Non-Islamist political forces are showing signs of being troubled by Islamists' domination - and this monopoly could be harmful for Egypt

The recent presidential decisions by President Mohamed Morsy to send Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and former Chief of Staff Sami Anan to early retirement, to appoint Mahmoud Mekky as vice president, and to cancel the supplementary constitutional declaration have been applauded by many commentators as revolutionary achievements.

Non-Islamist political forces are showing signs of being troubled by Islamists' domination - and this monopoly could be harmful for Egypt. This needs urgent action by non-Islamist forces to avoid the uncertain future of democracy in Egypt. If this does not happen soon, it will be more difficult to tackle this unhealthy political environment in the future and then put the country on the path of democracy and prosperity.

President Mohamed Morsi’s decision to dismiss several military leaders – most importantly the minister of defence, the army’s chief of staff, the commander of military police and the chief of intelligence – is a key transition in the history of civilian and military relations in Egypt.

Revolution began life as a simple word, describing the completion of a circuit. In those pre-Copernican times, lexicographers used the example of the Sun completing its “revolution” around the Earth. By the middle of the 18th century, the Earth now completed its “revolution” around the Sun, but European dictionaries also defined the word as a “change in the state of a government or country.” The Académie Française’s 1768 edition referred to the “memorable and violent changes that agitate” a country; the “revolution” of a given country was “the most memorable” change, “which brought in another order.” The Académie waited until its 1835 edition to admit that meant 1789 in France. Émile Littré, in his 1872 French dictionary, took a far more unequivocal stance: for a Frenchman, the revolution meant “the first revolution, the great revolution, that of 1789.”

Promulgated a couple of weeks before the first sitting of the post-revolution parliament, an assembly now disbanded, the law granted Cairo's prestigious religious institution considerable autonomy and gave the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar wide-ranging scope to manage internal affairs after after six decades of it being essentially annexed to the Egyptian state.

Anxiety is running high among Egypt’s liberals and secularists. President Mohamed Morsy and the Islamist constituency that elected him pose a threat to the character of the Egyptian state, according to such figures as Tahani al-Gebali and Mohamed Abou Hamed. And the threat has apparently become significantly greater now that former Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and Chief of Staff Sami Anan have departed the political scene. No matter that, until recently, the purported liberal bulwark against Muslim Brotherhood dominance was military rule. No matter that the Egyptian state has not had a secular character for decades, if at all. Such inconvenient particulars cannot obscure the broader imperative of ‘saving’ Egypt from the Brotherhood, one is told.

A few days before Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, minister of defence, commander of Egypt’s armed forces and chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), along with a large number of SCAF members were retired on 12 August, I received via email a paper by the prominent political science professor Yezid Sayigh who works at the US’s Carnegie Centre, titled "Above the State: The Officers’ Republic in Egypt," which expertly summarises the abundant literature about the nature of the Egyptian state since Anwar Abdel-Malek published his famous book about Egypt as a “military society.”

Negotiations between the Egyptian government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have resumed. On Wednesday, the IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, met President Mohamed Morsy and Prime Minister Hesham Qandil in Cairo to discuss a possible US$4.8 billion budget support loan, which the government hopes to secure before the end of the year. For the new government and its creditor-to-be, completing the deal would herald a new phase in the transition, where Egypt confronts its many challenges and sets the economy back on track. But at stake is also Egypt’s economic orientation post-Mubarak.

Most Egyptians will come to remember 13 August 2012 as more than just another long hot day of the holy month of Ramadan. Just a few hours before sunset when millions waited eagerly to break their fast, news broke out of a major development in the ongoing power struggle between two main power houses: the generals representing the country's

Egypt has a long history of distrust of opposition groups by the authorities, which at times included accusing it of disloyalty and working on behalf of foreign powers

On Monday morning, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi woke up and didn’t recognize himself in the mirror.

President Mohamed Morsi had US support before dismissing Field Marshal Tantawi, who had worked with the US for decades

President Mohamed Morsy’s recent decision to force Egypt’s most prominent military leaders into retirement has been lauded as a major step toward the demilitarization of the Egyptian state. For some optimists, his decision represents the triumph of the revolution over its adversaries inside the military establishment. There is indeed little doubt that this event will prove monumental and may be the prelude to a new era in civil-military relations in Egypt.

Last week, sixteen Egyptian soldiers were killed at a Rafah border checkpoint in a cowardly attack by militants reportedly belonging to Geishul-e-Islam and Al-Jihad (holy war) donning the mantle of al-Qaeda. The treacherous attack occurred after Egypt elected a new president loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian army received firm instructions from President Morsi and is now launching an all-out counterattack on these terrorists, who are reportedly hiding in the mountainous Sinai.

The comments made by revolutionary activists on the attack in which 16 Egyptian officers and soldiers were killed at the Karam Abu Salem checkpoint at the Egypt-Israel border are noteworthy. While some of them were confident that Israel was responsible for the attack, others were quite sure that Hamas perpetrated it.

The violence at the Nile City Towers 10 days ago left one dead and more than 22 injured, in addition to damaged property. It also created panic in the area and sparked a firestorm of rumors and speculations about the causes and possible ramifications of the incident, such as fears of more violence and worries that it signaled the beginning of the dreaded revolution of the hungry.

In a span of 10 days, militants killed 16 Egyptian guards near the Israeli border, Amr al-Bunni died trying to collect his wages from Nile City Towers, and Moaz Mohamed lost his life to a burnt shirt in Dahshur. In Egypt today, tragedy and farce are two faces of one coin.

The revolution's overriding call: "the people demand the overthrow of the regime", could mean only one thing, the dismantling of this web of inequity; yet, for the military command, which presumably saved the revolution by not shooting at the protesters (ultimately a rather short term kindness), this was a recipe for disaster.

This is the revolution of rural dwellers. Urban dwellers are more calculating, it seems. But rural folks, inside and outside the city, are in revolt.

What happened in Dahshour last week confirms that there is a deep problem in Egyptian society. What I call "the sectarian syndrome" bluntly describes the crisis between Christians and Muslims. The current environment is unhealthy to build bridges between the two sides. The reactions by President Morsi and other organisations in Egypt, such as the Shura Council (upper house of parliament) and the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights are good and necessary, but they are not enough to end the repeated clashes between the two sides in different regions, such as Koshh, Al-Zawaya Al-Hamra, Atfiah and others. There are structural changes needed to tackle the roots of the problem.