Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for President?

With a high approval rating, many Egyptians think that Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is the answer to all the country’s problems. and they saying that  he is the hero God sent to make everything right again -- until he opened his mouth during an interview, which was aired in two parts, on a private Egyptian channel.

The TV interview with sisi last week revealed an out of touch military man with has no answers or understanding of how bad things are in Egypt. It also showed that he is not prepared to be the leader everyone desperately wants him to be.

His answer to a debilitating economy and high unemployment is to create trucks out of thin air and hand them over to young men to use as mobile vegetable shops. When he was asked where the trucks are coming from, Sisi said "don't worry they will be here if I say so" with the attitude of a high school bully.

When Siai was pressed to further explain his solution to the unemployment issue, he mention something about telling the banks to buy the trucks and then the drivers would be responsible for repaying the loans when they started making money.

It was clear that he had been put on the spot, He didn’t have prepared answers. However these questions should have been thought of before he ever agreed to be on the interview. Mind you that these questions are on mind of everyone in Egypt: What are you going to do about the economy? How can you solve the unemployment problems? education? corruptions? all of this are questions that need to be answered by someone who is running for president.

Sisi also promised that he will eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood from the political stage in Egypt. His language insinuated that he is going to remove them by any means necessary.

Now Egypt is faced with an unqualified front runner for president. He is a military man who thinks that he can create things out of thin air, and eliminate his opponents by any means necessary.

Unfortunately Sisi will win and the struggle will continue to find someone better to lead Egypt out of the dark ages.

Run Sisi Run

Many people think the idea of Abdelfattah El Sisi running for president is a great idea, and that it might bring the stability and security that Egypt needs right now. Among the supporters of Sisi running for president is Omer Musa, who used to work for Mubarak's government, and many other Mubarak cronies. Why do they support Sisi's canadcy? Because they are used to the system of corruption from Mubarak's era and they hope that it might come back if Sisi becomes the president.  

I think that having another military man running the country is a huge step back. Not only would Sisi follow in the footsteps of Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, his retaliation will go a lot farther than detaining activists, or locking up the Muslim Brotherhood. He will have nothing to stop him from keeping the whole country in a state of submission.

Despite the the history of military violence against the protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood right after removing first Mubarak and Morsi, I have been hearing many talk on Egyptian and international media about the possibility of Sisi running as a presidential candidate in 2014. Not only has his candidacy been occupying people's minds, it is also a hot topic among activists who have experienced the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces “SCAF” in 2011 to 2012, which resulted many deaths and detentions for activists.

The idea of Sisi running is unpopular among activists because it means that all their hard work, and the people who died since the initial revolution, will have been for nothing. Everyone understands that if Sisi runs he will become the president no matter who is running against him. Sisi’s winning will mean one thing; that he will have absolute power. Really think about it. The military already has control over the economy and the weapons.

After removing Morsi, the military provided Egypt with better security than they had experienced since Mubarak, or during Morsi's one year presidency. Sisi captured most if not all Muslim Brotherhood heads, after giving them a chance to show their true skin by inciting violence and protesting endlessly until Egyptians were sick and tired of the Muslim Brotherhood and their sore loser strategies.

On the other hand, I don’t think that the military was behind the lake of the security during Morsi's presidency. But they witnessed it and didn’t do anything to stop it. Which makes it obvious that the military's strategy for allowing the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood was to let them fail, and turn the public opinion against them. I’m not saying that the Muslim Brotherhood would have succeeded if there were security in place, but it would have made it harder to get rid of them.

The reason why I think that Muslim Brotherhood would have failed anyway is that they had no vision. All that Morsi and the supreme leader of Muslim Brotherhood wanted was to have greater control of Egypt, and to install Muslim Brotherhood members in the government to replace the representatives of the Mubarak regime. They had complete disregard to the people needs.  

Not only did the Muslim Brotherhood have no vision to rule the country, but they allowed the fact that they were the winners of two elections consecutively to cloud their judgment, so they turned a blind eye to the people who elected them in the first place.

