A Tahrir Refrain: "Raise Your Head Up High, You are a Copt"

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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When the Egyptian masses rose up on January 25, 2011 to throw off the yoke of the Mubarak regime, they raised in Tahrir both the crescent and the cross.  That is Egypt at its best: inclusive, cosmopolitan, moderate and diverse.  As of that date, all of its population (90 million - one fourth of all Arabs) aspired to a bright tomorrow, with Egypt, both of its Muslims and Christians (Copts) charging forward, leading the region towards democracy, development, and, above all, dignity.

Then came the Maspero massacre of Wednesday, October 19 (see our earlier blogs).  Thousands of Copts clashed with security and armed forces guarding the Egyptian TV building in the area of Cairo called Maspero.  Several from both sides; more were wounded.  It was the Egyptian Revolution darkest hour.  Egyptian blood on Egyptian hands.  Some expatriate Copts even called for internationalization of "the Coptic question."  The unthinkable became almost thinkable.  It was a jolt which caused Egyptian leadership and institution to spring into action.

Consequently on October 24, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the de facto and interim Egyptian Head of State, met with Pope Shenouda, the Pope of Alexandria, and the head of the Coptic Church -one of the most learned personalities whom I know of in that part of the world.  The agenda carried an assuring message: Egyptian Copts and Egyptian Muslims are one and inseparable body politic.

At that historic meeting, there were issues to be discussed, solutions to be put in place, national harmony to be strengthened.  The purpose was to emphasize that Egypt's national interest was supreme, and that Coptic grievances which resulted in the Maspero massacre needed to be addressed.  On top of the list was, not only to investigate the events and the wrong-doers of the Maspero massacre.  But also to deal with the perennial delays in the construction and refurbishing of Coptic churches all over Egypt.  The triggering events which flared as a result of the attack on the Marynab Church in Egypt's deep south had to be addressed.

For his part, Pope Shenouda was eloquently reassuring at this meeting with Tantawi.  The spirit of amity and peace should always govern all dealings between Egypt's Muslims and Copts.  They are, as the Pope of Alexandria said, the sons and daughters of the Egyptian homeland.  Sedition was a danger that should not confront Egypt.

The following day, the Egyptian Cabinet considered a new law governing the zoning, construction and authorization of all places of worship, both churches and mosques all over Egypt.  This law was the product of committees on social justice and legislation, and of "the Family's House" (Bait Al-Aaelah) -an interdenominational institution created by the Grand Imam, Dr. Al-Tayeb, of Al-Azhar, the citadel of Islamic learning located in Cairo for more than one-thousand years.

How is this reflected within the Egyptian community in the U.S.?  In the monthly newspaper entitled Voice of Belady (My Country's Voice), its editor-in-chief, Mr. Mouhib Ghabbour (a distinguished Copt) celebrate with members of the New Jersey Egyptian community, both the end of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting) (in August) and the feast of the Virgin Mary in one sitting. The motto of his more than 70 pages in both English and Arabic is fascinating.  It reads: "Separation Between Religion and State -No Turban Is Above the Law."  AMEN, Mr. Ghabbour!!

These expatriates have now been given a potential voice in running the new Egypt.  By a decision of the Egyptian Court of Administrative Justice in Cairo, the Government were instructed to allow Egyptians abroad to vote at their respective Consulates and Embassies.

Said Al-Azhar, through its delegation to Pope Shenouda on October 25: "The Maspero event shall be the last of Egypt's deep sorrows."

Gaddafi's Bloody End As Seen from Cairo

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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The headlines in the Cairo press screamed "Gaddafi's Assassination."  It was not in glee on the part of the Egyptian printed media.  It was in reflection on the end of the life of the Libyan dictator of 42 years who once waged war on Egypt only to be hit back by Egypt's airforce as ordered by Sadat.

Then there was this quiet satisfaction in the Egyptian street as it compared between how Gaddafi was pummelled  then shot to death, and how Mubarak was being wheeled on his sick bed into open court in Cairo with his doctors and lawyers in tow.

Within this spectrum of emotions and soul searching, there was no mistaking Egypt's sigh of relief that Gaddafi's end meant a new beginning in neighboring Libya.  There was no dancing in Egypt's streets, yet there was quiet humming of glee for the Libyan masses erupting in song and dance.

The editorials celebrated what promises to be a new beginning in Tripoli.  The theme in the main editorial in the Egyptian Government newspaper Al-Ahram (established in Cairo by the Takla Christian Lebanese brothers 136 years ago), in its issue number 45609 summed up Egypt's mood. 

