The crowds in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo were again very large on Tuesday, and new networks of people joined in them, showing that the protest movement is expanding. Many newcomers appear to have been impressed by the DreamTv interview with Wael Ghonim (scroll down), which ended with him sobbing over the deaths of some 300 protesters while he was arbitrarily locked up in an Egyptian prison cell. Ghonim is among Egypt’s foremost internet technology specialists. He clearly regrets the killing of some 300 protesters by state security forces in the past two parliamentary contests. but says that those lives lost are a reason for the organizers to continue to demonstrate until victory. The central demand of the protesters is the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Meanwhile, newly appointed vice president Omar Suleiman, former head of military intelligence, said that calls for the departure of president Hosni Mubarak were disrespectful, and warned the demonstrators that Egypt could not go on with big rallies every day. Although he affirmed that president Hosni Mubarak had undertaken not to arrest or interfere with the protesters, he said that one possible outcome of continued turmoil would be a military coup. Suleiman seems not to have noticed that Hosni Mubarak is an Air Force marshal, and that key cabinet posts are already filled by military officers.
Christopher Anzalone writes in a guest column for Informed Comment:
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood & the Demonstrations: Fact vs. Fiction
Since the start of mass popular protests by Egyptians against their country’s autocratic government, headed by the aging president Hosni Mubarak and his new vice president, Omar Suleiman, a great deal of attention has been paid to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Attention on the opposition movement has been particularly heavy and skewed in the United States where pundits from both the left and the right breathlessly claim that the Brotherhood is poised to take over Egypt in a repeat of what happened in 1979-1980 in Iran and erroneously tie the Egyptian movement to Usama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda Central. Much of this analysis is based on fallacies and conjecture rather than fact.
The claim that al-Qaeda emerged seamlessly from the Brotherhood is the most egregious claim that has been made. Pundits who make this claim point to former members of the movement such as al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj who founded militant jihadi-takfiri groups that declared Muslims with whom they disagreed to be apostates. A fact that it usually left out is that these individuals left the Brotherhood after it swore off the use of violence to achieve its ends. Al-Zawahiri, who had been an Brotherhood activist at age 14, was particularly bitter about the movement’s “betrayal” of “Islamic principles” and in the 1990s he wrote a lengthy monograph harshly criticizing it entitled The Bitter Harvest: The Muslim Brotherhood in 60 Years. For its part, the Brotherhood frequently condemns al-Qaeda in its public statements and positions.
The ghost of Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the Brotherhood’s most well-known member, is another recurring connection used to paint the movement as inherently militant and radical. The Egyptian litterateur-turned-Islamist revolutionary ideologue was imprisoned for a decade by Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir’s government and eventually executed by it in 1966. Journalists and pundits looking for an easy answer to the “root causes” of jihadi-takfiri groups such as al-Qaeda frequently point to Qutb and the medieval Hanbali Sunni jurist Ibn Taymiyya. Although Qutb was clearly a revolutionary and radical thinker and the Brotherhood’s position toward him has been ambiguous in many ways, past analysis of Qutb and his thought have been based on, at best, a shallow reading of a fraction of his many writings.
John Calvert, a professor of Middle East history, has written what will become the standard scholarly study of Qutb, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism. Rather than study only one segment of Qutb’s life and thought, Calvert examines his entire life and tracks the evolution of his thought. Calvert points to the ambiguity of much of Qutb’s writings as one of the causes for their use by extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and Egypt’s al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), the latter of which has since renounced violence. Far from being an apologia for Qutb, Calvert’s book takes a holistic approach to examining Qutb’s life and thought. He and other scholars also point out that Hasan al-Hudaybi, the “general guide” of the Brotherhood during Qutb’s lifetime, wrote an influential book entitled Preachers, Not Judges in which he was critical of many of Qutb’s ideas. Ultimately, though Qutb was certainly a radical, revolutionary Islamist thinker his ideas alone did not create al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. As Calvert shows, many of these groups actually take positions that are contradictory to what Qutb was arguing. Al-Qaeda is instead best seen as a group that has taken selectively from a myriad of different sources, including Qutb and Ibn Taymiyya, and combined them with positions espoused by ideologues such as al-Zawahiri to create a new, hybrid ideology.
