Mona al-Tahawy has a personal story of dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood and explains why she backs their political rights even as she (rightly) finds their views distasteful: I Will Stand Up for the Muslim Brotherhood.
I think, even more than the arrests, the sign that there is really a fierce campaign taking place against the MB is that last week they were prevented from hosting their annual Ramadan iftar, which only two years ago was being attended by NDP figures. Symbolically, it is saying that they are considered beyond the pale, which was not the case not so long ago.
(Rightly). In case we all missed your hatred of all things Islamic earlier?
Mona’s piece was interesting, but I was a little bothered by the idea that Akef _is_ the brotherhood.
She obsesses a little too much over whether or not they sugar-coat their words sufficiently to be palatable to her sensitivities. What was she expecting, exactly? The Brotherhood have changed doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve renounced the fundamentals of their religious beliefs. Don’t expect them to serve alcohol at their dinners either, shocking as that may be.
I am not sorry to say that Eltahawy turn my stomach in the same way Friedman does; both claiming to be “liberals”. And some who know her history of reporting probably feel the same. In her current piece, she repeats the same old story about being labeled as “naked” by the leader of the Muslim Brothers. And if this story was true, she already milked it a few times before.
Again, if I am a woman labeled as naked by anyone, I would have no dignity whatsoever if I don’t respond forcefully. This is Cairo and not Paris or Los Angles. And there is nothing in this fluffy write up to suggest that she or others should “stand up” for the right of the Muslim Brothers to rule this country. Their right to live in peace, yes, but who in Egypt is able to do so with this corrupt and impotent government!
And she keeps repeating, like many of those idiotic Egyptian liberals, that Bush’s “Washington was bent on Arab democratization” and on their “push for democracy and reform in the middle east”. Oh, yes; they wish us peace and prosperity too!
There’s some debate as well over the translation of the word used, and whether he necessarily meant naked. He probably used the word “arian” or something like that, (amusingly also the name of a prominent liberal brother), which means naked, but could also mean, uncovered, which she was. Agree with them or not, the Brothers generally tend to be pretty police in their headquarters, and I’m a bit surprised that Akef, while a conservative old fart, would be so impolite to a guest as to mean naked, rather than just uncovered. But then naked makes a better story.
Akef is rather uncouth when it comes to language — he is the man who said, after all, “toz fi misr” much to the horror of many other Brothers.
[…] Brother Ibrahim al-Houdaiby has responded to Mona al-Tahawy’s critical column in the Forward on the group. In this pieces he distances himself from Supreme Leader Mahdi Akef’s remark […]