Islamist understandings of sharia and their implications for the post-revolutionary Egyptian constitution

The first wave of elections in post-revolutionary Egypt, held between November 2011 and January 2012, brought into being a parliamentary majority dominated by Islamist parties. In June 2012, Mubarak-era appointees still serving in the government succeeded in dissolving Parliament by court order. Nevertheless, prior to its dissolution, the Parliament had appointed a one-hundred-member committee (al-jam‘iyya alta’sīsiyya) to draw up Egypt’s post-revolutionary constitution. And most committee members—like a majority of the Parliament that appointed them—are Islamist in orientation.