Longtime scholars of the Brotherhood have cast doubts on exaggerated claims that the movement will be swept into power in a post-Mubarak/post-authoritarian Egypt. In fact, many doubt that the movement has the power to take over the entire country even if it wanted to. The Brotherhood, though the oldest and arguably best organized opposition group in the country, currently suffers from a number of ills. First, it is beset with a generation gap between the older generation of leaders, such as the current general guide Muhammad Badi‘a, and a younger generation that has sought to change the movement’s policies on a host of issues including the role of women in leadership positions and Coptic Christians. The Brotherhood is in fact no longer the dominant force that it was in the past. As a movement it has lost a lot of credibility in recent years after allowing itself to be co-opted by the Mubarak government says Khalid Medani, a professor of political science and Islamic studies at McGill University who has conducted extensive field work in Egypt including interviews with the movement’s members representing various veins of thought within it. Despite remaining the country’s largest formally organized opposition group the Brotherhood is failing to attract many new members, he says.
Although it eventually decided to participate in the January 25 demonstrations in Egypt the Brotherhood only announced its decision two days before. Its endorsement was also far from enthusiastic. Following the unprecedented size and staying power of the mass popular demonstrations against the Mubarak’s authoritarian government, the Brotherhood took a much more proactive approach in supporting the demonstrators. To date it has released eight official statements, including three signed by Badi‘a. In them the movement has been careful to not claim leadership of the demonstrations and instead says that it is simply one party among many that make up the opposition. Observers on the ground have noted that the Brotherhood is not the most visible or powerful voice represented among the hundreds of thousands to millions of demonstrators who have defied government curfews and violence to continue calling for their civil and human rights.
The Brotherhood has joined other opposition groups and demonstrators in calling for the resignation of Mubarak, the abolition of the “emergency law” that has been in place since 1981 when Mubarak came to power, the holding of new elections that are actually free and fair, the release of all political prisoners, substantial amendment of the constitution, and the prosecution of government officials who have ordered the use of violence against the demonstrators. The movement has also been careful to explain its decision to enter into cautious talks with the government, which is increasingly under the public direction of Vice President Suleiman. Thus far, the Brotherhood remains unconvinced by the government’s claims that it is trying to address the popular will of the Egyptian people.
Although it is far from being a force for social or political liberalism, certainly of the kind that is desired by progressives in the U.S. and Europe, the Brotherhood is also not the all-powerful Islamist bogeyman and twin sister of al-Qaeda that it is often portrayed as. Facing its own internal divisions and problems of legitimacy among the Egyptian public, the Brotherhood is unlikely to be able to “seize control” of the country even if it wanted to. Its internal problems are recognized by no one more clearly than by the Brotherhood itself, which has been careful not to further alienate the Egyptian people who have collectively led the popular uprising against authoritarianism that continues to defy an aging autocrat’s decrees even in the face of extreme state violence.
Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University.
Ghonim consistently called for non-violent methods, becoming Egypt’s Google Gandhi (an epithet he would hate, since he urged that he not be lionized and that people think instead about the some 300 protesters shot dead by the regime in the past week). His grief over those deaths drove him to end the interview in tears.
Ghonim’s assertion that the deaths were not his or the protest movement’s fault is certainly correct.
Carlyn Meyer writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment
The Egyptian Uprising is not a Revolution – “Chaos’ Fear a Cynical Red-Herring
Over the last few days, Hillary Clinton has been pushing the Mubarak/Suleiman ‘orderly transition’ hype hook, line and sinker. But why would Mubarak leaving bring chaos? The protesters demands are: no Mubarak, rewrite of constitution (including rescinding decades of martial law), free and fair elections.
These are demands for reform, not revolution. The uprising is not calling for dismantling the authority of the state or the army. This is not 1917 Russia, 1949 China or 1776 New World. The demands of Egyptians are much less extreme than the destruction of the Iraqi state and army after the 2003 US invasion. Now that resulted in chaos.