"Yesterday, the curtain fell on the Gaddafi era, in order for a new age to begin.  This beginning is not for Libya only, but for the entire Arab region, and perhaps for the world.  It was an era marked by dictatorship, oppression, suppression of the freedoms and rights of the citizen, and murder.  The Gaddafi period was characterized by disrespect for the people's destiny, by frittering away national wealth in order to feed personal ambitions and external whims.  In this, the Libyans, the legitimate owners of that wealth, were permitted no say, no opinion, not even a whisper.

More than any other leader in this area , Gaddafi personified this dark period in Arab history.  Since his assumption of power in 1969, he pushed his behavioral antics to grotesque limits... Those antics included his strange theories which he posted in his book "The Green Book" in which he developed a philosophy of governance all his own.  Through that philosophy, he made the Libyan people his field of experimentation from populism (jamahiriya), to socialism (ishtirakia), to rule by "popular committees."

Gaddafi swung wildly from the concept of Arab unity, to divorcing that concept in preference for African unity.  Throughout his reign, he tried to impose his views on his people and their neighbors.  This he did through money, weapons, terror and intervention in their internal affairs.  This led him to wars with Chad, Sudan, Egypt and Tunisia.

His mischief had an overreach beyond North Africa.  He got involved in conflicts in Northern Ireland and in Latin America.  Then abruptly, in later years, he tried reconciliation (after Lockerbie) with the West, by giving up his nuclear material and allowing western companies to pursue investments in Libya.

But the Arab Spring, armed and determined, flared up, ending his reign -a reign which was based on family and tribe, through he clothed it, once in nationalism, then in socialism.

No doubt, the post-Gaddafi world will be both different and better.  It is our fervent hope that, in its new era, Libya shall open a new page based on democracy, respect for human rights, and responsiveness to the Libyan people's aspirations.

During the long Gaddafi period, these were all values which were nowhere to be found."

Egyptian Blood on Egytpian Hands: The Maspero Massacre

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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The email came to me, fast and furious.  It was from a young Coptic lawyer, one of my collaborators.  It was dated October 11 on a horrific disaster which befell all of Egypt on Sunday, October 9, at Maspero.  That is where the Egyptian Television is located, facing both the great Nile and also thousands of mainly Coptic demonstrators.

On that eventful day, perhaps the most eventful since Dictator Mubarak was chased out of office, 26 demonstrators were killed, 329 injured.  The cause of the Maspero uprising: an attack in upper Egypt on an Egyptian Coptic church in the most southern of Egyptian provinces, Aswan Province.  It was the spark that ignited the Copts who marched from their area of mostly Coptic concentrations in Cairo, called Shubra, on the symbol of Egypt's newly found freedom of expression, the state-run Egyptian Television at Maspero.

In his email of October 11, my Coptic lawyer friend said: "Egypt is crying blood and all the reason for that is the selfishness of some political parties and internal/external groups that want to see Egypt in this catastrophe.  I am really wondering why this is occurring for our dear country which really does not deserve all of that.  I also bring this tragedy to the lack of rule of law (for) which we all should work to strengthen (it.)"

Reflection of this extreme anxiety about the future of the Revolution of January 25 was through a cartoon in a government-controlled newspaper called "Rose Al-Youssef" which made the rounds throughout the Arab world.  The gifted cartoonist by the name of Anwar, had 2 persons wading into a pool of blood: one representing the military, the other, the civilian Prime Minister, Dr. Essam Sharaf.  On top of these two figures, the ominous words read: "Do you think we should open an investigation in where this blood came from, or is that not necessary?"

That bloody confrontation was between Coptic demonstrators on one side and security forces bolstered by military police on the other.  Muslims seem to have been split into two factions:  one group sided with the Copts, the other with the forces of the Government.  The first group was rewarding the Copts for their principled stand for national unity during the anti-Mubarak uprising; the second was rewarding the army for keeping its powder dry when Tahrir was aflame in quest of Mubarak's removal form power.

Who is to blame?  All parties.  Who are the winners?  Nobody.  Who are the losers: EGYPT.  In an email, my dearest niece told me from Cairo: "My heart is breaking for Egypt."

What are the consequences?  The honeymoon between the army and its people seems to have evaporated -at least for now.  There is suspicion that the military is angling for overstaying their welcome by extending the period of military rule, with a facade of a supine civilian government.

Yet actions by the Government were swift as were mutual recriminations.  Partial night curfew was declared for central Cairo; the Supreme Council of Armed Forces instructed the Government to conduct a thorough investigation and to bring to justice all those who were the cause of that mayhem; the Prime Minister called for national unity; the Copts called for the internationalization of sectarian strife, accusing the army of complicity.

