The insecurity of a security state: What can Hannah Arendt tell us about Egypt?

My larticle on understanding the Egyptian political situation through the works of Hannah Arendt. Published in Politics in Spires

Hannah Arendt
In Egypt, it is clear that constructive results are not going to materialise anytime soon. Increasing state violence, arrests and intimidation have no clear logic beyond an attempt by the security apparatus to regain power and tighten control over the economy. It is an outworn order that risks collapsing.


The insecurity of security

While the regime does have a serious security issue on its hands, namely the Sinai-based terrorism that has now spread to Cairo, the regime is increasingly blurring the lines between terrorism and anyone who opposes the official line. Labelling the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, outlawing anti-regime protests, cracking down on NGOs and the clampdown against anti-regime activists and journalists are indications that the security state is disintegrating. The regime is carrying out violent measures against Islamists and youth – two major groups that cannot afford to be alienated – signalling the regime’s struggles to control a significant segment of the population via peaceful means.

According to Hesham Sellam, a fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, “These are the actions of a security apparatus that has lost the capability, coherence, and discipline to contain its challengers through targeted repression, and institutional and legal engineering.” Sallam argues that state increasingly can only justify its existence at the end of the barrel or through the desperate propagation of incoherent, xenophobic and militant nationalism. If this continues, he explains further, the Egyptian state will inevitably fail to establish any semblance of control, which successive governments have tried to impose since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

In the meantime, there is no sign that the regime can deliver the security or stability that is required to attract tourists and investors. Billions in Gulf aid money will not resolve Egypt’s structural tensions. Reducing a bloated bureaucracy, addressing the subsidies burden and solving rampant unemployment remain in the queue. Meanwhile, with half of Egypt’s population under the age of 25, there is a startling lack of opportunity for an emerging generation.

Egypt – politically, economically, and socially – cannot be saved through violent attack on dissenters, there is an urgent need for a broad political consensus to tackle longstanding crises.

Applying Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s understanding of violence can provide fundamental insights into the regime’s behaviour. In her 1972 work Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Arendt points out that the rise of state violence is frequently connected to a decrease in substantive power as regimes mistakenly believe they can retain real control through violent measures (CR 184). Real and sustainable power arises when a concert of people get together in a space to exchange views. Thus, power arises through free choice. Violence sits outside the realm of legitimate politics. It is an expression of desperation. It renders speech, discussions and persuasion impossible, making support from the public harder to come by.

Although she argues against violence, Arendt made qualified exceptions. She makes a point in her 1963 book On Revolution that violence may be required in initiating a new beginning such as a revolution in order to secure freedom. Yet this contrasts with the negative role of violence – its suppression of freedom. Contrary to the popular view of a peaceful uprising, the 2011 Egyptian revolution saw violent conduct from many protestors. Police stations were burned to the ground and symbols of the state were attacked. These actions, among many, helped to alter the political dynamics in favour of the street, and as Conor Cruise O’Brien once stated, “Violence is sometimes needed for the voice of moderation to be heard.”

Still, violence, state or otherwise, should not be glorified. State violence makes holding order difficult in the long term. As the bloody crackdown launched by the Egyptian security forces demonstrates, violence makes the situation unpredictable and perilous; it also does not guarantee the intended outcome. Arendt has much to say about this too. She remarks, “The danger of violence, even if it moves consciously within a non-extremist framework of short-term goals, will always be that the means overwhelm the end (OR 177).” The problem is that Egypt has long moved beyond such a framework. The spread of pain and suffering is too widespread to manage or control.

Arendt stresses that violence cannot create power, it can only destroy power (CR 155), meaning that it only takes away the conditions in which power can exist, merely forcing a group to disperse. Yet it does not create power which relies on the number of individuals supporting a certain group. In light of this, violence does not require numbers; it requires implements, the tools of violence that multiplies human strength. Therefore power is “not confronted by men but by men’s artefacts” (CR 106). As such, violence is the poorest foundation for a new government.

Arendt uses the example of a disruption in a university class. If one student successfully disrupts the class by yelling or using violence, while all other students choose to carry on peacefully, this breakdown in the academic process would not be due to the disruptive student’s greater power, but rather due to the entire group of students’ choice not to exercise its power to overpower the student (CR 141). In the context of the Egyptian regime, security sector violence subdues the majority to cause it not to exercise its power.

