Egyptians are not the only Arabs who are grappling with the place of religion in their emerging democracy. In Tunisia, perhaps even more so than Cairo, the battle between liberals and Islamists has been raging since last year’s ousting of the Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali regime.

In a country where the state has been staunchly secular – there was a time when police would detain women wearing the headscarf – Islamists in all their shades have faced a more determined opposition than in Egypt. Continue reading »

For many years Egyptian businessmen have struggled with the ups and downs of economic reforms, but one thing they never worried about was who is in charge of the Arab world’s most populous country. Like it or not, Hosni Mubarak (pictured) has been president since 1981 and he has dominated Egyptian politics, never allowing a credible opposition to organise or pose a threat to his rule.

Now, however, and for the first time in decades, the business community is grappling with political uncertainty as next year’s presidential election looms. Continue reading »

BB: time to register

Dear beyondbrics readers,

After more than three years of fully open access, we are taking the step of asking our readers to register on FT.com to read our articles. Beyondbrics will still be free but we'd like to know a bit more about you, our readers. Other FT blogs (including Alphaville) already do the same thing. Registration is active on beyondbrics from May 6.

Many of you are already registered on FT.com, or are subscribers - in which case, if you are logged in to the site you will not notice any difference. Just carry on as before.

For those of you not yet registered, it's a simple process which only takes a few moments.

Reading beyondbrics articles will NOT deduct from your free monthly quota of stories on FT.com.

Many thanks

Stefan Wagstyl, emerging markets editor

Global equities macromap

Number of the day

-0.2% Fall in Polish retail sales in April, rather worse than 1.1 per cent growth expected.

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