Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joel Lisonbee, Senior Associate Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Cattle auctions aren’t often all-night affairs. But in Texas Lake Country in June 2022, ranchers facing dwindling water supplies and dried out pastures amid a worsening drought sold off more than 4,000 animals in an auction that lasted nearly 24 hours – about 200 cows an hour.

It was the height of a drought that has gripped the Southern Plains for the past six years – a drought that is still holding on in much of the region in 2026.

The drought cost the agriculture industry across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas an estimated US$23.6 billion in lost crops, higher feed costs and selling off cattle from 2020 through 2024 alone. As rangeland dried out, it also fueled devastating wildfires.

Historically, droughts of this magnitude happen in the Southern Plains about once a decade, but the severe droughts of this century have been lasting longer, leaving water supplies, native rangelands and farms with little time to recover before the next one hits.

Many cattle producers and rangelands were still recovering from a severe 2010-2015 drought when a flash drought hit western Texas in spring 2020, marking the beginning of the current multibillion-dollar, multiyear and multistate drought. Ample spring rainfall in 2025 and severe flooding in central Texas that year weren’t enough to end the drought, and a powerful winter storm in late January 2026 missed the driest parts of the region.

In a recent study with colleagues at the Southern Regional Climate Center and the National Integrated Drought Information System, we assessed the causes and damage from the ongoing drought in the Southern Plains.

We found three key reasons for the enduring drought and its damage: rising temperatures and a La Niña climate pattern; water supply shortages; and lingering economic impacts from the previous drought.

Weather and climate helped drive the drought

The Southern Plains is known to be a hot spot for rapid drought development, and the ongoing drought that started in 2020 is no exception.

Documented “flash droughts” – defined as periods of rapid drought onset or intensification of existing droughts – occurred at least five times in the region from 2020 to 2025. As global temperatures rise and climates warm, research warns that the frequency and severity of flash drought events will increase.

For the southern part of the Southern Plains, winter precipitation is closely linked to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a climate pattern that affects weather around the world. Five of the past six years exhibited a La Niña pattern, which typically means the region sees winters that are warmer and drier than normal.

La Niña was likely the primary driver – although not the only driver – of the drought for Texas and southwest Oklahoma, and one of the reasons drought conditions have continued into 2026.

The Southern Plains have a long history with severe droughts. The Dust Bowl of the early 1930s may be the best-known example. But a history with drought doesn’t make it any easier to manage when crops and water supplies dry up.

Deeply rooted water shortages

The heat and dryness since 2020 have left many of the region’s rivers, reservoirs and even groundwater reserves well below average.

San Antonio’s reservoirs all reached record-low levels in 2024 and 2025, as did the Edwards Aquifer, which provides water for roughly 2.5 million people. They were still low as 2026 began. Surface water and groundwater resources across central and western Texas have been depleted to the point that even a few big storms can’t replenish them.

A few major rivers flow into the Southern Plains from other drought-affected regions. Consider the Rio Grande, which begins in Colorado and winds through New Mexico and along Texas’ southern border: Not only has the Lower Rio Grande valley in southern Texas missed out on needed precipitation this winter, so did the Rio Grande headwaters in southern Colorado.

Colorado is facing a snow drought in winter 2026, as is much of the western U.S. If it continues, there will be less snowmelt come summer to feed rivers, such as the Rio Grande, or fill reservoirs. In early February, the Elephant Butte, Amistad and Falcon reservoirs, along the Rio Grande, were only 11%, 34%, and 20% full, respectively.

Lingering economic impacts

Like water supplies, the economy doesn’t just recover when the rains return.

One of the reasons the current drought has been so costly is that parts of the region had not fully recovered from the 2010-2015 drought when the latest one began in 2020. With only a five-year break between droughts, the landscape behaved like someone with an already weakened immune system who caught a cold.

During the 2010-2015 drought, cattle producers in Texas sold off about 20% of the statewide herd as water became scarce and rangeland dried up. Rebuilding a herd after a drought is a slow process. Pasture recovery can take a year or more, and a newborn heifer will take two years to mature and produce her own first calf.

