346 Mohammed Khairat ash-Shater, 180 Brotherhood Students Arrested
Police have arrested Mohammed Kairat ash-Shater and 180 students from Al-Azhar University following Sunday’s creepy demonstration. The wires have the story.
[Update: Names, details, and condemnations in HRW’s press release.]
[tags]Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood[/tags]
December 14, 2006 | In Egypt | 11 Comments
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yiii that really is rather creepy.
Comment by Ha ana za — December 14, 2006 #
How much of this is Egyptian Islamists seeing Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine with their cool uniforms and weapons and kung-fu grip and feeling left out?
Comment by Andrew Exum — December 14, 2006 #
Here’s why the students did it, in their own words: ?We apologize for this skit,? they said in a statement released Wednesday. ?This is not our way. It reflected poorly on our school and ourselves by making us look like a militia. This image is absolutely untrue. We are students. We did this skit because we felt that no one was listening?to our requests for justice in the university?.The university administration, in cooperation with the security apparatus, has denied us our rights to participate in student union elections.?
Comment by The Skeptic — December 14, 2006 #
This is interesting. These students took up a “muqawama” pose, affecting the look of a real resistance. And then they were shocked — shocked! — when their antics scared the crap out of people.
Comment by Andrew Exum — December 15, 2006 #
Yeah, fair enough. No one, not even the kids, disputes it was an incredibly stupid move on their part.
Perhaps worth noting, though, that the students made their mistake in response to SSI threats to send in the beltigiya as they had at Ain Shams etc. The students were trying to send the message they weren’t scared.
Lovely. As they admit, they fucked up royally. Until this happened, even the police had to admit that they knew the Brothers were nonviolent. This little display has set the Brothers back 10 years in their attempts to convince the world they’ve renounced violence.
When I spoke with al-Irian the other night (right after his release), he said that the Brotherhood had “saved thousands of youths from the path of violence.”
Given my conversations with some younger members of the organization, that rang true. A lot of the kids, particularly the less sophisticated ones from the governorates, really do have a jihadi outlook. It’s probably a blessing that they’ve found an outlet in a peaceful group. It was interesting to hear the MB’s influence beginning to work on them, to hear the MB party-line before it had settled and cooled. Yes, the kids were talking about the weakness of Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and in Egypt. But instead of talking about overthrowing the government, going to Iraq, or battling the Zionist enemy, they were talking about “reform.” Yes, they were ready to be martyred, but they were ready to be martyred for reform.
I suspect that if you checked in with these kids in a few years’ time, the moderation of their views would be complete. Rather than talking about Bosnia, they’d be talking about the Emergency Law and election rigging… Or they’d have left the organization in frustration because it’s not as hardcore or (in their view) as glamorous as Hamas or Hizballah.
Comment by The Skeptic — December 15, 2006 #
I thought the exact same thing about cool uniforms and HA wannabes when I saw the pics of the kids in their masks. If this were anything other than a police state, we could all just roll our eyes at them for their clumsy bravado.
Is it really accurate to label this admiration for HA and Hamas and righteous indignation about the oppression of Muslims at the hands of evil govts du jour “jihadi” thinking, though? It’s a common enough sentiment among Egyptians.
On a side note, it’s a real shame that the Israelis are trying to marginalize Hamas again and sustain their glamorous-resistance image by refusing to allow them to transform themselves into little bureaucrats worried about government balance sheets.
Comment by SP — December 15, 2006 #
I didn’t talk to the kids about Hamas or Hizballah.
The frequent references to jihad and martyrdom (as well as the stock list of Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine) did strike me as jihadi.
Comment by The Skeptic — December 15, 2006 #
This is so interesting, this culture of resistance. Of course those kids talk about Chechnya and Palestine: in those places, things are so much more black and white — and thus easier to be a jihadi — because you have an occupying power. You want to know what’s tougher? Thinking about your condition in Egypt, where life still sucks and yet you can’t blame your condition on an occupying power — just other Egyptians. If I were Egyptian, I would be dreaming of Palestine as well … it beats Cairo.
Comment by Andrew Exum — December 15, 2006 #
I should clarify that they did talk a lot about Egypt, too. Mostly. They put it in the same list, cast it as a struggle between the Egyptian people and the government…
Comment by The Skeptic — December 15, 2006 #
Fair enough. Me, I’m no better. I’m at home watching Louisville-Kentucky on TV rather than pay attention to the far more depressing and not nearly as harmless Hamas-Fatah clashes play out in Palestine.
Comment by Andrew Exum — December 16, 2006 #
lol. sounds like a much more healthy pastime.
Comment by The Skeptic — December 16, 2006 #