Egypt for all Egyptians

"What is happening now in Egypt is natural in nations experiencing a shift to democracy. Nations take time to stabilize and in some countries that took many years. It has only been two years in Egypt and, God willing, things will stabilize soon."
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi

The feverish outraged need to protest has communicated itself to the young in Egypt. Hardly surprising, since it is usually the young who are attracted to such opportunities to act out. Besides which, the outrageous number of unemployed youth make for an especial kind of rage being exhibited in the public sphere. Along with the inescapable conclusion that rioting is considered by some to be an opportunity to run amok.


In which cause the youth of Egypt are commending themselves to whatever fates look over the antics of the young and keep them safe from harm. They are committed to violence because it satisfies something primeval deep within their beings. This kind of response seems a a very partial one to those living in the Middle East in particular.  It is the kind of attitude and behaviour Israel knows well, through their introduction to the various Intifadas.

President Morsi can be excused for bewilderment that it is happening to  his regime, bringing Islamism where it belongs, to the 80-million Egyptians whose Muslim faith needed to be refreshed, and he the man to do it on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. And there lies the rub, since the opposition parties, those who consider themselves liberals committed to democracy, the socialists, the secularists, have no wish to be further indoctrinated into the fine particulars of Sharia.

The mayhem that has ensued under a president who has taken upon himself all the power and more, much more, than his predecessor presumed to do, represents a backlash against the monopolization of power in the hands of the Brotherhood, claim the opposition leaders.  Insisting that President Morsi rethink his commitment to the rule he has established and the special authority he has taken for himself. Apart from the fact that the constitution requires a re-write.

Even the Brotherhood's partner in Islamism which received the second-highest number of votes in the democratic election that brought the Brotherhood and Morsi to power, the Salafist Al Nour party, has stationed itself beside the opposition. "We are considered Islamists, and we are from the Islamic current but when we work for the sake of national reconciliation, we have to be neutral ... Egypt for all Egyptians", declared Younis Makhyoun, head of Al Nour.

One wonders, does it concern those who have come out in the streets in their affronted and vehement numbers that Egyptian women are not safe from molestation and mob violence in this Egypt for all Egyptians?

Egyptians flee tear gas fired by security forces during an anti-President Mohammed Morsi protest in front of the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. Thousands of protesters denouncing Egypt's Islamist president marched on his palace in Cairo on Friday, clashing with security forces firing tear gas and water cannons in the eighth day of the country's wave of political violence.(AP Photo/Amr Nabil)