Cattle herds had still not returned to pre-2010 levels when the 2022 drought peak forced another mass sell-off. From 2020 through 2024, Texas’s herd size declined from 13.1 million to 12 million; Oklahoma’s declined from 5.3 million to 4.7 million; and Kansas’ declined from 6.5 million to 6.15 million.

Looking beyond livestock, a large percentage of the Southern Plains’ crops failed in 2022, the peak year of the drought. In Texas, 25% of the corn crop was planted but never harvested, and 45% of the soybean crop was similarly abandoned. A normal season would have yielded a $2.4 billion cotton crop in Texas, but 74% of that crop was abandoned, slashing its value to roughly $640 million.

Ending the Southern Plains drought

Is the end in sight? With La Niña fading in early 2026 and its opposite, El Niño, potentially on the horizon, there’s a chance for wetter conditions that could reduce the drought in the fall and winter months of 2026.

But the Southern Plains still have to get through spring and summer first. Ending a drought like this requires consistent precipitation over several months, and drought conditions are likely to get worse before they get better.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sixth year of drought in Texas and Oklahoma leaves ranchers bracing for another harsh summer – https://theconversation.com/sixth-year-of-drought-in-texas-and-oklahoma-leaves-ranchers-bracing-for-another-harsh-summer-275219

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

When the early 2000s hit series “The West Wing” returned on Netflix in December 2025, it spurred conversation about how the idealistic political drama would play in Donald Trump’s second term.

The series features a Democratic presidential administration led by President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, and his loyal White House staff negotiating political challenges with character, competence and a fair bit of humor.

It sparked cultural commentary long after it ceased its original run in 2005.

In 2016, The Guardian’s Brian Moylan asserted that the “The West Wing” was appealing because it portrayed “a world where the political system works. It reminds us of a time, not too long ago, when people in political office took their jobs very seriously and wanted to actually govern this country rather than settle scores and appeal to their respective bases.”

In 2025, Vanity Fair’s Savannah Walsh mused that “The West Wing” might be dismissed by younger audiences as a “form of science fiction” or lauded by the demographic currently watching “Jed Bartlet fancams scored to Taylor Swift’s ‘Father Figure’” on TikTok.

Audiences have been comfort-streaming the “The West Wing” since Trump’s first term. Interest in the series spiked after Trump’s election in 2016, and it served as an escape from the contentious 2020 campaign.

When the cast reunited at the 2024 Emmy awards, the Daily Beast’s Catherine L. Hensley remarked that the series’ “sense of optimism about how American government actually functions … rang hollow, almost like watching a show from another planet.”

Nonetheless, Collider’s Rachel LaBonte hailed its Netflix return in late 2025 as a “balm for these confusing times.”

“The West Wing’s” transition from broadcast television behemoth to “bittersweet comfort watch” in today’s streaming era reveals a lot about how much our media and political landscapes have changed in the past 25 years.

As professors of media studies and political communication, we study the fracturing of our media and political environments.

The shifting appeal of “The West Wing” during the past quarter century raises a sobering question: Is political competence and an idealized respect for democratic norms losing popularity in 2026? Or does the new political reality demand engagement with the seamier side of politics?

‘The West Wing’s’ optimistic big tent

“The West Wing” premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999, blending political intrigue with workplace drama in a formula audiences found irresistible. The show surged in viewership in its second and third seasons, as it imagined responses from a Democratic administration to the values and ideology of the newly installed Republican President George W. Bush.

But the series was undergirded by an ethic of political cooperation, reinforcing the idea that, according to Walsh, “we’re all a lot more aligned than we realize.” In 2020, Sheen observed in an interview that writer “Aaron Sorkin never trashed the opposition,” choosing instead to depict “people with differences of opinion trying to serve.”

In 2019, The New York Times observed that the “The West Wing” presented “opposition Republicans, for the most part, as equally honorable,” and noted that the show earned fan mail from viewers across the political spectrum.

At its height of popularity, episodes of “The West Wing” garnered 25 million viewers. Such numbers are reserved today only for live, mass culture events like Sunday night football.

Of course, “The West Wing” aired in a radically different television environment from today.

Despite competition from cable, that era’s free, over-the-airwaves broadcasters like NBC accounted for roughly half of all television viewing in the 2001-02 season. Currently, they account for only about 20%.

