only governmental options lay in sinister alternatives of authoritarian military cliques that had ruled for […]

Arab Spring

A New Arab Cold War: Saudi Arabia Pressures Qatar on Muslim Brotherhood, American Think Tanks

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Saudi Arabia’s listing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and the withdrawal of the Saudi, Kuwaiti United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain ambassadors from Qatar signal a big geopolitical realignment in the Middle East. Qatar is the Red Prince of the Middle East. Despite being fabulously wealthy because of its natural […]

Arab Spring

As Egyptian Gov’t Falls, Leftist Presidential Candidate seeks Youth Vote

Juan Cole

(Via AFP) Egypt presidential hopeful fears return to autocracy (via AFP) Presidential hopeful Hamdeen Sabbahi said he fears a return to autocratic rule in Egypt, telling AFP that the army chief, a likely election frontrunner, has failed to dispel these concerns. Sabbahi, 59, who came third in the 2012 presidential election… —— Related video: […]

Arab Spring

As Ukraine’s President Flees in Overthrow, Lessons for Kyiv from the Arab Upheavals

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The dramatic overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Saturday, as he fled the presidential palace and it was occupied by extreme nationalists, recalls events in the Middle East in 2011. The crisis in the Ukraine was provoked last fall when Yanukovych reconsidered earlier moves toward integration with Europe. He is from […]

Arab Spring

Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Failures?

Juan Cole

The troubles that Ukraine is having (and that Russia and the former Yugoslavia also had) in its post-Soviet politics, with a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy and between a Moscow orientation versus a Brussels one, are very similar to the difficulties that have beset many countries of the Arab world in the past few years. […]

Arab Spring

The Arts of the Arab Uprisings at the Arab-American Museum

Juan Cole

VOA interviews my colleague Christiane Gruber of the Art History Department at the University of Michigan on the exhibit she helped curate at the Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, which came out of our symposium in November at which Arab bloggers and graffiti artists and other practitioners of the arts of protest presented alongside academics […]

al-Qaeda

Daily Show: How much of an A*hole do you have to be that Al-Zawahiri won’t Work with You?

Juan Cole

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show at Comedy Central covers the fruitless Syria negotiations and break between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Imagine my surprise when a a clip from an interview I did at Aljazeera America on the issue was included in this piece! Thanks, Daily Show! The Daily […]

Arab Spring

54 Dead in an Egypt Polarized between pro-Military, anti-Coup on Revolution Anniversary

Juan Cole

(by Juan Cole) January 25 marked the third anniversary of the revolution that overthrew dictator Hosni Mubarak, and Egyptians observed it in three distinctively different ways. In the iconic Tahrir Square downtown, thousands of supporters of the military coup of July 3, 2013, gathered for a big party. People never used to dance to patriotic […]