An Open Letter from an Egyptian Revolutionary

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There is no second revolution, there are no open riots on the streets. The action was totally confined to a 250-meter radius around the embassy, with people going to eat, drink, and smoke shisha within earshot of the fighting. For most Egyptians, this whole video thing didn’t affect us at all. And after the initial clashes, the majority of the 2,500 young dudes stationed around the embassy were soccer fans — the Zamalak Ultras — who were there simply to do what they do best: battle with the police. The rest of us just went about our lives.

Sure, there are scary indications of things to come, like the attack on a multinational peacekeepers’ camp in Sinai, where the al Qaeda flag was hoisted, the same flag now being sold on T-shirts in Tahrir Square. Then there’s the arrest of Alber Saber, a guy whose crime was sharing the trailer of Innocence of Muslims on his Facebook page while being a Copt and an atheist as well, and whose house was attacked by a mob (ironically, just like in the movie), but such things are trivialities compared with our other problems.

Here’s what I’m talking about: Egypt’s becoming way too much like Pakistan for comfort. We are slowly becoming a dangerous, broken rogue state, just like them. Just this week, we had a Salafi member of the Constituent Assembly (the people who are writing our new constitution) talking about efforts to remove or change the law to lower the legal marriage age for girls to the moment they reach puberty and have their first period, even if they are as young as 9 years old. Yes: We might end up having a constitution that grants us child marriages. And you thought you had a culture war.

I know what you’re thinking: How can you possibly be proud of all this?

As an Egyptian, the most fascinating aspect of all of this has to be our effect on the American elections, and how we suddenly became an important campaign issue in the snoozefest that is Obama vs. Romney. Isn’t it crazy that Obama — he of the message of peace and understanding with the Muslim world — must now contend with Islamist rage fueled by those whom he — and a million thinkers, analysts, and pundits – has referred to as a moderate Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s the same moderate Islamic group whose people met with his people more than 14 times this past year and a half, who convinced them that America should support them because Salafis and liberals are unpredictable and unreliable, and because the Brothers alone can bring peace to the region. That’s the same moderate Islamic group that actually called for and facilitated the protests at the U.S. Embassy on the anniversary of 9/11, all while pretending to have nothing to do with it to the English-speaking world. The same moderate Islamic group that now controls nearly all aspects of the Egyptian government, and the source of his current dilemma.

How is it that, in just four years, Obama went being from the American president who called in Cairo for a new beginning with Muslims to the target of hostile chants by religious extremists storming U.S. embassies across the Islamic world (“Obama, Obama, we are all Osama”). If this ends up becoming a hot campaign issue, and Obama loses, pundits and historians will say that the Obama presidency started with Egypt and ended because of Egypt. As an Egyptian political geek always enamored with international political theater, how can I not be proud of that? How awesome is that?

The icing on the cake in this whole affair has to be the role the Brotherhood played in this attack, and how it provides fantastic fodder for conspiracy theorists and political analysts alike. Here is what we know: A bunch of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi figures started making an issue of this movie, which no one heard of before, a few days before the anniversary of 9/11. Both the Brotherhood and various Salafi groups called for protests at the U.S. Embassy on the anniversary of 9/11.

That day, a friend who works for the embassy informed me, the employees who left at 4 p.m. noticed that both the police and the army forces protecting the embassy had vanished, followed by the attack that you all watched on your plasma TV screens. Over the next few days, the Brotherhood would praise the attackers in the Arabic media and condemn them in their English language media, prompting a testy exchange between the U.S. Embassy and the MB’s English Twitter account and Obama’s remark that he no longer views Egypt as an ally.

The Brotherhood and its sympathizers went into damage-control mode, asking the world to understand the depth of Muslim anger and blaming the affair on the Interior Ministry, which had assured them everything was cool. So why didn’t the army — which President Mohamed Morsy supposedly now controls — step in? And why hasn’t Morsy fired a single Interior Ministry employee?

Meanwhile, we now have a call from the justice minister to reinstate the emergency law — again — and a call to boycott Google, which is so absurd it’s hilarious. Will the Brotherhood be throwing Gmail account-deletion parties?

How did we get here? What happened to all those images of cute, flag-waving Westernized-looking Egyptian girls? How did the face of Egypt become the bearded image of Mohamed Morsy? Have we gone from your favorite world drama and the subject of a million social media conferences and think-tank panels to being another cautionary tale, the harbinger of bad things to come, and now a threat to Barack Obama’s re-election? My little country, my beloved Egypt, did all of this with one peaceful revolution. Imagine.

OK. Maybe “revolution” isn’t the right word for what we did. Because let’s face it: the “revolution” is now over for the time being. My secular-minded revolutionary friends have become so traumatized and exhausted by the abuse they’ve endured at the hands of the army and police that they are now solely focused on holding those institutions accountable, instead of doing the broader work of trying to create the country of rights and freedoms of their dreams. Sure, it is safe to say that with Islamists in power, child brides are nothing but a taste of the horror we are bound to see over the coming years. As someone who fought on the front lines in Tahrir Square and even ran for parliament at the height of my revolutionary exuberance, all this breaks my heart in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

But, hey: At least we’re still making headlines, and maybe we’re even going to overthrow YOUR leader this year. And surely that counts for something.

Best Regards,

Mahmoud Salem

Egyptian Revolutionary

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Maybe Egypt is a living, breathing, cautionary example of “be careful what you wish for”?

Another guy, son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, Mosab Hassan Yousef has a terrific book out, autobiographical.
And soon to be a movie.
He left Hamas, lived in Israel and spied for Israel against Hamas, moved to the USA, became a Christian, has a death fatwa on his head but is making another movie about Mohammad.
The Times of Israel has this and more:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/son-of-hamas-to-his-father-leave-the-movement-youve-created-a-monster/