I’m glad they are gone, and no longer ruling Egypt. And I’m specifically happy that what they did during the time of Morsi may have ruined their chances of ever being elected again.

However now Egypt has to face the harsh reality that there's nobody worth voting for when it comes to President. Egyptians are longing for someone like Nasser to come and rule the country, and rally people around him. Unfortunately we don’t have such a person.

On Monday Sisi met with a group of representatives from Congress, and I have to wonder why. I do think Sisi might be smarter than the average military leader, but I still think it will be the worst thing for him and the country if he runs for president.

Tannoura

Living in Cairo for over six months in 2013 not only allowed me to work on my films, but also freed me to spend some time on my favorite thing in the world, which is making photos. On the other hand, staying longer this time around gave me more opportunities to make new friends who work in Egypt's tourist industry, who showed me an amazing side of Egypt which I didn’t know much about.

One of the places we visited was the Wekalet El-Ghouri, where the Tannoura live show takes place every week on Wednesday and Friday night. Going to see Tannoura live in Cairo was an eye opening insight on a folk art tradition that is still alive and strong today.

If you haven't heard of Tannoura, it is a folk dance tradition with its roots in ancient Sufi twirling, featuring colorful costumes and amazing music. To quote from the website of the Tannoura troupe: "As the major Tanoura dancer moves himself around, the other dancers start to follow in his dancing steps by whirling around him in a great harmony, in order to act out the movement of the planets on space around the sun. Their anti-clockwise movement is a symbol of the movement that the Muslims usually do around ‘The Kaaba’ (the holy shrine in Mecca) during the Pilgrimage."

The show was amazing and very inspiring, so I decided to make a book out of the photography I did during the show, and I would like to share that with you. I hope the carefully curated photographs and selected verses from Rumi I've included will inspire you.

Please check out my book, and leave me a comment. I would like to hear your feedback. Thank you for buying a copy, and supporting my art.

Tannoura by Khaled Sayed 

No End to Islamist Violence in Sight

Even though the Muslim Brotherhood leaders are losing ground and Egyptian public support, they are still insisting on unrealistic demands. While they have no upper hands, the Muslim Brotherhood are demanding to sack military leaders, reinstate the deposed president Morsi, and restore the constitution Morsi pushed through.

While the Muslim Brotherhood trying to send a message to the world that they won’t accept what they call a military coup that ousted Morsi, they are paying a high price in human lives that they lose every time they take their show of support for Morsi to the street.

Eager to take over Egypt's political scene after the toppling of Mubarak in the January 25 popular uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood did everything they could to lead the country. Their political party, Freedom and Justice, was a brand new front for the Muslim Brotherhood that won the majority in the parliament in 2012, followed by electing a Muslim Brotherhood president who has been unknown to most Egyptians until right before the election.

With all these successes under their belt, the Muslim brotherhood didn’t care about the Egyptian people's security, economy, or the demands they made during the 2011 revolution. Morsi was only interested in what the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, advised him to do every step of the way during his short-lived one year presidency.

Although Morsi was very popular among his party and group members, he wasn’t very popular on the street. People mocked Morsi and made fun of his many gaffes on Egyptian TV and during his trips to other country.

The Muslim Brotherhood is continuing to defy the military. However the crackdown is targeting the top heads of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation and prominent members. One of the latest arrests was the Senior Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Essam el-Erian. He was arrested in a Cairo suburb in late October. Today thousands of Morsi supporters demonstrated nationwide on Friday against the military-backed government ahead of his planned trial on Nov. 4.

Mohamed Morsi, who was removed from the presidency by the military amid nationwide protests against him is still in custody and accused of many crimes, such as inciting violence and of failing to protect protesters who were killed outside the presidential palace in El-Etahadya.

The Muslim Brotherhood rallies people to go out and protest and sacrifice themselves for the selfish goals of increasing the group's own political power, and restoring their control over Egypt again. However I think Egyptian people are becoming smarter every day, and with no end to Islamist violence in sight, Egyptians are getting more familiar with Muslim brotherhood rhetoric, and their truly violent nature.

