Living in the Palm of a Ghost

After spending nearly a full year in Egypt, I am about to bid the country farewell. This time next week I will be in San Francisco enjoying a combination of food, baseball, and fog – a far cry from the oppressive desert heat of the Cairo summer. Before leaving, however, I, along with 85 million Egyptians, am about to witness this country’s first ever competitive presidential election. Voting will commence on Wednesday morning and extend through Thursday evening, with the results to be announced soon thereafter. While this is only the first round (the top two vote recipients will face off in a runoff election on June 17^th and 18^th), the excitement and anticipation in the country are palpable. As my Egyptian dialect teacher told me last week, “we are living in the palm of a ghost [an Egyptian saying meaning that everything is very tenuous, nothing is for certain], no one knows what to expect!”

Indeed, the outcome of this first round is going to be as close to a complete surprise as possible. There are no reliable public opinion polls in Egypt, and, while most people have a general sense that the election is going to be between four main candidates (Amr Moussa, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the Arab League, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, former MB member turned liberal and Salafi favorite Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and Mubarak crony and former Minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafik), it is anybody’s guess as to who will make it into the runoff.

Whatever the outcome, Egyptians have thrown themselves into this campaign season with unmatched fervor. Literally every time I walk down the street past a café or overhear discussions in public areas, the subject is always politics! Taxi drivers love to expound on their reasons for voting for one candidate or another, and the newspapers and television talk shows are full of stories about the candidates and the campaign. These past two days have been deemed a “media blackout,” but that has done little to dampen the debate. When I told a friend of mine that I thought the blackout was a ridiculous idea, he responded “Don’t worry, Egyptians are naturally absurd like this: when there is a curfew we go down to the street to see what’s happening, and when there’s a strike we stay home instead of going to protest, so of course when there’s a media blackout everyone will just talk about politics more!”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a chance to see all of the main candidates in person. I wrote about the Mohamed Morsi rally I attended here, I heard Moussa and Shafik speak at luncheons held by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (where I have been interning for the past few months), and I attended a political rally-cum-festival last weekend held by the Aboul Fotouh campaign.

Like Morsi, Moussa had very little charisma and his rhetorical style was what I imagine Professor Binns (the “History of Magic” professor in the Harry Potter books known for his endless droning) would sound like. Nevertheless, Moussa has turned out to be highly popular because of his long tenure in government (which he has diligently tried to portray as endowing him with experience rather than associating him with the Mubarak regime). He is the John McCain equivalent in this race – old, a known entity, and running on his long record of civil service.

Shafik, on the other hand, is making no bones about his connection to the old regime. At the AmCham luncheon he made his distaste for the revolution clear, speaking of the “huge crisis” that Egypt was currently facing as a result of doing away with Mubarak. Shafik is running on a security and stability platform, claiming that security will return in “100 days – maximum!” if he becomes president, and there is little doubt that he plans to achieve that goal by letting the police force loose as Mubarak used to do and allowing it to round up anyone and everyone it so desires. Like Mubarak, Shafik is also fiercely opposed to the Islamists and hinted that he would take steps to push them out of politics (primarily by instituting a presidential system and effectively stripping the Parliament of its power). As you might expect, many of the revolutionaries are apopleptic at the possibility of a Shafik presidency. A friend of mine told me that if Shafik wins, he and all of his friends would go down to Tahrir Square with only two possible outcomes in mind: “Either we overthrow him, or he kills us. I would rather die than live in an Egypt where Ahmed Shafik is president.” Despite that fervor, however, I have met a surprisingly large number of people who plan to vote for Shafik.

And finally, we come to Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the closest thing to Obama that Egypt has to offer. Fotouh was a longtime Muslim Brotherhood member, although he was from a decidedly more liberal wing of the brotherhood than Mohamed Morsi. Soon after the revolution, he split off from the group in order to run for the presidency, taking a large chunk of the MB youth with him. Since then, he has assembled a coalition of youth who see him as the most revolutionary candidate, liberals who see him as a pseudo-liberal candidate who has a realistic chance of winning, and Salafis who like that he comes from an Islamist background and don’t want the MB to control both the parliament and the presidency. A true “big tent” campaign. As expected, Aboul Fotouh has been accused of pandering to the different constituencies supporting him, and many liberal and Christian friends are also highly suspicious of his history in the MB (“once a brother, always a brother” is a common refrain). Nonetheless, Aboul Fotouh seems to have been steadily rising in popularity, and the rally I went to last weekend was well attended. In classic Aboul Fotouh form, he stated in his speech that he wanted to create a “civil democratic state built upon a civilized Islamic foundation” - every word in that sentence, of course, was targeted at a particular constituency.

Unlike the parliamentary elections, which hinged much more on a candidate’s local ties and reputation in a particular community, the presidential elections are going to be the first real indicator of the overall political mood in the country. At the same time, however, these elections are certainly not an end in and of themselves. Whoever takes power will inherit an Egypt that still does not have a coherent governing framework, is plagued by the military’s “state within a state” of economic and security interests, and currently faces a huge economic and budgetary crisis. For now, though, it’s time to let the voting party begin!

Finally, here's my off-the-cuff prediction for the first ever competitive presidential elections in Egypt's history:

1) Amr Moussa

2) Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

3) Ahmed Shafik

4) Mohamed Morsi

           

Election Season in Egypt

Catchy slogans, campaign rallies, seemingly sane and intelligent people making outrageous statements…it’s election season! The election I’m talking about, though, is not between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. No, this is presidential politics [cue the remix music] Egyptian style!

Last night, a few Egyptian friends and I attended a campaign rally held by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) for their party leader-turned-presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy. Before diving into the details of the rally, I’ll provide a little background for those of you who have not been able to keep up with the circus that Egyptian politics has become of late. In an effort to assuage fears that the MB wanted to immediately establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt, the group’s leaders pledged that they would only contest a portion of the seats in the parliamentary elections and would not, under any circumstances, field a presidential candidate.

