MER Article Establishment Mursi On June 29, 12 days after he was elected president of Egypt, Muhammad Mursi ascended a Tahrir Square stage and issued a dramatic pledge to guard the revolution launched there the preceding spring. Mursi opened his jacket, revealing that he wore no bulletproof vest, thumped his chest and yelled, “I f Joshua Stacher • 6 min read
Current Analysis Men Behaving Badly Here we go again. A preposterous provocation easily manages to ignite fevered protests in Muslim-majority countries around the world, and everyone is worse off as a result. The episode is playing like a sequel to the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy, but with bigger and better explosions than the ori Moustafa Bayoumi • 8 min read
Current Analysis Ordering Egypt's Chaos To the left of a makeshift stage in a Cairo five-star hotel, the waiting continued. Ahmad Shafiq, the last prime minister of the deposed Husni Mubarak and one of two remaining candidates in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential race, was three hours late. Fewer than 60 hours were left until voting Joshua Stacher • 12 min read
Current Analysis Tunisia Moves to the Next Stage Tunisia was the first Arab country to have a pro-democracy uprising in the winter of 2010-2011, and now it is the first to have held an election. Tunisians took to the polls on October 23 to choose a constituent assembly that will be tasked with drafting the country’s first democratic constitution a Issandr El Amrani, Ursula Lindsey • 15 min read
MER Article Media Wars and the Gulen Factor in the New Turkey Turkey’s experience in the twenty-first century is characterized, at least in part, by the efforts of a “conservative democratic” coalition against an eroding state class elite. Although led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), this coalition is reliant upon the increased legitimacy of a new block of supportive Joshua D. Hendrick • 20 min read
MER Article "Afghan Arabs," Real and Imagined During the holiday season of Ramadan 1425/October 2004, The Road to Kabul was one of the more popular television miniseries broadcast throughout the Arab world. The program traced recent Afghan history from one superpower invasion to another through a budding romance at Cambridge University between Tariq, a Palestinian pursuing Darryl Li • 13 min read
Current Analysis Pakistan, the Army and the Conflict Within Pakistan’s generals are besieged on all sides. Like never before, they are at odds with their own rank and file. According to the New York Times, the discontent with the top brass is so great as to evoke concerns of a colonels’ coup. The army also is losing support from its domestic political allies Pervez Hoodhboy, Zia Mian • 12 min read
Current Analysis The Reawakening of Nahda in Tunisia Casbah Square in Tunis has the feel of the morning after. Strewn around the plaza are the odd, drooping Tunisian flag and other relics of the mass demonstrations that forced the fall of the ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January and then two “interim governments” deemed too closely associate Graham Usher • 17 min read
Current Analysis Egypt Without Mubarak Save the worsening snarls of traffic, March 19 was a near perfect day in Egypt’s capital city of Cairo. The sun shone gently down upon orderly, sex-segregated queues of Egyptians who stood for hours to vote “yes” or “no” on emergency amendments to the country’s constitution. Although there have been Joshua Stacher • 19 min read
MER Article Hizballah in the Sights Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel (Free Press, 2010). Lara Deeb • 20 min read
MER Article What Does the Gama`a Islamiyya Want Now? In the early 1990s, the security forces of Egypt were embroiled in a low-grade civil war with the Gama‘a Islamiyya (Islamic Group), an uncompromising outfit committed to the violent overthrow of the government. The Gama‘a, like the even more radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Takfir wa al-Hijra, Ewan Stein • 14 min read
MER Article The Bitter Harvest Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, is a nervous city. In the past, Quetta was a provincial capital where people were accustomed to taking leisurely walks on Jinnah Road, the main boulevard of the city, gazing at shop windows and haggling over the goods on display. Young Stephen Dedalus • 14 min read