Egypt's Curfew is Coming to an End...or is it?

Living abroad, outside of Egypt, sometimes can be great, and sometimes frustrating as hell, because you have no choice but to look at the whole picture from the outside. But living in the USA is different because the mainstream media here don't cover Egypt unless there are clashes with casualties.

I left Egypt in early July to return to the U.S. right after the ousting of Morsi. The Egyptian people weren't sure what would come next, and they are still not sure now.

Retaliation from the Morsi supporters has been dragging on for almost two months, although they seem to protest every Friday with shrinking numbers every time.

I have been getting my information about how things are in Cairo, and Egypt overall, from friends, family, and many activists I made contact with while I was there. They inform me that life in Cairo isn't as fun anymore. Everyone is living on edge. Factories instead are doing two or one shift only instead of three, and most of the time they are closing early. People are going home before the afternoon due to the curfew, which is being enforced by the military in response to violent protests by Morsi's remaining supporters.

Fights erupt  between supporters and opponents of Morsi daily, and the Army and police have to come and stop clashes before they go too far. Assassination attempts are happening as well. The latest one was a failed attempt to kill the Minister of the Interior. A car bomb went off in Cairo's eastern district, near Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim's convoy.

My friend Mo'nes, who lives in Cairo, told me that Egyptians are overwhelmingly respecting the military curfew. For their own safety they are following the military guidelines, such as a recent recommendation for people to stay home for Friday prayers.  However the media is not getting much attention from the people anymore, after they started attacking the way the military is handling the situation.

I'm not surprised that the Egyptian people are showing support, and listening to the Egyptian military. Egyptians think of their military as heros for winning the 1973 war against Israel, and they trust them more than they really should. I always say never trust someone with a gun.

I believe that the military's popularity never faded, even when the military took actions that opposed the will of the general public, such as attacking and killing peaceful protesters in Maspero in October 2011, during the Mohamed Mahmoud street clashes November, and at the Council of Ministers street December 2011. The military trials are back on; something which many human rights NGOs are against. However an Egyptian military court handed down heavy prison sentences to supporters of ousted president Morsi. The court sentenced eleven men to twenty five years in prison. Forty five Muslim Brotherhood defendants were given five-year sentences. Despite all this the military’s popularity in Egypt never faded.

So consider what is happening in Egypt, from attempted assassinations, weekly Muslim Brotherhood protests, clashes between anti and pro Morsi demonstrators, and active terrorist group working hard to destroy the current interim government.

Given all that, I believe that the military will have many reasons to extend the curfew and emergency law that becomes active again last month. And the Military is in a good position right now since they are getting the Egyptian supports behind them.

Are we seeing the last of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Another Friday protest from the Muslim Brotherhood supporters against the Egyptian military. However their call to protest attracted a low turnout. The protest was another attempt from the Muslim Brotherhood to rally in Cairo and other cities in Egypt to show their discontent with what they call the illegal removal of an elected democratic president, Morsi. The low turnout in Cairo, and the non-existent rallies around Egypt, show the unpopularity of the Muslim Brotherhood at the moment.

The military has had the upper hand so far. They have put Cairo under curfe,w and barbed wire is surrounding several squares in Cairo after the bloody clashes that left over 1,000 people dead.

The Muslim Brotherhood are losing ground in all over Egypt, and after the military detained many of their leaders over the past week, they appear scattered and less organized.

The issue I have now is that we are going backward. Many Egyptians were killed, and many people were arrested arbitrarily. It is not the right way to seek justice, or to move forward toward democracy. The Egyptian revolutionaries in Egypt fought for freedom and the end of emergency law in 2011. However, after the Muslm Brotherhood protests turned violent, the military chose to restore emergency law for the protection of the people. I have a feeling they could have done it without bringing back emergency law, but this is the way they decided to handle it.