Mohamed Morsy

They did not live up to either of those pledges. After fielding candidates in nearly every parliamentary district, the group announced about a month ago that they had reviewed their earlier pledge not to field a presidential candidate and decided that “new political developments” forced them to put forward one of their own for the presidency. The MB’s chosen candidate, Kheirat al-Shater, did not pass muster, however, in the eyes of the country’s electoral commission (which by most accounts was heavily influenced by the old regime and the ruling military council).  After Shater was disqualified from the race on what was essentially a technicality, the MB scrambled to put forward Mohamed Morsy as an alternative. He’s spent the past few weeks campaigning throughout the country, but from what I saw last night it’s easy to see why he didn’t get the nod in the beginning.

The rally was held at the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, reputedly Cairo’s oldest, in a working class neighborhood just south of the center of the city. While the rally was technically supposed to begin at 7:00 PM, we arrived at around 8:30 (most official events here run on “Egypt time,” meaning that they begin two to three hours after their supposed start time), just in time for evening prayers. As I sat in the mosque waiting for my friends to finish praying, an older man greeted me, declaring to me ,“I grew up in this mosque! I joined the brotherhood when I was this tall [making a gesture to indicate that he joined at a young age], I grew up a brother, and I will die a brother! Islam is always first!” Similar to most political rallies in the US, nearly all of the attendees seemed to be ardent MB supporters.

My friends completed their prayers, and we, along with hundreds of other men, spilled out of the mosque and onto the street in front of it where the rally was being held. A few words about the set-up of the event: the first thing that caught my eye was that the MB, apparently with an eye towards not causing a major traffic snarl by blocking off an entire street to hold the rally, had decided to put the stage and chairs on half the street, leave the other half open for traffic, and then put the spillover crowd on the opposite sidewalk! As a result, a steady stream of buses, trucks, and cars through the middle of the rally kept up throughout the night. Secondly, this was a gender-segregated rally. The chairs directly in front of the stage were occupied by men, and the sizable contingent of women were relegated to a spot on the sidewalk between the mosque and the stage (essentially at a 45 degree angle from the stage). When I asked my friend why the women didn’t have as good a view as the men did, he shrugged and said that it must be because they just ran out of space to fit them all in the front. I decided that it would be better not to press him on the issue.

As to the campaign rally itself, it actually bore somewhat of a resemblance to what you would expect at a campaign event in the US. Loud music (a mixture of Islamic and national songs), lots of flag-waving, campaign literature being distributed, etc. Morsy and his entourage didn’t arrive until about 9:30 (even presidential candidates get stuck in Cairo’s traffic), so the emcee led the crowd in a number of chants, such as “the people want Morsy to be president!” and “all the people call for Morsy to be the president of the country!” As the wait for him to arrive dragged on, I made up one of my own: “Where are you, oh Mohamed Morsy? I still can’t find a chair!” (all of those slogans rhyme in Arabic, by the way).

When Morsy finally showed up, everyone greeted him with whoops and cheers. Sitting next to him on the stage were a number of MB bigwigs, including Essam el-Erian (current MP and former member of the MB’s Guidance Bureau) and Safwat Hegazi, an outspoken imam and televangelist who has major street cred for being one of the first people to publicly come out in favor of the revolution in January of last year.

The first speaker of the night, however, was a woman (who also had a seat alongside Morsy). While I didn’t catch her name, she gave a ten minute speech about the special role of women in Islam, referring to the important role women played in the time of the prophet Mohamed and calling on the women in the audience to continue to work hard to make Egypt a more Islamic country. She yielded the floor to Essam el-Erian, who delivered a speech in impeccable formal Arabic that was long on flowing rhetoric and short on actual content. Perhaps the most rousing speech of the night was delivered by Hegazi, who drew a huge rise out of the crowd with his calls for the toppling of the ruling military council. He also drew another loud roar and a sustained period of slogan-chanting when he declared that the Egyptians would work with all Arabs to liberate Jerusalem. As a whole, however, the anti-Israel rhetoric that is so common on the Egyptian street was largely absent from the night’s dialogue.

And then it was Morsy’s turn. Like his colleague el-Erian (and unlike the other speakers), Morsy spoke exclusively in formal Arabic. He spent the first ten minutes of his speech touching on broad, nationalist themes, which included the idea of a “national renaissance,” and he spoke in general terms about the need to harness Egypt’s resources and the power of Egyptian workers to bring about economic and social development. After those first ten minutes, however, most of the crowd was losing interest. Unlike the other speakers, Morsy spoke in a monotone and stood in place on the stage, not using any hand gestures or other rhetorical devices to drum up interest in what he had to say. That being said, what happened next was absolutely shocking. The emcee, who had been silent throughout the previous speeches, suddenly interrupted Morsy when he was in the middle of a sentence and started shouting into the microphone “the people want Morsy for president!”, to which the crowd half-heartedly responded in kind. Morsy went on to drone on for another ten minutes, but the closest he got to laying out any kind of specific program was to say that he had convened a meeting of Very Smart People to study all of the problems that Egypt currently faces and come up with solutions. What exactly those problems are or what solutions he might be promoting are still unclear. Twenty minutes into his speech, el-Erian seemed to be dozing off in his chair next to Morsy, and a shouting match broke out on the street next to the stage which led a large portion of the crowd to take their waning attention off of Morsi and flock toward the bickerers. The emcee, again unprompted, broke in with more slogans just as Morsy was in the middle of explaining how Egypt’s foreign relations must be based on “mutual respect and shared interests.”

It was just that kind of night for Morsy. Since this was the first time I’ve seen him in person, I can’t say whether he was having a bad night or whether this is just who he is. I suspect, however, that the latter is true. Morsy wasn’t the MB’s first choice, he is not very well known outside of MB and political circles, and he doesn’t have the charisma and presence that you would expect in a presidential candidate. Despite the fact that the MB won 40% of the seats in Parliament, the latest opinion poll (which, admittedly, is of questionable reliability) had his level of support at just 3.6%! While there are still a few weeks to go before the first round of the elections, Morsy faces a Herculean task if he is to win one of the top two spots to advance to the runoff in June.

While most of the attendees at the rally were diehard MB supporters, the three friends who came with me left unconvinced. Riding the subway home, I asked them what they thought of the rally. “I’m still undecided,” my friend Mohamed said, “but I’m definitely not voting for that guy!”

