Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak (review)

It is hard to imagine a timelier book than Egypt on the Brink. Written as a guide for the general public, the author defines the work as "a multi-disciplinary attempt to tell the story of the Egyptians, a people, and how they — and their society — have changed" over the past half-century (p. 8). The result is an elegantly written and insightful analysis of the fissures and discontents of contemporary Egypt. The book's central theme is a gloomy one; that in various areas of life — internal political life, international standing, economic equity and wellbeing, social integration and harmony — the recent history of Egypt is one of regression and decline. Containing considerable information drawn from academic studies and the press, the Notes also merit close reading.

Chapters One and Two are primarily historical, the former an account of Egypt's modern history from the 19^th to the mid-20^th century, the latter an overview of the transformations brought by the Revolution of 1952. While acknowledging the economic inequality of the pre-1952 period and the political despotism of the Nasser years, these chapters are a nostalgic lament both for the relative political freedom and cultural vibrancy of the liberal era of the parliamentary monarchy, and for Egypt's heroic age under Nasser when a sweeping reconstruction of internal life was attempted and when Egypt became the leader of Arab nationalism. Simultaneously liberal and Nasserist in perspective, the work measures Egypt's subsequent regression against the dual (idealized) benchmarks of the liberal era, when cosmopolitan Egypt was fully part of the world, and the Nasser period, when anti-imperialist Egypt meant something in the world.

The five topical chapters that follow deal, respectively, with the revival of Islamism since 1970, Egypt's free-market economic orientation under Sadat and Mubarak, the status of Egyptian Christians, the Mubarak years, and the contemporary conditions of Egyptian youth. Although noting some of the positive social features in the recent growth in Muslim religious sentiment and expression, the overall impression left by Chapter Three is of the Islamist phenomenon as an undifferentiated and menacing threat to Egyptian social unity and progress. Chapter Four, on economic trends, documents the growth of economic inequality since Sadat's "Opening" of the 1970s, the growth of the gap between beneficiaries of the Opening and the bulk of the population, and the resultant lack of legitimacy of the free-market capitalism in the eyes of many Egyptians. Chapter Five, on Egyptian Christians, focuses on the declining position of Christians in public life since the Nasser period and the consequent psychological separation of Christians from Egypt's Muslim majority. "The Mubarak Years," Chapter Six, is a devastating portrait of political stagnation and loss of international influence on the part of an increasingly aged and isolated regime. Its conclusion, that "[t]he regime is potentially close to a tipping point" (p. 194), is apt. Chapter Seven, "Young Egyptians," once again emphasizes alienation, here of younger Egyptians from the society of their elders, and deals with their recent efforts to create alternative spaces maintained primarily through the media. The work's conclusion offers some speculation regarding the probable course of Egypt after Mubarak. Its prediction that "the dynamics at the top of Egypt's political hierarchy will be determined by the military establishment's course of action" (p. 232), at present seems to be being borne out by events.

As is the case with any work of this scope, there are problematic aspects. Specialists will find some of its interpretations about the Egyptian past, such as its attribution of part of the reason for the recent Islamist surge to Egypt's period of Shi'ite dominance under the Fatamids (pp. 78-79), to be questionable. The generalization that Nasser "failed to convert his revolution into a state" (p. 68) is puzzling; as the work clearly shows, Nasser may have created too much of a state. The lengthy chapter on the Islamist movement does not...