Over the past two years, much of foreign media and punditry have had a disproportionate focus on Egypt’s Islamists movements (particularly the Muslim Brotherhood) compared to any writings, academic or journalistic, on Egypt’s opposition. Some of that, of course, is understandable. The greatest hope, and fear, effectively lay with the Islamists. It was finally their moment of truth, answering the long-suspended question of whether or not all the anti-democracy and anti-human rights claims against them were essentially hyperbolic or in some way justified. They were the mystery that was finally surfacing and also evolving, rapidly and towards uncertain directions, as well as an increasingly fashionable subject of writing. In some ways, they still are.
But the second reason for this disproportionate interest in Islamists was the relative lack of interest in, if not even scorn for, some of the alternative opposition. For many, the opposition pretty much represented a considerably weak, largely immaterial, and very disorganized, incoherent entity whose influence on Egyptian politics was hardly worthy of interest. True influence was with the Islamists and the military, observers quipped, and they were not entirely wrong in that account. Secular and progressive political groups remained largely underdeveloped in street presence and internal organizational development, they lacked mutual coordination and alliance, were vague in messaging and effectively were presented to the public as just the non-Islamists rather than having their own complete project.
