Published date: 12 January 2021 10:57 UTC | Last update: 2 months 2 weeks ago
The question of what could have been looms heavily over Victor Willi s new history of the Muslim Brotherhood
Senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member Sobhi Saleh is seen behind bars during a verdict and sentencing session of a retrial for him and other Brotherhood members in Cairo on 11 September, 2019 (AFP)
One of the oddly difficult truths to grasp about the Arab uprisings is that they did not have to be the failure they appeared to be.
When looking back on major historical events in an effort to understand them, we intuitively tend towards teleological interpretations that ascribe eternal essences to protagonists, whose actions in particular circumstances could only have resulted in the events that happened.