HLS Visiting Professor Chibli Mallat recently published an op-ed in the Egyptian newspaper Ahram Online entitled “Why and How SCAF must fold in Egypt.”
Mallat argues that, although the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) can be largely credited with keeping the Egyptian people’s revolution (against the regime of former military leader and president Hosni Mubarak) nonviolent, it is now time for SCAF to disband, and to be replaced by a transitional government of the revolutionary forces.
Mallat writes: “With the loss of thirty innocent lives in the Maspero massacre on October 9, and the ongoing Tahrir square violence against unarmed demonstrators, the brutal undemocratic character reminiscent of the old regime is being cruelly exposed. The government did well to resign. SCAF is now alone. If it appoints another nondescript government, it will fare no better. If it appoints a military government, it will have transformed itself into a junta of the worst type, bringing the country into huge turmoil over months, while finding itself completely isolated domestically and internationally.”
Read the entire piece here.
Mallat is HLS’s Custodian of the Two Holy Places Visiting Professor of Islamic Legal Studies, as well as the Presidential Professor of Law and Professor of Middle Eastern Law and Politics at University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. He is the author of several books, including “Iraq: Guide to Law and Policy” (Aspen/Kluwer Law International, Boston, 2009) and “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law” (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007).