Gone are the days of television’s ability to create the “big tents” of diverse audiences. Instead, since “The West Wing’s” original airing, television gathers smaller segments of viewers based on political ideology and ultraspecific demographic markers.

Darker, more polarized media environment

The fracturing of the television audience parallels the schisms in America’s political culture, with viewers and voters increasingly sheltering in partisan echo chambers. Taylor Sheridan has replaced Sorkin as this decade’s showrunner, pumping out conservatively aligned hits such as “Yellowstone” and “Landman.”

Liberals, conversely, now see “West Wing” alumni recast in dystopian critiques of contemporary conservatism. Bradley Whitford morphed from President Bartlet’s political strategist to a calculating racist in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and a commander in “The Handmaid’s Tale’s” misogynist army.

Allison Janney, who played “The West Wing’s” earnest and scrupulous press secretary, is now a duplicitous and potentially treasonous U.S. president in “The Diplomat,” whose creator in fact got her start on “The West Wing.”

Even Sheen has been demoted from serving as America’s favorite fictional president to playing J. Edgar Hoover in the film “Judas and the Black Messiah,” whom Sheen described as “a wretched man” and “one of the worst villains imaginable.”

Television as equipment for living

Philosopher Kenneth Burke argued that stories function as “equipment for living.” Novels, films, songs, video games and television series are important because they not only reveal our cultural predilections, they shape them, providing us with strategies for navigating the world around us.

Films and series like “Get Out,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Diplomat” and “Judas and the Black Messiah” urge audiences to confront the racism and sexism ever-present in media and politics. That includes, as some scholars and viewers have noted, the often casual misogyny and second-string roles for some women and Black men in “The West Wing.”

As U.S. citizens protest authoritarianism in the streets from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, a comfort binge of a series in which the White House press secretary, as Vanity Fair said, “dorkily performs ‘The Jackal’ and doesn’t dream of restricting West Wing access – even on the administration’s worst press days” is appealing.

But indulging an appetite for what one critic has called “junk-food nostalgia for a time that maybe never even existed” may leave audience members less equipped to build the healthy democracy for which the characters on “The West Wing” always strived. Or it may invigorate them.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why ‘The West Wing’ went from a bipartisan hit to a polarized streaming comfort watch over 2 decades, reflecting profound shifts in media and politics – https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-wing-went-from-a-bipartisan-hit-to-a-polarized-streaming-comfort-watch-over-2-decades-reflecting-profound-shifts-in-media-and-politics-274173

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Many of America’s iconic holiday candies have Philadelphia or Pennsylvania roots – like Peeps on Easter, Reese’s peanut butter cups on Halloween, and a good, old-fashioned Whitman’s Sampler box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day.

As a Philadelphian and a cultural historian who teaches students about the history of American corporations, the role of the city in the nation’s food history often comes up in my class.

Philadelphia was one of the largest port cities in the U.S. through the early 20th century. Sugar and other candy ingredients were readily available from Delaware River docks. Improvements to sugar refining made the product significantly cheaper during the first half of the 19th century, while the Second Industrial Revolution, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, expanded transportation and trade.

This led to a dramatic increase in candymakers and confectioners in Philadelphia. Many, like Whitman’s Chocolates, one of the oldest still in existence, were concentrated in the Old City neighborhood.

Old City was also home to the oldest candy distributor in the country. Casani Candy Company was founded in 1865. While the company now operates across the Delaware River in Pennsauken, New Jersey, it continues to distribute hundreds of products, including Asher’s candy, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1892.

A box of chocolates

The company that would become Wilbur’s Chocolate was founded in 1865 by Henry Oscar Wilbur and Samuel Croft. After several moves, and a split between the founders in 1884, Wilbur opened a new facility in 1887 at the corner of Third and New streets, where the Chocolate Works condominiums are located today.

There, they began production of their famous Buds, made by pouring hot liquefied chocolate into molds that resembled flower buds.

Phillip Wunderle, maker of gumdrops and other candies, set up shop in North Liberties, just north of Old City, in 1871. An employee of Wunderle Candy Company named George Renninger is often credited with the invention of candy corn, the iconic Halloween staple. However, it would be a decade before this sugary treat, also called “chicken feed,” became popular.

Wunderle also employed a salesman who would go on to become a candy legend: Milton Hershey.

