Abstract
In just 18 days in January and February 2011, Egyptians succeeded in mobilizing a popular movement that demanded, first, serious political reform and then the overthrow of the authoritarian regime that had ruled the country for 57 years. Although attacked and intimidated, the protesters held their ground on Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, which ironically was named by the former regime to celebrate Egypt’s liberation from the monarchy and the British. The protesters displayed their demands on the tallest building on the square: the resignation of the president, dissolution of the two chambers of parliament, abolition of the emergency law, the formation of a transitional national unity government, a revision of the constitution, and instant trials of those responsible for the killing of protesters. There was nothing about specific policies to be pursued, no nationalism, and no mention of God or religion. The demands were institutional and procedural and read like a summary of liberalist theory of transition.
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Notes
Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 [1962]).
Gudrun Krämer, Hasan al-Banna (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), pp. 112–114.
Barbara Zöllner, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (London: Taylor &; Francis, 2009).
Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, al-Mar’a al-muslima fi’l-mujtama al-muslim (Cairo: al-Markaz al-Islami, 1995).
See Bruce Rutherford, Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), chapter 3;
Gudrun Krämer, Gottesstaat als Republik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999).
Nathan Brown and Amr Hamzawy, The Draft Party Platform of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Carnegie Papers, Middle East Series 89 (2008).
See, for example, ibid., chapter 2, p. 12. This is certainly a reaction to constant pressure on the judiciary, including the Supreme Constitutional Court, particularly in issues of political sensitivity; cf. for example, Tamir Moustafa, “The Political Role of the Supreme Constitutional Court: Between Principles and Practice,” in Judges and Political Reform in Egypt, ed. Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), esp. pp. 91, 99.
Olaf Farschid, “Hizbiya: Die Neuorientierung der Muslimbruderschaft Ägyptens in den Jahren 1984 bis 1989,” Orient 30/1 (1989), pp. 53–73.
Cf. Ran Hirschl, “Juristocracy vs. Theocracy: Constitutional Courts and the Containment of Sacred Law,” Middle East Law and Government 1 (2009), pp. 129, 141ff.
For the debate on the role and future of article 2 after the 2011 revolution see the contributions in Cornells Hulsman (ed.), The Sharia as the Main Source of Legislation? The Egyptian Debate on Article II of the Egyptian Constitution (Marburg: Tectum, 2012).
In the 2011 constitution, article 4 granted al-Azhar consultative power in the legislation procedure concerning issues related to Islam: cf. Mathias Rohe, “Verfassungsrechtliche Entwicklungen in der arabischen Welt: Das Verhältnis von Staat und Religion am Beispiel Ägyptens und Tunesiens,” in Schriften zum Islamischen Recht, ed. Bruno Menhofer and Dirk Otto (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), pp. 113–138. There was a dispute then as to whether this would only concern legislation or whether it would also have an impact on the role of the Supreme Constitutional Court.
Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron, Le politique à l’épreuve du judiciaire: la justice constitutionelle en Égypte (Brussels: Bruylant, 2003), pp. 339–394.
Hatem Ellisie, “Rule of Law in Egypt,” in Understandings of the Rule of Law in Various Legal Orders, ed. Matthias Koetter and Gunnar Folke Schuppert, SFB 700 (Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit) working paper series no. 5 (Berlin, 2010), pp. 11f, available at http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/17138089/Ellisie+Egypt.pdf. A systematic reporton administrative violations of the rule of law is given by Negad Mohamed El-Borai, “Government’s Non-Execution of Judicial Decisions,” in Bernard-Maugiron (ed.), Judges and Political Reform, p. 199.
Cf. Ahmad al-Raysuni, Imam al-Shatibi’s Theory of the Higher Objectives and Intents of Islamic Law (London: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2005).
Cf. Mathias Rohe, Das islamische Recht: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011), pp. 153, 209, 289.
Insofar as the situation, for example, of Ahmadis, Baha’is, and Evangelical Christians does not change; for the nonrecognition of such religions and its legal impact cf. Johanna Pink, Neue Religionsgemeinschaften in Ägypten (Würzburg: Ergon, 2003), esp. p. 95.
Cf. Mathias Rohe, “Islam and Freedom of Religion,” in Media Power and Religions, ed. Manfred Pirner and Johannes Lähnemann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 27, 29ff.
Ibid., chapter 6, pp. 74–76. See Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, “Egypt’s Ulama in the State, in Politics, and in the Islamist Vision,” in Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law and the Politics of Administration in Egypt and Iran, ed. Said Arjomand and Nathan Brown (New York: State University of New York Press, 2012), pp. 279–302.
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© 2015 Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann
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Rohe, M., Skovgaard-Petersen, J. (2015). The Ambivalent Embrace of Liberalism: The Draft Program of the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt. In: Hatina, M., Schumann, C. (eds) Arab Liberal Thought after 1967. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137551412_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137551412_11
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