A search for salvation   

To survive, a regime needs a genuine powerbase of believers (CR 149). This powerbase, at the moment, appears to be a large swathe of the Egyptian public cheering on the crackdowns and arrests, and adulating Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi as their messiah. Sisi does not want to become a dictator as much as the people want to make him one. Yet this base rests largely on a quickly hatched informal pact in which the instability-weary public surrenders democratic governance in exchange for security and economic progress. Neither is likely to eventuate, further entrenching the use of violence and consequently exacerbating the instability of the regime.

Arendt warns that violence, like any mode of action, can change the world, but alas, the most probable change is to a more violent world (OR 177). Yet as she notes in The Human Condition(1958), the unpredictability of political action and violence can be countered through promises and forgiveness to help stabilise action and provide healing. Making and keeping promises helps to give signals to the public about the future, ensuring steadfastness. Forgiveness tempers the irreversibility of violence by forgiving past mistakes (HC 241). An alternative to forgiveness is punishment, which involves reparations to rectify the original transgression and bring it to a close. This should not be confused with vengeance that reacts by perpetrating a mirror image of the original wrong.

Distressingly, the Egyptian story of the past three years has been anything but promise, forgiveness and punishment. Instead, it has been one of promises to elites, forgiveness for old regime figures, and punishment for those who criticise the established state chorus.

As elites seek to exhaust every polarising measure before arriving at the obvious station of compromise, Egypt’s road to progressive and inclusive politics is going to be stained red with calamity. In the absence of a visionary leadership, violence will likely continue unabated and further enflame the serious empathy drought in the public discourse.

The spectre of unpredictability, an important Arendtian theme, is another added challenge for the state. The 2011 Revolution brought a new beginning which opened up spaces in which individuals could share with one another their identity and engage in speech and action in which freedom and plurality materialised. It was a Pandora’s Box that unleashed a wave of political change that cannot tolerate the resurrection of Mubarak-style authoritarianism for the very reason that its foundational social contract is no longer feasible. In a paradoxical way, Egypt is a new Egypt even if it still looks like old Egypt.

It may be the case that Egypt’s move towards democracy will eventually happen because they will be left with no other choice as the tools of violence become blunted, but this will not be because the establishment will simply have a change of heart.

“To substitute violence for power can bring victory,” Arendt states, “but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished but it is also paid by the victor” (CR 152).

The question now remains how high a price is Egypt’s regime willing to pay, and also how long the classroom will remain apathetic. A state is predictable, a revolution is not.

What Would People Say? The Obsession with Public Image in Egypt

Published in the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy 

Promotion banner of draft constitution featuring non-Egyptians and misspelled Arabic word for “Egyptians”
Promotion banner of draft constitution featuring non-Egyptians and misspelled Arabic word for “Egyptians”

“Would you allow your unmarried daughters to live alone in their own apartments in Cairo?” This was the question asked by American journalist Milton Viorst to the late Naguib Mahfouz in the 1990s. The legendary Arab novelist replied that such a circumstance would not be acceptable, as it simply would not look right.

Mahfouz did not invoke a financial, safety, or even religious motive to underpin his reasoning—in effect, he made the “what would people say?” argument, which permeates  Egyptian society and holds hostage any and all statements and actions to the court of public opinion, consequently warping people’s reasoning.

In light of the increasing harassment of bearded men in Egypt, I called a relative of mine out of concern for his safety. His first response to my inquiries was, “Can you imagine what the Americans and British are saying about us now?” He found this conjecture to be a more pressing issue than his personal safety and the safety of others. Indeed, every relative with whom I speak cannot help but ask, “What is the West saying about us? Make sure you tell them the truth!”—as if I had a monopoly on the information coming out of Egypt (and the rest of the world had no access to the Internet).

A sort of obsessive-compulsive public-image disorder is sufficiently widespread that it crosses social and class lines in Egypt. At the heart of everyday decision making lies the anxiety of what society may think rather than any consideration of the merits involved. This hyper-sensitivity to public opinion is present on multiple levels, ranging from how society will judge the individual to how the international community will judge Egypt. For the latter, this sensitivity is in no way a constructive one that encourages appropriate responses, such as tackling sexual harassment and human rights abuses. Instead, it combines with an entrenched political and social schizophrenia, leading to a pattern of denials, conspiracy accusations, and selective historical reminders whenever sensitive topics are discussed –“Did you not know that Egypt loaned money to Great Britain during World War Two? Or that Egypt used to provide the Kiswah (covering cloth) for the Kaaba in Mecca?” There is an accordingly disoriented sense of priorities for the state and individual.

