The MB is not A terrorist organisation

No it is not.

The MB is not a terrorist organisation. The MB is the terrorist organisation.

You know how in some action video games you are fighting a horde of insectoid aliens and then you reach a final level in which you meet a queen insect who is the mother of all aliens. The MB is the queen mother. The MB is the Borg queen. it is the root of all evil, and the mother of all catastrophes that have infested the Islamic world since it first bubbled to the surface.

By the turn of the twentieth century, there was a rising tide of fundamentalism in the Islamic world. But it was a fundamentalism in the essential sense of the word, a return to the fundamentals, a focus on the barebones of the faith and an abandonment of all the flakes that had attached themselves to Islam over centuries. It was an enlightenment movement that came as a response to the suppressed but not entirely killed sterility of Wahabist fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia. The movement was the Protestantism of Islam, a refocus on personal relation to scripture, an abandonment of acquired liturgy, and disenfranchisement of clergymen. And it could have helped the Islamic world join the rest of the world in the social revolutions of the twentieth century.

But it was aborted.

Or perhaps it was co-opted. A guy born in a village in the Eastern Delta called Hassan El-Banna had a vision. The vision was recreating the world in the image of his village. Why? Because that's all he knew. Method: Claim that Islam is under threat of extinction and that you are its saviour. And the Muslim Brotherhood was born. A strange mix of theatre troupe, KKK-like secrecy, clandestine literature, military-like structure, and a good dose of heresy relative to Islamic orthodoxy.

But it was when the Banna-ist ideology mated with the diseased psychosis of Sayyed Qutb that the true MB materialised. Sayyed Qutb was driven almost entirely by sexual frustration born of a very unsuccessful trip to the US where his romantic advances were apparently rebuffed by a random blonde. When he came back to Egypt he formulated the first explicit ideology in the Islamic world that fostered: A deep seated hate of the West, non-Muslims, and social and personal liberties; The intent to raise generations and vanguards of ideologized undercover youth; the use of terrorism and violence to enforce the vision of the MB but only when the time is right and when the vanguard is ready.

The Qutbist/Bannaist cult is very similar in its ideology and action plan to White Supremacist organisations in the US. But the main problem is that the MB metastasised. Muslims have a problem they have to face, and by Muslims I mean the general population of peaceful Muslims in the world. It is true that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But it is also true that the majority of terrorists are Muslims. This wasn't the case in the past. Terrorism being a uniquely and distinctively Muslim trait can be traced in its origin to the MB. They were the ones who first introduced bombings of civilian targets to achieve political aims, and it happened within the lifetime of El-Banna and under his tutelage. Qutb later refined this into an art. As the MB grew it began to form offshoots and spinoffs. Some of them global, some local, and some global brands that later develop local franchises. Perhaps most critical of all was the offshoot of the Jamaa Islamiya in the seventies, which in turn spanned off a little organisation called Al-Qaeda.

Which is very convenient really. The MB can quit its earlier forays into direct terrorism and just outsource the dirty work to its offshoots. This was all well and good as long as the MB wasn't in power, and it allowed them to have perfect deniability. But as soon as they reached power the mask fell off. The terrorist offshoots were suddenly standing on the stage with the MB president, explicitly threatening physical violence against political opponents and fanning sectarian hate. Gullible liberal youth who believed the MB were on the path to reform were aghast. Veteran liberals with bloodied knuckles from the battles of the seventies and the nineties chuckled knowingly.

Perhaps among the gullible youth was president Obama. The theory that the MB are moderate and could absorb the terrorist inclinations of Islamist groups and channel them into taking power in the Middle East instead of attacking the West. Instead, the MB used said Islamists in the most flagrant and abhorrent manner, channeling their terrorism in ways that the US could not have foreseen.

In any case, the MB is a monster that Egypt gave birth to. And Egypt has decided to kill its monstrous child or die trying. Even if Obama does not approve.

The cause of the "revolution"

The Egyptian revolution of 2011, whether or not you like it, introduced radical change to Egypt. Change for the worse, a lot of people would argue. Those who were against the "revolution" from the get go claim that the change was for the worse because the revolution was malicious and ill-intentioned to begin with. Those who were for it, argue that the revolution was "betrayed" by various actors at various stages. I believe the revolution was a still birth. It killed itself. And the reason is, it was all built on a myth. The cause of the revolution was less solid than dragons.

The revolution was actually multiple revolutions. The Islamists joined it to start an Islamic state, the "revolutionary youth" started it either to start a democratic state or to get paid for footage or both, the military piled on to prevent the handover of power to Gamal Mubarak. Nobody betrayed the revolution, everyone worked to make their version of it work. None of the players managed to get anywhere.

The main causes given for the revolution of 2011 happening are actually the motives of the three main actors joining in. Other causes given are in fact catalysts. Preventing a Gamal Mubarak presidency, vying for an Islamic state, or looking for a Bush-esque democratisation of Egypt a la liberation of Iraq were all motives, but not causes. The revolution in Tunisia, the proliferation of cultural dissatisfaction among the rising upper middle class, and police brutality (alleged or real) were all catalysts that helped galvanise street movement.

Alone, the motives and catalysts were enough to cause the initial waves of protest and rioting on January 25th. However, what turned a sit-in into a revolution is a full blown civil disobedience and general strike that had its roots in a myth perpetuated by everyone.

"Egypt is a rich country"

The statement is a staple of every social studies book in Egyptian schools. Although the treatment of Egypt's geography in school books is professional an realistic. The axiomatic assertion that Egypt is rich is always maintained. But if Egypt is rich, why are Egyptians poor? The axiom and the question were internalised into almost every Egyptian of all walks of life. The answer to the question ranged between "Egypt is rich but its resources are mismanaged" to "Egypt is rich but Mubarak's elite steal all the money", the latter ironically pronounced more often by people who are themselves elite.

The axiom-question pair is what pushed hundreds of thousands of people to join protests and sit-ins between February 4th and 11th 2011. Perhaps they were manipulated by the "activists", perhaps they were being herded by the MB. But one fact remains, they knew fully well why they were going out to protest: They wanted the riches of Egypt to reflect upon them.

That's why the revolution has faltered. Because the real revolution was not based on the promise of a democratic state or an Islamic state, it was based on the promise of a rich state. And since Egypt being rich is a myth, the revolution has gone and will continue to go through spasms in which declining portions of the population join one side or another to remove one side or another because Egyptians aren't rich yet, and Egypt is rich, which means that the revolution is being betrayed.

Perhaps the spasms will die soon, or perhaps it will take some time. It all depends on how soon Egyptians realise a critical fact: Egypt is a resource-poor overpopulated country that was on its way to maximising its growth potential before 2011. Now we would be lucky to go back to the development path of January 24th 2011. Admitting this fact is bitter, it's also scary because the amount of intellectual terror that would be unleashed on someone as being regime ancien for saying this is significant. But facts must be faced if this country is to be saved.

Perhaps a point by point discussion of the arguments made in favour of Egypt being rich is warranted. Invariably, the arguments include: Egypt has a lot of land, most of it unused; Egypt has lots of mineral resources; population is an asset, look at Japan and Korea; we have a lot of sunshine lets produce a shitload of solar energy; we have a lot of natural gas and oil.

"Egypt has a lot of land, all of it unused, and Mubarak is stopping the youth from settling the land because he works for Israel," I was informed of that by a very serious looking scientist in 2005. He was fully convinced of what he was saying. The argument of Egypt's unused land is easily answered by the fact that most of the unused land is unusable. Egypt is one of the driest countries in the world, our agricultural activities are water-limited not land-limited, and we are already global trend-setters for productivity and efficiency in irrigated agriculture. Our grazing lands in the Sinai and coastal regions are among some of the most efficiently and ecologically soundly used in the world. Why don't you use a more efficient irrigation technique than basin irrigation in the Delta you say? Because otherwise the water table will drop and salinity in the Delta will lead to an ecological disaster.

Egypt doesn't have tonnes of precious metals. Egypt has moderate resources of some minerals, and it is making the most out of them. There really isn't a huge gold mine along the Wittwatersrand in South Africa, we don't have diamond mines either. We have a single gold mine that is just starting to be economic in terms of extraction. Nor do we have substantial oil or gas reserves. We barely have enough to cover our energy needs. In fact anything we have is immediately drowned by the every increasing population.

Which brings us to the most misleading argument of all: Population is a resource, Japan made use of it. True, population can be a resource. But this is only true when water and land resources are able to support the population. Population growth on the other hand is never a resource. Japan and Korea are often used as examples, nobody mentions the fact that both have had a fraction of Egypt's population growth in the past four decades, and that both now have nearly no population growth, and that in both cases this was an intentional policy and a welcome result. In fact, China managed to achieve economic growth only after instituting draconian birth control policies. Even Iran provides government subsidised birth control and has its Shiia clergy encouraging smaller families. In fact, even oil-rich Gulf countries are instilling in their peoples a sense that smaller families are better. Only in Egypt is their a sentiment that population growth is good based on no empirical or theoretical evidence. If population growth were universally recognised as an asset and Mubarak only tried to stifle it because Israel told him to do so, why did international pop-culture produce Dan Brown's newest marvel of alarmism "Inferno"?

