Hazem Kandil is a fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and a lecturer in political sociology. Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt came out in 2012.
Islamism was born in Egypt in 1928. And it was in Egypt, 85 years later, that the first successful uprising against an Islamist government occurred. The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood is a momentous event: but to foreign observers, the army’s intervention overshadowed everything else.
Evaluating a still unfolding revolt is like trying to shoot a moving target. Yet there has been at least one steady pattern in Egypt over the past two years: subversion has constantly outpaced efforts to consolidate a new regime.
It is no longer fashionable to describe the events of 3 July in Cairo as a ‘second revolution’, but to describe them as a counter-revolution presupposes that there was a revolution in the first place.
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