An Analysis of Last Week's Events in Tahrir Square

Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square en masse last week in what many dubbed the “second revolution”. What began as a largely Islamist protest on November 18 against the attempts of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to insulate itself from civilian oversight and play an active role in politics turned into an extended sit-in as thousands of protesters, with the support of all of Egypt’s liberal parties, clashed with central security forces and sought to bring down the SCAF. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, which had a heavy presence in the square on November 18, was noticeably absent from the subsequent protests.

The dynamics of the most recent Tahrir Square protests shed further light on the distinct strategies that Egypt’s liberal and Islamist groups employ to achieve similar goals. Both groups descended upon Tahrir Square to voice their opposition to the SCAF’s ongoing rule. The Islamists, however, made it clear that they view the ballot box as the most effective means to combat the SCAF. After their brief stint in the square, they refused to officially support the ongoing protests and strenuously resisted calls to delay this week’s parliamentary elections (which, by most accounts, they are poised to dominate). Liberals, on the other hand, demonstrated once again that the square is their preferred forum to express discontent and try to effect change. Although elections were less than a week away, nearly every liberal party turned its attention away from their campaigns and supported efforts to topple the SCAF. While both sides are participating in the elections, the liberals have had little success in expanding their base of supporters and thus have little to lose by continuing to protest. The Islamists, on the other hand, seem ready to take aim at the SCAF through the institutions of state – namely the Parliament. The diverging tactics employed by both sides reveal fundamental differences in the groups’ faith in the democratic system as a framework within which to achieve their goals.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, Egypt’s two most prominent Islamist groups, began the Tahrir saga on November 18 with a major protest against a SCAF’s proposed supra-constitutional principles. The most contentious aspects of the document included a stipulation that the military budget would not be subject to civilian oversight and an effort to ensure an active role for the military in the constitutional process. Both Islamists and liberals opposed these principles on the grounds that they would enable the military to remain outside the control of any civilian government. The Islamists were particularly vehement in their opposition, however, because they feared that the principles would also empower the military to intervene in politics – a direct threat to the Islamists’ strategy of gaining control of political institutions and working through them to oppose the military. The Islamists crowded the square with thousands of supporters and spent the day inveighing specifically against the supra-constitutional principles.

While the Islamist supporters left the square, a few family members of those killed and injured during the January revolution who had spent the day in Tahrir decided to remain. On Saturday, a group of central security police officers violently flushed them out. As news spread of the officers’ use of excessive force, thousands of Egyptians came down to the square to support the protesters. By the end of the night, protesters had retaken the square and running battles with the police continued on the outskirts of Tahrir. Compelled by the spread of videos showing the police treating the dead with utter disrespect, the crowd in Tahrir continued to grow. By Sunday night, one of the streets leading to the square turned into a de facto war zone between riot police and protesters.

With thousands of protesters in the square, the array of Egyptian political parties faced a choice: support the protesters and demand the resignation of the SCAF or call for calm and a truce to end the fighting. The response from the liberal side was overwhelming: activists who had played a major role in the January revolution set up camp in the square, twitter buzzed with activity, and the chants calling for the SCAF to step down grew louder by the minute. Furthermore, liberal parties released official statements of support for the “million-man protest” on Tuesday, November 22. The Free Egyptians Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, distributed a list of seven demands that included the widely-echoed call for the formation of a “National Salvation Government” to take control of the country. Such a government, which protest leaders had proposed would include a representative distribution of Egypt’s political interests led by the respected presidential candidates Mohamed al-Baradei (a liberal) and Abu Monem Abul-Fatooh (a former Muslim Brotherhood member), represented the ideal solution for Egypt’s liberals: the end of SCAF rule and a transfer of power to a government headed by a trusted liberal leader with popular support.

As the violence continued and the ministers of the sitting government submitted their resignations in protests, the SCAF’s hold on power seemed to weaken. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, remained on the sidelines. The group equivocated, stating that it would not officially participate in the protests but supported the right to peaceful protests and sit-ins. When some of the group’s younger members joined the protests in defiance of orders from their superiors, the brotherhood released a statement on its website reaffirming its original decision not to participate.

For their part, the liberal parties were not prepared to match some of the most extreme demands of the activists in Tahrir. As pressure from many activists for a delay or boycott of the elections grew in light of the violence, most liberal parties did not officially support such calls. Indeed, the speed with which those in the square forsook the elections in favor of concentrated opposition to the SCAF indicates the particularly low value that many hardcore revolutionaries place in the electoral process as a means to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, the liberal parties stood in solidarity with the protesters against the SCAF throughout the week.

For the time being, the SCAF has regained its hold on power. After soldiers stepped in to end violence, the protesters found themselves unable to maintain the support that they had received out of sympathy for those who had died or been injured while fighting the police. Now, as the liberals’ immediate and direct challenge to the SCAF’s rule seems to have temporarily softened, the advent of parliamentary elections means that the Islamists’ real efforts are just beginning. In the end, however, both sides will likely realize that they are most likely to achieve their common goal of knocking the SCAF out of power through coordination and cooperation. A combination of intense protests and parliamentary pressure – drawing on the resources of both the liberals and Islamists – may well be the straw that breaks the SCAF’s back.

The Need for Police Reform in Egypt

I just published my new piece on Fikra Forum today focused on the importance of reforming Egypt's police force (read it here). With so much attention being devoted to Egypt's upcoming parliamentary elections (the first since Mubarak's fall in February) it is easy to overlook the underlying problems that plague the country's security services. As I argue in my piece, however, political and economic development cannot occur in the absence of fundamental changes in the relationship between the police and Egypt's citizens. My other two published articles on Fikra Forum can be found here and here.

Election Season Begins in Egypt

Mohamed, my friend and ex-Muslim Brotherhood member, left Cairo two weeks ago for his hometown Damietta. He is going to be there for a month and a half, and he hopes to come back to Cairo in the beginning of November as a newly-elected member of the Egyptian Parliament. If his party, the “Egyptian Movement” (it makes sense in Arabic), wins 60% of the votes in his electoral district, Mohamed will win a spot in the first Egyptian Parliament in the post-Mubarak era.