We are a poor country. We need stability. Stability is not stagnation. Stability is tourism and foreign investment. Investment is not a bad word, it means jobs. Investors are not evil, they are taking a chance on us. Stop listening to second rate Twitter pundits and face the reality of Egypt and its revolution. Perhaps then we can start a new revolution based on work-ethic, fighting corruption and waste, institutionalism, and eradication of sexism and xenophobia. Something that can have more impact on the lives of normal people instead of an impact on the bank accounts of April 6th activists.

الحكم المتداولة

الحكم المتداولة في مصر غالبا غلط. و الحكم المتداولة على الانترنت بشكل اخص غلط اكتر و اكتر. على الانترنت بنخلق مجموعة من العوالم الموازية فيها "حقائق" ملهاش اي اثبات او أمارة انها حقائق غير انها بتتكرر. بس هي بتتكرر بين ناس كلها ليها نفس الرأي تقريبا. الخروج من الانترنت بيكشف للواحد شوية حاجات يمكن تكون خافية عنه. لكن لأن حياتي الطبيعية كمان هي جزء من الحقيقة يمكن اكون انا نفسي في حياتي عايش في عالم موازي. معرفش. بس على الأقل اقدر اضمن ان فيه شوية حاجات بانت لي اوضح لما بعدت عن الانترنت المصري شوية.

١ العالم التويتري: الناس عاشقة السيسي / الناس شايفة السيسي قاتل

الحقيقة: محدش عاشق السيسي. محدش بيشتري شغل التسبيل بتاعه. ولو السيسي اترشح هيكسب من اول جولة. اينعم هيكسب من غير اعادة. عارفين ليه؟ لأن الناس مش هطل زي ما احنا فاكرينهم. الناس مش ماضيين لعبد الفتاح السيسي شيك على بياض ولا هيمضوله ومش بيحبوه لسحر عيونه ولا كاريزمته. الناس عايزة تنجز وتحسم لأنهم شايفين ان اسوأ حاجة هي حالة الولا حاجة المستمرة من ٣ سنين. و شايفين في السيسي اول امل يظهر ان ممكن ننجز عشان ناكل عيش. الموضوع ابسط بكتير من تنظيراتنا. وأبسط دي مش شتيمة، تنظير هي اللي شتيمة.

٢ العالم التويتري: اوعى احسن الناس بتتعاطف مع الاخوان

الحقيقة: محدش بيتعاطف مع الاخوان ولا حد عايز يشوفهم بيقوملهم قومة ومحدش لا تعاطف مع حرائر ولا خرائر ولا نيلة. اللي بيظهروا تعاطف مفاجئ مع الاخوان، اسأل اصحابهم هتلاقيهم كانوا بينزلوا رابعة بس مش كل يوم. منهم ناس يمكن نزلوا معانا ٣٠/٦ لكن قليل منهم قوي اللي منزلش مع الاخوان من ٤/٧ بعد عزل مرسي. فيه ناس بتقرف من الداخلية وفيه ناس خسرانة ان الامن يشد حيله وفيه ناس بتتظلم وفيه ناس سبوبتها هتروح. انما بالنسبة لغالب الشعب دا لا له علاقة بالاخوان ولا التعاطف.

٣ العالم التويتري: الاستفتاء على الدستور ملوش علاقة ب ٣٠/٦ ولا بالاخوان
الحقيقة: دي بالأخص ضربت في الأوساط الفلولية بشكل عجيب. طبعا ده استهبال. في الحقيقة وفي الشارع، الاقبال الضعيف وحتى التصويت ب لا هيعتبر نقطة ضخمة في صالح الاخوان وضد الشرعية الثورية ل ٣٠/٦. التصويت بنعم واجب. ايون التصويت بنعم واجب وكل الناس اللي بتروج للتصويت بنعم بيخدموا البلد دي ومستقبلها. ممكن نقعد نرغي كتير عن فلوس مين اللي اتصرفت على الاعلانات في الشارع ولون كلمة نعم أخضر ليه. بس من الاخر هو ده اللي هيأكل عيش. احنا ممكن نفضل عايشين بنمثل على بعض اننا المفروض في السويد بس هنفضل اسمنا بنمثل على بعض. اه وبالمناسبة النتيجة غالبا نعم وبنسبة كبيرة ودي مش حاجة وحشة.

Egyptian Twitter should die

The experiment is simple. Immerse yourself in Egyptian Twitter. Extract yourself from Egyptian Twitter. Observe. Invariably, the reaction is one of much reduced stress, much higher joy of life, and a better overall balance. Why is that? The reason has to do with the nature and peculiarities of Egyptian adult Twitter, as well as with universal information handling capacity.

First off, there is the question of content. Twitter everywhere is supposed to be a medium of flow of diverse information. A mix of politics, breaking news, and professional updates makes some part of any international citizen's Twitter timeline. But the bulk is mostly made up of trivia. In Egypt timelines are completely different. Trivia, pop culture, and geek updates make a small portion of a typical timeline. The bulk is made up of local news of protests, marches, and clashes, news of the day, endless opinions and rehashings of news of the day, endless analysis of news of the day, nitpicking of news of the day, misrepresentations of news of the day, exaggerations of news of the day, lies about news of the day, debunking the lies about news of the day, and by the end of the day discovering there really is little news of the day.

Secondly, there is the question of backgrounds. Backgrounds of major Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that is. Again, in most Twitterspheres major accounts include movie stars, techno geek accounts, gaming site accounts, cooking channel accounts, weather update accounts, trivia, celebrities, and major political figures and pundits. In Egypt, the majority of immense-followership accounts basically have no credentials. From self-styled anarchist philosophers who have never read a serious book let alone written one, to self styled pundits with as much analytical power as a garden slug, to self-styled journalists who aim to address a limited circle of western journalists through "profound" neutral morally superior tweets. The major problem here is that everything is self-styled. Nothing has much to support it. Accounts of people with little integrity or potential have millions of followers and miraculously have the power to influence the opinions of thousands.

What all this combines into is a surreal parallel universe with a life of its own and a common wisdom that has nothing to dow with Egyptian reality. Egos of major accounts are stroked, growing to epic proportions. Meanwhile, their relevance to real life remains proportional to their true power. Which leads to frustration, and lashing out.

Meanwhile, personal accounts with few followers to a few thousand followers are caught up in a vicious cycle where they are simply assaulted by too much information. Leaving aside the fact that most "information" on Egyptian Twitter is hardly "information" at all, and that most of the collective effort is exhausted not in absorbing information but in debunking it, even real raw information is fed in a very wrong way. Nobody needs to know every fight that happens in every corner of the country. Nobody needs to know every street closure, or every burst pipe, or every residential block with a blackout. In fact, nobody should even want to know that kind of information. We are simply not designed to absorb that much information, it clouds our ability to see the real picture, to live our lives, to move forward. We get caught up on the mundane and we forget what really matters.

And then again perhaps even on Twitter there are parallel universes that exist side by side. After all, my timeline is a result of my decisions. Maybe I designed it to be this way. But I believe that for Twitter to have played such a radical role in the street action that has shaped and reshaped Egypt over the last few years perhaps most timelines look a lot like mine.

And perhaps that's why Egyptian Twitter has and will continue to be shocked by off-Twitter Egypt. Perhaps the continuity of the street actions and the inability to affect polls or real change is a result of the echo-chamber that we have forced our Twitter to be.

This is such a confusing mix of grimy on-the-ground in-every-corner minute-by-minute reporting, and complete detachment from reality. I really don't get it.

بالدستور هتكون شطور

بأي دستور في حقيقة الأمر. فقط نحتاج الى دستور.

لم يخطئ من قال أننا في وضع حرج قد لا يسمح لنا بكتابة دستور دائم وبالتالي نحتاج دستور مؤقت لفترة حتى تستقر الأمور ونصل الى قدر اكبر من التوافق. وإن كنت أرى في مشروع لجنة الخمسين نواة دستور قوي يتعدى فكرة المؤقت لكني لا أمانع التفكير به على هذا الأساس (التأقيت).

أنا أدعو للتصويت بنعم. لماذا؟ لأني أراه مشروع جيد للدستور. لأنه حقق قدر من التوافق لم أظنه ممكناً في هذه اللحظة. لأني أرى كل الإعتراضات الموضوعية مردود عليها. و أخيراً و بدون خجل لأني أرى الظرف يتطلب الموافقة عليه. نعم اعتقد اننا يجب ان نراعي الظرف في التصويت ولا أرى في هذا تشبها بالإخوان في تمريرهم لدستورهم نتيجة اختلاف محتوى الدستور ونتيجة اختلاف طبائع من يعارضه.

أولا أرى هذا الدستور جيد. أراه جيد بشكل مجرد كما أراه جيد بالمقارنة ليس فقط بدستور الإخوان ولكن أيضاً بدستور ١٩٧١ المعدل. الدستور الجيد هو الدستور الذي يحمي الأقلية من الأغلبية ويمكن الأغلبية من الحكم ويحمي الفرد من المجتمع والمواطن من الدولة بينما يمكن الدولة من بسط نفوذها. وهذه كلها مواصفات وجدتها في هذه المسودة. فمواد الحقوق الشخصية والمساواة الموجودة به لم أرى مثلها من قبل في مشاريع الدساتير المصرية والاعتراف بالحقوق الأساسية والتعددية يأتي لأول مرة مطلق ومتماشي مع المعايير العالمية. في حد ذاتها هذه مكاسب تاريخية أرى من الضرورة تمريرها عن طريق تدعيمها تصويتيا حتى تصبح حقاً مكتسبا.