The former President Hosni Mubarak, meanwhile, was let go from prison on Thursday and taken to a military hospital in Cairo. Mubarak was ousted during Egypt's 2011 revolution, and his release has angered Egyptians from all walks of life, and has sparked concern that the Egyptian military authorities are reinstating the old regime, which is highly unlikely. Mubarak will still appear before court to face trial for different charges related to the January 25, 2011 revolution.

However I think that if Morsi were still in power today Mubarak would have gotten out of prison anyway. Mubarak wasn’t released because of the failure of Morsi. It is a failure of the judguary system we have in Egypt. The whole Mubarak trial was filled with mistakes, in addition to a corrupt judiciary system that was installed long before Mubarak or Morsi took office.

After the arrest of many of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders over this past few weeks, is the Muslim Brotherhood weakened, or is the worst yet to come?

The Muslim Brotherhood Shows Their True Colors

As we are watching the news and the images coming out of Egypt, and the death toll, you can see the contrast between the protests that ended Morsi’s regime and what has been going on since then.

The Muslim Brotherhood are adamant about fighting the will of the people. If they actually cared about legitimacy, they would have accepted the people’s decision to remove Morsi from office. On June 30th over 33 million of people walked out to participate peacefully in a rally asking Morsi to resign. That is more than the total number of people who voted for Morsi, and far more than have participated in protests calling for his return to office.

I understand that the Muslim Brotherhood won all elections that followed the toppling of Mubarak, and Morsi governed the country for a year. But we cannot ignore the fact that Morsi’s regime ended because of mammoth rallies and overwhelming popular opinion denouncing his rule as incompetent and partisan.

Now we are seeing Morsi supporters being used as pawns in a pointless fight. I do respect their right to protest, but you have to pick your battles. It is obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood has lost the people’s trust and sympathy.

We are left now with a group who prey on the Egyptian people’s love of their religion, and their lack of awareness about the political issues. They carelessly put these faithful followers in harm’s way, and encourage them to engage in illegal acts, such as burning churches, attacking the armed forces, and defying the military. The direct result of this behavior is that Egypt is now under emergency law again, despite the all the hard work Egyptian activists did to get it overturned in 2012.

I don’t endorse violence against civilians who are protesting for a cause they believe in. But when the Muslim Brotherhood members protest with guns and torches, I need my local authorities to take action to protect the rest of the people. Because now we are not talking about a peaceful protest or sit-in, we are talking about a terrorist organization taking to the street with assault weapons to harm civilians and challenge the authorities.

The violence we are witnessing these days from the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t even unusual for them. They seem to welcome the bloodshed to prove their legitimacy and their appeal. The Muslim Brotherhood lost a great deal of public support after their recent sit-in, and they are now facing police and military on the streets of Cairo. Their supporters are shrinking to a few thousand, and many of the people fighting in the streets on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood aren’t even Egyptians, but have come from other countries to fight for their faith.

The Muslim Brotherhood chants about peace during their protests, however their protests have been anything but peaceful. Protesters used women and children as shields, and some had machine guns. Snipers maimed security forces from the tops of buildings. More than a dozen churches were attacked and burned on a single day by Morsi supporters.

It seems like the Muslim Brotherhood has declared war against Egypt, and is using terrorist tactics to foil the country’s aim of forming a secular democratic civil state. They have been seen burning churches, schools, and museums, randomly firing on and killing civilians sitting in their homes, burning public and private property, and targeting government buildings and police stations. These are all are clear forms of  terrorism.

What we have in Egypt right now isn’t a civil war; it is is civil unrest. In a civil war you generally see a divided military, but that hasn’t happened here. On the contrary, the unified military is very popular in Egypt right now, and the police as well. We have even seen regular civilians forming vigilante groups to defend their neighborhoods against attacks from the Muslim Brotherhood rallies.

