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A few months after the first democratic elections were held in Tunisia, a question that still hovers over this post-revolution political sphere is: Why did the Islamists win about 40 percent of the seats in the Constituent Assembly?

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Jonathan Brown Carnegie Paper, December 2011

As expect  ed, Egypt’s first parliamentary election after the overthrow of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak confirmed the popularity and organizational strength of the Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party, which won 77 of the 156 parliamentary seats contested in the first electoral round. Surprisingly, it also revealed the unexpected strength of the Salafi alliance, dominated by the al-Nour party, which secured 3  3 seats. Much to the discomfort of secular Egyptians and Western governments, Islamist parties now dominate the Egyptian political scene.

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By Ursula Lindsey

The Faculty of Letters, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Manouba, in northeastern Tunisia, has been closed for almost two weeks, paralyzed by a standoff between Islamist protesters who say the university is violating their religious rights, and administrators and professors who say academic freedom is under attack.

In recent months, the university has become the epicenter of a showdown between religious and secular elements in the country

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As we await the results, what may be more important than the size of the
Salafist presence in the next parliament is their results compared to

Door: Nadia Fadil

Tegen deze achtergrond van ineenstortende zekerheid, gaan de laatste jaren steeds meer stemmen op die de noodzaak van ‘nieuwe zekerheden’ vurig bepleiten. Steeds vaker wordt de noodzaak beklemtoond de verworvenheden van ‘onze beschaving’ te beschermen. Zeker in het licht van aanvallen zoals die van 9/11 die, als een regelrechte aanval op ‘onze normen en waarden’ en ‘way of life’ worden gezien. Hierbij verschijnt ‘de (fundamentalistische) islam’ dan ook als de nieuwe, bedreigende ander. Als een mogelijke vijfde colonne, die onze democratieën van binnenuit zou kunnen bedreigen en opheffen.

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Pakistan is too often portrayed in flawed and reductive ways that flatten its complexity and offer misleading guidance to policy-makers. This makes it all the more important to acknowledge some difficult trFor even leaving aside the military, there are colossal obstacles in Pakistan both to the creation a truly representative democracy and to economic and social progress. These obstacles are bound up both with the deep conservatism of most of the population, and with the entrenched power of local kinship groups and the landowning and urban bosses who lead them.uths about the country, says Anatol Lieven.
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By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - After a prolonged lull, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a series of covert operations in the rugged Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan following strong tip-offs that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been criss-crossing the area in the past few weeks for high-profile meetings in militant redoubts.
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Sayyid Qutb was executed in 1966 for his role in a failed conspiracy against the Nasser regime. Yet his call for Muslims to replace the sovereignty of man with that of God continues to haunt Egyptian state authorities. On Feb. 8, 2010, following a controversial election for the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide post, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak regime arrested three prominent Brothers belonging to the movement's conservative wing -- ‘Isam al-‘Aryan, Muhiy Hamid, and ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Barr -- accusing them of belonging to a radical organization inspired by the thinking of Sayyid Qutb, the prominent ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood. Almost certainly, the arrested men did not belong to a clandestine organization dedicated to violent political change. Nevertheless, by their own admission they upheld Qutb as the embodiment of the Islamist movement. In so doing, they allowed the Egyptian government to peg the Muslim Brotherhood as a movement that harbors revolutionary intent.
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Thursday, September 11, 2008
On the Seventh Anniversary of September 11: Time to Declare the original al-Qaeda Defeated