“every fork in the road Nasser went left, Al-Sadat went right, and Mubarak says, "Don't move.” — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Nasser taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunists, and hypocrites.” — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“September 2011 Salafis were calling for the covering of Egypt’s pharaonic monuments because they were an affront to its Islamist identity.” — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The government must rethink its strategy toward the Bedouin, or else those in the area who are armed will turn it into… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“the way Islamism has infested the political system, again a warning for the Middle East. Perhaps the most striking example is the… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Of course, it's easy to be overly optimistic when it comes to Egyptian reform. The country has a history of false promises… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“In Southeast Asia, the Wahhabization process began in the 1960s, when the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood were the great intellectual fashion… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“That constriction of discourse cannot be unconditionally accepted, but the problem in condemning it at the present time is that the group… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Not that anyone needs much of an excuse to stay away from Cairo, with its chronic traffic congestion, choking pollution, and legions… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The situation is complicated, though, in a country like Tunisia, where sudden and dramatic change in favor of Western-style democracy at this… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“in retrospect Nasser's pan-Arabism seems to have given Arabs little to celebrate, it is certain nothing good can come from the Arab… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“If the Assad regime in Syria were to fall, the likeliest outcome would be a prolonged and bloody civil war. The last… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“And the president, Dr. Ismail Lutfi, was—as he would proudly tell me—a graduate of a hardline Wahhabi institution, namely Riyadh’s Imam Muhammad… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The simplistic nature of Islamism means that it thrives on victim narratives and clearly identifiable enemies. When there is no such simple,… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Syria, there are clear red lines when it comes to politics and religion, but people’s personal habits are not considered part of… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Egypt is now a deeply conservative country that, over the past two decades, has so pervasively succumbed to the Wahhabi customs promoted… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Nationwide, the Islamists have whipped up such a wave of Islamist hysteria in this once liberal country that women are caned in… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“fact is that moderate Islamism is a myth. There are, to be sure, more than a billion moderate Muslims—people who pray five… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“After the fall of Mubarak, Salafist groups had been sprouting throughout Egypt. Nobody knew where they came from. But they were blamed… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Kelantan, where it has ruled the longest, for instance, bizarrely has segregated supermarket checkout queues, which is unheard-of even in Saudi Arabia.… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“From the outset, it was clear to me that Boot’s dictum was wishful thinking. Already the Bush doctrine had made a vicious… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Because Islam is so tightly bound up with Acehnese exceptionalism, it has since the introduction of Islamic law become the territory’s version… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“After that fateful day of July 23, 1952, the "Paris Along the Nile," as Cairo was lovingly renamed by the foreigners who… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“But in 1954 the organization was banned, then almost annihilated by Nasser. He claimed they tried to assassinate him while he delivered… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“A secularist but not an atheist, he used the example of the Prophet, who according to tradition did not fast in Ramadan… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Give them an inch, and they take the whole playing field and then change the rules of the game to make sure… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“best soldiers to the southern Arabian tribal country and thus leaving Egypt defenseless in 1967, was not only a tactical military miscalculation;… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The irony lost on all, though, is that the Syrian regime is quietly keeping alive the traditions that Moubayed lamented had vanished,… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“reminded Al-Aswany of this before I read back to him what he had said about Egypt in the same interview with Egypt… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“This is the story everywhere in the wider Muslim world. Students go to the Middle East on generous scholarships and study Salafi… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“It just means that for liberal democracy to develop in the Muslim Middle East, it will take much more than merely removing… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The Arab Spring has been a dismal failure. All indications are that what comes next will be significantly worse than what existed… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Back in Egypt, Nasser, like a petty village leader, promoted his cronies according to their personal loyalty rather than on their merits.… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Clerics and senior government officials are promoting temporary marriage as a way to deal with the undeniable realities and to stem the… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Tunisia settled into its modern, secular identity in the 1990s under Bourguiba’s successor, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Appalled by Bourguiba’s decision to… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Malaysia, then, offers an example of what happens when socalled moderate Islamists are appeased by the liberal elite. They provide cover for… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“So effective has their propaganda been that an American official was moved to describe the Brotherhood as “a loose network of secular… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“But if Nasser's gift to the Egyptians was their sense of pride, Mubarak's curse is to have created a cultural climate where the only… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“However, since the Syrian regime is even less transparent than the NGOs, we have no way of knowing that, either.” — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“After the attack, it was again the image of the country, rather than the well-being of those who had been caught up in the… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Because Islam is so tightly bound up with Acehnese exceptionalism, it has since the introduction of Islamic law become the territory’s version of political… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“After all, there is in more stable, developed countries like the United States and Britain a quantifiably more vicious culture of child abuse. A… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“After that fateful day of July 23, 1952, the "Paris Along the Nile," as Cairo was lovingly renamed by the foreigners who flocked to… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Mansour earned the nickname "Al-Turbiny," from the air-conditioned express trains linking Cairo with Egypt's second city Alexandria, whose roofs were the favored location for… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The situation is complicated, though, in a country like Tunisia, where sudden and dramatic change in favor of Western-style democracy at this juncture does… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“Nothing gives your average bored Sunni bigot surfing the web more instant gratification than zooming in on sigeh to condemn the Shia as debauched… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“despite having a thriving gay prostitution scene, Damascus is unlike just about every other Middle Eastern city I have visited in not having any… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“The Arab Spring has been a dismal failure. All indications are that what comes next will be significantly worse than what existed before, in… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image
“An investigative report by the BBC in July 2007 found that thousands of young Egyptian men try to enter Europe illegally every year. Sometimes… — John R. Bradley Copy Share Image