A great story in Mada Masr about the mysterious, unaccountable funds to which Egyptians are being strongly encouraged to donate.
Driven by curiosity, rather than patriotic sentiment, I also decided to donate to the Tahya Masr fund. Rather than promise Sisi my vital organs, I settled on a humble LE100 and accepted that I would be outdone by an 8-year-old.
When I arrived at the National Bank of Egypt, one of four banks that accepts donations, I quietly stated that I was here to donate to the Tahya Masr fund. The security guard and the policeman sitting next to him greeted me with excitement and respect.
“That’s it?” the policeman asked cheekily as he handed me a number and asked me to wait my turn.
After my number was called, I walked up to the desk, bolstered by my two new friends at the door, and stated that I would like to donate to the Tahya Masr fund, to which a busy bank teller shook his head and asked for my ID.
First, however, as a contributor to the fund, I had a few questions: how much money has been collected so far, where will the money go, and how soon?
The bank teller responded impatiently with “I don’t know” to every question.
I then asked what the difference was between account number 306306 and 037037. He went into a discussion with his neighboring colleague, and finally came back with an answer: “306306 is called Support Egypt, while 037037 is called Long Live Egypt.”
Both accounts were active at the same time, and people can still donate to either one, I learned.
“Now, are you going to give me the money?” the teller asked, as I handed over my LE100 bill, not knowing where it would end up
Andrea Teti, writing for the indispensable MERIP, gets it – this is precisely how I see the Egyptian state and its actions:
The arrest, trial and often torture of journalists, activists and students from across the political spectrum has nothing to do with the pursuit of justice or security. Even comedians are harassed. These actions are best understood as a mafia-style warning, the content of which is fairly obvious: For anyone opposing the regime installed since the 2013 army coup, there is no safety in the law, nor in Western governments, nor in the international media. The use of violence to repress or stir up conflict useful to the regime is nothing new. The regime wants it to be clear that it can imprison anyone, any time, no matter how absurd the charges, how surreal the evidence or how great a travesty of justice the trial. In fact, the absurdity of the evidence and the Kafkaesque legal process are not an aberration. On the contrary, the greater their absurdity, the more effectively the new regime makes its point: Cross us at your peril; there is nowhere to hide.
. . .
Every criminal gang worth its salt knows it needs to keep the local population dependent and scared enough to believe there is no alternative, and duped enough into thinking that there is at least a veneer of morality covering what the racketeers do.
Egyptian nationalists don’t like to hear it, but the leadership of their beloved military – whatever the merits it once had – has devolved into a mafia, no more, no less. Understanding that is the beginning of understanding what is happening in Egypt, and the risks it entails considering the region’s other mafia states were the Assads’ Syria and the Husseins’ Iraq. And look where they are now.
Baher Mohammed, Al Jazeera English producer who has know been in detention for four months now: “I want to bow before all those who are fighting for freedom of expression, a free press, and an end to our detention.”
Details of Clash of Forever, Ganzeer, from the Cairo Berlin show, sponsored by the German Embassy in Cairo Freedom is Coming, Lara Baladi, Townhouse Gallery Discarded, Hoda Lutfy, Townhouse Gallery
A semi-regular features from our contributor Nour Youssef, who watches a lot of TV.
It is now generally inadvisable to involve religion in politics in Egypt, unless you limit it to condemning involving religion in politics. This is especially true if you are just looking for a hadith that recommends the murder of your political opponents.
But ONtv presenter Youssef el-Husseiny has too much testosterone to care. Earlier this week, in an effort to see how much the Brothers like Sharia now, Husseiny told us a story about the Prophet and the Jews of Banu Nadir and Banu Qaynuqa, which he argued gives the authorities the religious right to kill all Brothers that hit puberty.
Those Jews, Husseiny tells us, used to gloat over the misfortunes of the Muslims (just like the MB celebrated their fellow Egyptian Muslims’ embarrassing football defeat) and broke the medina charter by collaborating with Quraysh, if only in spirit, against the Muslims in their unsuccessful siege of el-Medina during the Battle of the Trench. After the Muslims won, the Prophet, he says, asked his wounded companion Sa’d ibn Mo’ez what to do with the treacherous Jews, and Sa’d suggested the mass murder of all the post-pubescent males of the said tribes, or at least everyone capable of fighting. Given that it was a time of war, the Prophet followed Sa’d’s advice.
