Night on the Nile

Why in Egypt banned the "Muslim brothers"

Egypt has been announced in the dissolution of the Islamist Association “Muslim Brothers”, including funds and structures controlled by it. And in the coming days, the same fate will also befall the political wing of the “brothers” - the party “Freedom and Justice” (PSS). But everyone remembers: Hosni Mubarak has already forbidden the “brothers” and as a result was overthrown by himself. Whether the new authorities also risk the same - the New Times correspondent recognized in the Egyptian province, where the Islamists managed to introduce the laws of Sharia, and in the capital

Assistant priest in a church burned by the Islamists. ISUT, Egypt. August 2013 ... First, the Bible caught fire. Then - wooden crosses and altar bedspreads. The flames absorbed the holy walls and reached the ceiling. The statues of saints and the Virgin Mary were beheaded. Here it is called "tanatopolitics", in other words, a massacre. Here, in Upper Egypt, not a single church was left alive, everything was burned with the hands of the Muslim Brothers and the Salafites from the Al-Nor party. In Cairo they say this is far from the same. Maybe. But here, in Upper Egypt, the differences between these two groups of Islamists are almost invisible.
Ghost city
El-Minya is located from Cairo six hours by car along the coast of the Nile. