Just for salafs

‘If someone should say to you, this is politics, say: This is Islam, and we do not recognise such divisions.’ (Hasan al-Banna, ‘Between Yesterday and Today’)

I opened the window this morning and looked out onto Hoda Shaarawy to see four girls, about ten years old, holding an Egyptian flag and chanting Islamiyya, islamiyya, masr dawla islamiyya as passers-by stopped to film them on camera phones. Outside the mosque, clusters of dudes lay around on green mats in the shade. Snowdrifts of white robes had mounted in the side streets. The great beard march was beginning! AMW came out on the balcony beside me. ‘They’re everywhere,’ he said, in hushed tones.

I put on my least seductive outfit, ending up looking vaguely Amish, and we set off to talk to some Islamismists. As we headed down Talaat Harb, we played ‘scariest Salafi’. AMW won with a guy wearing a tea towel on his head. (That’s not racist, you know. He was actually wearing a tea towel. Just a practical attitude to sun protection.) The street was full of box fresh white robes and sensible sandals. It was a bit like a mirror image of this. ‘I’M HERE…TO PROTEST.’ Somewhere, Thomas Friedman was weeping at the sight of Muslims doing something he’d rather they didn’t. The crowd was incredibly thick in Tahrir Square and I could feel rivers of sweat running down my back and legs. There were many of those awkward moments when a Salafi jostled me in a crowd thinking I was a man (short back and sides, you see) before realising I’m a woman and pulling away as if they’d just accidentally touched a hot plate. There were chants that I hadn’t heard for a long time. The people and the army with one hand? So Jan25, guys.

I wondered where all the people in the tent city had gone. The central reservation was surrounded by a phalanx of bearded guys and there was no way of getting in to see what was left. I heard that secularists were still running the stage by the Mogamma but it was impossible to push through the crowd to see. Later I read that most of the groups making up the coalition for the 29th July had pulled out. The day was set for a particularly obnoxious show of strength by Egypt’s least lovable political grouping. (Although I guess ex-NDPians could give them a run for their money.) (I should point out, to any of you who are foolish enough to take this blog as your main source on Egyptian politics, that Tahrir Square has been occupied for the past couple of weeks by a large and shifting group of people from many different political parties or groups. The character of it has been largely secular. This was a pretty unusual display of Islamist force. This probably puts it best.)

AMW and I got talking to a man carrying a picture of the Dome of the Rock. This turned out to be a bad idea as he was an egregious example of what Jerry Seinfeld would call a close talker. AMW was accosted by some guys in white robes while I was left to dodge spittle as Dome of the Rock barracked me about Western support for Israel. I rehashed the usual arguments about the difference between government policy and personal opinion. He made the eminently fair point that we voted these cretins into office. I jokingly said that maybe the solution was no government at all and earned myself a slightly cold stare. A man standing next to him told me that he appreciated my support for the Palestinians. (About time someone gave me the recognition I deserve! Jesus! I’ve been sweating it out supporting the Palestinians for years without a word of thanks from an Arab!) He then proceeded to list for me the achievements of Arab civilisation and the ways in which it had contributed to science, literature, art, undsoweiter. He looked at me somewhat expectantly. I was conscious of a large sweat patch developing on my stomach. ‘Um, thanks,’ I said.

A young guy in a white t-shirt started telling me the life story of Muhammad. His accent was almost impenetrable and the only word I could work out was rusuul (messenger) which obviously came up a lot. I’m pretty sure it was the life story of Muhammad but couldn’t really be sure. Whatever he was saying, he really, really wanted me to take it in. Dome of the Rock kept interrupting but White T-shirt would brush him aside and fix me with his burning gaze, say Shouf ya ukhti, and carry on with his interminable tale. He then told me that every ruler in the history of Islam has been both political and religious. I asked him what the difference between politics and religion was. There is no difference, he said. Dome of the Rock at this point converted his sign into a makeshift awning to shade me and my rapidly growing crowd of interlocutors. A smartly-dressed young duktuur type asked if I had any questions for them. I asked him what their aims were. He told me that they wanted a civil state but with Islamic ‘concepts’ (mafahiim). I asked him to clarify and he said that a civil state meant civilian rule, democracy, a parliament, the rule of law, but based on Islamic concepts such as justice, social equality, gender equality. I gave up at that point and went to grab a guava juice. As we left we got talking to a man who named us Mohamed and Fatima and asked AMW for my hand in marriage. ‘My sister is far too young for you,’ said AMW with convincing disapproval and we turned on our heel towards the juice shop on Midan Falaki. ‘Good bye Fatima,’ said the man.

Cruising back towards Talaat Harb, we spotted a bunch of Hizb al-Noor (recently formed Salafi party) activists sitting in the ahwa at the foot of our apartment building and sat down to talk to them for a bit. They gave us the same line: a civil state with Islamic ‘concepts’. They also told us that the Qur’an comes down hard on litterers. One of them asked us if Britain had a constitution. We decided that ‘it’s more of a mutually understood, unwritten constitution, based on years of legal precedent’ was a bit beyond our language skillz so nodded assent. He then told us that everything in our constitution was borrowed from Islam. There wasn’t really a reply to that. Their rhetoric was a lot like the early Muslim Brotherhood: studious denials of any ‘political’ aims, and an assertion of total political and financial independence. The Egyptian Salafis remind me a lot of the Tea Party movement, in some ways. The idea that you can somehow affect politics by determinedly existing outside it, and the constant assertion that this is not politics, what we are doing, this is not politics.

It felt like a show of muscle. Supporters were bussed in from around the country and filled the square until any dissenting voice or even appearance was pushed out. The space was starkly coded in white and black, but mainly white, because there were very few women around. It was a marked contrast to the cooperation between groups which has been ongoing and developing for months: this wholesale, aggressive assertion of one point of view. Cooperation between different groups in Tahrir has not always been harmonious, by any means, but it has at least been attempted. But this was different: this was saying, look at us, look how powerful we can be, and be afraid.

Tahrir documents

A very cool project collecting documents from the Egyptian uprising (with English translations.) Translation practice has never been this revolutionary…

Bassem Youssef, Egypt’s Jon Stewart

Read the whole profile here.

TALAT ZAKARIYA: You must have heard what’s happening in Tahrir Square.

BASSEM YOUSSEF : No! What? What?

T: Drums and horns and dancing…girls…and boys…and drugs…and full sexual relations.

Y (on the phone to someone): Didn’t I tell you we need to go to Tahrir Square? Dude, they’re saying there’s music and women and sex, and we’re sitting here? … Sorry, sorry.

Y: Mr. Talaat, is there a video that proves what you’re saying?

[Belly-dancing video]

Y: Sorry, clearly we got the video mixed up. We’ll fix it. Mr. Talaat, sorry, go ahead, tell us what else is happening in Tahrir Square?

T: What happening right in Tahrir Square is a carnival.

[Carnival clip]

T: There’s a band..there’s a one act play..all of it against the president..there are snacks and drinks and sodas and tea.

Y: I’ve finally learned what’s happening in Midan Tahrir. Out of solidarity with the eminent Mr. Talat Zakariya, I’m going to show you the proof.

T: Drums and horns..

[Crowds singing the national anthem]

Y: So ill-bred. People singing in Midan Tahrir.

T: Full sexual relations…

[Protesters fighting police]

Y: You’re right. It was an orgy…Anything else to add, Mr. Talat?

T: And who knows how many Muslim Brothers, and God knows what else, there…

Y: What, with the music and the girls and the drugs and the sex? What kind of Muslim Brothers, dude?

Mr. Talaat, concentrate for a moment–are you sure of what you’re saying?

T: And I take full responsibility.

Y: So when we write the history of the revolution… There was music and dance, girls and boys, drugs and sex, and Muslim Brothers. They had a carnival, they ate snacks and this lead to the fall of the regime.

Y: Mr. Talaat, is there anything else you’d like to add– anything else bothering you?

T: “Depart”: What does that mean? What does it mean to simple people?

[Video of Wael Ghonim and friends]

“Depart” means get out of here! What don’t you understand?

Y: I hope we answered the question.

(translation by Ursula Lindsay)

Testimony from Cairo

A video testimony (with English translation below) from a protester shot outside the Ministry of Interior in Cairo. Read and watch the full thing here.

‘I had 4 wounds in my head from the beating with the back of the rifle. I was also bleeding profusely from my hip, the blood filled the ground. The policemen told the officer “he’s bleeding boss” he replied “from where? the son of..” he pointed to my leg. The officer kicked me in the place the bullet entered, he kept on kicking a lot till the policemen told him “he is finished boss” the officer left me and another policemen came and I told him I was bleeding. He told me he’ll bring me an ambulance. He lifted me from the top of my trousers and stole everything in my pocket and left. I didn’t know what happened next except that I found more protesters came and attacked the ministry of interior with stones.