In 1900, Hershey revolutionized the chocolate industry by introducing the Hershey Bar, the first mass-produced milk chocolate in the United States. Seven years later, the Hershey Company introduced a bite-sized, teardrop-shaped chocolate similar to Wilbur’s buds. Legend has it that the name, Hershey’s Kisses, originated from the sound of the machine that manufactured the candies, but there were several other candies with the name that predate Hershey’s.

As Hershey grew more successful, Whitman’s looked for a way to maintain its market share. Whitman’s advertised heavily after the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century, promoted its products with suggestive ads that linked chocolate with romance.

In 1912, Whitman’s introduced its Sampler box. It became a Valentine’s Day staple, especially after it became available in a heart-shaped box – a marketing stunt that English chocolate brand Cadbury reportedly started in 1868.

Chewing gum and movie snacks

The candy market in Philly – and nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania – continued to grow during the Roaring ‘20s.

A former dairy manager at Hershey named H.B. Reese built his own candy factory in Hershey in 1926, and two years later, he introduced his famous Peanut Butter Cups. Reese’s merged with Hershey’s in 1963 and later introduced their popular candy in different holiday shapes, like Easter eggs, Christmas trees and Valentine’s Day hearts.

Another company now owned by Hershey is York Peppermint Pattie, a chocolate-covered soft mint candy introduced in 1940 in a town 40 miles south of Hershey.

Back in Philadelphia, Frank H. Fleer, an inventor of Chiclets, the peppermint- flavored candy-coated gum, founded his confectionery company in 1885 in the Fairmount neighborhood. Fleer sold the invention to the Trenton, New Jersey-based American Chicle Company in 1914. In 1923, Fleer Corporation first included sports cards with its candy, and in 1928, company accountant Walter Diemer helped perfect the formula for Dubble Bubble, the first bubble gum.

Meanwhile, Goldenberg Candy Company, which was founded in Philadelphia in 1890, introduced their Peanut Chews in 1917 as an energy source for troops during World War I. Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews are now owned by Just Born, which makes the popular Easter candy Peeps and has its headquarters in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. However, Peanut Chews are produced out of a facility in the Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia.

Further establishing southeast Pennsylvania as the chocolate capital of America was the emergence of Philadelphia-based Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company in 1909. Beginning in the mid-1920s, it began producing candy for movie concessions after being approached by Philadelphia concessions entrepreneur Jacob Beresin when some theaters placed a ban on popcorn in the 1920s, which was considered too messy. Blumenthal’s Goobers, Raisinets and Sno-Caps are still popular movie snacks, and a sweet complement to date night.

The post-World War II era brought a number of business and market changes that led many of these candy companies to move out of Philadelphia.

Yet vestiges of Philadelphia’s candy dominance can still be found around the city. For unique handmade candy this Valentine’s Day, Philly residents can visit Shane’s Confectionery, which is arguably the oldest, continuously operated candy shop in America. (There’s some debate to that claim because the space has been a candy shop since 1863, but Shane’s didn’t open until 1910.) And stop back in March to pick up some “Irish Potatoes” – coconut cream rolled in cinnamon – for St. Patrick’s Day.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Jared Bahir Browsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Philadelphia was once a sweet spot for chocolatiers and other candymakers who made iconic treats for Valentine’s Day and other holidays – https://theconversation.com/philadelphia-was-once-a-sweet-spot-for-chocolatiers-and-other-candymakers-who-made-iconic-treats-for-valentines-day-and-other-holidays-274714

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Margret Grebowicz, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Americans love dogs.

Nearly half of U.S. households have one, and practically all owners see pets as part of the family – 51% say pets belong “as much as a human member.” The pet industry keeps generating more and more jobs, from vets to trainers, to influencers. Schools cannot keep up with the demand for veterinarians.

It all seems part of what Mark Cushing, a lawyer and lobbyist for veterinary issues, calls “the pet revolution”: the more and more privileged place that pets occupy in American society. In his 2020 book “Pet Nation,” he argues that the internet has caused people to become more lonely, and this has made them focus more intensely on their pets – filling in for human relationships.

I would argue that something different is happening, however, particularly since the COVID-19 lockdown: Loving dogs has become an expression not of loneliness but of how unhappy many Americans are with society and other people.