In such complicated event, the conspiracy theory takes a front seat in the drama of the new Egypt taking its first baby steps towards democracy.  PM Sharaf declared: "There are criminal internal and external fingers which played their part in the violence in central Cairo to impede the establishment of a democratic system in Egypt."  Then he went on to tell the nation on TV: "The worst dangers confronting Egyptian security are the attempts to disrupt national unity; to sow disunity (between Muslims and Copts); to drive a wedge between the people and their army... It is difficult to characterize what happened as a sectarian conflict."

PM Sharaf seemed to have a boost for his theory from Pope Shenoudah, the head of the Coptic Church.  His Eminence, through the Holy Clerical Council which included 170 bishops, declared: "Christian faith rejects violence.  Outsiders penetrated Coptic demonstrators to commit those atrocities and then point the finger of blame at the Coptic community."

As for Al-Azhar (the Glorious) (Seat of Islamic learning for more than 1000 years), it declared through its Grand Imam, Sheikh Dr. Ahmed El-Tayeb:  "The Egyptian military was and shall always be the expression and manifestation of the principle of Egyptian citizenship."

The root cause of Coptic unrest was also tackled:  The Council of Ministers is slated to approve within two weeks a new law for standardizing the zoning rules of the construction of both mosques and churches.

If it does, then the flames at Maspero, which were ignited from a small church in Aswan Province, might have been converted into light guiding Egypt in the near future towards civilian and democratic rule.

Between the Egyptian Army and the Revolution: What is the Deal?

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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No body knows for sure, except that the revolutionaries are impatient.  They want a date certain for the transfer of power from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to a civilian government.  They want an immediate lifting of the state of emergency law which has been in effect for nearly the entire reign of "El-Askar" (the army) from the early 1950s till now.  Under these laws, detainees can be held without charges or trial for an indefinite period of time.  They want to abolish trials before military tribunals.  They want jobs with salaries commensurate with the inflationary pressures.  The want... They want... They...!!

Revolutions are never tidy affairs.  They are, as in all countries in the region affected by the Arab Spring, cascading events, popular explosions, sudden upheavals where there is hardly any planning or any recognizable leadership.  Euphoria is the result especially, as in the case of both Tunisia and Egypt, the dictator either flees (the case of Tunisia's Ben Aly) or is prevented from leaving the country and is put on trial (the case of Mubarak of Egypt).  In Egypt, the guns of that one-million man cohesive army remained silent, and the generals were invited to rule in an interim capacity (ruling by the Supreme Military Council under Field Marshal Tantawi, and governing by a technocratic government led by Prime Minister Dr. Essam Sharaf) until after elections, both parliamentary and presidential.

Although the honeymoon between the protesting public and the military seems to have lost a part of its steam, but the bond between these two poles of power seems to survive in the following manifestations:

• The fear of a pro-Mubarak conspiracy to sour that relationship persists;
• The responsiveness to the public demand for a definite time-table for parliamentary elections (with 38 parties in the competition), now set for November, to be followed by presidential elections on the basis of a new constitution to be drafted thereafter;
• The declaration by Field Marshal Tantawi that the military would not offer a candidate to be Egypt's next president.  This declaration had a calming effect with regard to the new Egypt becoming, once more, a secular democratic polity;
• The trumpeting of the completion by the Egyptian army corps of engineers of a speedway stretching for 309 kilometers (192 miles) from Giza, at the foot of the pyramids to Assyout, the de facto capital of southern Egypt, nearly halfway from Cairo to Aswan;
• The pomp and circumstance attending Armed Forces Day, October 6, in which the public came out in strength to celebrate;
• The avoidance of showering praise in the Egyptian media on the generals for fear of a slide-back to the military dictatorship which collapsed on February 11, 2011 after 60 years of oppressive rule;
• The call by leading opinion-makers in the Egyptian media for the armed forces to show more muscle in dealing with the chaotic conditions resulting from the continuity of demonstrations in Tahrir and elsewhere in Egypt;
• The rejection by the public of foreign criticism of the slowness of the pace of Egypt's transition from military to civilian rule as interference in Egyptian internal affairs;
• The repeated assurance by Tantawi and other leaders on the Egyptian Supreme Military Council that once the acts of instability cease, and the re-organized police forces are back to the business of maintaining law and order, emergency laws will be lifted.

These are indications that both the military and the Tahrir throngs are adjusting to a basic revolutionary reality: filling the vacuum left by the defunct regime takes time.  And solutions for the economic downturn cannot be fashioned by decrees alone. 

