Name: ______
What Is Going On In Egypt?
December 8th, 2012 7:08pm (http://www.edusolution.com/myblog/?p=3297)
For many of us who have been following events in Egypt since the Arab Springthat began two years ago, the situation seems to be getting from bad to worse. In the wake of the revolution that toppled the longtime dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected as the new government. Mubarak had been president since 1981 and only left after the people forced him out.
After a period of relative calm, over the past two weeks Egypt has once again erupted as tens of thousands of people have been protesting against the new government and calling on President Morsi to step down. This is because President Morsi has issued a new decree that concentrated more power in his hands. Many of his opponents believed that he is on his way to become another dictator in Egypt. This they say would be a betrayal of the democratic future that most Egyptians expect following the revolution.
In addition, anew Constitution has just been drafted and will be put to a referendum in a few days’ time. The constitution was drafted mostly by members of President Morsi’s party which is largely made up of Muslim fundamentalists. Many Egyptians opposed several articles in the Constitution especially those that denied basic rights to women as well as freedom of religion and the press.
Many critics in the West are citing the confusion in Egypt to demonize others as being incapable of building a democratic society. But such argument is a profound misreading of the situation in Egypt. Democracy is a messy business and is not built overnight.
ProfessorStephen Walt of Harvard University reminds us that expecting quick results in Egypt is to forget our own history.
What’s going on in Egypt? The short answer is: precisely what we should have expected. What is happening is obviously disturbing, but it is also a completely predictable and probably protracted struggle for power. And unless the “Arab spring” is quite atypical, the political revolutions that began two years ago are going to take years to work out. . . .
The history of modern revolutions confirms this view. The American Revolution was comparatively benign (though it did involve both a war of independence and the persecution and expulsion of the defeated loyalists), but more than a decade passed from the signing of the original Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. The original Articles of Confederation (1783) proved wholly inadequate, and the fight over the new Constitutions was protracted and sometimes bitter. Nor should we forget that the Founding Fathers sometimes saw each other as near-treasonous, and disputes between different factions were even more contentious than the partisan wrangling we observe today.
The French Revolution was equally protracted: it began in 1789, but Louis XVI was not deposed until 1792 and revolutionary France was convulsed by recurring struggles for power and several distinct governments and constitutions before Napoleon Bonaparte finally seized power in 1799 and eventually declared himself Emperor. By this standard, Egypt has a very long way to go.
The Russian Revolution was also a prolonged process: the Romanov dynasty was initially replaced by Kerensky’s Provisional Government in March 1917, which was then ousted by the Bolshevik coup in November. But the Bolsheviks had to fight and win a protracted civil war and repel several foreign interventions before they consolidated their hold on power, a process not completed until the mid-1920s. Infighting among the Soviet leaders continued until Stalin was able to eliminate his various rivals and emerge supreme in the early 1930s.
The revolutions in Turkey, Mexico, China, and Iran were also violent and uncertain affairs, and in each case it tookyearsbefore the final form of the new regime was reasonably well-established. Mao Zedong famously said that “a revolution is not a dinner party,” and one might merely add that they are rarely, if ever, short.
------
1. Who was the President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011? ______
2. What is the name of the movement that ousted the previous President? ______
3. Who is now the President of Egypt? ______
4. What are the people of Egypt about to vote about? ______
5. List some of the events Professor Walt named in explaining what is happening in Egypt.
· ______
· ______
· ______
6. Explain the meaning of Mao’s quote.
______
7. In your own words, what is happening in Egypt?
______