The Middle East Uprising: Why now? What next?
Date: Mid-March 2011, 6:45pm (for a 7pm start) to 8:30pm
Venue: Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN.
Speaker: Karl Sharro
Download PDF of transcript of Karl Sharro's talk
The events in Egypt have come as a surprise to most, with even President Obama questioning US intelligence agencies’ failure to predict the uprisings in the Arab world.
The drive behind the January 25 revolt is a genuinely popular democratic movement, but its outcome is still unclear. Who are the main players determining events – the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, young protesters, workers, the elite? And how should we characterise what Twitter calls #Jan25 in the absence of obvious leadership of the movement?
The uprising seems also to put paid to the idea that democracy is exclusively Western, and not a universal aspiration. Yet the reaction from Western elites has been ambivalent at best: can Egyptians bring about a ‘stable democracy’? Fears about an Islamist takeover are voiced as much by Westerners as by President Mubarak. What do we make of calls from foreign ministries for an ‘orderly transition’, especially in light of Western powers’ history in the region? What does the revolt mean for the balance of power in the region, and for American hegemony?
Readings
The Egyptian uprising: on the universal aspiration for freedom, by Karl Sharro, 4 February 2011
Why Tunis, Why Cairo?, by Issandr El Amrani, London Review of Books, February 2011
The Egyptian uprising: ‘why now?’ and ‘what next?’, by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked-Online, 8 February 2011
Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood, by Scott Atran, The New York Times, 2 February 2011
Middle East protests bigger than oil, by Daniel Ben-Ami, 28 February 2011
A revolt for whose benefit? by Kenan Malik, Expressen, 10 February 2011