You would think that the deaths of protestors would lead to the prosecution, if not at least the resignation, of the responsible public officials. To the regime, however, such deaths are not as serious asDecember’s banner fiasco, which marred the promotion of Egypt’s new constitution by featuring foreign, stock-image faces and an Arabic spelling mistake. This public relations embarrassment before the world saw State Information Service head Amgad Abdel-Ghaffar resigning and the designer of the banner being “penalized.” Yet, the Interior Minister is still in his position. Banners, clearly, make Egypt look bad—arrests and killings do not.

Such a climate transforms Egypt’s political sphere into a theatre of the absurd, enabling the recent, extraordinary scandal of the military “invention” that allegedly cures Hepatitis C and AIDS. This worrying development is a reflection of the authorities shifting into desperation mode, trying to improve their image by demonstrating any sort of unprovable achievement. This is so even though it comes at the expense of damaging the reputation of Egyptian doctors and scientists and, worst of all, giving false hope to millions of impoverished patients across the country who are unlikely to see through the political smokescreen.

What about the world?

One of the most common tactics to justify the public image disorder is to employ the logical fallacy of tu quoque, Latin for “you, too,” which has become increasingly rife in everyday language. Criticism, constructive or not, when levelled at Egyptian policies or social ills, is rejected solely on the basis of the critic’s perceived inconsistency, not the argument or position itself. While many critics of Egyptian matters may indeed be hypocritical and inconsistent, this form of ad hominem attack still does not invalidate their arguments.

Following the horrific 1997 Luxor massacre, which saw 62 people, primarily tourists, killed, an Egyptian official came out before the international press, grinding his teeth and insisting that this happens everywhere else in the world. Such is the function of the time-honored deflection of responsibility that we still hear daily—“It happens around the world, not just in Egypt!”

Sexual harassment rampant in Egypt? That is fine, it happens in India too. Buildings and bridges collapsing in Alexandria and Cairo? Not to worry, Bangladesh has it worse. Pollution choking Egypt’s capital? Have you even seen Beijing? Foreign journalists illegally incarcerated in Tora prison? What about Guantanamo? Was that a massacre of a couple of hundred demonstrators in Rabaa? Well, it’s our war on terrorism, just like yours.

Egypt might be burning, but the only response it seems to have is to deflect attention away from the flames. Tu quoque or not, it is clear by now that reason and logical arguments have been pushed to the margins of political discourse in an Egypt where a stork and muppet can be investigated for conspiracy, terrorism and espionage.

The politics of visual piety

The public image disorder can also be seen in the way that religion plays a powerful role in Egyptian society and the value attached to being seen to adhere to religious norms reflects the society’s abiding concern for what others may say.

Once, while attending the Friday sermon at a Cairo mosque, I heard the imam express disappointment that youth were not attending the fajr (dawn) prayer. After a number of conversations with the devout who were not in attendance, it did not take me long to figure out that, apart from the stay-up-and-sleep-in behavior common to the Egyptian lifestyle, the societal incentive to be seen attending the fajr prayer is significantly less than that which is attached to the weekly, congregational Friday prayer, an event that not even a bank robber would miss.

This is neither to dismiss genuine convictions nor to deny the fact that Friday prayers—in the congregational manner—are considered obligatory in Islam. Rather, it is to show that the social element attached to public displays of devotion is so overwhelming that it skews the degree of religiosity in Egypt, widening the gap between beliefs, statements, and actions.

The rule of former President Hosni Mubarak gutted the official political-administrative sphere, and the religious sphere grew in scale as a form of societal empowerment and opposition. Women increasingly donned the veil, the zabiba (a mark on a Muslim man’s forehead from frequent prostration) mysteriously proliferated, and the crucifix became more prominent on Copts. This phenomenon at least partly explains why the Muslim Brotherhood confused Islam with Islamism and believed that their form of identity politics could just be rammed through the public sphere without any semblance of negotiation

Women, religious or not, receive the harshest judgements regarding personal dress, whereabouts, and life decisions in general. Every deviation from the behavior associated with that of a mohtarama, or a “respectable woman,” is discouraged by families concerned by the social impact of what people may say about her.

Since the revolution, there has been a growing trend of Muslim women removing their veils. Those with whom I have spoken largely argue that they have neither become any less religious nor comprised their principles, and they stress the freedom element involved in the decision to wear the veil. Strangely enough, these women are not admonished with “God will disapprove” statements; they instead encounter responses focused on society. One young woman who had recently removed the veil remarked, “I lost so many friends who felt that I was letting them down, that I was no longer the person they thought I was. The public was unforgiving; they had certain expectations of me that were defeated.” Equally, it is not unusual for women who wear the veil to receive compliments and criticisms that revolve around fickle public opinion, not divine ordainments.