Before he left, I had a chance to sit down with Mohamed for an extended chat about his political ambitions and platform at one of Cairo’s many cafes nestled in a downtown alley. Before discussing his election campaign, Mohamed first laid out the basics of the electoral system in Damietta. As he described it, his party is competing primarily with a party composed of former Mubarak supporters (known in Arabic “falul” – the remnants). The residents of Damietta will be voting on two separate ballots: one is a party-list system, in which voters vote for a specific party which is then allocated a number of seats in Parliament proportional to the percentage of votes it receives. The other is for independent candidates, running without a party affiliation, whom the voters choose based on their individual merits. Mohamed is running on a party-list, and he is ranked fifth out of eight candidates on the Egyptian Movement’s party list (Damietta will have eight party-list seats, so if a party won 50% of the votes, for example, its top four candidates would earn seats in Parliament). If you find this system unnecessarily confusing, you are not alone – there has been a lot of griping over the past few months about the complexity of the electoral system and its vulnerability to fraud.

Mohamed began describing his platform with a simple statement: “I am running in order represent the interests of Damietta’s youth.” Before diving into his views on specific political or economic issues, Mohamed detailed his plan to revamp Damietta’s educational system, which he considers one of his core issues. Arising from the belief that the education system fundamentally sells Egypt’s youth short and inculcates them with useless information through its emphasis on rote memorization, Mohamed wants Damietta’s youth to take matters into their own hands. He plans to identify 300 of the brightest students in the area (“for their critical thinking skills, not their ability to score well on Egypt’s secondary school exit exam”) and provide them with six month scholarships to study education in Brazil or Malaysia. After learning about those countries’ educational systems, they would then return to Damietta and begin working in local schools as teaching assistants and administration advisers in an attempt to change the curriculum to better serve the students’ needs. At the same time, Mohamed wants to open a new high school for exceptionally smart students (50 per year) that would be modeled after the American educational system (read: critical thinking skills, hands-on learning, liberal-arts style breadth and depth).

In addition to his proposal for education reform, Mohamed also has a distinct economic philosophy that he describes as “socialist and centered around the needs of the poor.” Damietta is a large manufacturing center, and Mohamed commented that the many factory workers are all inclined to vote for candidates with socialist economic policies. He is calling for the Egyptian government to play a significant role in supporting certain industries with tax breaks and investment subsidies, while identifying others that it deems less essential and will thus tax stiffly. “How can Egypt export grain,” Mohamed queried, “when we have to import other food from abroad in order to feed our own people?”

On top of emphasizing domestic production and imposing stiffer government oversight on Egypt’s exports and imports, Mohamed plans to focus on ensuring that all of Egypt’s workers have a minimum wage of 50,000 Egyptian pounds (approximately $8,500) per year. Given that Egypt’s current GDP per capita is just under $3,000, that goal seems nearly impossible to reach in the near future. Suffice it to say that Mohamed’s economic plan, were it actually implemented, would represent a major shift away from the Mubarak regime’s efforts to promote liberal economic reform.

As to foreign policy, Mohamed declared that Egypt should emulate the Turkish “zero problems with neighbors” model. In his own words, Mohamed emphasized his belief that “dignity” should be a core concept of Egypt’s foreign policy: “If other countries respect us, we will certainly respect them.” Beyond the rhetoric, however, he did not go into many specifics. When I asked him about his position on Egypt’s relationship with Israel, he replied that he did not inherently oppose the idea of Israel as a Jewish state nor was he opposed to the idea of Egypt and Israel continuing their economic and diplomatic relations. He did say, however, that “as long as Israel continues to kill our soldiers [on the Sinai border] and Palestinian children, we cannot accept it as a legitimate partner.”

Taken as a whole, what is there to make of Mohamed’s policy positions? In my opinion, his platform as a whole seems high on rhetoric and low on substance. He is enthusiastic and full of ideas, but none of them seem to be grounded in a sober analysis of the political and economic realities in Egypt. Can the Egyptian government actually pay for any of the social programs he proposes? Would it be able to carry out a major realignment of the tax system? Will the Parliament be able to wrest any control over the country’s foreign policy away from the military? Mohamed, like many other candidates for Parliament, does not have any political experience. While he and his fellow Egyptians are bursting with enthusiasm at the prospect of what they hope will be the country’s first set of transparent democratic elections, no one is quite sure how that enthusiasm will translate into the reality of writing, passing, and implementing legislation.

In addition to that uncertainty, the elephant in the political room is, of course, the military. It remains as powerful as ever, and, as of yet, has not laid out a firm timetable for completing the transfer of power to a civilian government. In the battle for power between a Parliament filled with green politicians and a military council composed of experienced soldiers who have access to extensive financial resources and support from the behemoth that is Egypt’s security apparatus, it is hard to imagine that Mohamed or any of his peers will have much success carrying out their plans without the military’s approval.

For now, however, Mohamed has the luxury of ignoring the rocky road ahead. He left his job as a sales representative at a medical services company to focus on his election campaign. From now until election time, he will be doing what politicians do when they campaign: attending public events, meeting with voters, spreading his message as widely as possible. After we had finished our last cups of tea, I wished him good luck: “rabina yuafuqk!” – May God grant you success.

Egypt's Treason Law: Using Mubarak-era Tactics to Keep Mubarak's Cronies Out

Earlier this summer, I wrote an article for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's "Fikra Forum" about the ongoing economic debate in Egypt. Today, I just published my second piece on the site. This article is about Egypt's newly-amended "Treason Law," which is aimed at keeping Hosni Mubarak's former cronies in the now-defunct National Democratic Party out of Egypt's future political scene. As you will see in my article, however, this law has the potential to backfire and open the door to a new era of dictatorship in Egypt. You can find it here on Fikra Forum.

A Firsthand Look at the Muslim Brotherhood

Since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has emerged as a legitimate political force that is sure to play a large role in shaping Egypt’s future. Both Egyptian and Western media organizations have devoted a large amount of focus to analyzing the MB’s political prospects, its power structure, and its position in Egyptian society. While most Egyptians have plenty of opportunities to form their own opinions about the MB from their own interactions with members and the Egyptian media’s coverage of the subject, the only exposure to the MB that many non-Egyptians have is through the Western media. Those articles and news reports have alternately described the MB as a widely popular, democratizing force, or terrorist sympathizers bent on war with Israel and ensuring that Egypt becomes another case of “one man, one vote, one time.”