وهنا نأتي لثانيا. فالمسودة تأتي ببعض المواد وبعض العبارات في الديباجة التي لا تعجبني. لكني لا أرى منها عبورا لأي خطوط حمراء. لذا أرى ما حدث هو تطبيق عملي لبناء التوافق عن طريق التنازلات المتبادلة. كمثال دستوري المثالي كان لينص على نظام رئاسي وانتخابات فردية ولم يكن لينص على شكل الضرائب. لكن دستور آخرين المثالي كان لينص على العكس تماماً. ولأني لا أدعي امتلاك الحق، فأنا أتفهم نظرهم لهذه الأمور. لذا أرى النص على تصاعدية الضرائب فقط على الأفراد حل وسط، وأرى إرجاء النظام الانتخابي للقانون، حيث يسهل تعديله، أمر واقعي. كما أرى نظام شبه مختلط يتنقل بين الرئاسي وشبه الرئاسي بناء على بنية البرلمان هو حل توفيقي. بنفس المنطق لا أستطيع إهمال وجود السلفيين في المجتمع كجزء فاعل فيه. ولا أستطيع أن أهمل تاريخية مباركتهم لدستور يحتوي على هذا القدر من المساواة والحقوق. لذا لا أستطيع أن أقول لا للدستور بناء على إصرارهم على مكسب رمزي في الديباجة.

إذا أعجبني كل شيء في الدستور فهو بالضرورة أغضب الكثيرين.

ثالثا لا يمكن إنكار وجود اعتراضات حقيقية عند البعض على الدستور لكني أراها مردود عليها. من جانب جزء من التيار الإسلامي الدستور مرفوض لمجرد كون دستور الإخوان مقبول وهو موقف لا يستحق الكثير من النقاش. بالنسبة لجزء من القوى التقليدية فالدستور مرفوض إما لتكوين اللجنة الذي أقصاهم أو لكون دستور ٧١ هو المقبول. لا يمكنني رفض منتج المسودة لمجرد تكوين اللجنة. إذا كانت هذه المسودة خرجت من لجنة الإخوان لقبلتها. كما أني أرى تكوين اللجنة جيد. فعلى الرغم من إقصائها للملايين التي انتخبت الفريق شفيق إلا أنها لجنة مجتمعية غير مسيسة حقاً. ضمت ممثلين عن فئات مجتمعية بشكل لم نره في لجان الإخوان. ففي لجنتي الإخوان تم تضخيم تمثيل الحزبيين لمجرد كون الإخوان حصلوا على أغلبية لحظية في البرلمان. كما تم اختيار الشخصيات المجتمعية بحيث تكون كلها شخصيات إسلامية. أما في لجنة الخمسين فكان الاختيار أعمى لدرجة اختيار أحد النقباء المنتمي للجماعة. أما عن دستور ٧١ فقد انتهى والتمسك به هو تمسك بالماضي لا محل له في الواقع. كل هذا لا يمنع وجود اعتراضات موضوعية لل"فلول" على بعض مواد الدستور.

الاعتراض الأساسي على ما يُرى أنه انتقاص من صلاحيات الرئيس وخلق رئيس "طرطور". أتفهم المخاوف هنا، لكني أراها ليست في محلها. حقيقة قام الدستور بتقليص صلاحيات الرئيس وأعطى المزيد من الصلاحيات التنفيذية للبرلمان. لكن يجب أن نلاحظ أن سلطة البرلمان لمنح وسحب الثقة هي حق أصيل ولا يمكن ترك يد الرئيس بدون وجود عامل موازن حتى في الأنظمة الرئاسية. أما عن صلاحيات البرلمان في المشاركة في تسمية الحكومة فهي تأتي فقط في حالة استطاعة البرلمان تكوين توافق مستقر وتأتي تحت تهديد حل البرلمان ككل. لذا فالمواد تسمح بنظام إما رئاسي أو مختلط بناء على قدرة المؤسسات. و أؤكد أن صلاحيات أقل للرئيس وأكثر لرئيس الوزراء في مصلحة الوطن. فتجربتنا السنتين الماضيتين تؤكد أن المجتمع غير مستقر ويتجه إلى تغيير السلطة التنفيذية بشكل مستمر. ونتيجة صعوبة تغيير الرئاسة بطرق دستورية يؤدي ذلك الى الموجات المتتالية من عمل الشارع وهو ما لا تستطيع الدولة تحمله كثيرا. تغيير السلطة التنفيذية عن طريق تغيير رئيس وزراء ذو سلطات حقيقية هو صمام أمان. كما أن الدساتير لا توضع لكي لا تتغير. نعم نعم أدرك أن "الاخوان قالوا كده" لكن أبواب نظام الحكم بالفعل هي أكثر الأبواب عرضة للتعديل في الدساتير لأنها تتغير لكي تتعلم من التجربة وتتغير لكي تلائم الواقع.

وأخيرا أرى التصويت بنعم لأن البلد محتاجاها. أدرك اعتراض الكثيرين على هذا، وأدرك أن التصويت على الدستور ولا يجب أن يكون تصويتا على ٣٠/٦ أو على إزاحة الإخوان. لكن الحياة ليست مثالية وليست عادلة. ربما أخبرنا بعضهم أنها عادلة لكنها ليست كذلك. الترويج بأن التصويت بلا لن يضر ٣٠/٦ ولن يفيد الإخوان هو ترويج سطحي أو مضلل. انتزع نفسك من كل المحيط بك وفكر. استفتي هذا الشعب منذ عام تقريبا على دستور الإخوان وقال نعم. لم يكن الحضور طاغيا ولم تكن ال نعم مدوية لكنها كانت نعم واضحة جلية تخترق حتى ادعاءات التزوير (الحقيقية). بعد سنة وبعد خلع نظام الإخوان يتم استفتاء نفس الشعب على دستور جديد ليحل محل دستور الإخوان فيقول الشعب لا. ما معنى هذه ال لا بالمقابلة بهذه ال نعم؟

يعتقد البعض بأن ال لا يجب أن تعني لجنة أخرى تعد وثيقة دستورية أخرى. وأنا أقول أن هذا السيناريو كارثي. في حالة التصويت ب لا يجب علينا الاستسلام لرجوع دستور الإخوان والتعامل مع تعديله لاحقا على الرغم من كونه أساس ضعيف. لماذا؟ لأن في حالة التصويت بلا من أدراني ما سبب ال لا؟ سيدعي الفلول ان ال لا جاءت نتيجة تقليص سلطات الرئيس لذا يجب تكوين لجنة جديدة يرضى عنها الفلول تقوم بتعديل جديد. سيدعي النشطاء أن ال لا نتيجة مادة المحاكمات العسكرية لذا يجب تكوين لجنة يرضون عنها تقوم بالتعديل. سيدعي الإخوان أن ال لا هي رفض لإلغاء دستورهم ورفض للحقوق والحريات والمساواة في وثيقة دستور ٢٠١٣. من سيكون الأحق؟ الإخوان. لماذا؟ لأن عندهم نتيجة استفتاء سابقة يستطيعون الإشارة إليها كدليل على أن الشعب رفض ٢٠١٣ لأنه وافق على ٢٠١٢. وفي الحقيقة يكون الحق في جانبهم. لا يمكنني أن أتخيل حال البلد في حال التصويت بلا ثم تكوين لجنة جديدة بمعايير لا ندريها لتجري تعديلات لا نعرف السبب فيها بينما يكسب الإخوان مكسبا معنويا هائلا يمكنهم من الحشد الداخلي وزيادة الضغوط الخارجية لدرجة لا تحتمل.

يمكنك التفكير في أني أبتزك لكي تقول نعم. لكن في الحقيقة أنا أحذر فقط من محاولة السير في طرق خطرة في حالة اللا. قل لا. لكن كن مدرك أن معناها عودة دستور الإخوان. وهذا في حد ذاته ليس كارثيا ولا استخدمه في الضغط عليك. فمن نزلوا في ٣٠/٦ نزلوا في الأساس لرفض محمد مرسي وحكم الإخوان ولم يكن يعنيهم دستور الإخوان. يمكننا التعايش مع دستور الإخوان لفترة حذرة حتى نستطيع تكوين توافق أكبر لكن لا يمكننا العيش في حالة انتقالية غير محددة المعالم والأسباب في وسط حالة من هياج الجماعات الدينية المتطرفة العنيفة.

Everyone goes Mandela

Since Mandela's death, talk of his experiment, particularly in post-Apartheid South Africa has bubbled to the surface of Egyptian debate. The main point being made is that Mandela's greatness stems from his ability to forgive and look forward. The thesis then is that everyone should forgive the MB and the MB should forgive everyone. And that this will ultimately be possible when a Mandela-like figure appears on the scene (most likely Baradei is implied here). I believe this is a rather simplistic view of both post-Apartheid South Africa and post 30/6 Egypt.

First of all the Mandela experience as laid out in the Egyptian intelligentsia is not exactly the historical Mandela or the historical South Africa. The narrative given is a hand wavy account of Mandela forgiving his persecutors while at the same time setting up a system for "transitional justice." This perfectly suits the revolutionary mythology built up in Egyptian media over the last three years, namely that there is an international norm and standard to achieve some form of extra judicial justice during transitional periods. Also, that there would be no stability or advancement unless such "transitional justice" is exacted.