The state’s extreme makeover

However, there is a deeper and more sinister side to this disorder. Inevitably, as national image becomes conflated with national security, this disproportionate concern with perception over reality helps to pave the way for public policy to effortlessly make inroads into the private social sphere. Taking advantage of a public already well-practiced in focusing on social perceptions, the state sets the tone of this self-image affliction by accusing its “opponents” of nonsensical crimes such as “spreading false news,” “damaging Egypt’s image abroad,” “insulting the judiciary,” and “breaching national trust.” Looking at the names of these “crimes,” it is almost as if the Egyptian state has feelings that are easily hurt.

Egyptian’s private spheres are continually violated rather than protected, particularly with regard to bodily integrity such as an individual’s safety, privacy, religious freedom, liberty, and protection from arbitrary arrest and detention. This is a key factor behind the establishment of Hossam Bahgat’s Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights,  human rights in Egypt have largely focused on the public sphere, not the personal sphere (and even in the former, they are struggling against a rising tide of state authority). The private sphere is where one experiences everything from silent violations, like one’s religion being placed on national ID cards, to the more menacing trend of neighbors ratting out neighbors to the authorities—your business is everyone’s business when your actions are seen to reflect on the state.

As with many problems, one may need return to childhood for an answer. Here, the 1971 collection “The Black Prince and other Egyptian Folk Tales,” by Ahmed and Zane Zagloul, may have the answer.

In one of the stories, a father decided to teach his son a valuable lesson due to the son’s frequent response of “what would people say?” in regards to his father’s disciplining him. The father mounted a donkey and told his son to follow along on foot in the market place. The crowds immediately responded: “Do you have a rock instead of a heart, you merciless man? How do you have the shamelessness to ride while that poor boy of yours runs along behind?”

So they switched places, with the father now following the boy and donkey on foot. An old man yelled out: “I do declare! If that ain’t the way to bring up an ingrate. Yes sir-ree, if you want no respect from your boy, that’s the way to get it…What are fathers made of these days, I’d like to know?” Finally, they both mount the donkey only to be jeered at by more onlookers who are never happy with whatever the father and son do. The ending sees two police officers taking the father and son first to the police station, then to the madhouse. “This, my son,” the father says, “is the result of troubling yourself over what other people would say.”

Egypt’s own written traditions scream against the excessive “what would people say?” syndrome, as it compromises one’s integrity and leads to actions that are not reflective of an individual’s true self. It shuts down debate, separates one from exposure to new ideas to improve the human condition, renders self-expression perilous, and makes hypocrisy and double-standards into accepted norms. The end result is a society that is living a lie as the world moves on, with or without Egypt.

Now vs. Then

Dr. Nawal el-Messeri Nadim did her dissertation on Mahfouz’s Sugar Street. She makes the case that, in Egypt’s culture of the alleys, what people think of you trumps your individual achievements. That is to say, an alley-dweller is not just a person; he or she is part of a social network that is final arbiter of his or her value.

Yet, one of the Egyptian revolution’s secondary goals has been to break this kind of social network, particularly its harmful elements. Despite the revolution’s apparent regression, it has had remarkable success in the cultural arena, which has witnessed a massive expansion in the space that is open for creativity, from new forms of street art to the wide popularity of satirist Bassem Youssef. Such openings reflect a force against which the state will have to reckon.

It will be some time before the public space renegotiates the question from “what would people say?” to “what would the future say?” Historians studying the current period in Egyptian history will undoubtedly find its events beyond description and understanding.

One only hopes that the obsessive-compulsive image disorder, along with the many other disorders that are a part of this increasingly fascist-leaning environment that is pushing people into the folktale’s madhouse, burns out before it burns the rest of the country with it.

 

If the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots started in Alexandria, then why are there few accounts of it?

(scroll to bottom for NYT article)

This week marks the infamous bread riots that rocked Egypt in 1977, and was arguably a precursor to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The New York Times ran the story on the riots with this peculiar paragraph:

“The riots started Tuesday in Alexandria, which has a reputation for left-wing militance, when thousands took to the streets to protest a Government announcement increasing the price of many staple foods and other basic consumer goods by 50 to 100 percent while giving an across-the-board wage increase of 22 percent. The riots spread to Cairo and its suburb of Helwan”

What’s unusual about the NYT piece is that it’s one of the few then contemporary accounts, though brief, to accurately name the geographical spark of the riot and label its perceived political profile.