In fact, the Egyptian popular revolt has been exemplary in discipline and unity of purpose. The only chaos in two weeks of massive outpourings was caused by paid pro-Mubarak thugs. But the discipline of the protesters pushed back even these horse and camel night-riders.
Clinton says there needs to be time to set up free and fair elections. Who disagrees with that? Who in the opposition is calling for immediate elections? After all one demand of the protesters and legal and banned opposition is that the constitution be re-written first.
There is no reason the state apparatus would not function at least as well under an interim government as it did under Mubarak. An interim government composed of the opposition, military and Suleiman could surely handle any transition.
So people might ask, if Suleiman, Mubarak’s confidant,stays, why it is so important for Mubarak to resign. First, the opposition secures its credibility when Mubarak leaves. Second, without the participation of the opposition in setting the course for free elections, transparency is a joke. Currently, the opposition has no way to monitor the actions of government, nor are there any credible proposals from the government that would permit popular oversight. Promises mean nothing after the cameras are gone and the world turns to another crisis.
Do Clinton’s remarks mean President Obama is backing down from his demand that Mubarak leave? He hasn’t yet. But Clinton is obviously trying to sway Western opinion to accept that possibility.
Every organization within the Egyptian opposition has pledged to uphold Egypt’s treaties and international obligations. The only danger of chaos or regional upheaval comes from Mr. Mubarak, Vice-President Suleiman and the Egyptian military ignoring popular demands for the most basic of democratic reforms.
Looked at another way, Mrs. Clinton, what if Mubarak, an ailing 82-year-old, were to drop dead tomorrow? Surely there is a plan within the Egyptian government for carrying on without him.
I noticed a lot of television commentators wondering why no one predicted the unrest in Egypt. I’d just like to draw attention to the number 1 item in my New Year’s list of 2011 challenges for US foreign policy. While it is not exactly a prediction of what we are seeing today on our television sets, it lays out the outlines of the challenge as we are now experiencing it and suggests that corporate media is just listening to the wrong inside-the-beltway pundits if they weren’t hearing about these potentialities in the Egyptian scene before January 25.
‘ Egypt, after decades of being unproblematic for the US, may be on the verge of being a foreign policy challenge of some magnitude. President Hosni Mubarak is advanced in age and could pass from the scene soon. He is grooming his son, Jamal, to be his successor, but the wikileaks cables suggest that the powerful Egyptian military intelligence chief is not happy with this idea of dynastic succession. On the other hand, US cables also suggest that the Egyptian military is declining in power and modernity. Although the government successfully repressed its radicals during the past two decades, they are back in the streets again, as with today’s car-bombing of a Christian church in Alexandria, which killed 21. More serious challenges come from the Muslim Brotherhood,, which could do well in an election that was not rigged against them. Likewise, Egypt’s labor and middle class movements have shown themselves capable of mounting significant campaigns in recent years, deploying new communications tools such as facebook. A more democratic Egypt, like a more democratic Turkey, may not be willing to be complicit with Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Obama should not take Egypt for granted, but rather should have some subtle and culturally informed contingency plans if its politics abruptly opens up. Above all, the US must not stand in the way of democratization, even if that means greater Muslim fundamentalist influence in the state. ‘
Sunday saw a return to Egypt of themes of national unity across the Christian-Muslim divide that recalled the heyday of early Egyptian nationalism in 1919, when the modern nation was formed in the cauldron of mass demonstrations against British colonial rule.
Nowadays, Copts are roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population, or about 8 million people. Coptic Christianity is its own branch of the faith, tracing itself to the foundational teaching of the Apostle Mark the Evangelist in Alexandria.
The Al-Arab newspaper reports that Christian protesters conducted funeral prayers over the spirits of the martyrs that have fallen in the demonstrations since January 25. The three Coptic denominations mounted three joint prayer ceremonies.
On Friday, Christian youth had stood guard to protect Muslims as they prayed at Tahrir Square, since people at prayer are vulnerable to the secret police.