In fact what Mandela did was to completely shred any concept of "justice" during the transition. This was done for pragmatic purposes. Mandela realised that justice means so many things to so many people. Justice to the countless Blacks living in townships meant revenge on the White society that for so long subjugated them. Justice for the warlike Inkatha in Natal simply meant independence after so many years of fighting the good fight. Justice to many Whites would be revenge on Mandela's own ANC for very real acts of terror it committed. Trying to extract justice would then be an open invitation to tearing the country apart. Moreover, trying to shake the boat would simply mean that the elite who oiled the machine of the state would suddenly abandon it, leading to a catastrophic breakdown that would worsen the lives of everybody. So Mandela opted instead to symbolic and largely voluntary truth and reconciliation tribunals where truth was shared by all sides, and everyone forgave everyone. A brilliant feat of very noble very immaterial very effective PR.

Let's review what happened in Egypt post January 25th 2011. Rapidly, a narrative was setup by the same people who now cling to the model of Mandela. The narrative was that there would be no moving forward until the regime ancien was held accountable for its crimes. The crimes started out as specific incidents of protestor deaths and rapidly mushroomed and ballooned into hazy accusations of political responsibility for ailments that are as old as the unification under Naarmer. The accused started out as a few leaders and mushroomed into a large network of very legitimate interests that covers millions of people in the Delta and Middle Egypt. The demanded method to achieve said goal started out as criminal courts, and when criminal courts failed to prosecute the nebulous accusations, demand was made for extraordinary tribunals. All along the MB pushed along the concept of the centrality of vengeance, using it as a pretext for purges. Purges that were naturally followed by replacement with MB cadres. The process was steadily approaching the army and was already tearing the judiciary apart.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps through a central intelligence but more likely through a distributed realisation, a recognition was made that this was a road to perdition.  And 30/6 happened.

Now all of a sudden the Mandela narrative is surfacing from the same people who talked about "transitional justice" for thirty six long months.

The Mandela model is irrelevant. First its window of opportunity has closed. The Mandela approach should have been taken immediately following the stepping down of Mubarak. Instead the focus turned immediately towards imprisoning him. Second, there is really little one can compare the MB to. The MB is not an ethnic or religious minority as the Whites were in South Africa. Islamists can, in a way, be considered a religious minority. But beyond an initial euphoric spate of teasing bearded men in the street immediately following 30/6, there is no sign that Islamists are being targeted in Egypt just because they are Islamists.

Instead, Egypt has decided to purge a secret Brotherhood whose membership, funds, and activities are all clandestine, and whose loyalties lie clearly outside the borders of the country. One might argue about the methods (and the appropriateness of their violence), the possibility of the purge succeeding, or even if it should be attempted. But one should not argue that we can use the same approach Mandela used to bring the MB into the fold. The MB has demanded nothing and continues to demand nothing in very explicit terms other than ruling Egypt and transforming it according to their cultist aspirations. The MB has no intention on becoming an open organisation, membership will remain secret, its internationalist pan-Islamic strain will remain integral, the sources of its income will remain mysterious, its fascist views on transforming society will remain integral.

I am all for calls to keep the authority in check while it is fighting its fight against the MB. And I think that signs like today's acquittal of hundreds of MB detainees by courts shows that the state apparatus still chooses to remain professional. However, I am completely against any illusion that reconciliation with the MB is desirable or even possible. Reconciliation between Islamists, mainstream Muslims, and Christians is a must. The destruction of the death cult called the MB, as an organisation, is a necessity.

Think of this as Egypt trying to get rid of its very old very disastrous KKK.

In vogue: Faux nostalgia

This video is supposed to show the progression of love songs directed at a male from a female from roughly the turn of the twentieth century to the present time. The moral we are expected to derive is that the classiness, the lyrics, and the melodies have all deteriorated horribly.

This photo is being exchanged as an example of how classy people were in royal Egypt. We are supposed to compare it to a modern Cairene coffee shop and come to the aforementioned conclusion.

This photo is, according to the person sharing it, a picture of students in King Fouad University (modern day Cairo University) in the thirties. Again, we are expected to contrast their progressiveness and wealth to today.

All three are but the tip of the iceberg in a years long trend of sharing pictures from the past in a nostalgic yearning to eras most people haven't even lived. The political undertone of the message is shared between all: There once was a golden age. However, the nostalgia is faulty. People are yearning back to times that never existed, using pictures to prove facts that were never true. 

The first video, for example is clearly comparing apples and oranges. Picking the ultimate classics from each decade, and then intentionally comparing them to the bottom drawer of pop-music in 2013. Counter-examples can be very easily formulated in which cabaret music from the twenties or monologues from the forties with nauseating lyrics are compared to wonderful exercises in classical and innovative Egyptian music from the present. But the comparison had to be drawn in a certain way to prove a certain point.

The photo of the coffee shop, Groppi, is another exercise in misleading. In fact the photo is a devastating indictment of royal Egypt and of modern audiences. The patrons of the coffee shop are obviously all non-Egyptian. Whether expats or naturalised, there isn't an ethnic Egyptian to be seen in sight. Even the waiter is most probably Nubian and is dressed in overstated quaint garb to give “ambience.” That modern Egyptians find inspiration in a picture that very obviously represents a colonialist system designed to segregate them is very telling.

The third picture is so misleading that it isn't even impressive. What is purported to be a picture in a public university in the thirties, is in fact a picture in an exclusivist private university in the sixties. Facts be damned.

So why are Egyptians doing all this? What’s the motive behind this campaign of self-deception? As I mentioned earlier, the aim is to search for a golden age. The myth of the Egyptian upper and upper middle class is that there was once a golden age in which everything was dandy and from then on everything went downhill. Internal conflict stems from when that golden age was. Was it royal Egypt? Nasserist Egypt? Sadat’s rule? But never Mubarak’s era. Mubarak has to be the downfall! Thus the proliferation of lower middle classes with their habits and behaviours on the beaches is not a sign that said class now has the capacity and the spending power to afford a vacation, it is rather a sign of how everything has deteriorated. Classism disguised as nostalgia.

But what the royalists, Nasserists, and Sadatists are missing is that they are all reminiscing about the same thing. Why is there a newfound and growing trend of yearning back to the eighties or even the early nineties? These are Mubarakist years that we should despise. What’s common between all the pictures of days bygone?

The answer lies in observing the trend. These nostalgic bouts come in bursts. The trend starts, grows, and then dies. It always starts the same way: photos of women looking extremely glad, wearing beautiful colourful dresses, without veils and with gorgeous hair. It doesn't matter what period the pictures are from (except the 80’s where they are unveiled but the hair isn't gorgeous) the focus is always on how the women look and act. Then voices seep in, subconsciously or consiously, intentionally or unintentionally the trend turns into pictures of panoramas, scenery, and generally human being-free vistas.

The conclusion is obvious. Egyptians are not yearning for a golden age of plenty and wealth, that never existed by the way. What they are reminiscing about is an era when society was free from the pressures and effects of political Islamism. People demand a time when they were truly happy, and truly safe, because society had not yet given in to clerics that turned women into violable sources of sexual gratification. Except most of the women sharing the pictures are veiled themselves and can’t for the life of them face the fact that they wish they could wear a dress in the street. So everyone gives in to the nudging of Islamists to go on a tangent and share pictures of Cairo skyline, damning Mubarak for wasting Egypt’s golden age of plenty.

Black Flag Islamists

A photo of a Lebanese girl holding an Al-Qaeda flag, not in a Burqa mind you, but dressed and made up like Kim Kardashian. A French reporter is baffled by the fact that French-North African Sunni militants in Syria don't even know how to perform Muslim prayers. Militant, closed-minded, claustrophobic, and in cases downright terrorist Islamist groups resorting to branding, advertising, live feeds, podcasts, and Twitter accounts to spread their cause.

These are all observations of a trend years in the making. While the US was fighting its war on terror by inexplicably invading and decomposing the secular Arab state of Iraq; Al-Qaeda, its mother the MB, and their offshoots were creating a new definition of Islamism that cut deeply into Muslim societies and broke down walls in recruitment never before breached.

We should all have seen it coming. The main culprits in the 9/11 attack did not come from very religious backgrounds; particularly the Lebanese and Egyptian members. This much is well known and understood. However, what should have been interesting but for some reason wasn't is that they were not themselves religious, or even observant at the time they carried out the terrorist attacks. Why would they kill themselves attacking innocents in a holy war if some of them not only came from secular backgrounds, but were also secular themselves?

Islamism since the late nineties has been going through a metamorphosis. In a way, it has been preparing itself to replace Pan-Arabism. Sunni Islamists are trying to reorient their goals and repaint them in pan-nationalist streaks. To do so, a new sense of ethnic and national identity was carefully implanted into the minds of a whole generation. This sense of identity draws on romanticized tales of the Islamic days of glory when everything between Morocco and Borneo was one country. It is, perhaps, irrelevant that this pan-Islamist state never actually existed, and that Islamic civil wars started as soon as the prophet died and never stopped. What is relevant is that the idea is attractive.

