When Egypt opened its 2011-12 election season, the first election to be held since the end of the Arab Spring, the country's political atmosphere came alive with promise and debate. At the time, I lived in the coastal city of Alexandria, where "let's give them a try" had become the refrain of my religiously conservative Egyptian friends. They were referring to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood candidates who were flooding the parliamentary tickets, figures who had never before been able to challenge the military leaders who had ruled Egypt with a tight grip since the 1950s. "But they're not experienced," was the common retort of my more secular friends, many of whom went on to cast their vote for technocrat Hamdeen Sabahi in the presidential race that spring. Yet when the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi was declared the country's president in June 2012, the noisy celebrations of his jubilant supporters echoed...