In my own book, “Rescue Me,” I explore how today’s dog culture is more a symptom of our suffering as a society than a cure for it. Dogs aren’t just being used as a substitute for people. As a philosopher who studies the relationships between animals, humans and the environment, I believe Americans are turning to dogs to alleviate the erosion of social life itself. For some owners, dogs simply offer more satisfying relationships than other people do.

And I am no different. I live with three dogs, and my love for them has driven me to research the culture of dog ownership in an effort to understand myself and other humans better. By nature, dogs are masters of social life who can communicate beyond the boundaries of their species. But I believe many Americans are expecting their pets to address problems that they cannot fix.

Dogs over people

During the pandemic, people often struggled with the monotony of spending too much time cooped up with other humans – children, romantic partners, roommates. Meanwhile, relationships with their dogs seemed to flourish.

Rescuing shelter animals grew in popularity, and on social media people celebrated being at home with their pets. Dog content on Instagram and Pinterest now commonly includes hashtags like #DogsAreBetterThanPeople and #IPreferDogsToPeople.

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog” appears on merchandise all over e-commerce sites such as Etsy, Amazon and Redbubble.

One 2025 study found that dog owners tend to rate their pets more highly than their human loved ones in several areas, such as companionship and support. They also experienced fewer negative interactions with their dogs than with the closest people in their lives, including children, romantic partners and relatives.

The late primatologist Jane Goodall celebrated her 90th birthday with 90 dogs. She stated in an interview with Stephen Colbert that she preferred dogs to chimps, because chimps were too much like people.

Fraying fabric

This passion for dogs seems to be growing as America’s social fabric unravels – which began long before the pandemic.

In 1972, 46% of Americans said “most people can be trusted.” By 2018, that percentage dropped to 34%. Americans report seeing their friends less than they used to, a phenomenon called the “friendship recession,” and avoid having conversations with strangers because they expect the conversation to go badly. People are spending more time at home.

Today, millennials make up the largest percentage of pet owners. Some cultural commentators argue dogs are especially important for this generation because other traditional markers of stability and adulthood – a mortgage, a child – feel out of reach or simply undesirable. According to the Harris Poll, a marketing research firm, 43% of Americans would prefer a pet to a child.

Amid those pressures, many people turn to the comfort of a pet – but the expectations for what dogs can bring to our lives are becoming increasingly unreasonable.

For some people, dogs are a way to feel loved, to relieve pressures to have kids, to fight the drudgery of their job, to reduce the stress of the rat race and to connect with the outdoors. Some expect pet ownership to improve their physical and mental health.

And it works, to a degree. Studies have found dog people to be “warmer” and happier than cat people. Interacting with pets can improve your health and may even offer some protection against cognitive decline. Dog-training programs in prisons appear to reduce recidivism rates.

Unreasonable expectations

But expecting that dogs will fill the social and emotional gaps in our lives is actually an obstacle to dogs’ flourishing, and human flourishing as well.

In philosophical terms, we could call this an extractive relationship: Humans are using dogs for their emotional labor, extracting things from them that they cannot get elsewhere or simply no longer wish to. Just like natural resource extraction, extractive relationships eventually become unsustainable.

The late cultural theorist Lauren Berlant argued that the present stage of capitalism creates a dynamic called “slow death,” a cycle in which “life building and the attrition of life are indistinguishable.” Keeping up is so exhausting that, in order to maintain that life, we need to do things that result in our slow degradation: Work becomes drudgery under unsustainable workloads, and the experience of dating suffers under the unhealthy pressure to have a partner.

Similarly, today’s dog culture is leading to unhealthy and unsustainable dynamics. Veterinarians are concerned that the rise of the “fur baby” lifestyle, in which people treat pets like human children, can harm animals, as owners seek unnecessary veterinary care, tests and medications. Pets staying at home alone while owners work suffer from boredom, which can cause chronic psychological distress and health problems. And as the number of pets goes up, many people wind up giving up their animal, overcrowding shelters.

So what should be done? Some philosophers and activists advocate for pet abolition, arguing that treating any animals as property is ethically indefensible.

