In 2011 Egypt, like many Arab countries, took part of what the media has called the Arab Spring. Arab Spring “is a term for the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010.” (Arab Spring) On December 17th, 2010 in Tunisia, Mohammad Bouazizi, in protest of governmental corruption and the bleak economic opportunities, emulsified himself. He had been beaten and ignored after a confrontation with government officials, leaving him feeling like he had no other option, but to take such extreme measures. However, Bouazizi’s protest would not be in vain, leading to mass protests in Tunisia, with many other Arab countries facing similar political and economic situations to follow. Egypt was one of those countries that took note after Bouazizi’s protests in Tunisia “on Tuesday, January 25, when -- inspired by the successful revolution in Tunisia --thousands of people began taking to the streets to protest poverty, rampant unemployment, government corruption and autocratic governance of President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for thirty years. These were the first protests on such a large scale to be seen in Egypt since the 1970s.” (Parks)
Hosni Mubarak, had ascended to power in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. By the time the Arab Spring began, Mubarak had been in power for thirty years. The Egyptian people were full of unrest due to many of Mubarak’s governmental policies as well as the bleak economic outlook that many Egyptians faced. According to an NPR report by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, “A growing number of them are fed up living in what they see as a police state under his iron-fisted rule and ...
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At the beginning of the Suez Canal crisis many individuals felt hostility towards each other and the main concern was the ownership of the Suez Canal and to who exactly would gain the authority to run it on their own accord. In 1954 Gamal Abdul Nasser came to power in Egypt, he was once formally known as an Egyptian army officer, before becoming a politician. After the attack of the Israelis in Gaza, Egypt to protect Israel from hostility the Egyptians had been putting forward against them; many Egyptians felt hatred for the Egyptian king, this led to a democratic system being built and that was how Nasser came to power in a democratic society in which he was able to play on the hearts of Arab Nationalism. When the cold war began to surface Britain asked Egypt to join an anti-soviet alliance with them in times of need, for Egyptian Suez Canal was in the authority of Britain making Egypt an ally of the United Kingdom. Nasser refused saying t...
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, born in Cairo, Egypt in 1954, is the current president of Egypt who came into office during the summer of 2014.
First, political Islam has rogue Egypt and held it down, suffocating the country, not allowing it to stand a chance. President Hosni Mubarak was ousted and people thought that Egypt was getting better. It has not been the case. While Zaki lives in faded luxury and chases women, Bothayna endures sexual harassment while working as a shop assistant to provide for her poor family after the death of her father. Meanwhile her boyfriend, Taha, son of the building's janitor, is rejected by the police and decides to join a radical Islamic group. Egypt is heading towards a bottomless abyss. Everything is controlled by the elite. Jobs are no more; it is preserved for the top. This increases the plight of the people and leads them into committing some of the acts seen in Islam as bad or as a taboo. The political elite are crashing its opponents and ensuring that whoever com...
Egypt has one of the longest histories of any nation in the world. Written history of Egypt dates back to about 5,000 years, the commencement of civilization. While there is divergence in relation to Early Egyptian times, it is said that Egypt came to be around 3200 B.C., during the reign of a king by the name of Menes and unified the northern and southern cities of Egypt into one government. In 1675 B.C., Egypt was invaded by the Hyksos, people from the east, bringing along the very first of chariots and horses ever to come across Egyptian soil. Approximately 175 years later in 1500 B.C., the Egyptians had gotten rid of the Hyksos and driven them out. In 1375 B.C., Amenhotep IV had become the king of Egypt. During his reign he eliminated the worship of Egyptian gods and initiated the idea of only worshipping one god. But after his death, his ideas were retired and old ways were reestablished. Egyptian supremacy then started to decline around 1000 B.C. Between 1000 B.C. and 332 B.C., Egypt was ruled by many such as the Libyans, Assyrians, Ethiopians, and Persians. In 640, Muslims conquered Egypt and founded the city of Cairo in 969 and deemed it as the capital of Egypt. For many centuries Egypt was ruled by Muslim caliphs. A prominent ruler of this period was Saladin, who battled the Christian Crusaders at the conclusion of the twelfth century. In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt but was then forced to withdraw in 1801 Turkish and British armed forces. In 1805 Mohamed Ali began ruling Egypt till 1848 and great changed the country in terms of modernization and its military. During Mohamed’s conquest, he borrowed a lot of money from the French and British, which later resulted in Egypt’s coloniza...
Ridel, B, 'The real losers in Egypt's uprising', The Daily Best Online, 13 February 2011. Retrieved 19 March 2011< http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-13/al-qaeda-absent-in-hosni-mubaraks-fall-and-egyptian-revolution/>
In 2010 the Middle East experienced a disturbing series of protests and riots against the government. The term Arab Spring was coined as an allusion for the 1848 revolutions that rocked the Arab world. This devastating revolution saw its inception in a chain of small scale protests for the democratization of the Arabian governments. With its start in Egypt and Tunisia it has not failed in affecting every Arab country from Libya, Sudan and Morocco in the West to Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the East. A branch of the same revolution has successfully managed to become the cause for a civil war outbreak in Syria and even stretched its influence outside the Arab world to affect Iran and Mali.
Lewis, Bernard. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years. New York: Scribner,
Early 2011 uprisings swept across the Middle East and North Africa, and many rebellions are still going on today. The Arab region has seen revolts and conflict since the 1800‘s, but only recently have these revolts been redirected to the problems of Arab society (Ghannam, J. 2011 pg 4-5)The Arab Spring Uprising was first sparked in Tunisia and eventually struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen and then spread to other countries. Citizens throughout these countries were dissatisfied with the rule of their local governments. Issues like human rights violations, political corruption, economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, dictators...
First of all, imperialism was not something the Egyptians wanted. They witnessed the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and that acted as a wakeup call. They can either keep up with the modernization of the world around them, or be overwhelmed and lost among it (Modern World History, 354). They decided to make new reforms as an attempt towards modernization. One of these attempts was the Suez Canal. It was a waterway that connected the Nile River, Mediterranean Sea, and the Red Sea. The labor costed over 100 million dollars, and it opened in 1869 (Rosenberg). The Suez Canal, along with other reforms, put Egypt in a rough economic state. The British wanted control over the canal because it was the main route to India and its other colonies. Because of the huge debt, Egypt was forced to hand the canal over to Britain. Later, in 1882, Britain gained control to Egypt itself (Modern World History, 355). Thus, Egypt was under new rule and became one of Britain’s many colonies. To sum up, Egypt created many reforms ...
There was total chaos on the roads, rallies and strikers in some places. They yelled with righteous indignation as well as raised signs to express their requirements for the government. I watched these picture on the TV on 18 December 2010 which called Arab Spring which began in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya was wave demonstrations against governments have never happened before . I think that there were two mainly causes to appear protest in some countries, and we will talk about effecting for some protest in this essay (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/arab_spring).
Maynes, Charles. "The Middle East in the Twenty-First Century." Middle East Journal 52.1 (1998): 9-16. JSTOR. Web. 6 June 2011.
The Arab world consists of twenty-two countries encompassing all of North Africa and much of the Middle East. The Arab people number over 360 million and while they share a common language, there is a surprising degree of diversity among them, whether in terms of nationality, culture, religion, economics, or politics. (McCaffrey, 3) Most inhabitants of the Ar...
Gerner, Deborah J., and Philip A. Schrodt. "Middle Eastern Politics." Understanding the contemporary Middle East. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008. 85 -136. Print.
The structure of Egyptian politics and state administration was also redefined during Ali’s rule. As the go...
...nd Politics." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Ed. Philip Mattar. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 890-895. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.