From NYRB, Joshua Hammer reviews The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution by Jack Shenker and Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy, ed. Dalia F. Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi. Plight of an Arab intellectual: Jonathan Guyer interviews Sonallah Ibrahim on the “beautiful generation” of the Tahrir Square revolution and how the military saved Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab world has never recovered from the loss of 1967: Fifty years after the Six-Day War, the intellectualism that once lit up the Middle East has been all but extinguished by corrupt regimes and perverse religiosity. Amr Khalifa on Egypt’s age of intellectual fascism. Maged Mandour on the absence of Arab intellectuals: A class under siege.