It’s often baffling as to why a city that sparked off the riots and known for its “left-wing militance” could not garner any interest from then reporters – Egyptian or foreign – to investigate further, but basically recycle from their Cairo hotels and stations the same news coming out of Alexandria, such as the burning of the historical Alexandria Stock Exchange. There is a scarcity of interviews or even later research on what made Alexandria a tinderbox on a local level in January 1977. Unfortunately, all of Egypt’s problems, like today, are grouped into a national narrative, rather than seeking out what unique factors existed in each area.

This information vacuum has been one of the casualties of centralisation. The problem of Centralisation is not just about power and resources shifting to the capital, but it also undermines the media presence and research interest in the cities and towns affected. It gutters a large city like Alexandria in reducing the incentive for foreign correspondents to have been present in Alexandria at the time of the riots. As a researcher on Alexandria myself, this forces one to rely on oral interviews, which is a credible approach no doubt, but one would expect that a large event such as this to leave better accounts than what is available today.

Furthermore, 1977 also signposts that not much has changed today, besides the obvious political and socio-economic dimension; For a city of over four million, Alexandria is yet to acquire locally robust media organisations and a publishing industry. There is Egypt, and then there is “Egypts”, all fighting their unique yet complementary battles.

NYT 1977 Bread Riots Alexandria Egypt

 

 

Save Alexandria, and free Sherif Farag

Published in Mada Masr
For the Arabic translation, see انقذوا الأسكندرية.. وأفرجوا عن شريف فرج

Sherif Farag
Sherif Farag

Sherif Farag is “one of the greatest persons you can meet” tweeted prominent Alexandrian activist Mahienour al-Masry. Sherif is a Master’s student and assistant lecturer at Alexandria University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. He is also one of the most underrated activists you will ever meet in the coastal city. Following his vocal opposition to the protest law, his life took a turn for the worse when the infamous late-night police raid occurred.

At 2.30 am on Sunday, November 24, a large security force of over 20 heavily armed men entered Sherif’s family apartment in Sidi Bishr, Alexandria. Masked security forces occupied the staircase of the building. Security convoys blocked the street. And all this deployment was to arrest a rising academic and advocate for the rights of teaching assistants, for architectural standards and heritage preservation.

The travesty did not end there, however. Taken to the security directorate in Smouha, in the presence of his lawyers, the charges leveled at Sherif were “joining a banned group” — presumably the Muslim Brotherhood, which Sherif is not a member of, nor affiliated with in any way.

Realizing that such a charge could prove difficult to stick on Sherif, still more trumped-up charges were thrown at him. At 10 pm that same night he was charged with campaigning to promote chaos, mobilizing crowds, and using violence.

The next day he was charged with planning and killing peaceful demonstrators, breaking cars and — just to make sure that the ludicrousness of the whole case was sealed — robbing a bank.

Since November 28, Sherif has been in Hadara Prison pending investigations. On December 8 his incarceration was renewed for another 15 days, despite the fact that there is no evidence or witnesses to incriminate him. Throughout this period, there have been daily protests and petitions demanding his release.

Sherif’s academic activism was in many ways a success story of the January 25 revolution. As his friend Ahmed Hassan noted: “Sherif’s positive attitude, motivation and inspirational effect on people guaranteed him a fixed place in the emerging academic and cultural groups in Alexandria. His campaigning for the rights of teaching assistants was integral to the collective effort that helped champion the cause of teaching assistants throughout Egyptian universities. This was also followed by his rise to sit on the advisory committee of the Ministry of Higher Education in order to deliver our demands to the decision makers.”

But it was Sherif’s presence on the street that made him familiar to the public, and Alexandrians in particular. He led peaceful demonstrations to protest against Alexandria’s real-estate mafia and its destruction of the city’s heritage. He spoke against the dangerous proliferation of tens of thousands of buildings that violate basic safety standards and consequently lead to the frequent tragedy of the city’s collapsing buildings.

Sherif was part of a growing swathe of Alexandrian activists who increasingly shared the view that Cairo’s centralized decision-making was the main source of Alexandria’s problems — a situation that must be rectified.

It was tacitly understood among Alexandria’s civil society scene that heritage and building issues were critical concerns shared by all groups. Facebook groups and pages such as Alexandria Scholars, Alex Agenda and Radio Tram united behind the Save Alexandria initiative. This initiative, co-founded by Sherif, was primarily aimed at the preservation of the city’s architectural heritage. But it has become a political platform for activism in Alexandria.

