Ursula Lindsey writes: The man across the aisle was reading an article headlined: “No Turning Back and No Surrender Before the Forces of Darkness.” As our plane descended over night-time Cairo, the streets were blurry in the weak city lights, and eerily empty because of a military curfew.

Coming home from a summer vacation on Wednesday evening filled me with dread. It was partly fear for my personal safety. But mostly I was worrying about whether I would recognize the place where I have lived for the past 10 years, or find it hollowed out by the latest viciousness.

I had spent the last week online, reading the essays, news reports and interviews, tweets and blog posts of colleagues and public figures, acquaintances and friends. I looked at the pictures and the videos and saw my Facebook page turn into, as one fellow-blogger put it, “an obituaries page.”

There were no lines at passport control at the Cairo airport. At customs, officials were on the look-out for journalists with satellite up-link equipment. They inspected my husband’s digital recorder. “The Western media are not telling the truth about what’s happening in Egypt,” one official told us.

That view is echoed by presidential advisers and every talking head on state television’s around-the-clock stream of “Egypt Fights Terrorism” coverage. International condemnation of the new Egyptian authorities is the product — so the argument here goes — not of shocking state violence against protesters, but of foreign journalists’ tendentious omission of the context that justifies that violence.

In truth, there has been plenty of criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its failure was made starkly clear on June 30, when millions called for President Mohamed Morsi to step down. The rot of the Islamist movement was on display in the days that led up to the massacre at Rabaa al-Adawiya — when Brotherhood leaders pushed their supporters toward “martyrdom,” and after that Islamists attacked churches and innocent bystanders across the country in retaliation.

With a few shining exceptions, Egypt’s cultural and political elite — which celebrated Morsi’s downfall — has also failed spectacularly.

There was their intellectual failure to recognize two parallel truths: That the Muslim Brotherhood was intolerant and authoritarian, but that cheering its liquidation by the police and the army would bring Egypt no closer to freedom and pluralism.

There was a moral failure: the unwillingness to acknowledge that fellow citizens, however misguided their beliefs or criminal their behavior, still have rights — foremost the right to live. [Continue reading…]

Sherief Gaber writes: “You want to see the bodies? Ok then, here!” the man working at the morgue said, holding me and a friend by the arm and practically pushing us into a humid room filled with bodies, lying on slabs or on the floor and in various states of decay. We had been at the morgue for over an hour, coming from the tear gas and shooting in Mohamed Mahmoud Street to Zeinhom, Cairo’s only morgue, because we had heard that medical examiners were refusing to autopsy the bodies of those shot by the police and military in the clashes.

The man was trying to mock us, to frighten us away, and as the overpowering stench of decay hit us he nearly succeeded. Several days and several further visits to this place later, I would sit in the rubbish-strewn courtyard outside the building listening to the mother of martyr Ahmed Sorour, rocking herself back and forth, saying, “Look at what’s being done to Egypt’s youth, look at what they’re doing to them, the ones thrown in the trash, the ones run over and thrown away, the ones that were crushed by the police trucks.”

Ahmed Sorour’s mother was not the only mother that week of November 2012, as countless other families came in, some having heard of their sons’ fates, others seeking a missing loved one and coming to Zeinhom as a place of grim last resort. It seemed the mothers, the sisters, the aunts, the daughters were always there before the men in the family, disconsolate and powerless not just in the face of death, of murder, but also unable to find any dignity or justice for their lost amid the trash, the bureaucracy, the waste of Zeinhom. All too often, once the men arrived, stern and disapproving fathers or uncles, these women were told to keep quiet, that there would be no autopsy or funeral procession, that they would take their troublemaking sons home and bury them quietly. Like a second death. [Continue reading…]

Bessma Momani writes: During the short-lived rule of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood complained bitterly about the “deep state” (the bureaucracy, military, security services) while liberal-secularists accused the Brotherhood of consolidating power throughout Egypt in order to push through its conservative social policies. In rebutting these claims, each side accused the other of sheer paranoia.

And now, the impending decision on former dictator Hosni Mubarak’s release from prison will only give further political ammunition to the polarizing narrative in Egypt – and ultimately tip the balance in favour of one of these opposing arguments.

For almost a year, liberal-secularists had spoken out against what they saw as the “Brotherhoodization” of Egypt, with the Morsi government and its Muslim Brotherhood supporters exerting greater control over Egyptian state institutions. They pointed to the removal of General Mohamed Tantawi and the appointment of General Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as head of the armed forces; the rushed constitutional process; the appointment of Islamist state governors; and the sacking of the Cairo opera house’s director. Most importantly, liberal-secularists have complained against Brotherhood attacks on the judiciary, which started with the overthrow of the prosecutor-general and lowering the retirement age of judges in order to remove old members of the bench. These decisions have been noted as evidence that the Brotherhood wanted to forever change Egypt into a “Brotherhood dominion.”

Meanwhile, the Morsi government and its Brotherhood backers claimed they were forced to fast-track the constitution last December and were unable to implement reforms and policies because of the “deep state” – where powerful Mubarak-era cronies continued to dominate key Egyptian institutions. Throughout Mr. Morsi’s time in office, his supporters claimed that at every turn, the isolated President was unable to change the country because of fervent resistance from the judiciary, bureaucracy and liberal media. After taking office, they realized that the civilian government was a mere fig leaf for democracy; the real power-brokers were Mubarak-era business elites, the military, security and intelligence forces. [Continue reading…]

Mada Masr reports: A recent poll has suggested that 67 percent of Egyptians are satisfied with the way the Rabea al-Adaweya and Nahda Square sit-ins were dispersed by security forces last week. This left 24 percent displeased with the way the sit-ins were dispersed, and 9 percent saying they cannot judge.

The poll, conducted by Baseera between August 19 and 21, surveyed 1395 people across Egypt’s governorates.

It said that 17 percent of respondents thought the protesters camped at Rabea al-Adaweya and Nahda were peaceful, while 67 percent disagreed.

Only 23 percent of those polled felt security forces used excessive force in dispersing the sit-ins, compared to 65 percent who felt otherwise.

On August 14, security forces forcibly dispersed the two sit-ins, set up six weeks previously by supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi. Six hundred people were killed and thousands injured during the dispersals and in the nationwide clashes they triggered.

The Washington Post reports: Deposed former president Hosni Mubarak was freed from prison Thursday and flown by helicopter to a military hospital in Cairo a day after a court ordered the release of the longtime strongman.

State-run news media said the frail, 85-year-old Mubarak was flown from Cairo’s Tora prison Thursday afternoon aboard a medically equipped helicopter and arrived at the Maadi Military Hospital, where he will remain at his request. Dozens of Mubarak’s supporters rallied outside the prison earlier as they awaited his release from more than two years in detention, the Associated Press reported.

But the court’s ruling to free Mubarak was greeted mostly with indifference here in the Arab world’s largest country — the most stunning sign yet of how outrage over Mubarak’s iron-fisted rule has faded since the Arab Spring revolt that swept him from power. [Continue reading…]