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This article examines the power of mass mobilization during the January 25 revolution in Egypt and analyzes how popular protests succeeded in toppling Mubarak's regime in eighteen days. Because the Mubarak regime rested on three pillars—the security forces, the National Democratic Party, and the military—this article paper assesses the strategies and tactics the mass uprisings used to overcome the first two pillars and neutralize the third. It views the January 25 revolution not as a sporadic act, but as a cumulative process that built up over several years of political repression, economic mismanagement, social injustice, police brutality, and political activism. This article examines the structural causes behind the revolution and the role of influential actors, opposition forces, and organizations, including the pro-change movements, the April 6 movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Popular Campaign for the Support of ElBaradei, and labor unions. It also assesses the crucial mistakes that the Mubarak r...

This paper examines the ideological and practical aspects of FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) foreign policy. In its perception and practice of foreign policy, the FIS passed through two distinct phases: as an opposition party more concerned with ideological formulations and domestic politics; and, after the crisis precipitated by cancellation of the 1991 elections, as a party that had to reformulate its foreign policy in order to gain recognition and mobilize support at the international level.

Drawing on results from a survey among members of the Muslim Brothers and the Wasat Party, Emad ElDin Shahin, Professor at the American University in Cairo and Harvard University, looks at changes in Egyptian political Islam and examines the views of mainstream Islamists of the European Union polices and initiatives in the Mediterranean. The discussion focuses on the Muslim Brothers, the country's main opposition force, and the Wasat Party, as purporting to represent an evolving Islamic centrist orientation. Despite their seemingly different orientations, the commonalities between the two groups regarding their views of the EU far outweigh their differences. Their shared Islamic frame of reference and a perceived inconsistency of EU policies in the region largely explain this similarity.

Analyzing the role of secularism and Islamism in the process of political and social change in today’s Morocco is a far more complex issue than contemporary development theory suggests. The theory assumes that religion is a traditional or, at best, a transitional, force that will wither in the process of modernization and growth of rationalism in society. In fact, the experience of the Middle East since the 1970s reveals that religion is becoming an ideological vehicle in the struggle for power. Traditional reassertions are increasingly playing a role in political and social mobilization that is inexplicable in terms of modernization theory and political change. This suggests that the phenomenon of Islamic revival may not be adequately understood or easily analyzed through a secular conceptual framework.