While I do not consider myself an expert on the MB, I want to share with the readers of this blog some of my experiences with the Brotherhood throughout the past few months in Cairo. Before this year, I had not had the opportunity to meet any Brotherhood members. Open membership in the MB during the Mubarak era could easily lead to expulsion from college or the loss of a job. This year, however, everything has changed. Membership in the Brotherhood no longer puts one at risk of intimidation or state-sponsored violence. As a result, I have had the opportunity to meet and befriend an MB member, and I think that his story is quite instructive for anyone wanting to learn more about the role that the MB plays in Egyptian politics and society.

The story begins with a discussion group that I attend every Thursday afternoon at a Cairo think tank. A group of Egyptian political activists and interested citizens from all sides of the political spectrum come together to discuss a specific political issue with an expert in the field – past meetings have focused on the relationship between religion and the state, the continued sit-ins in Tahrir Square, and analyzing the recently released electoral laws. I generally do much more listening than talking at these meetings (I consider it an achievement that I am merely able to understand much of what is being discussed…), and I consider each meeting one of the highlights of my week.

My friend Mohamed, a 27 year-old man who works at a pharmaceutical company, is the leader and organizer of the group. Until this past March, Mohamed was a member of the MB, but he and several hundred other young members formally split from the Brotherhood a few months ago. Mohamed had been a part of the Brotherhood for 12 years. While we had discussed politics and international relations several times previously, I did not learn Mohamed’s personal story until my last week in Cairo this summer. After we finished our weekly meeting, he asked me if I would come with him to a local café and serve as a translator for an interview that a Czech researcher had scheduled with him. The interview lasted an hour and a half, and, in addition to learning firsthand how tough it is to serve as a translator, I was fascinated by Mohamed’s story.

Mohamed grew up in a town in the Nile Delta near the Mediterranean coast, the son of a politically indifferent mother and a socialist father. At age 15, he decided to join the Muslim Brotherhood. He respected the local Brotherhood members and believed that there was a natural synthesis between the Islamic principles that the Brotherhood espoused and the establishment of a just, transparent government in Egypt (i.e. the opposite of the Mubarak regime). While Mohamed’s father was initially opposed to his participation in the MB, Mohamed recalled that his father’s opposition softened over time as he saw that Mohamed’s participation in the MB seemed to make him a more focused student and well-rounded person.

Mohamed climbed the ranks of the Brotherhood, and he continued to play a role in it throughout college and after graduation. He eventually reached the fifth and highest level of Brotherhood membership (although if he had stayed on he would have had a ways to go before obtaining a provincial or national leadership position). He participated in the January revolution that toppled Mubarak, but in the wake of Mubarak’s resignation Mohamed found himself caught in the divide that has currently split the MB in two.

In a meeting on March 26 with several hundred members of the Brotherhood’s younger generation, Mohamed and his colleagues declared that they were officially cutting ties with the MB. As Mohamed was careful to point out, he did not split off from the MB because he disagreed with the group’s political or religious principles. Instead, he fundamentally disagreed with what he saw as the MB’s mixing of preaching and politics as it sought to garner political support leading up to the first elections in the post-Mubarak Egypt. While Mohamed himself had taken part in both fields (preaching and politics), he steadfastly maintained that two must remain separate. The MB devotes a great deal of effort to maintaining a presence at local mosques and spreading its version of Islamic values to the attendees therein. In Mohamed’s opinion, however, the MB’s preaching had begun to cross over into the political realm. As he explained to me in one of our earlier conversations, bringing politics into the mosque has the potential to sow division and detract from the Brotherhood’s political and religious goals. “Politics is a matter of choice,” he said, “you pick the person or the party that you think best represents you. Disagreement is normal. The problem with mixing preaching and politics is that if someone disagrees with your politics, that disagreement can carry over to religion, too. Our opponents will then seem to be arguing not only against our politics, but also against religion as a whole. If that happened, it would sully both our name and Islam as a whole.”

That was Mohamed’s official reason for leaving the Brotherhood, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity. At the same time, however, he and his fellow youth defectors did not disavow the Brotherhood’s ideology. He joined a new party called the “Renaissance Party,” which he described as embracing almost all of the Brotherhood’s values without mixing preaching and politics. He also supports former Brotherhood leader and current presidential candidate Abd-Munam Abu-al-Futuh (who was expelled from the Brotherhood upon declaring his intention to stand in the presidential elections – the MB is not fielding an official candidate for this year’s presidential elections). Mohamed’s continued adherence to Islamist political platforms suggests that there is another factor that contributed to his decision: the split between the older and younger generations of the MB.

While people often think of the Brotherhood as a monolithic institution devoid of any differentiating views on politics or religion, it has become quite clear since the January 25 revolution that the Brotherhood is actually quite diverse. The Brotherhood’s leadership is largely composed of the old guard members whose political views have been hardened by years of repression under the Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak regimes. The younger generation, however, has shown itself much more amenable to cooperation with non-Islamist groups. Furthermore, the younger generation has publicly chafed against the old guard’s hesitance to turn over leadership positions to them. This split in the Brotherhood continues to grow, and, with defections such as those of Mohamed and his colleagues and the rise of more hardline groups such as the Salafis, the MB no longer has a monopoly on Islamist politics in Egypt.

Two Must Read Articles

It's almost been a year since the "Arab Spring" began, and now that the wild jubilation has cooled off in most parts of the Middle East, it is time for the nitty-gritty of electoral laws, campaigning, and constitution drafting to take the spotlight. I highly recommend the following two articles for anyone looking to gain some perspective on what is happening in Egypt and the region as a whole. Enjoy!

1) How Bad Electoral Law Could Crash Egypt's Revolution (Atlantic)

2) The Arab Counterrevolution (New York Review of Books)

Emotion Trumps Rationality

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the 18-day Egyptian uprising in January and February was that the protesters were focused almost exclusively on the internal issues plaguing Egypt: unemployment, rising prices, corruption, etc. External issues that long played a major role in Egyptian political consciousness, primarily the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were put on the backburner.