The initiative presents itself as a pressure group that works at ensuring Alexandrians’ “right to their city” — often through organizing protests. “Save Alexandria’s” Facebook page has been used to publicize protests and mobilize people to take part. Naturally, the prominence of this initiative, along with Sherif’s university activism, put him on state security’s radar.

Sherif took a sophisticated and multi-faceted approach to his activism that ranged from protest vigils, media interviews, to sitting down with officials to try to work out a solution to the city’s problems.

When Sherif spoke of the city’s problems, it was articulated with such eloquence and succinctness that it was bound to disturb those in power. I recall one scene last year in which Sherif, myself, and his friend Ahmed were invited to speak with the governor at a roundtable meeting at the engineers’ club overlooking the Mediterranean. We were the youngest ones in a room full of sycophantic public officials and aging, self-obsessed “call-me-doctor” academics. They seemed to have trouble accepting our presence at such a high profile meeting. Nevertheless, Sherif spoke loudly and eloquently of the city and the people’s problems.

“You are standing on Fouad Street, one of the oldest [continually used] streets in history,” Sheirf told me once during a protest. Passionate about saving Alexandria’s heritage, he laments today’s building culture, and how nobody teaches or learns architecture properly: “Every building that rises looks like the other,” he told me.

Noha Mansour, who  got engaged to Sherif in August, told me, “Sherif is the type of person who values freedom of speech and action deeply. He never feels ashamed to speak his mind and express his opinions. I feel it was his outspoken opposition to the recent protest law that finally made the authorities arrest him.”

Sherif is due to submit his Master’s thesis this month. He sent this note from prison to be added to the opening page of his dissertation:

This letter was written from my cell, where injustice and aggression abounds, I write these points in the hope that higher education in Egypt will someday be in a better position — though it never will be as long as universities are not liberated from the security [regime’s] iron fist and power. I have worked over two years and a half in an attempt to improve the situation of Egyptian universities after the great 25 January 2011 Revolution. I have played a part in contributing to the increase of salaries of faculty members and have been at the forefront as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Higher Education to focus on reforming how universities are regulated. Yet people so retarded [in the security sector] have continued to hamper our progress [in the cause of higher education]. If my imprisonment is a result of my suffering to better education, then no fault can be found with that. God Alone is sufficient for me, as He is the best disposer of affairs for me.

The Researcher

Sherif, locked up in a prison cell, has come to represent the “two Egypts” in conflict. One is bland, unimaginative, archaic, and brutal. And then there is Sherif Farag, along with many others now under arrest, who epitomize a passion, fearlessness, and hope to build a better tomorrow.

Imprisoning Sherif Farag is akin to imprisoning the dream of a better Egypt. His freedom is a necessity.

Legitimate charges, illegitimate trial: Morsi in the dock

morsitrial

Published in ABC’s The Drum

It is an irony that former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s trial – which highlighted the deep divisions in Egyptian society – was held on the country’s Valentine’s Day.

The only thing Morsi and his 14 co-defendants from the Muslim Brotherhood had in common with the military-backed interim government was the desire by both sides to use the trial as a theatre to address the Egyptian public by pushing their own agendas and accusations.

Morsi and the Brotherhood wasted no time in seeking to embolden their domestic base and tell the rest of the nation that the Brotherhood was not going away.

To undercut Morsi’s predictable grandstanding, state TV muted the sound. “I am here by force and against my will. The coup is a crime and treason” shouted Morsi, who set the tone for the non-cooperative atmosphere.

For the prosecutors, the goal was to send a signal to the wider Egyptian public about who is in control and to parade Morsi and his colleagues before the court as a form of political emasculation.

The charges against Morsi are in fact legitimate – they were filed on 5 December 2012 by human rights activists after the Brotherhood stormed a sit-in outside the presidential palace.

The actions of the Brotherhood sparked clashes that resulted in the deaths of ten protestors.

Even the case on its own skews the course of justice when there is a lack of enquiry into the security debacle and the Brotherhood chain of command on that day.

But legitimate charges do not necessarily lead to a legitimate trial.

Nor has the state all of a sudden developed a desire to see justice take its place for Egypt’s innumerable victims.

As the veteran blogger The Big Pharaoh tweeted “Irony = Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood cadets tortured people at the presidential palace gates. Police regularly torture people yet they’re securing Morsi’s Trial today!”.

