Group items tagged

Hamdeen Sabahy is the most famous Nasserist politician in Egypt today. Joining forces with Sisi, Sabahy has hailed the military position in the succession to Brotherhood rule in Egypt, the dispersal of the sit-ins, and the transitional programme. Given his broad popularity within the moderate left, plenty of roadmap confirmations and condemnations of the Muslim Brotherhood duly followed. Hamdeen’s position as centre left – somewhere between worker activists (Kamal Abu Eitta) and social democrats (Mohamed Abul-Ghar) is questionable. Yet proof for such claim is that they were all gathered around him in past elections in which he was the third runner up with 5 million votes. Another response might be, “If not Hamdeen, who?” 

Similarly, showing up in a group of young people meeting with El Sisi before the coup, then meeting with international actors before the dispersal of the MB protesters, not only gives a sense of legitimacy to those actions, but also make the floor seem open to other youth movements who might wish to be embraced by the new regime (an offer the MB failed to make).

Recommended by Abdelfatah al-Sisi personally, Ganzoury was appointed once again as a Prime Minister by the SCAF during the interim government that followed the revolution. Protesters rejected Ganzoury's appointment, arguing that he was far too old.

Many young women say they are puzzled at their mothers’ reactions—mothers who at their own age worked three jobs, came home late, or themselves decided not to wear the hijab. Some attribute this shift in perceptions of women’s role to successive waves of conservative religiosity: first inspired from Saudi Arabia for Egyptian families who either fled Sadat or migrated to the Gulf for work, and later by a post-Iraq war wave of opposition to the West.

Another patient of Nabil El Qutt is one such reason for hope. The daughter of very conservative parents, the young pharmacist joined a leftist party and stopped veiling. Her parents railed against everything she did, and even took her to a doctor for a virginity test. She sunk into severe depression and began self-harming. Nonetheless, she eventually managed to leave her family home and no longer felt the need for therapy. She even convinced her mother to leave her own emotionally-abusive husband.