Here is a short audio podcast not to be missed from Lawrence Wright on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
He says what I've been saying, and of course he's Lawrence Wright.
"We don't really know what size of a constituency they have," he says. "Other organized opposition parties [have] been so crippled by the Mubarak administration — and haven't been allowed to function and organize — so they simply haven't had a chance to get their roots out among the people. If the Mubarak regime comes down, which seems likely, there needs to be a period of time where people actually have the time to organize new parties with new candidates. One of the real problems in Egypt is [that there just] aren't very many democrats. They haven't had that experience and they're going to have to have it in an extremely compressed period of time."
It's really too bad that Gross is so underinformed. This guy is a world class scholar and she couldn't get into the dynamics of the history, but it is good that Qutb came up.
Recent Comments