The Muslim Brotherhood failed to impose a Taliban-like state in Egypt. The vast majority of Egyptians are more moderate muslims, and are opposed to such an idea. The misconception here that all Egyptians are in the streets protesting. The truth is the people protesting on the streets of Egypt are only the Muslim Brotherhood followers and supporters, and their popularity is getting weaker by the day.

Civil War Propaganda in the Making

I woke up today to terrible news. Forty people were killed by the military in front of the Republican Guard headquarters. 

However other news by the BBC included different details. They say the military attacked the unarmed protesters in the mosque at 4 AM today while they were praying. That seems odd to me, because by 3 AM the prayer is over and people are no longer in the mosque.

On the other hand, Al Jazeera had footage of people showing the camera empty bullet shells. Others showed unfired unused bullets. This is supposed to be evidence that unarmed people at prayer were attacked. But the bullets are easy to debunk; the empty shells fall off next to the shooter. If you are  in a protest where the police or the army is shooting at you, any empty bullet shells were probably fired by people standing next to you, not people firing at you. And they don’t fire unused bullets either; those have to come from somewhere else.

Another eyewitness who was awakened by the gunfire said that the whole thing took place in front of the Republican Guard headquarters on the street. the Muslim Brotherhood were trying to infiltrate the Republican Guard headquarters, and the military had to use force to get them out of there. So reports that it happened inside a mosque are very unlikely.

One of the famous people in the Muslim Brotherhood, a middle-aged woman named Oun Lymen, showed up on BBC Arabic to tell her side of the story. According to her she was raped for three hours by the military.

The news was bad to begin with. And it is being badly reported.

Friday of Rage Muslim Brotherhood Style.

Violence broke out as thousands of Islamists marched in several cities across Egypt in what they Called the "Friday of Rage" to protest Wednesday's crackdown on pro-Morsi protest at Al-Rabawiya and Nahda square sit-ins, which left more than 600 people dead and thousands wounded.

Health ministry sources said four were killed in clashes in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia and eight in Damietta.

A makeshift hospital in Cairo's Ramses Square, where Morsi supporters are converging, has put the death toll at 42.

Earlier, Egyptian state television reported that at least 7 were killed so far in Cairo. At least one person has been reported killed in Giza, according to the health ministry.

Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported clashes between security forces and pro-Morsi protesters at Giza Square in the Giza district, saying security forces fired teargas in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

The Egyptian Military's Agenda

June 30 showed the amazing unity among the Egyptian people, who took to the streets all over Egypt to hold the Morsi administration accountable for its failure to meet their demands. The largest single organized protest in human history was a direct result of a year of Muslim Brotherhood rule, with Morsi as a president.

Walking in a rally, hearing people chanting “the people want to topple the regime,” reminded me of what happened on Jan 25 2011; the initial revolution days, when people were chanting the same slogan to end the Mubarak regime.  We still trying to answer the question of whether what happened on June 30 is a second wind for the revolution, or a military coup.

Let’s examine the situation. After winning the presidential election, Morsi tried to control the country and gather all kinds of power for himself and his Muslim Brotherhood party. The Muslim Brotherhood tried to become the sole political player in Egypt, ignoring and suppressing any opposition. But in the one year of their regime, Egypt suffered electric, gas, and water shortages, along with rapidly increasing inflation. In the end, the people were feeling worse than they felt under Mubarak's regime. And Morsi ended up losing everything in only one year.

On the other hand, the military has been in power no matter who was in the presidential chair. And their power was not always beneficial to the will of the people. Even in the recent past, over 1200 civilians have been tried before military courts, and repressive tactics were used by the military in 2012 against protesters, including killing protesters.

But when Morsi came to power, the military worked with the Muslim Brotherhood, and put them in the forefront, so it would appear as if the military were not responsible for anything that might happen. They also made sure that no one would be allowed to review the military's financial affairs, their factories, and their assets. The constitution that Morsi rushed into place in just 48 hours late last year, with the support of the military, included terms that secured that deal.