Slick televangelists croon about the dream of one Islamic state with a passport more respected than EU passports, stroking the egos of millions of frustrated youths with rejected visas. Beady eyed Salafist preachers tell of (nonexistent) days when Muslims were the masters of the Earth and had countless sexual conquests. Al-Qaeda produces high definition videos of its operations and state-like paraphernalia in areas of Syria it managed to occupy. And in Syria, as in Afghanistan before, you see people from allover the Muslim world pouring in and becoming one. But unlike Afghanistan, not everyone is bearded, not everyone even prays, and many have a Twitter account.

Bush and Obama have succeeded in decapitating Al-Qaeda. But what happened is that it morphed. And it also blurred the lines between it and native Islamists in the Arab world. Perhaps the US doesn't care, because whether consciously or subconsciously Al-Qaeda has diverted its efforts away from the West. The new enemy is now the Shiia. An easy and somehow weak target, and one that allows Al-Qaeda a lot of rapprochement with Arab regimes and societies, both supremely sectarian. It is in this centuries old sectarian war and particularly in the desert plains between Iraq and the Syrian highlands that the new not-necessarily-religious but oh-so-gruesome brand of Islamism is being synthesized. And it is in its re-contact with Saudi Wahabism, but also in its contact with its spiritual roots in Egyptian and Syrian MB that Al-Qaeda's metamorphosis and fusion is maturing.

Think of this new brand of Islamism as a form of NAZI philosophy. It is a doctrine of a supreme people who have been done a historic injustice and who should be allowed to fulfill their ultimate potential. This achievement must be reached through various forms of expansion/Anschluss and cleansing of religious minorities, particularly the Shiites who are "worse than Jews"! But that's where the similarities stop. Emergent Islamism has absolutely no form of achievement through which to claim legitimacy. It also (at least now) lacks a charismatic leader. In some ways, this emergent form of Islamism has anarchist trends.

That's why it will ultimately be rejected in the Arab world. In fact, the wave of rejection is building up and will reach Syria very soon. In fact, even though Sunni Islam is the predominant religion in the Arab world, the continuous and demonstrable failure of Islamists has inoculated a large portion of the Arab world against full penetration.

And that's where the West should be worried. Where this new brand has achieved near universal acceptance is among Western Muslims (who form a hefty minority in many countries). The West will not have to deal with the consequences for some time as the focus is now on the "Arab Spring". However, ultimately an entire generation of Muslim youth saturated with Qutbist ideology, not necessarily exhibiting any signs of being religious, well-versed in modern psych-ops, and with a highly blurred views towards terrorism, will blow up in everyone's faces.

The Obama plan to subdue terrorism through the "Arab Spring" will backfire badly.

Dawn of coscience: The divine

"Self-made you fashioned your body,
Creator uncreated.
Sole one, unique one, who traverses eternity.
Remote one, with millions under his care ;
Your splendor is like heaven's splendor,
Your color brighter than its hues."

This is not an excerpt from the Bible, or a tract from the Quran. This is an ancient Egyptian hymn. This much will not shock or surprise many Egyptians. Most modern Egyptians are caught between the Abrahamic disdain for the "idolatrous" ancient religion of the land of the Nile, and pride in their ancient heritage. The solution, for them, has always been Akhnaten.

Akhnaten is an ideal solution for the dilemma of the modern Egyptian. To him they ascribe notions of monotheism, purity, and dedication that allow a large degree of compatibility with Abrahamic religion. Thus, they can claim some pride in their ancient heritage while dismissing its bulk as corrupted. In reality Atenism is very compatible with modern occidental religions but for all the wrong reasons.

Just as Hieroglyphs were a layered and complex multiform writing system, so was ancient Egyptian religion. The religion of Egypt combined worship forms that ranged from local deities, personal deities, pantheism, animism, and even one of the most mature forms of monotheism in the history of humanity.

The hymn at the top of the article is a hymn to Amun, not Aten. Amun was a local god at Waset, modern day Luxor. When Semites were kicked out of Egypt during the civil war at the end of the second intermediate period under the leadership of Waset, Amun rose to prominence. Amun was originally the god of the hidden power of creation, he developed in the New Kingdom into the king of gods. And then he became the one God, other gods being just reflections of him. He became hidden, yet omnipresent, distant, yet immediately reachable for the poorest of the poor. Amun became unknowable, yet omniscient. He became an all powerful all encompassing monotheistic mystery.

However, the worship of other gods continued. Amun was not jealous and his priesthood was (contrary to the reputation) undemanding. If a wife felt more able to connect with the divine through Isis who embodied her personal trials, so be it. It wasn't a problem that a lot of the populace loved Osiris, after all it was Osiris who in the after life fashioned bodies for foreigners and Egyptians buried without mummification (again contrary to pop perception) to allow them to live ever after. Osiris was the god who died and rose so that the common man could be salvaged in the afterlife (ring a bell?). Osiris, Isis, and Hathor were just aspects of the hidden God, and the hidden God appreciated being worshipped in any manner.

                                         The image of the mother of a God born from a king God                                        who died and was risen to give salvation to common man
                                                          is not an image that has died


The hidden God even appreciated foreigners. He identified their gods as just aspects of him, like the Egyptian gods, just with other names. Was Baal anything different from Geb? Was Apollo anything but a White people's Horus? But this complex syncretic tapestry that allowed some people to be monotheists, others polytheists, and others animists without condemning any to death or hell did not sit well with some.

The hidden nature of Amun was too much for some who remembered the sun god Re of the olden times. While Amun was the God who was in the sun, beyond it, and beyond everything, Re was the power of the sun.

Amenhotep IV was a Pharaoh whose name meant Amun is satisfied. Amenhotep was upset with the democratization of religion in the form of the popular cults of Osiris and Isis. He was also upset at the worship of the hidden god Amun, irritated by the distant nature that contrasted with the visible sun god of old. Amenhotep developed a new cult around Aten. Aten is not the power beyond the sun as many modern Egyptian Muslims and Christians believe. Aten is in fact the physical home of the sun, its disc as is visible in the day sky. Amenhotep wanted to emphasise the visible, physical nature of Re as opposed to the new immaterial aspect of Amun.

                                            Aten was a physical manifestation of the sun, a jealous
                                                desert god who only talked to the Pharaoh

Amenhotep also wanted to restore the centrality of the Pharaoh to worship. Thus his first targets were Osiris and Isis. Not because Amenhotep believed his god was the only god, but because Osiris and Isis were worshipped without the involvement of the Pharaoh. He then turned to Amun, he changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhnaten and proceeded to eradicate the worship of other gods.

Akhnaten believed gods other than his did exist. He just believed that his god was better and more powerful and thus nobody should worship any other god. The priests of Amun believed their god was the only God, however they believed that anyone can worship any god and they ultimately would be worshipping an aspect of Amun.


Akhnaten formed a cult in which he and his family only could worship, he and his family only could commune with the only god worth worshipping. The populace seethed. Unable to worship their democratic gods and goddesses of the home and the field, they revolted. Again, contrary to our popular belief, the fall of Atenism was a popular demand to which the priesthood and the royalty had to bow.

The ancient religion didn't die. The iconoclasm, henotheism, and sterility of Atenism were taken into the Levant to form the seed of upcoming Semitic religions. The cult of Osiris who died and was reborn to save humanity in the afterworld was coupled with the cult of Isis the untouched mother who raised the son of a god to bring justice to the world. This cult swept across the Mediterranean combined with ideas of Amenistic monotheism and the monasticism of the priests of Thoth to form the basis of all occidental religions.

Modern Egyptians believe that ancient Egyptians had received a message that was then corrupted. History points towards a progression from ancient Egypt to Abrahamic religion. But whichever way one wants to see it, it was somewhere in Middle Egypt as the local population had a bunch of Sectarian clashes that they would continue to have for millenia and to this current day that man was introduced to God as we know him in Abrahamic religions.

Amun was a hidden God who pervaded everything, yet was jealous of nothing, and was reachable by everyone in every possible way

"Praisegiving to Amun !
I make hymns in his name.
I give to him praise :
to the height of heaven,
and the breadth of the earth.
I tell his might to him who sails down-stream,
and to him who sails up-stream.

Beware of him !
Repeat it to son and daughter,
to great and small.
Herald him to the generations not yet born.
Herald him to the fishes in the deep,
and to the birds in the sky.
Repeat it to him who knows it not,
and to him who knows.
Beware of him !

You are Amun, the Lord of the silent.
Who comes at the cry of the poor.
When I call to you in my distress,
You come to rescue me.
Give breath to him who is wretched.
Rescue me from bondage.

You are Amun-Re, Lord of Thebes,
Who rescues him who is in the netherworld ;
For you are he who is [merciful],
When one appeals to you.
You are he who comes from afar." Stela of Neb-Ra

June truly is not January

Comparison and connection between the events of January 2011 and June/July 2013 is a very thorny topic. To revolutionaries it is very critical to ascertain that June is a continuation of January. The alternative is to admit that January 2011 was a failed revolution that did not deliver what people expected of it. This goes against the religion of January 2011 which states that the revolution was pure and bloodless but that it was subverted by innately evil outsiders. On the other hand, felool cannot admit that without January 2011 there would be no public, open, and popular denunciation of political Islamism the way there was in June 2013. For felool also have a religion that states that January is pure evil from which no good could come.

But what matters in the end is how the two events differ, and what they had in common.

