September 8, 2013

On Egypt: To my Canadian friends

As a practicing Muslim Egyptian Canadian (now living in Cairo), I urge you to consider that living in Canada and especially if you do not have roots in Egypt, you may have been lead to believe that the recent Egyptian people's decision to remove the deposed President of Egypt was in some way about Islam.

Some Egyptian Muslims seem to have believed that Islam entered Egypt in 2012 with the election of a bearded president (and they actually declared that in their marches) and that Islam will die in Egypt with the removal of that president.

While some do believe this, the absolute majority of Egyptian people see the current conflict as about a dictator incompetent President who chose to put himself above the law with a decree that made all his decisions above the law and outside the reach of opposition, courts or anything. it was a case of using democracy to get to power then systemically moving to destroy every aspect of democratic governance and every foundation of the Egyptian state.

if you feel you understand Egyptian politics enough to take a side, please go ahead and choose the demonstration of the side you agree with. if you do not know the politics, but you believe that as a Muslim, you should go out to support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, please recognize that you would be supporting a small fraction of Egyptian Muslims against the overwhelming majority of Egyptian Muslims.

I will not get into the terror that was imposed on the Egyptian people, especially the Christian Copts, by supporters of the ousted president because I will not get into competition of victimhood.

I just suggest that before you go join any demonstration, ask yourself if you know enough to support one faction of practicing Muslims against another faction of practicing Muslims who differ with them on the nature of the country they want for themselves and their kids.

Your truly

T.