Moral of the story is: The Brothers are like the Jews of Nadir, we are in a time of war and they want Sharia, right? [Smile] They do realize Sharia would see them killed? Perhaps they want to disagree with Sharia and — God forbid — claim to know better than Sa’d, the Prophet [pause and smile some more] and Allah!
Never mind the fact that the story Husseiny is trying to refer to here is that of Banu Qurazya (Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir were expelled for non-Quraysh-related reasons), and let that not reflect on his intimate knowledge of Islamic history and his ability to issue fatwas based on it for politically convenient purposes. More importantly, Husseiny wants you to know he is not seriously advocating the activation of his religion’s laws. He is merely invoking them to scare people and tell the government to man up.
Another TV presenter making helpful suggestions for the government this week is Amr Adeeb, who came to educate us on the three schools of counterterrorism, one of which the government must subscribe to now.
The first school is Iranian and it follows an “eye for an eye” strategy. Following it means the government must kill some of its MB prisoners whenever an attack occurs. The number of prisoners to be killed should equal the number of lives lost in the attack, of course. Another option, is the Israeli school, which means the government would have to kill whoever planned the attack no matter how long it took (Munich-style). And then there is the American school, which says to flatten the country to whom the terrorists belong — a suggestion that raises doubts about Adeeb’s patriotism.
While Adeeb was trying to predict how long Egypt’s war on terror will last (a minimum of 3 to 5 years, if you’re wondering), his wife, Lamis el-Hadidi was hammering the last nail in the MB’s coffin, thanks to the discovery by the have-no-bone-to-pick-with-Hamas Egypt’s Representative Office in Ramallah and the Egyptian Interior Ministry that the Jan 25 pseudo-revolution was actually a Hamas conspiracy to bring the Brotherhood to power. The Ramallah office allegedly detected smuggling of weapons and some food to Egypt during the 18 days in 2011. This is just a fuzzy scan of letters allegedly sent from one government body to another that just so happens to parrot official rhetoric. The only thing shocking, or rather confusing, about this discovery and the “Jan. 25 is a hoax” rhetoric it supports is that it is gaining popularity at the same time the “June 30 revolution is an extension of Jan. 25” talk is still alive and well.
Soon after that, the protest law came out and talk shows scrambled to justify it. Adeeb, for instance, deflected and decided to air the Qatari protest law to annoy Qatari Al Jazeera, which didn’t like Egypt’s law. This also served to mollify people about the law, in a the-grass-is-brown-and-patchy on the other side kind of way. Khairy Ramadan, on the other hand, got a video of a North Korean police rehearsal of a protest dispersal to drool over. If you find pro-regime Khairy comparing Egypt’s police force to North Korea’s perplexing, do note that he did so with envy and no sense of irony.
Wanting to get a different point of view, Rola Kharsa got an April 6th member to read offensive viewer messages out-loud to whenever she ran out of angry phone calls.
On the other hand, giving me hope in television this week is Mahmoud Saad, who asked some basic questions like: Why did Tamarod’s Mahmoud Badr “sense embarrassment” and abstain from voting on the constitutional article that allows the military trials of civilians? Why do people not wearing uniforms arrest protesters when police officers are there? If they are police, where are their uniforms? Why do you slap someone who is in your custody and is not resisting? And while we’re on that, why sexually abuse them? Also, why assault people indiscriminately when they come out of the police van? And why dump the people you release on a desert road rather than just let them go? If the police didn’t kill the two that denied in the Mahmoud Memorial Clashes III, but was obviously there in large numbers; how come the shooter got away?
Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi stirred some controversy of his own after he apologetically explained why he can’t issue an official order to label the MB as a terrorist group: Egypt lacks the legal text that properly defines what a terrorist group is. Also, he has no authority to do so since he is not a court, and it is just pointless. Terrorism is a crime, he said, if someone commits it you can press charges, they will be “investigated” and then found guilty by a court — which would have been all well and patriotic, if he had not added this rhetorical question: “So what, am I supposed to jail anyone who was in the MB?”
Later, he had to call an upset Wael al-Ibrashi and reassure him that he can still call the MB a terrorist group despite the lack of evidence, because he personally thinks they are too. He just meant to say the government can’t go around calling people terrorists or thieves, that’s the Interior Ministry and judiciary’s job.
