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Authors: Paul Danahar
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supporters not to. The Ikhwan did not believe at the start that the uprising would be successful.
Like her forefathers in 1952, Sondos wasn’t ready to admit her membership of the Brotherhood at the time to the crowd around her. ‘No, no, no, of course not,’ she told me when we met later during the campaign period for the 2011 parliamentary elections. ‘We were there as Egyptians, not as members of any political party. We were not there to make any propaganda for ourselves.’ Sondos had helped set up, and was now running, the Brotherhood’s English-language Twitter feed. She estimated that on the first day of the revolution only around 10 per cent of the demonstrators were active members of the Brotherhood. But though their numbers grew in the following days, she said they still all kept a low profile.
The revolution, it would have failed [if we had been open] because the security crackdown would have been more fierce. They could have stopped the protests very violently and the international community support would not have been that strong and also the liberals here in Egypt and many of those who don’t know the Brotherhood very well might have changed their decisions to participate. It was important to keep it a popular uprising and it was a popular uprising.
Their numbers were not overwhelming at the beginning. Only on the 28th, on the ‘Day of Rage’, did the Brotherhood firmly take sides.
Muhammad al-Qassas led the Muslim Brotherhood youth wing into the demonstrations on 25 January. He told me that while the Ikhwan’s participation ultimately secured the revolution, taking part went against all their instincts:
Basically, the Muslim Brotherhood in their core principles do not believe in the idea of revolutions in general. On the contrary, lots of the Ikhwan’s literature and sayings affiliated to Hassan al-Banna and other leaders reject the notion of popular revolutions and uprisings as chaotic and unproductive acts. There were also internal differences among the Brotherhood about the ideas of civil disobedience and strikes, because they do not understand these notions and they don’t understand their nature. They were satisfied with the reality on the ground, which was that they were the strongest opposition in a cat-and-mouse battle with the regime and would take whatever the regime allowed them to have.
The morning after Mubarak formally stood down, the angry young men who had led the revolution had been replaced in the square by their mothers, who were now cleaning up the mess. After weeks of reeking of tear gas it now stank of disinfectant. The pavement where I had stood with the revolutionaries as they had exchanged rocks and stones with the government yobs was being busily rebuilt by dozens of schoolgirls and young women. What they didn’t know was that they were actually just putting them back for next time, because before the year was out these stones would be whistling through the air again. If the mums of the revolution had taken over the square, the grandads in the army had taken over power.
‘The last ten years, President Mubarak was not ruling, it was President Mubarak’s family who was ruling, namely his son, wife, [Mubarak’s chief of staff] Zakaria Azmi and the interior minister [Habib el-Adly]. They were in control over everything.’ I met General Abdel Moneim Kato at his home in Cairo. Though retired from the Egyptian army he still acts as an adviser to them and is close to the leadership. ‘The armed forces had long ago decided that they would not allow the rule of Egypt to be inherited under any circumstances. It had made its mind up that Gamal will not be the next president after Mubarak.’
So the octogenarian Mubarak was replaced by his equally ‘aged and change-resistant’ commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who as chairman of the SCAF was now the de facto head of state. Though ‘charming and courtly’, the US had always seen him as
Like her forefathers in 1952, Sondos wasn’t ready to admit her membership of the Brotherhood at the time to the crowd around her. ‘No, no, no, of course not,’ she told me when we met later during the campaign period for the 2011 parliamentary elections. ‘We were there as Egyptians, not as members of any political party. We were not there to make any propaganda for ourselves.’ Sondos had helped set up, and was now running, the Brotherhood’s English-language Twitter feed. She estimated that on the first day of the revolution only around 10 per cent of the demonstrators were active members of the Brotherhood. But though their numbers grew in the following days, she said they still all kept a low profile.
The revolution, it would have failed [if we had been open] because the security crackdown would have been more fierce. They could have stopped the protests very violently and the international community support would not have been that strong and also the liberals here in Egypt and many of those who don’t know the Brotherhood very well might have changed their decisions to participate. It was important to keep it a popular uprising and it was a popular uprising.
Their numbers were not overwhelming at the beginning. Only on the 28th, on the ‘Day of Rage’, did the Brotherhood firmly take sides.
Muhammad al-Qassas led the Muslim Brotherhood youth wing into the demonstrations on 25 January. He told me that while the Ikhwan’s participation ultimately secured the revolution, taking part went against all their instincts:
Basically, the Muslim Brotherhood in their core principles do not believe in the idea of revolutions in general. On the contrary, lots of the Ikhwan’s literature and sayings affiliated to Hassan al-Banna and other leaders reject the notion of popular revolutions and uprisings as chaotic and unproductive acts. There were also internal differences among the Brotherhood about the ideas of civil disobedience and strikes, because they do not understand these notions and they don’t understand their nature. They were satisfied with the reality on the ground, which was that they were the strongest opposition in a cat-and-mouse battle with the regime and would take whatever the regime allowed them to have.
The morning after Mubarak formally stood down, the angry young men who had led the revolution had been replaced in the square by their mothers, who were now cleaning up the mess. After weeks of reeking of tear gas it now stank of disinfectant. The pavement where I had stood with the revolutionaries as they had exchanged rocks and stones with the government yobs was being busily rebuilt by dozens of schoolgirls and young women. What they didn’t know was that they were actually just putting them back for next time, because before the year was out these stones would be whistling through the air again. If the mums of the revolution had taken over the square, the grandads in the army had taken over power.
‘The last ten years, President Mubarak was not ruling, it was President Mubarak’s family who was ruling, namely his son, wife, [Mubarak’s chief of staff] Zakaria Azmi and the interior minister [Habib el-Adly]. They were in control over everything.’ I met General Abdel Moneim Kato at his home in Cairo. Though retired from the Egyptian army he still acts as an adviser to them and is close to the leadership. ‘The armed forces had long ago decided that they would not allow the rule of Egypt to be inherited under any circumstances. It had made its mind up that Gamal will not be the next president after Mubarak.’
So the octogenarian Mubarak was replaced by his equally ‘aged and change-resistant’ commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who as chairman of the SCAF was now the de facto head of state. Though ‘charming and courtly’, the US had always seen him as
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