Demonstrations:
January: January 2011 introduced mass rallies and occupation of public spaces as a means of applying pressure. In retrospect, the numbers in 2011 were not as huge as many people once claimed. The main reason rallies worked back then is because they were against the backdrop of so much pressure from so many sides and because of the novelty of the scene of a public square in Cairo filled to the brim with people.
June: The novelty of rallies has run out. In fact, there is now fatigue with rallies and sitins after two and a half years of constant demonstrations. To bring out numbers similar to 2011 would achieve virtually nothing since these numbers have been achieved on at least a dozen occasions over the past two years. June 30th had to turn out numbers that would blow January 2011 out of the waters, and it had to do so against a backdrop of little public sympathy for demos. June 30th 2013, delivered.

Public position on security forces:
January: Before the MB joined forces with youth on January 28th, the main focus of January 25th was reform of the police force. After some intermittent and unexplained violence on the 26th and 27th, the 28th ended with a massive simultaneous and seemingly organized attack on all police facilities in the country. Over ninety police stations were torched, over a dozen prison breaks happened simultaneously. Hundreds of prisoners, police officers, and civilians died in clashed around security offices. Attacks on security forces and Christians in North Sinai started around the end of January. The focus and turning point of January 2011 was attacks on security facilities and bringing police to  halt.
June: If there is one thing that revolutionaries that revolutionaries have a problem with June 30th for, it has to be public position regarding the MoI. It is probably not an overstatement to say that one of the main aims of June 30th in the eyes of many normal folk was to restore police. Restoration of police should not mean a return to random torture or excessive use of violence in the Mubarak era. But, perhaps due to the pressures of two years with little or no security, Mubarak era police seems to be exactly what a major section of the population wants. A year under Morsi, under a barrage of bloody rhetoric by Islamists in public and official forums, is enough to sway a lot of opinions.

Public violence:
January: Official revolutionary propaganda states that the January revolution was completely nonviolent except for violence practiced by the Mubarak regime. In fact, this wasn't true. Due to the security vacuum looting was widespread, local committees formed to guard the streets in place of police practiced extreme violence and summarily executed dozens of people. January also introduced the first occasion of warring protests in what is known as the battle of the camel.
June: The security vacuum is not as sharp. In fact, there is no security vacuum as of yet. No looting or any rise in crime can be noticed. Local committees were not formed. However, public violence features in June as much as it did in January. This time in the form of constant and consistent clashes between loosely organized MB and Islamist militia and even more loosely organized locals. This constant pitter patter plus large scale use of force by the army and the police on a couple of occasions, plus the constant armed Islamist attacks in Sinai have accumulated over 300 dead among Islamists, security, and civilians.

Local media:
January: Most public media started out highly opposed to January, then switched tone as the military switched positions. Most private media started cautiously neutral, then largely adopted January 2011. Public media used scare tactics to turn people off from demonstrating. Private media whitewashed the violence.
June: Public media started completely opposed to June, then switched again as control was given to the military. Almost all private media was fully on board for June 30th from day 1. Constant public and official threats of bodily violence by the largest Islamist groups against media figures who showed the slightest hint of opposition to the MB agenda left a lot of private media with a personal axe to grind.

International media:
January: International media was almost immediately on board, adopting the lingo of the revolutionaries and the Islamists and completely supporting the removal of Mubarak. After the removal of Mubarak, international media hailed the Egyptian revolution as an example. Whitewashing was the norm. AlJazeera started its tenure as an MB propaganda outlet in the January revolution, giving an example in skewed coverage that would inform Arab media for the years that followed.
June: International media ridiculed the demonstrations. The events on July 3rd were immediately labeled a coup. Statements by the MB spokesman were immediately echoed as fact. MB casualties were covered in depth, civilian victims of MB were completely ignored. Again, AlJazeera is setting the standard for politically charged coverage. But unlike January, a barrage of Egyptian privately owned channels have already eaten up a large portion of AlJazeera's Egyptian market share. And this local media, as stated earlier, has not too many great things to say about the MB.

International community:
January: The revolution was probably not started by any foreign power. But it was certainly approved of. Intense pressure was put on Mubarak to leave power. And after he did, gushing statements of support flowed, combined with promises of support and inclusion. When Mubarak was put under house arrest, then later tried and imprisoned, there was no official comment from any country and there was little media sympathy for him.
June: This one was definitely against most of the world. There is obviously little love for the deposition of Morsi in the US, Europe, and much of the Islamic world. Statements of condemnation flowed, and explicit demands for the release of Morsi were officially made by many nations. The EU representative insisted on visiting Morsi in his location of incarceration (compare to international position re Mubarak).

Saccharine and realism:
January: January was emotional. Hopes were high. Expectations were fantastic. Youth cleaned the square. Youth painted the pavement. Cairo airport hung billboards with the gushing statements of world leaders about the Egyptian revolution. Then the economy faltered, Islamists won the elections, and personal freedoms rotted. Egyptians replaced a constitution whose problem was term limits with a constitution that legalized child rape.
June: Nobody dared paint the pavement. Nobody dared raise expectations. The only expectation was to remove Morsi and severely wound Islamists, and then restore state institutions. Yeah there was a little gushing and swooning over the military, but that's just being Egyptian. The level of nauseating false sweetness in June is definitely orders of magnitude less than January.

Deconstruction vs synthesis:
January: Everyone who participated agreed on what they didn't want (Mubarak regime) and disagreed about everything they wanted.
June: What people didn't want (Islamists) and what they wanted (state institutions) were clear.

 

Why the Egyptian revolution wasn't quite right

Over two and a half years after the Egyptian revolution, it doesn't feel like it worked out fine. So much so that a large portion of the population felt the need for another revolution, another phase of the revolution, a coup, or whatever you want to call what happened on June 30th. There are many reasons that the revolution of January 25th 2011 backfired so badly. But the main reasons are surprisingly self-evident and shockingly simple.

Reason number one is Islamism. Political Islamists introduced straw man arguments right after the revolution to turn the transitional phase into a murky insincere identity struggle. The level of genuineness in the Islamists constant obsession with "Shariia" and the "Caliphate" varies significantly. The MB, for example, fully believes that elections give it the right to reshape the identity and culture of the entire population of the country into the image they desire. This belief that the MB are masters of the country, and its crème de la crème was constantly hinted at by MB politicians in talk shows when the pressure increased. So in order to reach electoral hegemony, through which the MB would supposedly turn everyone into cultural and social drones, the MB had to resort to Sharia and Islam. An outside observer of Egypt in 2011/2012, and even now after the removal of Morsi, would imagine that Islam is a declining religion in Egypt, constantly under threat and persecution. Islam, of course, never stopped being a dominant and domineering religion in Egypt; affecting every aspect of life.

Which brings us to the Salafists. These guys, in fact, did believe that there was an identity crisis in Egypt. They did believe that Islam was beleaguered and persecuted. The reason is that Salafists consider only Islamists to be true Muslims. This is how Morsi became known as the "Muslim president" among Islamists even though all the leaders of Egypt since the Arab expansion have been Muslim. Salafists actually believe that medieval values and norms have to be restored and that Egypt should be recreated in the image of seventh century western Arabia.

Thus, thanks to the MB and Salafists, the transitional phase was entirely consumed in inane discussions. As a very simple example, instead of discussing whether the constitution should specify a parliamentary or presidential system for Egypt, we spent months fighting to prevent and amendment by Salafists to make child rape constitutional. And we failed. The Salafists got to amend the constitution so that sixty year old men could potentially rape seven year old girls, and we don't know whether the constitution was presidential or mixed.

I don't think it's still an open question that without Islamists, Egypt's transition would have been much smoother, much more productive, and more smooth. But Islamists are not the only reasons the revolution failed. Heightened expectations also played a role.

Right after the January revolution people had such high hopes for the country. These hopes were almost entirely unfounded. The expectations were based on two assumptions: *Mubarak stole Egypt's riches, *Mubarak suppressed superior talent for fear they would threaten his rule. Both assumptions turned out to be patently false. Whether Mubarak stole or not, Egypt turned out to be as poor and resource lacking as he always warned. Egypt's most superior talent pool seemed to revolve around the pool from which Mubarak picked his cabinets. As the parliament and the cabinet of Hisham Qandil showed, instead of suppressed talent, Egypt has a surplus of people with inflated qualifications and little worth. But again, this was not enough to fail the revolution.

The last piece of the puzzle that completed the image of failure is the constant insistence on deconstruction. The January revolution was a revolution against what Egyptians perceived they did not want, not a revolution for what they knew they wanted. The revolutionary youth, with a near constant presence in media, synthesized a narrative where Egypt's number one priority was excising the regime ancien from all aspects of public life. The narrative was based on antiquated notions of revolutionary justice and legitimacy that have been out of vogue since the Bolshevik revolution. The result was possibly one of the most ham-handed and unjust group excisions of modern times. Through constitutional, legal, media, and even public action the revolutionaries managed to effectively dissociate Egypt from a large group of technocrats who had always been essential to the state and who could provide an effective counterbalance to Islamists. Islamists, of course, seized the opportunity, expanding the definition of regime ancien at first to every and any technocrat who did not agree with them and then to every politician who did not belong to an Islamist party. Thus signaling the failure of both the revolution and the MB's regime.