Despite fierce competition with Kharsa’s hairline, the most irritating TV thing for me was on military-worshipping el-Mehwar, whose Ahmed el-Sha’r pretended to be shocked to learn that ElBaradei, April 6th and all critics of the military are undercover, fifth columnists (i.e. Brothers i.e. terrorists) from a grumpy Lamis Gabr, an analyst and close cousin of Brain from Pinky and the Brain.
Before Jan 25, mosques had been hunting grounds for the MB. In the post-Jan 25 days, mosques evolved to become a place where they can meet, organize, mobilize, campaign, and more recently, treat fallen followers, count bodies and hide leaders. They also become the scene of political squabbles. At the time of the controversial Islamist-backed constitution, there were dueling campaigns to 1) challenge imams who used their sermons to support Morsi/the constitution (نزله من المنبار, “Get him down off the minbar”) or 2) physically restrain worshippers who challenged the imam (ربته في العمود, “Tie him to a column”).
The last thing the Brothers needed, after the eventful summer they’ve had, was to have their comfort zone fall back under government control and, now, the perked ears of pro-military residents, who would report an imam faster than he could compare what soldiers did to Muslims protesters in Raba’a al-Adaweya to what they haven’t done to the Jewish soldiers in Israel.
With the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) resolved to tighten its grip on mosques by passing a number of laws to substitute the much-criticized MB monopoly over religion with its own, many lips had been chewed and prayers for patience muttered.
Now there is a noticeable change in the khutbah (friday sermon). For the most part, it is shorter, just like the minister wanted (because the men have other things to tend to) and no longer connected to politics, not even by way of metaphors or anecdotes. A considerable number of imams have been contacted by the ministry and told specifically to stay off politics or else they might be considered a national security threat, inciting violence and possessing illegal weapons. Many imams sense danger and have begun self-censoring in case a housewife cooking in a nearby building hears the khutbah and doubts their patriotism, or in the not-unlikely-event that one of the new faces in the crowd turns out to be an informant.
Even though the great majority of MB imams have kept fiery sermons to a minimum and seem to have contented themselves with neighborhood night marches against the military in the meantime, some allow themselves a fit of rage and lead a protest out of mosques, three times a week, in areas too densely populated for police officers to be coaxed into visiting, like Ain Shams.
“You can tell (the MB supporters) are unhappy when they hear me preach about patience and generosity rather than comment about the situation,” said licensed Sheikh Emad, who is not Amr Moussa or something and should not be expected to talk politics. In the past month, Sheikh Emad was heckled out of his Ain Shams mosque when he tried to close it between prayers (another ministry rule).
But the fact remains that there are well over a 100 thousand mosques in Egypt and about half of them are manned by state-approved Azhar graduates. The rest are freelancers. The feared anti-military extremists can be either one of them. The new Awqaf minister has suspended the license-to-preach of all freelancers, said the must re-apply, and that only Azharis — as representatives of middle-of-the-road, official sanctioned Islam — will get one.
The ministry is also trying to limit the activities of zawiyas (unofficial very small neighborhood mosques). This may be why its list of four “conditions” regarding zawiya operation are closer to requests than rules. Laughable requests, according to Sheikh Gamal, a zawiya imam, shopkeeper, and occasional gas cylinder seller.
The conditions are that there be no (big) nearby mosque, or if there is one that it be full full; one can pray in a zawiya so long as it has a written permission to hold prayers or a licensed imam, as if people are going to walk in and ask for ID and licenses like a traffic cop. Anyway, what happens if people don’t abide by these conditions? What kind of legal consequences, if any, could one face for praying in zawiya?
For all its worth, most people under 45 like to skip the khutbah, if not physically, then mentally, and just wait for the iqaamah (the beginning of the prayer), Sheikh Gamal said with a knowing smile. Youngsters like to loiter by a kiosk and appear the moment the prayer starts in the back rows and the old sit inside and ponder life and prices.
The only people really listening to the khutbah now, Sheikh Gamal suspects, are those who wish they could deliver it and those who are there to make sure they don’t.
A while back, I expressed some misgivings about the great Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim’s seemingly uncritical support for the military leadership. I ended up paying him a visit and conducting a rather distressing interview. Despite my admiration for Ibrahim, and his friendliness to me, we were almost immediately disappointed with each other’s grasp of what is going on in Egypt these days, and unable to agree on the meaning of words like “massacre” and “nationalism.” I was surprised with Ibrahim’s willingness to accept repression in the name of abstract, hard-to-achieve and easy-to-manipulate goals like “fighting terrorism” and “standing up to the West.”
