Egypt needs to chart a way forward away from extremism and autocracy -FT

In the run-up to President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s White House meeting next week with The Donald, the global press is going to be putting Egypt under a microscope and dissecting us to learn more about our anti-democratic, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ, anti-capitalist, anti-everything authoritarian hearts. That process began yesterday with none other than the Financial Times:

The view that Egyptian leadership is in control is not borne out by the pile-up of policy debris, David Gardner writes in The Financial Times. He suggests: “If Egypt cannot chart a way forward between extremism and autocracy its prospects, as well as those of a region in turmoil, are bleak… Encouraging authoritarian rule risks taking the country so far backwards that it risks joining the pyre of failing states in the region. Except Egypt is not just another state.”