June 30th was a natural reaction.

State insecurity: MoI partly right

The minister of interior in his presser on the Manasa incident, mentioned in passing that several officers involved in monitoring and evaluating the activities of religious groups will be restored to National Security. Activists collectively gasped. But we need to pause here. The current minister of interior is in my opinion professionally incompetent, but this decision doesn't seem to stem from him. And it doesn't seem to be so bad after all.

State security is the internal intelligence service in Egypt, akin to the FBI. But because this is Egypt, state security of course had its fair share of violations. There are claims of torture, kidnappings, rapes, and all kinds of horrors. All the first hand accounts I've heard though, is of someone being asked to an office and asked questions by an officer. Evidence exists also that there was torture, although the extent is very difficult to judge. The extent and reach of state security in the Mubarak era is often portrayed by Islamists and activists alike to be spectacular. But this is probably a colossal exaggeration similar to the ones made about SAVAK in Shah-time Iran where activists once claimed a third of males in Iran to be SAVAK operatives (the truth turned out to be around 40,000 people!)

After the January 25th revolution, the country was essentially undone. Sectarian violence broke out in several locations, chaotic scenes spread, and attacks on police stations increased. Eager to preserve the pristine, though patently fake, image of the 18 days in Tahrir, activists and media alike scrambled to blame state security for everything. Highly respected talk show hosts made wild claims that state security officers were seen around sites of sectarian violence leading the crowds. Islamists fanned the flame of ire on state security.

The apparatus was dissolved a few months after the revolution. But this only happened after secular and Islamist activists stormed state security HQ's and extracted thousands of documents. In a ridiculous case known as "document shredding", state security officers were prosecuted (and found not guilty) for destroying printouts of classified documents before the public got their hands on it. In a Kafkaesque scene, dozens of Salafists stormed state security buildings insisting that they were tortured in subterranean cells (which never managed to materialize).

At the end of the day, the state security apparatus was essentially paralyzed. Activists claim state security never stopped functioning, but that is due to the necessity of a scapegoat upon which to hang every failing. Officers stopped working, many stopped caring, many were fired first by SCAF then by Morsi. Dozens of terrorists that the apparatus had helped capture were given presidential pardon by Morsi, any attempt to gather intelligence on Islamists was actively thwarted, and parts of the memory of the organization was lost as officers left it and documents lost their classification.

The result was a meteoric rise in weaponization and organization of terrorist groups in Northern Sinai, reaching a point where they are a veritable mini-army. Not to mention the now virtually unkown armory of Jamaa Islamiya in upper Egypt. But we also now have armed and active militia serving the MB and Hazemoon publicly in Cairo and Giza. We must recall that security attempts to warn about violence from Hazemoon was met with scorn and further calls for "reforming the MoI". People paid the price for this in neighborhoods around Nahda.

We are paying the price for the idealism and utter stupidity and inexperience of young activists today in blood. What the January 25th revolution knew was what it did not want. Everyone all of a sudden seemed to figure out that state security must go. What to replace it with, what state security actually does and how essential it is, are irrelevant questions. After all, some activists might have informed us, the principality of Monaco managed just fine without a state security officer. This whole debacle represents the nihilist, deconstructionist nature of January 25th that created the vacuum that the MB gladly stepped in to fill.

So now we are in a country where local groups openly call for civil war, carry weapons, kill people, call for foreign intervention, call for dissolution of the army, and essentially openly call for destruction of the state. All these groups without one single exception have religious overtones. When the MoI as an organization makes the decision to return a small number of officers with experience in monitoring religious groups, I think that's the least it could do. Are you afraid of illegal wiretapping or illegal detentions? If they happen and you make sure they happen point them out, in a month or so start pushing for legislation that puts legal (but reasonable) restrictions on state security, demand that the media be vigilant. But whatever you do, don't try to convince me that now and here we don't need a division in the internal intelligence service that monitors religious groups for signs of militancy!!!

What western media is getting right & wrong on Egypt

The effect of Western media on Western governments and the interest of the average westerner in what's happening now in Egypt are often exaggerated by Egyptians. However, it is interesting to take a look at Western media and try to dissect what exactly they are getting right or wrong. In Arabic language media, the situation in Egypt has virtually no neutral media outlets. The claim by one side that it is a war on religion, and by the other side that it is a war on the nation makes neutrality impossible to achieve. Thus Western media was expected to play a unique role here, which it largely failed to do. Part of the disappointment of Egyptians in Western media stems from the fact that, through trust in anything blonde and blue eyed, they over-estimate its professionalism and lack of bias.

What Western media is getting right that Arabic speaking media is not:

1-Sketch of the MB Rabea sitin. The sitin is described as it is, nothing is added, nothing is left out. Common stories about people being forcibly kept in the sitin are easily destroyed by these neutral accounts on the ground
2-The MB sitin has been largely ignored. Yes, the demands of the sitin have been largely ignored for weeks (perhaps for good reason)
3-Excessive force was used against MB marches. Despite all qualifiers, this goes without saying

What Western media got wrong:

1-MB marches are armed in ways that Egypt has never seen. Reporters often say dismissively that yeah, there may have been a shotgun or a dozen I don't know. But this is a very dangerous precedent in Egypt. Marches that carry weapons and shoot at people were introduced in Abassiya by Hazemoon (also Islamists), but they were very marginal at the time

2-The MB sitins have killed and tortured. The small sitin at Cairo University is particularly notorious for killings in almost all the surrounding areas. Residents of Bein El-Sarayat, Giza, and Manial have had roughly 30 people shot to death by the Nahda MB sitin. Western journalists invariably approach this in one of two ways: Either claim the victims fell in clashes without specifying sides, or quoting the MB that they were thugs

3-The central message of the Rabea stage. There is barely any attempt to translate or even listen occasionally to the Rabea stage microphone. It is certain and documented that the official stage is sending an extremely disturbing message from extremely disturbing people. The personalities on the stage invariably include terrorists from Jamaa Islamiya for example. The question of how do you know they are terrorists, well, they are self-confessed and proud about it. The message is almost constantly sectarian, laying the blame entirely on the Coptic church and almost explicitly calling for attacks on churches. Claims that the attacks on Sinai would stop once Morsi is restored were also made by Beltagi. Calls for the army to fracture, for foreign intervention, for Jihadists to join the cause, and prayers and curses upon all Egyptians who disagree with the MB were also made

4-Demographics. And by that I don't mean numbers, I mean types. Most Western journalists do report that most of the sitin is from the countryside, which is true. What they mostly mis-report is that the people are there for democracy or for their votes. People are there almost exclusively for religious reasons. Most of the people there see the ouster of Morsi as an attack on Islam, most are also fed bogus stories by the main microphone on how mosques are being burnt down allover the country. Denying that the sitin is largely Islamist, largely provincial, and largely poor; does not help finding a solution. After all there should be nothing wrong being these things

5-Realism of the demands and how genuine the leaders are. Yes, the demands have been ignored. But what are the demands? Morsi's return to power is the short answer. The few thousands who stay there all the time, the tens of thousands who come every night, and the leaders have all given a single message: Nothing will change until Morsi is restored to power, the constitution is restored, and the Shura council restored. Anyone with a hint of what's happening in the country knows that if any of these things happens, masses would flood the streets in protests that would dwarve Rabea. The army and the MB are striking a deal behind closed doors you say? Well, they probably are, but the MB leadership is digging itself a very deep hole by establishing as a hard fact among the sitin that there is only one hard nonnegotiable (and impossible) set of demands

إدارة التنوع في العالم العربي

الربيع في الشرق الأوسط ليس كالربيع في شرق اوروبا. الربيع في الشرق الأوسط حار خانق. الربيع في الشرق الأوسط هو وقت غزو رياح الصحراء و الغبار و الرمال. في الربيع في الشرق الأوسط لا يتحمل احد الآخر.

الوضع في الدول العربية في الشرق الأوسط بعد الربيع العربي لا يمكن تفسيره بعيدا عن التاريخ. على الرغم من كل مساوئ الاحتلال العثماني للدول العربية الا انه خلق نظاما مفتوحا يسمح بانتقال الأشخاص و الأفكار. و على الرغم من انحسار التأثير العثماني الى تأثير معنوي الا انها تركت ميراثا من الحد الأدنى من الحقوق للأقليات و مستوى من الاستقرار (او الركود) الذي ادى الى ظهور مجتمعات تعددية دينيا و اثنيا و طائفيا. و هو ما كان عليه الشرق الأوسط منذ القدم, مجتمع لا يمكن اتهامه بالنقاء في اي اتجاه.

عندما نفضت تركيا يدها من الشرق الأوسط و قررت انشاء دولة قومية حديثة آلت على نفسها أن تشارك في التعددية التي تميز الشرق الأوسط. فكانت مذبحة الأرمن التي خلقت دولة نقية دينيا في الأناضول. الا ان التعددية الاثنية ظلت رابضة تحت السطح في شكل الأكراد.