Any illusion that the Arab Spring would magically cure Egyptians’ dislike of Israel and lead them to focus more on fixing internal issues than settling external scores, however, was just that: an illusion. What little tolerance Egyptians had for the continuation of the status-quo in their country’s relationship with Israel after the revolution was reduced to nothing last month. In an effort to hunt down the Palestinian militants responsible for attacking a bus near Eilat, Israeli helicopters accidentally killed five Egyptian security officers in Sinai. That led to an outpouring of rage and serious protests outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and the protests reached a new peak last night as protesters broke down the security wall and stormed into the embassy. Israel pulled out almost all of its diplomatic corps in Egypt in the middle of the night.

From a vantage point on our roof, we saw large groups of youth sprinting down the main street near our house towards the embassy. Ten minutes later, some of the same youth came sprinting back the other direction, just as a large group of riot police departed from the police station next to our house in the direction of the embassy. Smoke was rising in the distance from the embassy area, and sirens blared throughout the night. Rumor has it that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his cabinet may tender their resignations today.

Today, life on the streets is pretty much back to normal. In my personal opinion, however, the outbreak of these protests could not have come at a worse time. Elections are coming up in November and the electoral laws are still muddled and in need of urgent reform, serious fissures have emerged between the Islamists and the liberals, and dissatisfaction with the ruling military council continues to grow. Every ounce of energy spent engaging in Quixotic missions to break into the Israeli Embassy is one less ounce of energy spent focusing on the real problems that plague Egypt right now. There will most certainly be a time for Egyptians to have a serious debate about how they think their country should deal with Israel, but it is not now!
Furthermore, the last thing that Egypt needs is to give the military council an excuse to crackdown on dissent, which it might very well try to do in response to last night’s events.

Egyptians feel like their government has allowed Israel to run roughshod over them for more than thirty years, and the pro-Palestinian sentiment on the Egyptian street has always been strong. Currently, however, emotion is blinding rationality. Nothing productive can come out of the sort of raw expression of rage that Cairo witnessed last night. I just hope that the consequences are not too serious, either.

A Ramadan Unlike Any Other

While I was trekking through Turkey during the month of August, Egyptians were busy fasting during the day and partying at night during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

I managed to return just in time for the end of Ramadan. Daily life in Egypt between the hours of 9 AM and 4 PM during Ramadan is surprisingly normal. People go to work, the streets are full of cars (and the accompanying noise is just as annoying as ever), and you would never know that they are doing all of that without any food or water! As several friends explained it to me, you make it through Ramadan for three reasons: (1) Over the course of the 28 day fast, your body adjusts to eating large meals at night and nothing during the day, (2) Everyone else is doing it, so there is a feeling of companionship and brotherhood with your fellow fasters, and (3) you have a giant party to look forward to once the sun sets!

Unfortunately we non-Egyptian city dwellers did not have as much access to the party scene as we would have liked. The real parties, as I was repeatedly told, happen in the countryside where families gather together for huge feasts every night with their neighbors and the music blares deep into the night. While that description might include a little bit of embellishment courtesy of my Egyptian friends who were wishing that they could have been celebrating at home, I don’t think it is too far from the truth…

Celebrating iftar, the sundown break-the-fast meal, was still pretty fun in the city. Every restaurant is packed with families, and the glum, tired faces brighten the second after everyone hears the muezzin’s call signifying that the sun has set. After dinner, people pour out into the streets to socialize and shop, and many of them stay there until the wee hours of the morning.

None of those observations about Ramadan, however, represent anything out of the ordinary. Indeed, the reason why I refer to this past Ramadan a Ramadan unlike any other has nothing to do with the normal traditions. Instead, this was the first Ramadan in the post-Mubarak Egypt. No longer did the newspapers carry headline pictures of Mubarak and his wife praying together at his favorite mosque on the outskirts of Cairo. Furthermore, the celebratory Ramadan banners hung between houses in narrow alleyways and on traffic roundabouts now carried the names of a variety of political parties. Prominent among them were the Salafi “Hizb al-Nur” (“Party of Light”), representing the hardline Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Hizb al-Huriya wa al-Adala” (Party of Freedom and Justice). Seeing banners openly promoting the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafis’ political wings would have been unthinkable a year ago.

After Ramadan ends, Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr, a three-day long celebration that includes gift-giving and, of course, more feasting. The first day of Eid begins with morning prayers at 6:00 AM. Mosques throughout the country overflow, and the attendees who can’t find space inside spill out into the streets and listen to the imam’s sermon on mats under large canopies.

I spent Eid with an Egyptian friend in Alexandria. While I was unable to drag myself out of bed at that early hour to attend prayers, my friend returned later that morning with a full report. After opening his front door and stepping onto the adjacent main street, he was confronted with two choices: to his left were canopies filled with Salafis, and to his right were canopies filled with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of both groups were milling around in the crowds distributing party literature and membership information.

“So which side did you pray on?” I asked him.
“The Muslim Brotherhood,” he replied and added with a laugh, “I didn’t have a choice! They’re crazy, but not as crazy as the Salafis!”

The debate between the religious and the secular parties is really heating up here. I’ll have some more posts on this topic in the coming weeks.

The Focus Turns to Midan Al-Tahrir (Again)

"Friday, July 8 is the single most important day in Egypt since Mubarak's ouster on February 11." -- Alaa Al-Aswany, Egyptian writer and political commentator

Hundreds of thousands (possibly one million) Egyptians are expected to descend upon Tahrir Square tomorrow in what will likely be the largest protest in the square since Hosni Mubarak relinquished power in February. The protest enjoys the support of all the major political parties in Egypt (including the liberals and the Islamists), and the parties are claiming to have cast their ideological divisions aside in order to come out as a unified force tomorrow. All the groups have gathered under the banner of economic reform, freedom, and social justice. There is also a big focus on pushing the military council to speed-up the judicial process for both the elements of the Mubarak regime charged with corruption and the police officers charged with murder during the January revolution.

In general, many Egyptians that I have talked to over the past few days feel that this is their best chance to "put the revolution back on the right track." There have been several clashes between protesters and police over the past few weeks - largely in response to several trial postponements that have been interpreted as attempts by those on the military council to protect their former cronies. In addition to the growing discontent with the military council, many people have become disillusioned by the petty fighting between the many political parties and the growing rift between the liberals and the Islamists. Furthermore, the country's economy is still suffering from a drop in tourism and foreign investment after the revolution.

