What Killed Egyptian Democracy? — A Boston Review Forum

Jan 21

This month’s issue of the Boston Review’s Forum was dedicated the question of what went wrong in the Egyptian transition.  I had  the honor of writing the principal piece, which elicited thoughtful responses from my colleagues, Ellis Goldberg, Andrew March, Nathan Brown, Akbar Ganji, Anne Norton and Micheline Ishay. Space restraints, of course, did not allow them a full response, nor me a response to their limited responses, but nevertheless, I thought the editors of the Boston Review did an excellent job putting this forum together. I would like to thank them for inviting me to write the piece, inviting these distinguished scholars to respond, and producing an excellent final version for the public. Finally, I’d like to thank Nader Hashimi and Danny Postel for inviting me to the University of Denver to lecture on Egypt’s transition. That lecture ultimately give birth to this forum.

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Ian Shapiro and “Power-Based Resourcism”

Dec 01

I just finished reading a recent article of the Yale Political Science Professor, Ian Shapiro, “On Non-Domination,” in which he contrasts his view of “power-based resourcism” and non-domination as the bedrock of justice to egalitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. 

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“Legitimacy, Revolution and State Formation in Sunnī Poltical Theology”

Aug 09

I contributed a post to There is Power in the Blog: Political Theology with the title “Legitimacy, Revolution and State Formation in Sunni Political Theology” that discusses the tension in Sunni political theory between the idea of the legitimate ruler and the usurper, and applies these concepts to the current crisis in Egypt.

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A brief case for rights-minimalism in developing countries

Nov 30

Egyptians are on the verge of civil war because they cannot seem to agree on the text of a constitution.  For the most part, the disagreements that threaten to tear the country apart center around rights, more specifically, the role of religion in the modern Egyptian state.  This debate essentially finds most traction in two contexts, gender rights, and freedom of religion. 

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Hobbes, Rawls and Egypt

Nov 28

A few days ago, I tweeted that Egypt was in a Hobbesian moment, not a Rawlsian one, and that Egypt’s draft constitution ought to be evaluated in light of that fact. 

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Sovereign Immunity, Islamic Law and Morsi’s Decrees

Nov 28

Does Islamic law have a conception of sovereign immunity? Yes, and it is derived from the notion of the public official as a public agent.  This relationship defines both why it is obligatory to obey lawful acts of a public agent.– because one is always bound by the lawful acts taken by one’s own agent — and why one is not bound by the ruler’s unlawful acts — because an agent’s unlawful acts are beyond the scope of his agency and are thus that of a private person and not of an agent. 

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