Morsi, as a result of his recent constitutional declaration, has been accused of attempting to acquire dictatorial powers.  The Roman Republic, however, instituted dictatorship as a regular constitutional tool to deal with war time emergency.  Does the Roman Republic’s institutionalization of the dictatorship provide any lessons for the current Egyptian transition?

Egypt is in the grip of another in a series of what appear to be unending crises threatening the viability of a transition to a democratic order.  This current crisis is the result of the interaction of three factors: the first is the inability of the constituent assembly to reach a consensus on provisions in the constitution dealing with the role of Islam in the state and the extent of individual freedoms.  That this should have been a stumbling block could hardly have come as a surprise to anyone with an inkling of knowledge of Egyptian political history over the last 75 years.   The second is the looming threat that the Supreme Constitutional Court could dissolve the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that because it was appointed by a parliament which was itself dissolved, it lacks valid legal authority to perform its work.  The third is the omnipresent threat of imminent economic collapse if the Egyptian state cannot reconstitute itself in a reasonably timely fashion, something that must have been a precipitating factor in President Morsi’s sweeping decrees of last week.

The problem in Egypt is that there is a giant ultimatum game going on, with the opposition threatening to deny the legitimacy of the constitution by walking out and convincing the SCC to invalidate the CA; well, it turns out that Morsi knows how to deploy a tit-for-tat strategy in the context of an ultimatum game, and people are surprised.  Hmm. 

When the Freedom and Justice Party nominated Muhammad Morsi for the Egyptian presidency, many Egyptian pundits dismissed him with the contemptuous title, “istibn,” or “the spare tire.”

My friend, Micah Schwartzman, recently posted what I thought to be a great piece by Dahlia Lithwick. Another friend, Pascale Ghazaleh, asked me why I thought it was great. Its greatness comes from her sincere call — which I read as being directed largely to the North American Jewish community — that it is time to listen. As she put it, “bombing people to oblivion” is not a solution.

Civil society groups in Egypt have released a letter addressed simultaneously to Hisham Qindil, Egypt’s prime minister, and Christina La Garde, executive director of the International Monetary Fund (the “IMF”), expressing their opposition to the proposed loan.  

The Egyptian Constitutional Assembly has finally completed a draft constitution for post-revolutionary Egypt, issuing it to the Egyptian public for their consideration almost a month ago.  (An English translation of the draft may be found here.)  As is the case with everything in post-revolutionary Egypt, the draft has proven to be extremely controversial, and has elicited widespread criticism, particularly from human rights organizations for its failure to meet international norms with respects to rights of women, children and freedom of religion.  Ellis Goldberg, meanwhile, has published a lengthy and very thoughtful analysis of the draft text in two parts on his blog, Nisr al-Nasr (Part I and Part II).

My article on the impact of the upcoming 2012 US Presidential elections has just come out in the latest issue of The Islamic Monthly.  It argues that Muslims should have no expectations of change with respect to the policies they care about regardless of who wins.

The Egyptian Constitutional Assembly has posted on its Facebook Page the draft language of the new constitution’s Citizens’ Rights Provisions.  I have reproduced the draft text below:

I read Wael Gamal regularly, and while I agree with some of his positions, I disagree with others.  With respect to his latest column, the cleverly titled “Dalil al-Mu`tarid `ala Hijaj al-Muqtarid,” I have penned in this post a short reply, with the equally cleverly titled “al-Radd al-Mu`tamad `ala Dalil al-Mu`tarid `ala Hijaj al-Muqtarid”.