Best laid plans: Egypt's Islamist project on the brink

Despite decades of planning for Egypt's eventual transition into an Islamic state, only two years of post-revolution politics appear to have put paid to the Muslim Brotherhood's longed-for Islamist renaissance

Ahram Online

"As Egypt's first freely chosen president took the stage last summer, the thousands arrayed in Cairo's Tahrir Square roared their approval. After a knife's-edge vote, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi had clinched the country's most powerful civilian position – the secretive Islamist organization’s goal for over eight decades. Now, surely, an Islamic state was within its grasp.


But one year on, Morsi's unofficial inauguration in downtown Cairo seems more like the pinnacle of the Islamists' power then the emergence of a Sharia-compliant Egypt.

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood’s dream of establishing an Islamic state in Egypt is nowhere close to becoming a reality. Some experts believe that, not only has Morsi’s first year in power tarnished the image of the 85-year-old group, but that of all Islamists......"