أما بالنسبة للدول العربية فقد تركت للدول الأوروبية الاستعمارية الفائزة في الحرب العالمية الأولى لتحديد مصيرها. و كان ترسيم الحدود بشكل عشوائي. ارسم خطا هنا و ارسم خطا هناك لتصنع دويلات لم يكن لها ابدا مقومات الدولة القومية. كما ان الحدود لم تراع التقسيمات الاثنية او الدينية. ارادت فرنسا ان تصنع حالة خاصة فحاولت خلق دولة تضم مسيحيي سوريا الكبرى لحمايتهم من الأغلبية المسلمة. فكانت لبنان. لكن لم يحدث هجرة طائفية في الاتجاهين كما حدث عند تقسيم الهند. فأصبحت لبنان التمثيل الأمثل لدول الشرق الأوسط بكل مشاكلها. أما بريطانيا فصنعت حالة خاصة أخرى أكثر نجاحا في فلسطين. ساعد على نجاح تكوين الدولة اليهودية العنف الشديد المتبع في التطهير العرقي (بما يستدعي مذابح الأرمن).

أما بقية دول الشرق الأوسط فواجهت معضلة صنع الدولة من لا شيء. و كان أمام تلك الدول عدة اختيارات لادارة التعددية في نطاق الحدود الجديدة. و من ضمن هذه الاختيارات كانت الحرب الأهلية. الا ان الاختيار الأساس في أغلبية الدول كان خلق هوية جديدة تسمى القومية العربية. هذه الهوية ذات اتجاهات يسارية و ميل خفيف نحو العلمانية. الا انها قامت بنجاح بمعالجة التنوع الطائفي في كل الدول التي تبنتها. و كان ذلك على حساب قمع التنوع الاثني (في الأساس للأمازيغ و الأكراد و العرقيات السودانية). كما انها انتهجت نهجا سلطويا غير ديمقراطي.

الاتجاه الآخر في الدول العربية كان باتجاه تكوين نظم ملكية. و في صدرها كان النظام السعودي حيث اتحدت الصدارة القبلية لآل سعود مع الثأر الشخصي لكهان الوهابية مع الأموال المفاجأة للبترول لتخلق وحشا يبحث عن أي مكان يصب فيه تأثيره. فكان الاتجاه للتأثير المباشر و الهيمنة من خلال الوهابية تحت عباءة ما يسمى السلفية على المسلمين السنة اللذين يمثلون غالبية سكان العالم العربي. ثم تلا صعود السعودية الثورة الايرانية و سعيها للسيطرة على الشيعة العرب. كما لم يتردد الغرب عن التأثير على المسيحيين العرب. و هكذا تبدد حلم القومية العربية بخلق هوية جديدة تجمع كل سكان الشرق الأوسط و شمال افريقيا. و ربما كانت الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية انذار مبكر عن التفتت الطائفي و الاثني المقبل عليه العالم العربي.

الا ان موت القومية العربية كان تدريجيا. تطلب مرحلة طويلة من الارهاب من الجماعات السنية و احتلال خارجي للعراق ثم مجموعة من الظروف الاقتصادية و الاجتماعية و المعلوماتية. و كانت النتيجة ما يسمى بالربيع العربي الذي اضعف اكبر دولة عربية من حيث عدد السكان و دمر تماما سوريا, اكبر دولة كانت تتمثل فيها الهوية العربية بصورتها الخالصة. ففي سوريا تجلت تداعيات سايكس بيكو و كوارث التغير الفجائي في الربيع العربي. فما يسمى ثورة سوريا هو كما هو واضح لكل العيان حرب طائفية. و ليس صحيحا انها بدأت ثورة ثم تحولت لحرب بعد استخدام العنف. فهي من أول لحظة ثورة من الأغلبية السنية على الأقليات العلوية و الشيعية و المسيحية التي احتلت المراكز القيادية في البلاد منذ الانقلاب البعثي. و الثورة في قلبها الاخوان و يشعلها الانتقام من مذابح الأسد الأب في حماة (التي يدعي العلويون ان لولاها لقسمت سوريا). ثم ما هو المطلوب من 40% من سكان سوريا الغير سنة. من الطبيعي عندما يتأملون العالم العربي و بالأخص بلدان الربيع العربي أن يصيبهم الرعب من العيش في دولة يتحكم فيها الغالبية السنية. و لكن بشار ارتكب مذابح! عندها يتضح قرب استحالة عيش الشعب السوري مع بعضه. ثم يطرح السؤال ما هي سوريا؟ لم لا يستقل العلويون و المسيحيون و الأرمن بدولة تضم الجبال و التلال المحيطة باللاذقية؟ و لينعم السنة بحقهم في حكم بقية "سوريا".

في شمال افريقيا يوجد حالتين شاذتين مخالفة لفشل الدول العربية الغير عائمة على آبار البترول. الحالة الأولى هي الحالة الثورية في تونس. فعلى الرغم من التردي الاقتصادي في تونس ما بعد الثورة فهي في طريقها الى بناء دولة حديثة. فتونس هي العاصفة المثلى للظروف. حدودها رسمت بعناية او بحظ شديد بحيث ان تونس لا يوجد بها تنوع اثني او ديني يذكر. كما ان تونس بها مستوى عال من التعليم و الاحتكاك الشديد بالحضارة الاوروبية. لذا فحتى اخوان تونس اصروا على دستور جامع علماني مطلق للحريات العامة و الشخصية. كما ان تونس بها حركات ليبرالية و يسارية و عمالية فاعلة تضمن عدم استئثار الاخوان بالحكم. اما المثال الثاني فهو الممثل للدول التي اسعدها الحظ بعدم دخول نادي الربيع العربي و هي المغرب. المغرب غارقة في التعددية, فبها تعداد يهودي لا بأس به كما ان جزء ضخم من السكان أمازيغ. المغرب تعاملت مع التعددية اللغوية و الاثنية بمبدأ غريب عن العالم العربي: الاعتراف به. فالأمازيغية لغة قومية معترف بها و الدولة ليست فقط منوطة بالسماح بالتعبير باللغات الأمازيغية و لكن أيضا بتمكينها من خلال وسائل اعلام حكومية. أما التنوع السياسي فالمغرب اتبعت نموذجا اصلاحيا حقيقيا يقود الى ملكية دستورية. و هذه الخطوات تمت بخطوات تدريجية لا تسمح بحالة من الاستئثار او التعدي على التوازن المجتمعي. في هذا المجال استطاعت القوى الاسلامية ممارسة السياسة, لا سياسة الأحزاب التي تقودك الى الجنة او سياسة تكفير الخصوم, و لكن السياسة الحقيقية. و في هذا الاطار تساوت القوى الاسلامية مع غير الاسلامية كبديل سياسي يستطيع الشعب اختياره في الصندوق و طرده بالصندوق بدون التعرض لخطر دمج الدولة في الحزب أو محاولة تغيير توازن المجتمع أو مهاجمة ثقافاته و أديانه.

التحدي الأساسي أمام وجود الدول العربية هو إدارة التنوع. إذا ما هي الخيارات المتاحة امام دول الربيع العربي بخاصة و أغلب الدول العربية عامة؟

1-    الدولة الحديثة: و هي بكل وضوح الدول الديمقراطية الليبرالية العلمانية التي تعامل كل مواطنيها بمساواة بغض النظر عن النوع أو الإثنية أو الدين. و هذه المبادئ تتقبلها (و إن كان إسما) أغلب المجتمعات الغير مسلمة. و هذا الخيار يعتمد على المساواة و الحرية الدستورية و القانونية و التنفيذية. هذا الحل شبه مستحيل نتيجة رفضه من أساسه لمخالفته في تصور الكثيرين للدين الإسلامي و لمعارضة القوى السنية الإسلامية له

2-    نضوج التجربة الإسلامية: الحقوق و الحريات الأساسية لا جدال فيها. لكن في تصور الكثير من التيارات الإسلامية فالمشكلة في طريقة الوصول الى هذه الحقوق. في هذا التصور فإن هذه الحقوق يحتويها الإسلام و هو قادر على ان يكون مصدرا لها بدلا من التجربة العلمانية الغربية (العلمانية بدرجاتها مقبولة ايضا في أغلب مناطق آسيا و امريكا اللاتينية و إفريقيا). هذا الخيار لا يبدو محتملا نتيجة سيطرة الاتجاهات السلفية على كافة الأحزاب و التجمعات الإسلامية نتيجة تدفق أموال البترول

3-    التقسيم: و قد يكون التقسيم واضحا و حادا كما يبدو اتجاه الأحداث في سوريا. أو قد يكون أكثر ضمنية كما يحدث في مصر. ففي مصر يوجد كتلة قد تصل إلى ثلث السكان ترى في العيش تحت حكم التيارات الإسلامية خطرا وجوديا عليها و على ثقافتها و طريقة حياتها. لكن نتيجة عدم الفصل الجغرافي و قلة الأراضي الصالحة للعيش فالتقسيم الحاد قد يكون مستحيل. فالحالة الغالبة تتجه (بعد تصفية من يستطيع الهجرة من الثلث المختلف) إلى تكوين جيتوهات و بانتوستانات غير رسمية و غير معلنة. لتصبح مصر بحرا من التطابق يتخلله جزر من التعددية و التنوع. و بما أن التنوع يأتي اوتوماتيكيا بحراك اقتصادي و ثقافي فهذه الجزر ستضطر لدفع نوع من الضريبة أو الإتاوة للدولة لتسمح لها الأخيرة بالوجود. و ستقوم تلك الجزر بخلق نظم تعليمية و ثقافية و تجارية موازية مع التعامل مع حملات دورية من العنف من محيطها.