But the anxiety about the speed of the return of the military to their barracks is catalyzed in an old Arab proverb reflecting the fear of the return to military rule.  The proverb says:

Those who have once been bitten by a snake suffer a jolt upon seeing a twisting rope being dragged.

This proverb explains why a frenzy of speculation gripped the entire Egyptian political spectrum because Field Marshal Tantawi was seen recently for the first time out of uniform walking the streets.  His mere appearance in a civilian suit and tie evoked the grim speculation of yet another military officer grooming himself for the post of president.  Tantawi was quick to respond to the rumors by saying humorously, "Would it have been better if I wore a torn up civilian suit?"

The Tahrir Refrain

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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"Hold Up Your Head High - You Are an Egyptian!!"  It is the joyful cry of retrieved dignity and national pride.  The flags of Egypt were held high, some emblazoned with the inscription "I Love Egypt."  After 60 years of dictatorship, of which the last 32 years were under Mubarak, Egypt woke up to a new dawn of liberty.  The long search for reviving democracy has begun.

How do these feelings of "don't step on Egypt's dignity" manifest themselves in this 8-month old revolution, internally and externally?

Internally, 38 political parties were created.  The spectrum stretches from the liberal secular to the parties which sprang from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis.  They were all licensed except for groups which espoused archaic precepts of Islam.

How about the now-dissolved National Democratic Party, the Mubarak party, whose imposing Headquarters overlooking the Nile with a sign reading "We Are for You," was torched by the Tahrir demonstrators at the start of the Revolution in January, 2011?  Its members were suspected of coming back to the halls of Parliament through the elections of November 2011 as "independents."  The new elections law allowed for one-third of the seats to be allocated to non-party affiliated independents; Two-thirds for voting on party lists.

The fear and suspicion of that group were palpable.  Thus the Supreme Military Council, the interim Government of Egypt, pending the full return to civilian rule, had to be pressured through the Tahrir demonstrators to amend that offending article (Article 5).  The military gave in to the national will.

The right to peacefully assemble and demonstrate has become enshrined by both law and practice of the new Egypt.  Tahrir has proved this principle of civil rights.  That right cannot possibly be abridged by a fatwa (a religious decree), as in the case of Saleh of Yemen, declaring that it was sinful to protest against the State.  That impossibility comes not only from Egypt's legislated laws; but also from Islamic jurisprudence under which an unjust ruler should be toppled by his subjects, when circumstances permit.

Thus the Friday of September 30 called "the Friday of Retrieval of the Revolution," meaning demonstrations to pressure the Egyptian military to amend the Elections Law, as noted above, and to end the so-called Emergency Laws was both possible and productive regarding the Elections Law.  Now proportional representation on the basis of voting for party lists is the means to become an Egyptian legislator once the November elections are held.

But again "Hold Up Your Head High - You Are an Egyptian" was at work externally.  The calls from abroad for elections supervisors from outside Egypt were rebuffed.  "Observers," yes; "supervisors," no.  After all, Egypt, since 1923, has been in the business of democratic elections - a tradition which was aborted by the onslaught of military dictatorship which began with Nasser, in 1952, and ended with Mubarak, in 2011. Egypt would thus accept observers, for example, from the Carter Foundation.

Within the same trajectory of pride in the new Egypt, the conditions which are now attached by the US Senate Appropriations Committee to U.S. aid to Egypt are objected to beforehand.  This objection applies to both economic as well as military aid.

That objection was announced by Egypt's new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Muhammad Kamel Amr, after meetings with US officials in Washington D.C.  The conditionality applied, among other things, to increasing border security in Sinai, and to having the Egyptian army commit to observing Egypt's obligations under the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.  The new Egypt, while not expressing its present objections as rejection of U.S. aid, said in effect, through its Foreign Minister, "Before the Revolution, no conditions were placed on that aid.  So why now?"

The issue here for the new Egypt was sovereignty from which national dignity flows.  The Egyptians, in whom sovereignty resides, have become, with their relevant institutions, co-makers of foreign policy.  This, at times, poses difficulty in dealing with foreign powers, as in this case, the U.S.

However, to be allied with the people of Egypt is a more durable alliance than with their former dictators. A writer by the name of Baher Shaarawi chose this apt title for his recent article on people's power, "People are more durable than their rulers."

Wael Ghoneim, is the young Egyptian and Google Executive who ignited the Egyptian street by the means of social media.  It was fitting to honor him in Boston in June 2011 by bestowing upon him the annual John F. Kennedy prize for courage.