AP says that Father Ihab al-Kharat gave a sermon on Sunday in which he said, “In the name of Jesus and Muhammad we unify our ranks … We will keep protesting until the fall of the tyranny.”
Al-Arab writes that crowds of youth participated, under the leadership of prominent Coptic figures such as Michael Mounir, the head of the Coptic Organization of the United States, Dr. Imad Gad, an expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, and George Ishak, a leader of the Kefaya! (Enough!) protest movement, along with members of Coptic community councils. (Other Copts are more ambivalent about the movement or oppose it).
Michael Mounir said after the prayers that the Egyptian regime has persecuted everyone, Muslim and Copt alike, which was proved by the fact that during the past 12 days, while the police and security forces had removed themselves from the scene, there had been no attacks on churches. Rather, Muslim youth had undertaken to guard them. In the past, he said, despite the presence of security forces, churches and Copts had suffered massacres, the most recent having been on New Year’s day.
A young engineer, Mina Nagi, who was injured on January 25, said during the ceremony (according to al-Arab, ” Speak the truth, and the truth shall set you free!” saying that tyranny possesses the numbers and the weapons, and intimidation and smoke bombs, and the ability to smear reputations. “But we have the truth, and we have our living bodies, which pulse with true love for living, freedom, and life with dignity and justice.” He reasoned that since the youth had done all that, they would be steadfast and courageous in the cold, the rain, in hunger and facing an unknown future from which attacks will be launched from every direction and of various sorts.
He added, “I came because the suffering and poverty that we live through are not a transitional stage, rather these two are the decisive outcome of the conditions of the economic, social and political structure which gives birth to this destitution, along with absence of democracy and the dominance of private interests over public ones.” He said that what is needed is a profound transformation of the structures themselves, and of the conditions that generate poverty, tyranny and oppression. He said, “I came in accordance with my faith in the struggle on behalf of respect for human rights and the construction of a democracy, and deliverance from prejudice and partisanship, and building a transparent and trustworthy order…”
The Christian and Muslim intellectuals issued a joint statement, affirming that the revolution of Egyptian youth had instilled a new spirit in Egyptian souls, in which was apparent an excellent example of national unity… when believers guarded each others’ prayers after the police disappeared. They said that this decision to stand guard came from the youth themselves, not from any religious leadership, and that it demonstrated that places of worship did not need armed guards. “They are Egyptian places of worship, dear to the hearts of all Egyptians..” They recalled that [because of the New Year bombing] Egypt had been on the verge of sectarian war, and clergymen’s statements had brought the situation to an explosive point, when all that tension was stopped by the Youth Revolution.
They accused the government of exploiting religious symbols to abort the Youth Revolution, and complained that some clergymen had taken government silver to denounce the protest movement. They praised clergymen who stayed inside their houses of worship and did not interefere, and called on the media to stop putting reactionary clergymen on the television screen to speak on public affairs.
AFP Arabic reports that Nadir, a young Copt, was holding a placard at Tahrir Square that said, “The Blood of many Copts was shed during the Mubarak era. Leave Egypt!” He complained that the pace of persecution of Christians has increased in the Mubarak era, and the only response of the president had been to try to cover it up. “That isn’t the solution,” he said. Another young Coptic Christian, Ihab, said that fear of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power was overblown. “A government by the Muslim Brotherhood would be a catastrophe, but there are other choices in Egypt beside Mubarak and the Brotherhood.”
Many Muslims supported the Copts. One, Ahmad al-Shimi, held up a sign that said, “Muslims + Christans=Egypt” with a Muslim crescent and a Christian cross.
Arabic wire services report that thousands of protesters again made their way into Tahrir Square on Sunday, with the theme of commemorating the some 300 martyrs who have died at the hands of the secret police since the protests began on January 25. Dozens bravely sat in front of the tanks positioned around it, to prevent them from moving in and blocking off the public space to prevent further protests. Some of the youth slept in the square in tents or stayed up all night, guarding their right to the public space.
