April 21, 2011
I was fascinated to reach
Port Said this week and see not a single photograph of former President
Mubarak. When I was here last year they were ubiquitous.
Having lived in Egypt and visited it regularly for over 40 years, I found the open attitude of ordinary Egyptians deeply refreshing. “Merhaba, Merhaba. Huriyat Mabrouk, Democratiya Mabrouk,” I would say (“Hallo. Congratulations on freedom and democracy”). People in the souq, young and old, would rush up to exchange the greeting and remind me that Mubarak and his family were thieves and that Egyptians would never again submit to tyranny. They had lost their fear. They took me to a mini Madame Tussauds, on a raised dais in a main street, of life-side effigies of a clownish Mubarak and his family, above all his son and heir Gamal, now in prison. It also included rows of members of his coterie and a ghoulish Mu’ammar Qadhafi. Men, women and children were gazing and taking photographs. The atmosphere was that of a fairground. “Next week we will burn them in a public show of solidarity”, one man said. We walked into the partly burned barracks of the now hated security police. A man came out and asked darkly why I was taking photographs. “He’s a friend”, said my companion. The policeman then smiled and begged us to have tea with him.
However, when I reached Alexandria my optimism for the emergence in Egypt of a European-style democracy was challenged. I made straight for the Ibrahimi Mosque, the centre of the revolution in Alexandria, just off the once glamorous corniche that lay at the heart of Lawrence Durrel’s Alexandria Quartet. The men wore long beards, shortened gelebiyas (gowns) and loose kaffias (head-dresses) around their faces. “Are you Ikhwan (Muslim Brothers) ? ” I asked. “Yes, we are Salafis.” The Salafis follow the example of the salaf as-salih (pious ancestors), the first three generations of Muslims after the Prophet Muhammad. In the Western press the word Salafi suggests something darker. Wikileaks has shown this week how Britain hosted violent Salafis like London’s Finsbury Mosque’s Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. My Arabic drew a wider a crowd of friendly, bearded faces. One man became their spokesman. “We are Salafis but we want democracy as in Europe and we will respect the constitution”, he said. They all agreed that whoever won the September elections, themselves or a secular party, they would honour their commitment to return to the ballot box every five years. They would not seek to impose a Shari’a state in Egypt if they won.
At that moment banners were raised with the picture of a girl and the motto “Rescue Camilla: we demand the release of Muslim women from churches”. More and more people arrived for the Friday prayer, the major prayer in the week and the high-point in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere during these months of people power. They told me that only two days earlier the Copts had killed a girl (and her children) who had converted to Islam and had “kidnapped” Camilla and Wafaa, two Coptic girls who had done the same. I expressed my doubts. I knew that there had been tension and even violence between Muslims and Copts in Egypt but believe that this had been manipulated by the now ancien regime of President Mubarak as a divide-and-rule tactic. The Salafis said that the Coptic Pope Shenouda 111, a Mubarak appointee, was behind the killings and kidnapping of the girls and that Islam in Egypt was ‘under threat’. I pointed out that this was absurd. Muslims were 90 per cent of the country and Sharia law strongly influences the country’s legal framework. How could anyone claim that Islam was under threat ? The Copts, who represent Egypt’s pre-Islamic population, must believe the opposite to be true. I asked the men what happened to Muslim girls who converted to Islam, a move punishable by death under Shari’a law ? “It is forbidden, yes”, they said, “but we do nothing. They kill and kidnap our women but we do not kill theirs, despite our obligation to do so.”
By almost noon a crowd of several thousand had formed. The stewards in luminous yellow coats, who ensured that a way was constantly made for traffic to pass through the crowds, smiled and waved and allowed me to take photographs. I did so throughout the prayer, the khutba (the Friday sermon) and the dramatic chanting for the two girls that followed. Thousands chanted “Bedam, be-ruh, nefdik” (‘With our blood, with our souls, we will redeem you’). After the prayer they were preparing to march on to the military headquarters and protest about the two girls. Apart from one or two traffic policemen, police are no longer to be seen. The army, still respected despite a few confrontations last week, is in temporary control. People and soldiers wave at each other as armoured cars roll through the streets. If you are demonstrating about women, why are there no women here, I asked ? “Because – Heaven, forbid – the army may open fire on us and our wives and children would be in danger,” they replied.
Islamists have been unable to protest in Egypt in public for decades. Thousands under Mubarak languished in the closed prison of Tora and probably still do. Now they relish the opportunity to protest in public. Why, I ask, exacerbate delicate Muslim- Christian tensions, I asked. They all competed to defend their point of view. “We protected Christians in [Cairo’s] Tahrir Square” they said. “We created a safety cordon around them when they said their mass. We love Christians. Jesus Christ is the second most important of our prophets. He is the “Ruh” – the Spirit - of God. But men like Pope Shenouda are behind this violence. They do not want peaceful co-existence.” I had remembered when I wrote Shaikh Tantawi's obituary for The Guardian two years ago admiring a photograph on Tantawi and Shenouda, both in brilliant clerical attire, chatting together amiably. Both were appointed by Mubarak. The men all shook my hand again and patted me on the back. They reminded me that it was men like Mubarak and Pope Shenouda who were creating this violence. Muslims and Christians, they insisted, love each other in Egypt.
I had to return to the nearby Cecil Hotel to collect a message. When I returned to the mosque the crowd had moved off to deliver its protest. A young man showed me his photographs of the demonstrations on his camera and explained all the protest slogans. A rather fierce Salafi approached and, apologizing coldly, demanded to see my passport. “Security”, he said. I showed him it. “It doesn’t say what you do.” “British passports don’t”, I replied. “What is your problem?” “We don’t know who you are,” he said. “I am a lecturer and writer.” More apologies . A debate. Two other men with him appeared to suspect me. They would not make eye contact with me. Another man explained that foreigners who joined them recently as journalists turned out to be British and Israeli spies. In order to reassure them that I was bona fide, I quoted the opening verse of the Qur’an, The Fatiha, but the debate continued. Eventually I shrugged and walked away.
I had arrived that morning convinced that this was the first genuine revolution Egypt had known – Gamal abdul-Nasser’s in 1952 against King Farouk was merely an army coup – and, as these men did, that Islamists were often falsely blamed for violence by corrupt regimes. In Algeria in 1991 the ruling FLN had persuaded the West that Algerians would vote for them because the Islamists were the only alternative. The argument backfired. When the Islamist FIS party was set to win, the army aborted the electoral process and a ten-year civil war ensued. In Egypt Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak had all played along with the Islamists, turning against them when extremists turned to violence. If during this transitional period in Egypt Field Marshall Tantawi and the army do not nurture the growth of centrist parties and if people believe that the choice lies between the hated ancien regime and the Islamists, they will vote for Islamists who promise to remove corruption. If they were to win, this period of benign revolution, this Cairo Spring, will have been squandered forever.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
