Heya Fouda? Egyptians Courageously Seek Justice

Heya Fouda?

I am an Egyptian-born American, and the title above is a common term in the Egyptian lexicon.  It literally means, “You think it is chaos?”  If we ask any Egyptian this question today, the answer will not be a universal ‘no’, nor will it be a universal ‘yes’.  If I already lost you because I did not offer a simple yes/no answer, I apologize and also confess that it is very likely that I will not have one before I finish writing this essay about the recent uprising in Egypt.  Another confession I feel I must offer is how difficult I am finding it as I hit these keys to know where to begin.  It is like I am pregnant with so many ideas shouting to see the light, but I do not know which to deliver first or even if I can actually line them up in a specific sequence.  Now, let me offer a suggestion.  The relatively recent Egyptian film Heya Fouda explains a large part of why what happened in Cairo on January 25 did happen.

Let me start with a quote from Matthew (5: 20) which goes like this, “I tell you, unless your sense of justice surpasses that of the religious scholars and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  What has been happening in Egypt since January 25 is all about denied justice, and I would like to share some of my own personal stories as an Egyptian-born to illustrate and support my point.

I left Egypt in my early twenties with all that I knew behind me and all of my hopes, dreams, and naive wishful thoughts ahead.  That was 1969, only two years after the Egyptian army had suffered a most humiliating defeat in a war basically initiated by Gamal Abdul Nasser, who led the military coup ending Egypt’s monarchy in 1952.  This is a profoundly significant detail if we are to make any sense of Egypt’s evolution since.  The essence of this historical factoid is the fact that Egypt has been militarily ruled for many, many, many decades, and may very likely continue to be so.  This fact should be considered when we call for democracy in the Middle East because, by comparison to our form of democracy where the military does not rule us, in Egypt and most Arab countries in the Middle East, it surely does.

Time will reveal why the Egyptian army did not intervene to protect the protestors when they were brutally attacked by what was so abundantly clear to be government-affiliated thugs.  One needs not be a mental giant to notice the sequence of events leading to the slaughter.  Only the ministry of interior and its gooneys could have pulled all police forces (not just anti riot police), opened prisons to hard core criminals, and beefed up the mob of thugs with supremely trained “security apparatus” henchmen to rain terror on courageous anti-Mubarak protestors.

It was also abundantly clear that there was some kinship between the protestors and the soldiers in Tahrir square (“liberation square”), juxtaposed against the ferocious animosity they had against the police.  This, too, is a profoundly important detail to remember and comprehend.  The Egyptian police force, like in so many other countries in that pesky region, is by any other name the iron fist that protects the ruling regime, cracks down on Islamists, handles usual matters to be handled by a police force anywhere else, staffs police stations (which are basically torture dungeons), and handles all matters of domestic security.  The problem lies not with what their “business cards/resumes” say.  The problem lies in the priorities of their responsibilities and their unparalleled corruption and savagery.  Should Egypt, by any sad chance, continue to be held by this force (known there as Mabaheth or Al Nizam Al Markazi), I fear that whatever effort, by the protestors and all their supporters, will be for naught.  However, to place the blame on the henchmen and totally leave their masters unscathed would be a most dishonorable act.

The dramatic rise in extreme Islamism (religiosity in general, as Gilet Keppel brilliantly details in his book Revenge of God) can be traced to the Iranian Islamic revolution.  It was in 1981 when president Anwar El Sadat was assassinated by extremis Islamists for signing a peace treaty with Israel. Ironically, the assassin was an army officer and the barbaric act was done as Sadat was watching his army parading to celebrate its relative victory against Israel only two years earlier.  I am not sure how many “usual suspects from the Muslim Brotherhood were arrested and harshly interrogated (to borrow former vice president Dick Cheney’s English translation of the word barbarically tortured) but the assassin and all members of his cells along with perhaps many thousands of Muslim Brothers were captured in an unprecedented short time.  It was then that emergency law was enforced and it was only February 5, 2011 when the bravery of the protestors “supposedly” ended it.  I can easily understand why it would be difficult for anyone who never lived in a flagrantly police state to properly estimate the immensity and enormity of such development.

As the 1990’s brought us the unauthentic wealth of the dot com, it also brought it to Egypt and with that a wave of “westernization” hit the shores of the Nile as a tsunami.  Again, there is significance to this factoid.  While the overwhelming majority of Muslims (particularly, Egyptian Muslims) are moderate, tolerant, and certainly not extremely fundamentalist, the same overwhelming majority would not tolerate what they perceive as western “hyper sexuality”.  With tons of money filling the pockets and bank accounts of the privileged few, millions of western tourists with millions of dot com dollars began to realize the attraction of Egypt as a most delightful vacation destination, thus increasing the number of bars, nightclubs, brothels, etc.; alcohol (the primal anti-Islamic substance) began to flow freely and openly.  Simultaneously, the number of veiled women and bearded men hit new heights.

Here is when the naked conflict between the Brotherhood and the regime became crystallized and irreversible.  The regime was painted as not only oppressive but, far worse, as anti-Islamic by the Brotherhood and all who feel sympathy for them because of how harshly they are treated.  Concomitantly, and not at all surprisingly, the regime offered itself to Egyptians and the entire world as the only wall between them and a Taliban-like rule.  As the savagery of the police increased, logarithmically, the anger in the souls and hearts of basically 90% or more seriously impoverished Egyptians multiplied, leading to a state of civil war between the two Egyptian factions.

Now, I hope that you see why I selected that quote from Matthew to begin my essay.  It is justice that the Egyptians are asking for and it is self-serving autocracy that is deafening those who cannot hear their cry.

This post was written by

Mohey Mowafy – who has written 1 posts on Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes.

Born in Egypt, Mohey Mowafy teaches nutrition in the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation at Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, Michigan.

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