People came and carried me. One, thankfully, lifted me on his back and ran. They meanwhile shot us with a type of ammunition that throws lead pellets. Not only I was shot, to the extent that the guy asked me do they want to kill you or what? The filled my back with lead pellets. From my back to my knees all filled with lead pellets. When I was in hospital I was very tired, I couldn’t sleep or rest from the pain.

The youth carried me and ran the entire street. These are the men of Egypt. Cars in the street stopped to anyone injured to transport them to hospital. I was transported in a coupe, we were three in the boot. I later found out that I was take to the Kasr el-Ainy hospital.

There were no beds for me from the number of people injured, I was treated on the floor, they cut the trousers on the floor and examined me on the floor. As soon as the doctor saw my wound he said that I should be operated up on immediately because the bullet I was shot with is internationally banned. He said that after entry in the body part of it explodes, cutting all the arteries and veins in my left hip. I had to be operated on. I stayed in the operating room 8 hours.’

 

Rakha on the revolution

picture by AMW

The ever-excellent Youssef Rakha on Tahrir Square. Please do read the whole thing.

‘ASH-SHA’B YUREED ISQAAT AN-NIDHAM.

Ash-sha’b, a word so completely misappropriated by the military in the 1950s and so often abused since then that, until 25 Jan, it could only be uttered ironically, is finally reclaimed, not in the discourse of the revolutionaries but, meaningfully, in their discursive acts. Overnight, a sha’b really does appear on the streets, ready to sacrifice work, home and comfort, even life, to make a point; it is real, it has flesh and blood, it is even capable of being killed (something the guardians of the status quo, predictably enough, demonstrated in a variety of ways). And it exists in sufficient numbers to suspend and overshadow everything else: terror, apathy, expediency, the machinery of repression. At last the word can be used to mean something real, something that can be confirmed instantly by sight.

Yureed: to want, to wish, to will; to have a will. An army conscript ends up as a police officer’s domestic servant; a physician in training is the Doctor’s errand boy; a journalist reports not from the scene of the event but from the office of the government official responsible; the student’s target is neither epistemological initiative nor professional aptitude but the certificate as a token of entitlement (to class, position, rank, kudos); and certificates too, PhDs in particular, can be bought, obtained by pulling strings: it is not simply a matter of corruption; life is hollow, unreal, drained out. As far as it exists at all, deprived of the right to gather, decide for itself, fight back, to say or to be, the people, which in recent memory has only exited as an abstraction, has absolutely no will.

Once again, miraculously, this changes overnight; and thanks to the machinery of violence and untruth, a nidham that has nothing to count on but fear and ignorance, the change very quickly becomes permanent. Before anyone has had time to think, ash-sha’b yureed is the central reference – amazingly, objectives are agreed on without discussion or premeditation, without leadership as it were, and they are shared by every protester regardless of background or orientation – although many, outside the arena of slogans, insist that the instigators and the agents of the revolution are in the end not so much sha’b as shabab (the young, who make up some 60 percent of the population anyway). I would personally take issue with the accuracy of calling this the revolution of the young, but no matter.

In the past, even when it existed enough to protest – as a trade union, a wannabe party or a brutishly repressed organisation of political Islam – ash-sha’b had focused on needing change or imposing it by force, not willing it. Now, overnight, it can actually will.

And what it wills, unequivocally is isqaat an-nidham:

the bringing down (not the changing or reforming) of the regime, the order, the manner of arrangement of things. There is space within that for willing other, grander and more complicated or conventionally organised things: things Arab, things Islamic, things quasi-Marxist, things civic above all… But the point of the revolution is the freedom in which to will those things and the right, eventually, to institutionalise them, the freedom to expose mechanisms whereby, until its outbreak, they could not be collectively willed: plurality and multiplicity within the scope of what everyone can agree on in their capacity as citizens of a modern, independent, self-respecting state.

As yet I can think of three gargantuan obstacles in the way of these freedoms, to which the revolution has been a revelatory, all but divine response: sicknesses that still glare hideously out of the dead body of an-nidham. Interestingly the one thing they have in common is the way they draw on existing and apparently ancient values which may not be undesirable in themselves but have not been holding up in the electronic age.’