Egypt

Egypt: neither the army nor Morsi!

The events in Egypt have confounded the image that pundits of both right and left have about the Muslim world — that the people are dominated, or automatically inclined to, Islamist movements. The movement against Morsi has been a huge popular movement against an Islamist government, and not just any Islamist government either. The Muslim Brotherhood, and its political wing, are in many ways the most formidable Islamist party, and it was democratically elected. What’s taken place is a coup. It’s not something to celebrate, and is in fact quite dangerous. The fundamental nature of the movement...

Thoughts on Egypt

4 July 2013: There has been in effect a military coup, which apparently is going to install an interim government – consisting of a Muslim religious leader (from al Azhar, which is a kind of ‘state’ mosque/university), the Coptic Christian Pope, and secular leader al Baradei. Of course the army will hold real power. Supposedly there will be new parliamentary and presidential elections. I think it’s likely that the military authorities will organise elections for several reasons, although of course they are very unlikely to do so immediately. The key impetus behind the coup is presumably the...

A new turn in Egypt

Protests in Egypt on Sunday 30 June marked a new stage of the revolution. Called to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Mohammed Morsi’s Presidency, and with estimates of 13 million attending nationwide, the protests demanded fresh elections and the President’s resignation and have once again highlighted the need for socialists to organise and argue for a workers’ government. The “Tamarod” (Rebel) protests have continued, already winning minor victories with at least four ministers quitting the Cabinet. Since January 2011 there have been many twists and turns in the Egyptian revolution...

Against the Egyptian military! Against the Muslim Brotherhood!

Editorial from Solidarity 291, 3 July 2013. (This article was written before the 3 July coup in Egypt.) The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not just a neo-liberal capitalist party, but clerical-fascist. Former SWP leader Tony Cliff used that term for it in 1946. Despite the SWP’s subsequent shifts, which went as far as recommending votes for the Brotherhood in last year’s elections in Egypt, he was right. The Brotherhood is an approximate Islamic analogue of the Catholic fascist parties of Europe between World Wars One and Two. It is a canny, cautious variant of the type, but like those parties...

From Tahir to Taksim

I was talking the other day to an educated and informed American and mentioned that I’d spent a lot of time recently working on building support for the protestors in Taksim Square. Her reaction surprised me. “But aren’t you worried about, you know, an Islamist takeover?” In the two years since the overthrow of the Mubarak Regime, many people have begun to learn all the wrong lessons from the Arab Spring. The fear that reactionary Islamists in Syria might hijack the revolution is a genuine one. But in Turkey, it’s the Islamists in power and secular, modern Turkey is in the streets and squares...

Egyptian railworkers fight forced conscription

Egyptian railway workers have forced the state to back down from a plan to conscript 97 striking railway workers into the army. The plan was the Egyptian government’s latest attempt to break a drivers’ strike that began on Sunday 7 April. It is the country’s first nationwide railways strike since 1986. Workers are demanding pay increases and more time off. Train driver Ashraf Momtaz said: “The Morsi administration’s targeting of strikers has proven to be much worse and more oppressive than the actions of the Mubarak regime”. 97 strikers were summoned to a Cairo barracks on Monday 8 April and...

Egypt's workers against Morsi

This is the text of a speech given by Workers’ Liberty supporter Clive Bradley at a public meeting in London on Wednesday 30 January. The transcript has been edited slightly, and some of Clive’s summating remarks have been incorporated elsewhere in the text. There is a government now in power in Egypt which has put snipers on the roofs of buildings in the canal cities to shoot demonstrators. It has violently clamped down on demonstrations, including recent ones in the Suez Canal cities against the death penalty being given to people sentenced for violence at a football match last year. It...

Where is Egypt going?

From a referendum called with only two weeks notice and voted for on 15 and 22 December, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Mursi has now forced through the adoption of an Islamist constitution that holds great threats for Egyptian democrats and workers. The proposals from the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 64% of the vote on a dismal 32% turnout. Many urban and working class centres including Cairo and Mahalla voted against it. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) distributed two million leaflets against the new constitution in workplaces...

Egypt: the threat from the Brotherhood

The situation facing the Egyptian working this year is extreme perilous, with the Muslim Brotherhood consolidating its grip on power following the referendum in December. President Mohamad Mursi of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 64% of the vote on a dismal 32% turnout in the referendum over a new constitution, which took place in two stages in December. He received 56% in the first of two rounds, despite many urban and working class centres including Cairo and Mahalla voting against. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) distributed two million leaflets...

Against the "Ikhwani state"

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Egypt in the first week of December, with further mass protests against President Mohamed Mursi’s cold coup, which includes plans for a new constitution that would give him exceptional powers. The protests forced Mursi to backtrack on some emergency powers. He is pressing ahead with the referendum on the constitution. On Friday 7 December, tens of thousands rallied in the square in front of the presidential place in Heliopolis. They broke through barbed wire, with some police apparently letting them through. Protesters had been expelled...

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