This is a hard case to make – especially with dog lovers. Dogs were the first animal that humans domesticated. They have evolved beside us for as long as 40,000 years, and are a central piece of the human story. Some scientists argue that dogs made us human, not the other way around.

Perhaps we can reconfigure aspects of home, family and society to be better for dogs and humans alike – more accessible health care and higher-quality food, for example. A world more focused on human thriving would be more focused on pets’ thriving, too. But that would make for a very different America than this one.

Margret Grebowicz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Americans are asking too much of their dogs – https://theconversation.com/americans-are-asking-too-much-of-their-dogs-256768

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Nareman Amin, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Islam, Michigan State University

Fifteen years ago, Egyptians from all walks of life took to the street to demand “bread, freedom, social justice.” They were protesting the oppressive 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt had been under martial law for 31 years. This meant that political opposition was silenced, and opponents were often imprisoned and tortured. Police brutality was the norm.

Egypt’s economy was also weak and relied heavily on foreign aid and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Even though the country’s per capita gross domestic product was growing, almost 25% of the population was living in poverty by 2011.

Neighboring Tunisia had toppled its dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on Jan. 14, 2011, after 28 days of protest. The Tunisian revolution’s success led to a wave of uprisings against corruption, injustice and economic inequality across the region, including the January 2011 revolution in Egypt.

For many who joined the movement in Egypt, there was a newfound sense of unity, equality and nationalism. Egyptians young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, man and woman, stood arm-in-arm for 18 days, until Mubarak resigned on Feb. 11, 2011.

Mubarak’s resignation signaled to many Egyptians the power of common will and determination.

Slowly, however, political divisions set in. While there were exciting voting opportunities that seemed free and fair for the first time in modern Egyptian history, there were many disappointments in this nascent and short-lived democratic experiment.

In my recently published book, “Is God for Revolution? Affect, Youth and Islam,” I investigate these political changes, but through the lens of religion.

Islam in Egypt

Egypt is a Muslim-majority country. Islam can be felt, seen and heard in every corner of the nation: The melodic call to prayer rings out five times a day to remind Muslims to stop what they are doing and turn their attention to God in worship.

Minarets of mosques and domes of churches dot the sepia-toned Egyptian sky. The Quran plays in shops, taxi cabs and on radios and television in local cafes. Most women wear veils as part of a religious obligation; men grow long beards, which they believe to be a prophetic tradition.

Scholars of Islam like Saba Mahmood, Charles Hirschkind, Aaron Rock-Singer and others have noted a resurgence in these physical aspects of Islamic piety since the 1970s. Some of these scholars attribute it to Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, established by Hasan al-Banna in 1928 as a response to the cultural and political incursions of the British occupation.

Salafis are another group who urged people to be good Muslims by believing in Allah – the Arabic word for God – and looking and acting the part as well. The Salafis believe they follow the Islam of the “pious predecessors,” or salaf – that is, the generations during and immediately following the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis offered social services for the poor and preached their versions of Islam widely.

The research

I lived in Egypt between 2007 and 2012 and visited every summer until 2018, when I formally began conducting interviews for this book.

In 2018 and 2019, I spoke with 61 middle- and upper-middle class Muslim Egyptians who were in their early- to mid-20s when the Egyptian uprising began in 2011. Most interviewees were from big cities like Cairo and Alexandria, but some also grew up in smaller villages and towns across Egypt.

For them, the revolution and the social and political freedoms it came with offered them a space to question everything in their lives, including how they relate to the Islamic teachings they grew up with and heard from Muslim parents and preachers.

For example, many of the interviewees came to believe that there are many paths to gaining God’s favor. Some turned to Sufism, or mystical Islam, for answers. Others left Islam altogether.

My interviewees all grew up with the sights and sounds of Islam surrounding them. Their parents and schools also taught them an Islam that highlighted both belief in God and physical practices like the veil, beards and prayer. For many of the people I spoke to, these rituals and visible markers of Islam were no longer as important as they had been raised to believe.

Heidi, a human rights activist, explained that the revolution was an eye-opener, especially for women. She explained that, after the revolution, she took off the veil and now places more importance on the ethical and spiritual rather than the ritualistic aspects of Islam.

“The revolution broke the fear barrier we had of thinking for ourselves … including about religion,” she said.

