Maclean’s Exclusive: Brothers in Charge — Is Egypt Becoming the Next Iran?
Maclean’s Exclusive: Brothers in Charge — Is Egypt Becoming the Next Iran? - World - Macleans.ca
Cairo’s Saladin Citadel appears to float above the heart of the Egyptian capital, a collection of seemingly impregnable battlements, towers, soaring minarets and the beetle-like domed roofs of its mosques.
Tonight its walls are bathed in pink light. In one of its courtyards, a men’s orchestra and a singer are belting out songs before a nimble-toed conductor. Young men dressed like medieval Muslim warriors, with flowing robes and wide swords on their hips, stand guard on rock platforms or mingle casually with the watching crowd. The yard is full of leather chairs; TV crews scramble to film arriving politicians. Egypt’s new government is commemorating Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1187.
“This event is to remind people of the hideous Israeli acts that are committed against Jerusalem and the Palestinians,” says Ahmed Salah, a member of the ministry of culture’s media office. Enass Omran, a young woman staffing a table for the Al-Quds International Institution, an NGO the U.S. alleges is controlled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, says the night is about more than long ago history. “Maybe,” she says, “we can enter Jerusalem again.”
Tonight is particularly sweet for members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its new political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party. During the rule of former president Hosni Mubarak, the Islamist movement was suppressed and many of its members persecuted. Still, it enjoyed wide support, especially among poor Egyptians, who shared its religiosity and benefited from its charitable work.
The Muslim Brothers were not at the forefront of the revolution that toppled Mubarak in early 2011. Yet they—and the more fundamentalist Salafists, who seek to emulate the rigid social mores of the Prophet Muhammad and his early followers—have benefited most from Mubarak’s overthrow. Muslim Brothers and Salafists dominated the newly elected Egyptian parliament before it was dissolved earlier this year. And they control the Constituent Assembly, tasked with rewriting Egypt’s constitution. In June, long-time Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi was elected president, representing the Freedom and Justice Party.