Egyptian Liberal View

I am sick and tired of the lectures in morality to Egyptian liberals coming from the West or Egyptians living abroad. As an Egyptian, like many other Egyptian "liberals", who not only can live and work abroad but who has can fairly easily migrate, generally speaking I just want to remind everybody that we mostly live here by choice and try to work hard to change our society and give back to our community. As someone who has benefited a great deal from the huge disparities in the Egyptian socio-economic system, I view this as our duty and not as something particularly honourable. Anyway, seeing that we are being lectured, this simple truth should not be ignored esp. that the Egyptian economy or what is left of it cannot afford further wealth and more importantly brain drain. Now, like most Egyptian liberals, I have respected the results of the presidential elections. I continued to pay my taxes, worked just as hard, did not flee and completely respected the political process. I believed like many Egyptian liberals that change can only come from within that process. That was until our elected president decided for no acceptable reason to give himself dictatorial powers. We did not ask for a military coup when this happened. In fact I remember only a few months before when like many Egyptians (liberals included) I welcomed Morsi's decision to discharge the leaders of SCAF from service. Anyway, we took to the streets in numbers to protest peacefully. What was the MB reaction? They sent their militias to break a sit in. They stormed the sit in and started the wave of civil violence that has not ended since. We did not run that day. We fought back although we were completely outnumbered. That day some of us got beaten to death or were severely injured. Captives were interrogated at the gates of the presidential palace itself and Christians in particular were at huge risk. That day the police was not on our side and the army was not taking sides. This proved to me that there is a real risk of dictatorship, a real risk of religious fascism and a willingness to use bigots and thugs to crush the opposition. Now, this was enough to destroy any faith in the political process. The final blow came with the new constitution, which in terms of process and outcome had nothing to do with inclusion and participation. On the surface and on the procedural side it might appear democratic but it was anything but. Again, we did not run. We stood ground and all we Egyptian liberals asked for after months of lousy performance on every level was early elections, which is a purely democratic way of resolving the dispute. We took to the streets peacefully in massive numbers showing that millions of Egyptians responded to this call. The MB did not respond and would have chosen to ignore us if they could and would have had no moral issue crushing us with the police or their militias or both if they could and as they have done before. Now, the army entered the scene and deposed the president and suspended the constitution. Now, a coup or not a coup, and much as I hate army intervention in politics, what were we supposed to do. On the one hand, we could side with the MB against the army to make sure that anything remaining between the MB and cementing their dictatorship is gone so that we retain the moral high ground. Then, of course next time we take to the streets in opposition, and militias enter the scene, they will be acting as the republican guard or something similar and we will be facing almost certain death or captivity. On the other hand, we could accept this awful outcome and continue the struggle to build a meaningful democracy knowing that for many local and international reasons, the military will ultimately have to give up or share power. It was a choice between certain dictatorship and a slim chance for democracy. It is a choice we did not want to make but one that we had to make. It is very easy to lecture us on morality esp. in the wake of recent events but it is a lecture that comes from people who mostly have no sense of the reality of the situation. The army and the police are no angels and they have and will continue to use violence against the Islamists many of whom are unarmed and many of whom are moderate and peaceful. Yet the adversary, the MB, use those moderate and peaceful mostly young Islamists in their struggle to hold on to power and have no problem sending them to certain death while simultaneously using their militarized and extremist allies to spread violence and chaos in Sinai, Upper Egypt and elsewhere. They have no problem targeting Christians and threatening civil war and calling for foreign intervention. It is an all out war in which they are willing and able to use everything at their disposal to win and if they do there will be absolutely no room for democracy. It pains me that many moderate and non-violent Islamists are being dragged into this war; however, they are or should be aware that the MB is using them in an alliance that includes militias and extremists and which is completely dissimilar to the January Revolution or any struggle since. Egyptian liberals have faced and continue to face tough choices. We will not side with the most power hungary element in society who is willing and capable of building a dictatorship that will destroy political and civil freedom just so that we can retain the moral high ground or because it would be more convenient for our lecturers on morality though.

By Mohamed Gabr