MM: I can’t help feeling that there will never be security sector reform. It’s very good for [the security services] to be fighting terrorism. Nobody is going to push them to change. Do you see what I’m saying?
SI: It takes time. The fundamental thing now is, if the police officer who used to insult me and kick me and beat me under Mubarak, if now he is fighting against terrorism, I am with him.
The full interview is at Mada Masr, which also has lots of coverage of Egypt’s celebrations of October 6 and of popular sentiment to the army.
Very nice, nuanced analysis of the different and shifting positions towards the Brotherhood, the army and civil liberties of Egypt’s various non-Islamist groups and parties by Sharif Abdel Kouddous in The Nation:
Opposition to Morsi grew throughout his time in office, eventually stretching across nearly every sector of Egyptian society. It also had grassroots support, manifested in more than 9,000 protests and strikes during his year-long rule that culminated in calls for early presidential elections and the unprecedented June 30 mobilization.
His opponents included a broad swath of political and social movements, often characterized by conflicting ideologies and grievances. It included revolutionary activists, labor unions, human rights advocates, the Coptic Church, intransigent state institutions, former Mubarak regime members and sidelined business elites as well as the formal opposition—the flock of non-Islamist political parties and figures routinely lumped together as “liberals,” despite the fact that many of them have rejected any notion of political pluralism, a defining characteristic of liberalism.
The result has been a confusing, and increasingly atomized, political landscape. Of the disparate groups opposed to Morsi, some actively sought military intervention, fewer opposed any military role, while others—like Dawoud—stood by the military as it ousted the president, but eventually broke away in the face of mounting state violence and mass arrests of Islamists under the guise of a “war on terror.”
The military—which formed a coalition of convenience with the Brotherhood for much of 2011 to manage the post-Mubarak landscape and hold revolutionary aspirations and unfettered popular mobilizations in check—successfully co-opted the movement against Morsi and, along with the security establishment, emerged as the clearest winner from his overthrow.
The biggest surprise for me was to read this account of what rabidly pro-military Tamarrod leader Mahmoud Badr said five weeks before Morsi’s ouster:
In his opening remarks, one of Tamarod’s founders, Mahmoud Badr (previously a coordinator in Kefaya), chose to focus on the role of the army. He recounted various incidents of popular mobilization and resistance against the Supreme Council of Armed Forces—which directly ruled the country following Mubarak’s ouster in 2011—in which the Brotherhood did not take part. He concluded by ruling out a military role in political life. “We insist that the army cannot be involved in politics,” he said emphatically.
Badr supports a Sisi presidency now (and generally giving the army whatever it wants). One of the most frustrating things about following and analyzing politics in Egypt is how utterly irresponsible and inconsistent political actors are, how often they go back on previous positions and statements and break their commitments.
A sad, amazing new video from the Egyptian Mosireen collective, setting a beautiful poem by Mahmoud Ezzat (“Prayer of Fear”) to film and finding a way to cut through all the bluster and bombast to the confusion and tragedy of this summer.
From Bernard Lewis’ autobiography, Notes on a century , a vignette about Nasser requesting Pakistan’s help to restructure the Egyptian military in 1960:
The government of Pakistan was willing, but on condition that it be permitted to send a small feasibility mission to examine the situation and then advise on what, if anything, Pakistan could do. It told Nasser that the mission must be allowed to go wherever it wanted, and its questions must be answered truthfully and honestly. Nasser agreed, saying that there would be no point otherwise.
A small group of Pakistan officers was then sent to Egypt. they toured the country, spoke to many people and reported that they were not told the truth. The reason that they were not told the truth is that nobody knew the truth. In the Egyptian armed forces, they said, “The corporal lies to the sergeant, the sergeant lies to the lieutenant, the lieutenant lies to the captain, the captain lies to the major and so on all the way up the chain of command. By the time it reaches the high command or the Ministry of Defense, they haven’t a clue what is going on.” The Pakistan general heading the mission concluded that the high command in Cairo was sitting on top of a pyramid of lies. The Pakistan government therefore declined and said it was sorry but could not help.