The wire services reprise the story of the Christian role on Sunday. A Coptic Christian priest, carrying a cross, celebrated Sunday mass before the crowd. Next to the priest stood a Muslim imam, carrying a copy of the Qur’an, as the crowd chanted in unison, “We are one hand!” A Coptic preacher lead them in the chant from the altar, “One hand, one hand!” referring to the unity of Christians and Muslims, who express the same demands for a change of regime. A Christian woman named Rana told Reuters Arabic, “All Egyptians, regardless of whether they are Christian or Muslim, want change, liberty, and justice for all people.”
This YouTube video, shot from the crowd, shows them chanting the unity of Christian and Muslim Egyptians and then “One hand, one hand!” You can see the priest’s cross at points above the heads.
So the parallel is to 1919. After World War I, Egyptians began demanding independence from Britain, which had occupied the country in 1882. Nationalist leader and politician Saad Zaghlul and others wanted to lead a delegation (Wafd) to the Versailles peace conference to ensure that Egyptian aspirations for self-determination were heard. The arrogant British jailed Zaghlul early in 1919, and thereby provoked huge multi-class and cross-sectarian demonstrations throughout the country. Copts were as nationalistic as Muslims and as eager to see the backs of the British, and they are clearly visible in photographs of the day, carrying banners with crosses on them. Egyptian women also played a visible role in the protests.
1919 Demonstration of Copts, Muslims Against British
1919 was a foundational moment for the Egyptian nation. The subsequent history of Christian-Muslim relations has had its ups and downs. But at Tahrir Square, Sunday, February 6, 2011 was another such 1919 moment of unity.
Ahmed Amr writes from Egypt in a guest column for Informed Comment
The campaign against the Egyptian protest movement by Egyptian officialdom, has been two-pronged. One tactic has been to attempt to neuter the foreign press. This step then allowed a propaganda campaign by the organs of the State-owned media, which has been shameless in distorting the realities on the ground. The employees of Egyptian government newspapers and television stations are nothing more than ruling party hacks but they are not without their talents. While some of the rumors they were circulating were marginally plausible, others were off the wall.
The general theme of the government’s propaganda assault has revolved around foreign agents organizing and deceiving the naïve anti-regime protesters. One concocted report in Al-Akhbar had 300 foreign saboteurs caught red handed in Suez. In government media accounts, alien provocateurs were everywhere to be found. The source of the mischief all depended on which hallucination you were reading. The agitators are apparently Israeli spies sponsored by Americans and Hamas activists financed by Iranians on a joint mission to turn Egypt into a striptease club ruled by a Shiite theocracy.
Perhaps the most entertaining rumor was the “Kentucky Fried” allegation. According to one story circulated by the pro-Mubarak ‘national press,’ the million-plus protesters came to the square in expectation of being rewarded, by shadowy anti-regime forces, with a platter of spicy chicken and 50 Euros. The fictional foreign agents serving the crowd were alleged to come armed with tons of cash and the Colonel’s secret recipe. Whoever dreamed up that rumor forgot to mention that there is only one Kentucky Fried outlet in Tahrir Square and it’s been closed since the uprising began.
To give you an idea of how disgraceful Egyptian state journalism can be; it took ten days for the official newspaper, Al-Ahram, to notice that the demonstrator’s essential demand was for Mubarak to abdicate his throne. Until yesterday, the flagship of the government’s propaganda machine portrayed the demonstrations as rallies against high food prices and unemployment and in support of unspecified ‘reforms.’ The day after the slaughter at Tahrir Square, Al-Ahram boasted this headline “Millions demonstrate in support of Mubarak.” The reporting is so scandalous that many government-employed journalists have quit in protest and others are simply refusing to write.
The regime’s efforts at damage control were not ineffective. The campaign hit a chord with the argument that Mubarak had already resigned and was just waiting for his term to expire in September. Egyptians are a sentimental people and the appeal to treat Mubarak as the father of the nation had some resonance. They failed to mention that Mubarak was the kind of father who devours his own children. So far, over 300 hundred have died because of his stubborn refusal to accept early retirement.
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
Informed Comment is made possible by your support. If you value the information and essays, I make available and write here, please take a moment to contribute what you can.
