Sibilant Egypt

You’re sitting in a café with your friends. A foreign stranger walks in and being the ever-hospitable Egyptian, you invite him to your table. You garrulously bemoan the state of the nation, prices are high, there is a gas shortage, a dastardly plot against the military is being hatched underground – in the metro. The stranger’s interest is piqued, and he texts this information to his foreign intelligence handler.

Ludicrous as this may sound, this is the plot of a state-sponsored ad doing the rounds on Egyptian television channels, warning against talking to foreigners armed with tweet-ready smartphones. The ad is a window on the toxic discourse that has engulfed Egypt since the ouster of the dictator Hosni Mubarak, in those heady days of February 2011.

What has come out of a botched transitional period overseen by the ruling military junta, the supreme council of the armed forces (Scaf), is an extremely polarized society and political process that has culminated in a choice between two options the majority did not want, the old regime that was supposedly overthrown and its age-old antagonists the Muslim Brotherhood. Read more…