On 30 June 2012, Muhammad Morsi became Egypt’s first-ever democratically elected president. His triumph seemed to confirm that the Muslim Brotherhood were the real winners of the Arab Spring as it had played out in Cairo. Yet exactly one year later, on 30 June 2013, millions of Egyptians took to the streets to demand Morsi’s removal from office. Three days later, that wish was granted when the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, stepped in to force Morsi from power. What had gone wrong? How did it come to this? Why did the Brotherhood fail? To answer these and other questions arising from Egypt’s abortive revolution, Dr Hazem Kandil will explore the ideology and strategy of the Brotherhood, drawing on the insights of his latest book, Inside the Brotherhood (Polity, 2015).

About the speaker

Dr Hazem Kandil is the Cambridge University Lecturer in Political Sociology and Fellow of St Catharine’s College. He is also the author of Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (Verso, 2012), and The Power Triangle: Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).