Over the past month, I have felt that Tahrir has become more of a "Speaker's Corner" than the center of a revolution. Everyone is always eager to talk, but it is unclear that those gathering there have anything to show for it. Tomorrow, however, may well be different. The sheer spectacle of a mass of humanity once again in the square, united by a list of simple demands, might push the military council to bow to the will of the protesters. On the other hand, there is also a chance that tomorrow's protest could lead to violent clashes (especially if a group of people try once again to attack the Interior Ministry). As Egyptians like to say: "rabina yestoorna" (may God protect us).

I will be back with an update tomorrow. For those of you following on twitter, use #tahrir, #jul8, and #egypt

Across the Egyptian Twitterverse

Tonight I attended a “Tweet Nadwa” in Cairo. This nadwa (which translates into English as “seminar” or “conference”), as its name suggests, was organized via twitter and facebook and brought together Egyptians for a discussion about social justice and the future of Egypt. Try as I might to summarize the meeting in 140 characters or less on twitter, I simply cannot do it. Instead, I’ve turned to the blog, which gives me much more space to discuss and analyze tonight’s nadwa in detail.

The event was held in a theater nestled in the alleyways of downtown Cairo, and the room was already packed when I arrived a few minutes before 6:30. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to find a spot on the floor – a few minutes after I sat down, the theater was filled entirely to capacity with people in seats, on the floor, and in the aisles. This being my first twitter-organized event I didn’t quite know what to expect…I assumed that everyone might be spending the entire time with their noses buried in their blackberries, focusing more on their tweets than on the actual content of the discussion. As the moderator explained, however, the event was meant to be much more of a town-hall style meeting and, while a projector screen displayed a live feed of tweets from the audience members, audience members who wanted to contribute would be given a microphone instead of a smartphone. The moderator posed a topic for discussion, and then passed the microphone around to audience members and five prominent tweeters who were sitting on chairs in the front of the theater. Each person could speak for no more than 140 seconds (a nod to Twitter’s 140 character limit). Knowing what sort of rhetorical gems town hall meetings in the U.S. have yielded (e.g. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”), I was quite excited to see how this concept would play out in an Egyptian context.

Before getting into the actual content of the discussion, a few observations about the overall feel in the room. The audience was generally young, quite politically and socially liberal (both from the nature of the discussion and their preferred styles of clothing), and clearly very tech-savvy. As far as I could tell, there were no Salafis (who often sport long beards and traditional robes called galabiyyas) and no one who publicly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood. A sense of excitement pervaded the room as the discussion began, and as an outside observer it was hard not to get swept up in the moment. I never imagined last year when I was in Alexandria that this sort of discussion would be taking place just one year later in a post-Mubarak Egypt. It was impossible not to be inspired by several hundred people voluntarily coming together to talk about the future of their country. The level of energy and passion in the room – fed by the feeling that there is a real window of opportunity right now to shape Egypt’s political and economic future – was infectious.

Tonight’s topic was social justice, and the conversation mainly focused on economics. The microphone swiftly changed hands in the beginning of the meeting, with most of the attendees striking idealistic notes about the necessity of improving healthcare and education, raising the minimum wage, etc. Nothing revolutionary, but nevertheless a good way to start the program. After a brief digression in which the attendees argued amongst themselves about how the stock market functioned and whether it was or wasn’t necessary for the country’s future, the discussion heated up when a proud Communist stood up and admonished the crowd for not focusing on the real issues. “You all are forgetting the critical problem here,” he declared, “we need to stop talking about the minimum wage and the stock market and start talking about how to end the capitalist plague that is destroying our country! We must return to the basics and realize that capitalism is inherently unfair!”

The crowd’s attention instantly turned to broad, ideological issues. Instead of clapping, the moderator told the audience members to raise their arms and wave their hands when they agreed with a certain point, and judging by the amount of raised hands and smiles after that mini-Communist manifesto, the man had many allies in the room. Several like-minded thinkers expressed their support for the idea of completely overhauling Egypt’s system, inveighing against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (among other foreign countries and institutions) for making the rich richer and the poor poorer while tacitly approving the pervasive corruption in the Mubarak regime.

The capitalists in the room were not as vocal, but a few brave souls did stand up to defend their position. “What we had in Egypt for the past 30 years,” one said, “was not capitalism. It was simply despotism.” Another chimed in: “we’ve tried socialism and it didn’t work!” While nobody endorsed the Mubarak regime’s version of capitalism, the capitalists did win a fair amount of head nods and raised hands during their responses to the communist and socialist salvos.

The back-and-forth debate between the capitalists and the communists/socialists continued for some time, but there were two speakers who I found particularly engaging. One man stood up in the middle of the debate and, quite calmly and skillfully, attacked both the capitalists and the communists at the same time: “This question of whether we should have a capitalist or a communist system here in Egypt is not as important,” he declared, “as this question: who will administer the system? If there is anything we have learned in the past 60 years, it is that no matter what ideology we follow, we are ultimately doomed to fail if we have bad leaders. Pick either one of these ideologies, but remember that our success or failure will ultimately be determined by who is making the decisions and not some theoretical framework for how things should work.” While I didn’t speak at the meeting and generally refrained from reacting to any of the statements from one side or the other, I couldn’t help but raise my hand in support of that statement. Soon afterwards, another man stood up and brought up an equally important point: “While it is important to talk about macroeconomics and large companies,” he said, “we also have to focus on small-scale issues. So many young people have business plans or inventions that they want to capitalize on, but our system makes it unbelievably hard for anyone to open their own business. Why should we have to get 15 permits from the government to open a small shop, and why is it so hard for us to get any start-up capital? Change has to come from the bottom, too, and we need to start by completely overhauling the system to make it easier for us young people to go into business for ourselves.” I, and many of the other people in the room, raised our hands in support of this point, too.

Finally, I was very interested by the constant comparisons of Egypt to other countries. Many people backed up their statements by saying “in America they do this” or “in Scandinavia they do that,” and there were several points in the discussion when people used specific examples from American political or economic history. Many of the moderates in the room advocated that Egypt look to northern European countries as models for how to balance capitalism and social justice, but just as many people shook their heads emphatically whenever someone said that Egyptians should look to foreign countries as they design their own system. One speaker garnered a sea of raised hands when he declared simply: “screw capitalism and communism, let’s invent a new and better system here in Egypt!” Nevertheless, America was certainly the most commonly referenced foreign country throughout the discussion. Interestingly, while there were occasional mentions of developing countries such as Brazil and Korea, no one said anything about the Chinese model.

