The Friday of Disunity

The Friday, July 29th, gatherings in Tahrir Square were announced as a “Friday of Unity” but it turned out to be anything but as thousands of Salafists sought to use the day to denounce secularists and call for the new Egypt to be under (their interpretation of) Shar’ia.

In a blog post covering the tense, angry day, 3arabawy writes:

The Islamist forces, whose leaders, also without any exceptions, are in one way or another allied to the SCAF awaiting their shares of the booties in the coming parliamentary elections and constitutional reform, decided to escalate their moves against the Tahrir revolutionaries by announcing roughly two weeks ago they were calling for mass protests in the square, to “assert Egypt’s Islamic identity, denounce supra-constitutional principles, and to demand the application of Islamic sharia.” Such announcement was coupled with an agitation campaign that spoke of “purging Tahrir from the secularists.”

I can offer nothing at this point to go beyond what he has written. I urge you to read it here.

On Monday, with the main groups of protesters having left Tahrir Square, the military entered and cleared its “tent city” of hundreds of remaining protesters. Ramadan Karim!

Zenobia, author of the Egyptian Chronicles blog, offers a thoughtful and critical reflection on how the revolutionaries are losing public support, and what they need to do to win it back here. She writes:

The revolutionaries do not rule in Egypt , in fact we do not really have a centralized body for revolutionaries in this revolution. In the golden 18 days of Tahrir square we had protesters at the tent city in the square from all over the country, from all political powers and from all classes.

and

The revolution is not made by internet users or leftists or Islamists or liberals or poor or middle class or rich only.

and

Tahrir square is not a holy land and it is not only land in Egypt full of martyrs’ blood  with my respect to the martyrs who had fallen there, think outside of Tahrir square. Think about farmers across the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt , think about the people in Matrouh and in Sinai , think about th