Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Mona El-Ghobashy

Mona El-Ghobashy is a clinical assistant professor in Liberal Studies at New York University.

Egypt From Icon to Tragedy — Anti-corporate demonstrators in Oakland, CA, take part in a march in support of protestors in Egypt, November 2011. Protesters in Oakland proposed the march after their Egyptian counterparts marched on the US Embassy in solidarity with the Occupy Oakland movement, according to a statement released on the Occupy Oakland website. Kim White/ReutersPortrait murals depicting revolutionary martyrs (left to right) Gaber Salah “Gika,” Alaa Abdelhady, Mina Daniel. Downtown Cairo, Egypt. December 2014. Mashid Mohadjerin/ReduxA poster of Egypt’s ousted president Mohammad Mursi in the pro-Mursi protest camp in Rabaa Square, Cairo, that was violently demolished by the military. August 15, 2013. Nameer Galal/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images

MER Article

Egypt From Icon to Tragedy

When masses of people assembled in Egypt’s public squares and succeeded in toppling President Husni Mubarak in 2011, the world went a little bit mad. That an urban uprising unseated one of the contemporary world’s most favored autocrats became freighted with symbolism. The two-week occupation of Tah

Mona El-Ghobashy • 16 min read

Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life — Ellis_Goldberg_cropped

Current Analysis

Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life

Mona El-Ghobashy pays tribute to the scholar Ellis Goldberg and his pathbreaking work on Egypt. Living in Egypt at the time of the revolution in 2011, Goldberg provided in-depth commentary on events in his blog, Nisr al-Nasr. El-Ghobashy's appreciation of Goldberg explains why his insights were so u

Mona El-Ghobashy • 8 min read

Current Analysis

Sisi’s Plebiscitary Election

From day one of his July 3 coup, al-Sisi has directed a relentless campaign to depoliticize and incapacitate the population, riveting the old relations of deference and subordination between those who rule and those coerced to obey. But plebiscitary elections are part of a different type of autocrat

Mona El-Ghobashy • 15 min read

MER Article

Dissidence and Deference Among Egyptian Judges

After the coup of July 3, 2013, judges in Egypt repeatedly shocked polite world opinion. In hasty proceedings held in police facilities, in the absence of defense attorneys, courts passed down sentences of death and life imprisonment for thousands of supporters of the ousted Muhammad Mursi, Egypt’s

Mona El-Ghobashy • 24 min read

Current Analysis

Egyptian Politics Upended

When he took office on June 30, President Muhammad Mursi of Egypt looked to have been handed a poisoned chalice. The ruling generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had tolerated a clean presidential election but then had hollowed out the presidency, saddling Mursi with an executiv

Mona El-Ghobashy • 18 min read

MER Article

The Praxis of the Egyptian Revolution

If there was ever to be a popular uprising against autocratic rule, it should not have come in Egypt. The regime of President Husni Mubarak was the quintessential case of durable authoritarianism. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the

Mona El-Ghobashy • 31 min read

Current Analysis

The Liquidation of Egypt's Illiberal Experiment

The Egyptian parliamentary elections that ended on December 5 defied expectations, not because the ruling National Democratic Party again dominates Parliament but because of the lengths to which it proved willing to go to engineer its monopoly. Official and unofficial ruling-party candidates garnere

Mona El-Ghobashy • 14 min read

Current Analysis

The Dynamics of Egypt's Elections

No one thinks parliamentary elections in Egypt are democratic or even semi-democratic. The elections do not determine who governs. They are not free and fair. They install a parliament with no power to check the president. The government National Democratic Party (NDP) always manufactures a whopping

Mona El-Ghobashy • 19 min read

MER Article

Egypt's Paradoxical Elections

For undemocratic regimes in a democratic age, elections are an extremely valuable tool. They create opportunities for limited popular participation, disarm domestic and international critics, and enhance political monitoring and control by revealing the relative political strength of government and

Mona El-Ghobashy • 18 min read

Current Analysis

Egypt Looks Ahead to Portentous Year

Not so long ago in Egypt, elections for the parliament, bar association and press syndicate, as well as presidential referenda, were dismissed as mere beautifying accessories for an incorrigibly authoritarian regime. In 2005, several developments promise to accentuate the significance of these once

Mona El-Ghobashy • 12 min read

Current Analysis

Egypt's Summer of Discontent

As the long, hot Egyptian summer of 2003 wore on into autumn, gloom-and-doom scenarios filled opposition papers and daily conversations, warning of a terrible quiet before the storm. Elites and the masses are slowly being pushed together by palpable disaffection at rapidly deteriorating economic con

Mona El-Ghobashy • 12 min read

MER Article

Unsettling the Authorities

Nowhere has the belittling designation “the Arab street” been more overused than in descriptions of Egypt, the most populous and politically central Arab state. Egypt’s richly textured history of political opposition, one of the lon¬gest in the region, is inevitably reduced to images of livid young men brandishing

Mona El-Ghobashy • 18 min read