As a whole, I would characterize the discussion as decidedly more focused on social justice and closing the gap between the rich and the poor than most discussions about economic issues in the U.S. Despite a rising culture of consumption here in Egypt and a tendency for the rich to flaunt their wealth, I think people are very conscious of the huge class divide that emerged during the Mubarak regime, and they want to take definite actions to solve the problem. “We must judge our government,” one woman declared, “on the basis of how it treats the weakest people in our society.” If this twitter nadwa is actually representative of the Egyptian liberal movement as a whole, I would expect to see a definite shift to more populist policies if they liberals gain a significant amount of seats in the parliamentary elections.

As I have written before, someone walking the streets of Egypt these days who didn’t know about what happened in January and February would probably not think that this country is undergoing dramatic changes. There are specific times, however, when the gravity of what is happening in Egypt hits you like a tsunami. Tonight was certainly one of those times, and I will certainly be returning to the next twitter nadwa. The attendees’ enthusiasm, optimism, and genuine desire to change their country for the better was truly inspiring.

The Last 2 Weeks in a Nutshell

It's been awhile since I've written on the blog, somewhat because school work is starting to pick up but also because there is just so much to do here that I don't have much free time! We are now on break for the next week and half, so I no longer have an excuse for not posting. Thus, here are a few fun experiences from the past week and a half:

1) My first Egyptian wedding. Last Thursday, three of us tagged along with the program's academic director to his friend's wedding. The wedding was in a suburb of Alexandria named "Wahed wa Ashreen" or, in English, simply "21." The unimaginative name is inspired by the fact this town is 21 kilometers from the center of Alexandria. The town didn't have many distinguishing features, and seemed decidedly middle class by Egyptian standards - modest, low-rise apartment buildings without much attention paid to aesthetics, satellite dishes everywhere, electricity, and bumpy roads. What was most interesting to me was the general absence of all forms of transportation on the streets. We saw a few cars parked along the sides of some of the streets, but we never saw or heard nary a motorcycle, bike, or car actually moving while we were there. As such, the roads turned into a playground for the local kids and a free and public venue for the wedding.

As guests, we were treated with the utmost respect and at every opportunity someone from the groom's family insisted that we eat more food or drink another cup of tea. One of the hardest jobs in Egypt is that of the guest: the host will always bring more food to the table than is humanly possible to eat, but you have to try your best to eat as much as possible lest you appear disrespectful. It's a tough task, but one I do enjoy (especially when there is good food like the Upper Egyptian food we were treated to at the wedding). When you are obliged to eat two huge meals in the span of two hours, however, it can become a bit much.

After our two dinners, we sat in the street and alternately watched and participated in the dancing / fundraising portion of the wedding. The groom and his family were from Upper Egypt (i.e. the south of Egypt), so this portion of the wedding included music played on a recorder-like instrument and drum from the region. As each person gave a small donation to cover the cost of the wedding, he would say who the donation was in honor of and would then get up to dance with the musicians. We donated in honor of Alexandria University, America, and finally Barack Obama, and then proceeded to do our best to emulate the Upper Egyptian style of dancing that we had watched the other men do quite gracefully before us.

Unfortunately after the dancing ended we had spent four hours at the wedding and we had to get back to Alexandria for a birthday party (and another huge meal). There was still no sign of the bride when we left, but I ran into the groom by coincidence a few days ago in Alexandria and he told me that the rest of the wedding went quite well. Alf mabrook (congratulations!)

2) As my Arabic skills continue to develop, I am starting to have some interesting conversations with the Egyptian students that go beyond basic, daily topics such as school, sports, and, my personal favorite, food. As opposed to my experience in Kenya last summer where I would read the English-language newspaper everyday and stay abreast of political developments, I am relatively cut off from Egyptian politics. I don't have time to slog through Arabic newspaper articles every day, and I didn't know much if anything about Egyptian politics before I arrived. In the month and a half that I have been here, however, I have heard the constant refrain from nearly everyone I've talked to that the current government is rife with corruption, inefficient in service delivery, and generally unable to take up the real problems (primarily unemployment) that the country faces. I have focused particularly on the shabab (youth) when thinking about the political situation in the country, and over the past week and a half I had a few chats with my Egyptian friends focused on the future of youth and politics in Egypt.

There are groups of young men all over the place in Alexandria, and Egypt, like most developing countries, has a disproportionally high percentage of its population under 30 years old. So the first question I always ask about the issue is about the options that these youth have. Is a steady job available for your average college student after he graduates? What if you don't make it to college? Are these youth seemingly languishing on the streets simply unambitious, or are they victims of an education system that doesn't prepare them well for future employment? What is their level of interest in politics? The general answers that I have heard so far is that these youth are victims of a poorly-designed and antiquated education system and a gerontocratic society that prioritizes age over skills at their expense. It would be a mistake, of course, to apply these sweeping generalizations to every Egyptian, but the reality on the street should not be taken lightly. Having large groups of unemployed, disaffected youth who are thereby cut off from engaging in the normal social processes of earning a steady income, finding a spouse, and starting a family is a potentially dangerous situation for the government and general stability in the country. The question that remains and that I want to take discuss more with my Egyptian friends is about the political alternatives that might or might not exist. I have heard some of my friends express support for the Muslim Brotherhood, some for the potential presidential candidacy of Mohamed el-Baradei (former head of the IAEA), and some continue to support Hosni Mubarak. As the semester goes on, I am going to keep trying to get my head around these issues and hopefully learn some useful Arabic vocabulary in the process.

We're off on our group trip to Sinai for the next few days, and after that some of us are going to Jordan to visit, among other things, Petra. I am complete ready for the beach, snorkeling, and, of course, for some more fun adventures in Egypt and Jordan.

UPDATE: After waiting five hours for our shredded bus tire to get fixed in a random rest stop on the side of the road in Sinai, we finally made it to Dahab. All of us are 100% relaxed here - life is good. More to come soon on Sinai and my upcoming trip to Jordan