Similarly, Hasan, a tech entrepreneur, who once used to be conservative in his understanding of what makes one a good Muslim, told me that after the uprising, he came to believe that “religion is not one single path, and that no one action can take you to heaven.” He became more accepting of the different ways people relate to Islam.

Some of my interviewees turned to Eastern practices like yoga and meditation, sometimes even mixing them with Sufism or Islamic mysticism. I spoke to Sonia, an Egyptian American Muslim woman who received training in various wellness methods like pranic healing, breath work and meditation, and I attended her sessions online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In post-revolution Egypt, she held sessions in yoga studios in which she guided practitioners through traditional breath work and meditation. She asked practitioners to chant the names of Allah in Arabic: al-Nur (the Light) and al-Rahman (the Merciful), in sync with their rhythmic, conscious breathing.

In these spaces, one would find energy crystals, and incense wafting in and out of the room. Attendees, both Muslim and non-Muslim, would sit in a semicircle around Sonia, trying to reach something transcendent, spiritual, maybe even universal.

Not all my interviewees approved of this spiritual practice. Basim, an entrepreneur, felt that practices like Sonia’s were not Islamic; they were a mishmash of Eastern practices that pull on the Islamic tradition selectively for marketing purposes.

Sonia, however, felt that people should not be judged for how they choose to build a connection with God or something transcendent.

Other interviewees left Islam altogether. Six of the people I spoke to had become atheist or agnostic. There were atheists in Egypt before 2011, but shortly after the uprising, more people became vocal about their lack of belief. The media widely reported on what it framed as a worrying trend in society.

Why did this happen?

The revolution opened a space for people who may never have come together to join one another in protest. Once Mubarak fell, people found unprecedented freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to take part in politics.

Among those who openly joined the political scene after Mubarak’s removal were the Muslim Brotherhood and political arms of the Salafis, who made considerable political gains in 2011 and 2012.

In June 2012, Muhammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood became the first democratically elected president of Egypt. But just a year into his administration, Mursi was deposed by the military. People who staged demonstrations and sit-ins to protest his deposition were violently removed from public squares and killed.

Religion in post-revolution politics

How religion was used in the political processes led almost all my interviewees to rethink matters of faith, practice and religious authority.

Data from the Arab Barometer, which conducts public opinion surveys in the Middle East, shows similar trends over the past decade. In 2011, when respondents were asked if Egypt would be better off if religious people held public office, 53% disagreed. By 2022, the figure had risen to 80%. Views on religious practice also indicated a change.

At the very beginning of the 2011 movement, for example, many of the Islamic scholars my interviewees followed argued that revolting against a ruler, no matter how unjust, is a sin and forbidden in the Islamic tradition. Later, when Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, most of my interviewees were shocked that many of these Islamist politicians played the political game, which meant lying and reneging on promises made.

When Mursi became president, his supporters compared his rule with that of the prophet. Others used offensive language to describe political opponents who did not share their political vision.

My interviewees believed that these behaviors were antithetical to the ethical and moral codes of the Islamic tradition that these Islamists and their supporters preached for years prior to the uprising and their political ascent.

Things came to a head when Mursi was deposed through a violent coup. The country was divided between those who praised the military for restoring order and stability in Egypt and those who decried the move as a massacre that ushered in the end of the democratic experiment.

All my interviewees were horrified by the massacre, leading a few to question why a just God would allow hundreds of innocent people to be killed in such a way. Worse yet was that some of the religious scholars who forbade people from protesting against Mubarak in 2011 urged people to protest against Mursi in 2013, with a few even condoning the massacre or at least staying silent in the face of renewed oppression.

The Egyptians I interviewed witnessed all these events and reacted emotionally to them. And because religion was at the center of these political processes in ways that almost all my interviewees viewed as hypocritical and opportunistic, my interviewees wanted to break away from the version of Islam that the Islamists and their supporters represented.

Fifteen years on, though the political and economic aims of the 2011 movement have not been realized, the social afterlives of a revolution live on.

Nareman Amin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Fifteen years after Egypt’s uprising, how faith and politics reshaped a generation – https://theconversation.com/fifteen-years-after-egypts-uprising-how-faith-and-politics-reshaped-a-generation-274430