Continue reading “Legitimate charges, illegitimate trial: Morsi in the dock”

Not My Brotherhood’s Keeper: The Fallacy of Crushing Egypt’s Chief Islamist Group

Published in the Atlantic Council

MBframe

 

By the time philosopher Hannah Arendt penned the words in her 1970 work On Violence: “The means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals,” a generation of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood transitioning into the Anwar Sadat era were reeling from the “means” of imprisonment and torture. For sixteen years, under the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the ideological foundations of radical Islamism were largely nurtured in Egypt’s prison system, and exported to the rest of the world. It became painfully clear with time, the Brotherhood and Islamists had to be co-opted into the political process, rather than rewind the clock back to 1954.

Over the past three months, security services have arrested key Brotherhood figures, in effect decapitating the organization’s first and second tier leadership, shutting down media outlets, seizing its assets, demonizing the group, arresting and killing countless supporters. Now the latest court ruling to ban the eighty-five year old organization is on the table. It is becoming obvious that Egypt’s political and security elites envision an Egyptian future in which the Brotherhood and its support networks are completely destroyed or incapacitated. Such a short-sighted move overlooks the group’s proven survival mechanisms.

In the tightly-controlled public sphere and information space of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s, Brotherhood inmates, intentionally dispersed across the country’s prisons in order to cripple the apparatus, were largely survived by the (little-known) Muslim Sisterhood. The latter acted as an informal prison support network, carrying ideas and messages from prison to prison to sustain the Brotherhood, and were vital to their rebirth.

Today, there is no need for prison support networks when that network now has a stronger international reach. No longer limited to the Gulf and London, the Brotherhood is opening offices as far flung as Australia. These groups are geared towards revising the Brotherhood strategy and wait for another political opening in Egypt. They are also making efforts to disturb diplomatic relations, skewing the Muslim world view of Egypt, splintering an already splintered diaspora, and pushing a clear-cut anti-coup narrative as opposed to the pro-army’s ill-defined ‘war on terrorism’ battle cry that has come to encompass Sinai’s violent extremism and Pro-Brotherhood protestors throughout Egypt

Recent events have enabled the Brotherhood to take the high moral ground, when addressing both their domestic constituencies and foreign audiences, depicting an Egypt engaged in a secular or religious sacred drama, nicely divided into digestible binaries. To the West, the Brotherhood argues that they are the torchbearers of democracy that are fighting the return of an authoritarian state that overthrew Morsi. To the Muslim world, the Brotherhood has effectively portrayed itself as the defender of Islam, battling godless secularism in the heart of the Sunni intellectual nerve centre.

It does not seem to matter that Morsi and the Brotherhood took a destructive course while in power, that a majority of Egyptians, including Al-Azhar and religious Muslims, have a highly unfavourable view of the Brotherhood or that the organization’s polarizing discourse of incitement and victimhood provides the cover for the killing and destruction of property. A sophisticated and nuanced reading into why Morsi and the Brotherhood collapsed and are largely unpopular is lost in translation.

And why should it not be? The rise in strains of liberal tyranny to rival the strains in religious tyranny gutted the moral clout of anti-Brotherhood arguments, let alone the argument to shut them down. Egypt has been transformed into a bear pit that is locked in an existential battle for survival, with each side going as far as targeting the perceived allied minorities of the other camp: non-Islamists target Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and more violently, the Islamists target Christians and their churches.

Given that the power cards are heavily stacked in favor of the military and security forces, and by extension, the interim government; they need to seriously address the imagination crisis that deal with security issues. It should be noted, no matter how ‘well-intentioned,’ the sight of a military machine carrying out killings in Cairo’s squares for the benefit of ‘your side’ does not score points with the rest of the world. More so when state media is fanning the flames of xenophobia and the arrest of foreign nationals occur in a country in dire need of tourists.

Yet no questions are being asked, how the child who lost his pro-Brotherhood parents in the Raba’a massacre will grow up in a society that largely cheered on the violent dispersals. Or how Islamists will ever trust the democratic process when they are continually being marginalized. Or the Coptic child who lost a father because the security forces did not turn up – some would argue strategically delayed to tarnish the Brotherhood – to protect Christian communities and churches when the threat of an Islamist mob was imminent in the usual rural flashpoints. These are the seeds of bitterness that will matter more to the future Egypt than the current intended myopic goals.

There is little doubt that laws need to be passed to prevent the misuse of mosques for political campaigning and sectarian incitement. The Brotherhood needs to be legally obliged to become transparent with its activities, and importantly, pushed into a state of self-reflection. Banning the organization pushes its members further back into their traditional comfort zone in which they thrive – victimhood and opposition.

