Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. By David Kirkpatrick. Viking; 384 pages; $28. Bloomsbury Publishing; £21.
IN 2005 a middle-aged Egyptian army officer arrived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. While taking classes at the US Army War College, the officer, a devout Muslim, sometimes led Friday prayers at the local mosque. During campus debates he took exception to those who claimed that political Islam was incompatible with democracy. In his final paper he argued that Arab democracies must include Islamists, even “radical ones”.
So when the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main Islamist movement, won the country’s first free and fair elections in 2011-12, the officer, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, seemed keen to work with the group. He was appointed defence minister and quickly gained the trust of the new president, Muhammad Morsi, a Brotherhood leader. Mr Sisi would show up at meetings with his sleeves rolled...
from The Economist: Books and arts https://ift.tt/2OpTGPX
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