Morsi did shuffle some military heads in 2012, but the military has been and will remain the strongest player in the Egyptian political scene. The military succeeded in controlling what happened on June 30, just as they did on Feb 11, 2011. For the military, it was not about the freedom and democracy the people were demanding, or supporting the activists who are working hard to bring that to Egypt. It was about protecting their interests in the huge economy they created in Egypt.

As with the start of the revolution in 2011, it was important on June 30, 2013 for the military to convince the people that the military's heroic intervention was crucial to removing Morsi, perhaps even more so than the millions of people who showed up on the streets all over Egypt. Many people discouraged any chanting against the military during the June 30 rallies on the basis that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This was helped by another slogan that was popular in the 2011 revolution: “The people and the army, one hand."

At the same time, the popular opposition to Morsi grew stronger every time he failed to listen to people's demands. So the people were encouraged to rally around the military, and forget the military's past mistakes. The military was smart to focus on gaining the people's love and support during the June 30 protests. They used a variety of clever tactics such as securing the safety of the protesters, overseeing and even orchestrating the rallies and celebrations, and throwing flags to the crowd from military helicopters overhead to show that they were backing the people's cause.

I've started to notice that the state police are also using a similar strategy, and are gaining some popularity on the streets from the people who have already forgotten what the police used to be like. The police force in Egypt is best known for detaining innocent people, torturing them, and then killing them. The classic example is Khaled Said, whose death at the hands of the police was one of the key issues in the initial 2011 revolution. Like the military, the police are being praised as heroes, without any accountability for what the did to thousands of protesters before. Sadly, people forget too easily that the state police force is still the same one that left Egypt lawless and without security for two years. That state police is being transformed in the minds of the people from a tool that regimes used to terrorise protesters, to a bunch of heroes and revolution protectors.

The awful truth is that both the Military and the Police served Morsi when it was beneficial for them, and they will serve the future regime, without regard to the will of the people.

The important question is whether there was animosity between the the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. The reality is that the military worked directly with the Muslim Brotherhood when it suited their needs, but ultimately sacrificed the Muslim Brotherhood because they did fail, on many levels, to manage the country.

We do have to remember that the Egyptian military helped us to get rid of Morsi. However we are facing new challenges. With the popular support of the people, the military could quickly return to repressing popular opinion and getting rid of anyone in the future who might challenge or disagree with them.

Egyptians are starting to realize that, without a true democratic process, the ballot box is just a different way for the few elites to control the masses. Our responsibility is to keep watching, and to use the power of organized peaceful protest to remove anyone who doesn’t serve the interests of the people.

Effective Mainstream Media

While I was going through customs to return to the USA, the customs officer asked me if I participated in any of the rallies on June 30:

Me: Yes, of course. It was beautiful, and I took tons of photos.

Customs Officer: There's a lot of talk about hating Obama and the USA over there now.

Me: Many people disagree with some of the US policies in the middle east, and its hypocrisy when it comes to democracy. It wasn’t a coup by the way

Customs Officer: (raising his eyebrows) What was it then?  

Me: It was the people rejecting a failed president. They called on their military to remove him, since Morsi wasn’t doing a good job.

Customs Officer: (in a sarcastic tone) Well I guess you know more than CNN, since you were there.

Me: Yes, I was there. What happened on June 30 was a peaceful demonstration.

Customs Officer: Well if it was so peaceful, and it wasn't a coup, what do you call what happened between the people and the army a few days ago?

Me: That was between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. They attacked the army, and the army defended itself. When was the last time an angry mob directly attacked the police in the USA without the police responding?

For the record, what happened on July 8 was that a bunch of Morsi supporters, upset over the removal of Morsi on June 30, attacked the military guard outside the presidential palace in the early hours of the morning. The military tried to disperse the crowd with announcements, tear gas, and finally a few warning shots. But the crowd didn't back down. Then some people in the crowd pulled out weapons and fired directly on the army. So of course the army fired back. As a result, there were casualties and injuries to both the Muslim Brotherhood protesters and the military.

It's impressive how the mainstream media can make up a story, and convince so many people to believe it.