Breaking News Dialogue: The Egyptian Revolution Event Summary by Rana B Khoury

Responding to the popular demonstrations and political upheavals that have engulfed Egypt in the past month, the Middle East Institute held a roundtable dialogue on 14 February 2011 to address the Egyptian Revolution. NUS Professors Gabriele Marranci (Sociology) and Hussin Mutalib (Political Science), and Dr Michael Vatikiotis of the Henry Dunant Centre and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, joined Middle East Institute Director Michael C Hudson to assess the significance and implications of the revolution. MEI Deputy Director Ambassador Verghese Mathews moderated the session. Each roundtable participant proffered a distinct perspective of the developments, providing the large audience of interested observers, researchers, and media representatives with comprehensive treatment of this complex issue.

Professor Hussin Mutalib initiated the discussion with an overview of the events that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who had served as president for 31 years and was toppled after 18 days of demonstration. He ascribed popular discontent – in Egypt and other Arab states– to a lack of regime legitimacy, contending that the regimes “rule but do not govern.” Accordingly, the popular movement was sustained by people across the board, not just the youth nor the Muslim Brotherhood. Mutalib cautioned, however, that the ouster of Mubarak qualifies as a ‘soft military coup,’ opening to question the nature of change in the coming months.

Professor Gabriele Marranci focused on the composition of the people’s movement, drawing upon his scholarship on Muslim youth. Yet Marranci opined that this revolution was not characterized exclusively by Islam nor even Egypt. Actively connected on Twitter, Marranci found that Egyptians were receiving support from all over the world and described the movement as a ‘world revolution.’ Furthermore, the revolution discredited the notion that Muslim societies cannot be both democratic and secular, an idea advanced by theorists such as Ernest Gellner and ascribed to by many Western observers who viewed Islam as a monolithic entity. Marranci asserted that while we may know what is to come, the events definitely destabilized the way we see the Middle East.

Hailing from a career in journalism and mediation in Southeast Asia, in addition to familial and scholarly roots in Egypt, Dr Michael Vatikiotis drew important parallels to the Indonesian revolution, thereby downplaying the “much-touted Islamic threat unleashed by the revolution.” Echoing the Indonesian model, in an open system Egypt could see more Islamic political platforms but the fanatical fringe would remain marginal. The impact of the Egyptian revolution, however, may be even more profound, as the Arab world is connected by language, faith, and ethnicity, in ways that Southeast Asia is not.

Expounding on the regional impact, Professor Michael C Hudson addressed the ‘contagion effect’ describing the spread of popular demonstrations across the Arab world. Noting that the terminology we use influences the conclusions we draw, Hudson juxtaposed this Western branding invoking undesirable images with the terms used by commentators in the Arab world such as a ‘blossoming’ or ‘renaissance.’ His analysis conjured evocative questions about the popular movements. Were they a ‘disease’ or a ‘cure’? Are they monolithic or locally distinct? Is the outbreak of one protest related to, or caused by another? Finally, are the various Arab countries equally ‘susceptible’ to the contagion? Hudson evoked a question posed by Shakespeare: “what’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” His eloquent reply: “to my mind the fragrance of jasmine, lotus, and – yes – roses is wafting around the Arab world.”