Chapter 13 Political parties and secular–Islamist polarisation in post-Mubarak Egypt Hendrik Kraetzschmar and Alam Saleh Tis chapter is concerned with the polarisation that gripped Egyptian politics in the period following the Tahrir uprising of 2011 and the coup d’état of 3 July 2013 which led to the ousting of the country’s frst directly elected post-uprising president Mohamed Morsi. 1 Whilst this polarisation took on many shapes, involving contentious episodes between revolutionaries and felool, 2 between establishment politicians and advocates of radical structural reform, as well as between lefist, nationalist and liberal forces, 3 its most talked-about dynamic concerned the discursive and physical batles fought out between the country’s so-called ‘secular’ and ‘Islamist’ forces. 4 Indeed, the growth in secular–Islamist polarisation – particularly with the coming to power of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood, MB) in 2012 – has become one of the more pertinent prisms through which local protagonists and outside observers have sought to evaluate this early post-uprising period. 5 Unfortunately, for the most part this was done by means of a rather uncritical usage of labels such as ‘secular’ and/or ‘Islamist’, and by treating secularism and Islamism as discrete ideological frames. Drawing on a range of interviews conducted with party elites, 6 this chapter casts a critical eye on the secular–Islamist binary in early post-uprising Egyptian party politics. With a focus on the country’s secular parties, it scrutinises their discourses and policies during the 2011–13 period, juxtaposing the two and assessing them within the context of an alleged secular–Islamist polarisation. Two inter-related scholarly debates will hereby form the theoretical point of departure. Te frst debate concerns the legacy of secular–Islamist rivalries in Egyptian (party) politics, dating back to the Sadat presidency (r.1970–81), and more recent eforts at cross-ideological cooperation between representatives of lefist, liberal and Islamist political currents. Gaining traction in the early 2000s, a handful of academics in Egypt and elsewhere in the region have studied the rising occurrence of such cross-ideological initiatives, critically unpacking the depth and purpose of such collaboration as well as their propensity to 5741_Kraetzschmar & Rivetti.indd 221 5741_Kraetzschmar & Rivetti.indd 221 05/01/18 6:30 PM 05/01/18 6:30 PM