As highly problematic as the organization is, the Brotherhood is not the by-product of a foreign plot, rather it is a by-product of Egypt’s social forces and needs to be reintegrated into a system of transitional justice and national reconciliation. Targeting the Brotherhood’s social support networks – healthcare, education, and welfare services – will have a crippling effect on the rural poor. The state is too incompetent to fill the void. Former regime loyalists and revolutionary forces struggle to run an effective political campaign in these areas, let alone service their basic needs. 

The late poet Mahmoud Darwish sounded a warning: “Those who spend an era breastfeeding from the milk of cruel despotism can only perceive destruction and evil in freedom.” In this lays the grim inheritance bestowed upon Egypt following decades of authoritarian rule, the public not only perceives destruction and evil in its own freedom, but in the freedom of others and, consequently, any notion of political co-existence. A third route is needed to save it. Instead of crushing the Brotherhood, there needs to be a national inclusive dialogue on the role of religion and politics, a focus on strengthening institutional checks and balances, and the enforcement of rule of law to protect Egypt from political and security violations and excesses, whether by Islamists or otherwise.

Egypt deserves better.

Whither Democracy in Egypt? (lecture)

If you are in Sydney, then please feel free to come to a talk this FridA handcuffed protester sits on the ground at a huge camp in Cairo's Al-Nahdaay 27 Sept 2013 that me and Macquarie University lecturer  Noah Bassil will be presenting on the topic: “Whither Democracy in Egypt?” Noah will be discussing the role and relationships between the Brotherhood, the Egyptian state and the US. My talk will discuss the political trajectory of Egypt’s hindered democratic development and the challenges of reforming the brutal security forces.
Time: 6pm to 7.45pm
Date: 27th September 2013
Location: The Gaelic Club, 64 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills

Sidi Gaber, Ovvero Fare Rivoluzione Ad Alessandria (Journal article in Italian)

La città mediterranea è il termometro della crisi egiziana.
La grande diversità sociopolitica e alcuni fattori geografici
e urbani la rendono perfetta per la ‘politica della strada’.
I crocevia delle proteste.

http://temi.repubblica.it/limes/anteprima-di-limes-713-egitto-rivoluzione-usa-e-getta/50667?photo=11

Marching to Sidi Gaber: Alexandria’s Epicenter of Upheaval

My latest piece for Jadaliyya

Sidi Gaber

Pro-Morsi supporters clash at Sidi Gaber, 28 June 2013. Photo by Sameh Meshally

A brief but long-lasting moment occurred on 19 May 2012, one that would awaken me to the changing realities in our neighborhood since the January 25 Revolution. It was late at night, while standing on my balcony overlooking Cleopatra Square, Alexandria, at the height of the first leg of the 2012 presidential campaign. A scuffle broke out between a group of political campaigners tearing up posters of candidate Amr Mousa, and shop owners and residents who supported Mousa. I ran down to film the incident, only to be tackled by undercover “security” who mistook me as part of the group. One yelled: “We are taking you to army headquarters.” Then a voice was heard: “Leave him, he is one of us” (as in to say, a resident of the area). It turned out to be my barber. In exchange for letting me go, I had to delete the video footage—which I pretended to do but did not.

I took a few steps back in disbelief. Someone I had trusted turned out to apparently be a part of an informal former regime loyalist network. This same group has attacked revolutionary protest marches that pass frequently through this area with bottles and knives. This same Port Said Street was the site of several human chains formed by former regime loyalists in order to prevent revolutionary protests from moving on, often unsuccessfully.

The motives behind their actions soon become apparent.

Stroll some one hundred meters or so, and you end up in Sidi Gaber–Alexandria’s budding Tahrir Square, second only to, or possibly eclipsing, the Qa’id Ibrahim Mosque courtyard–where the military’s fiercely guarded northern command headquarters is based. The barber and his friends see themselves as the first line of defense against encroachment on the “guardians of the nation.” Whether they were paid or not, I could not verify.

Sidi Gaber recently featured fierce protest violence during the pro-Morsi demonstrations on 5 July. Out of the thirty deaths across Egypt, a staggering seventeen occurred in Sidi Gaber alone. This includes the heart-wrenching video of what appeared to be pro-Morsi supporters throwing two teenagers over a ledge, resulting in the death of one of them. A week earlier, American student Andrew Pochter was stabbed to death in the same area.

Continue reading here..