Can Secularists Reclaim Egypt Revolution?

It has not been a very good 18 months for Egypt’s secular revolutionary political forces. After standing at the forefront of an unprecedented and triumphant popular uprising last year, which led to the ousting of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, their star rapidly dimmed. In the wake of the revolution, Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the even-more-conservative Salafists used their existing grassroots networks to dominate parliamentary elections last winter while post-revolutionary secular parties struggled to catch up. Presidential elections earlier this summer were an even bigger disaster: the  non-Brotherhood pro-revolution camp divisively split itself between multiple candidates, producing a thoroughly Mubarak-era runoff choice between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy and Mubarak’s former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq representing the military-backed deep state.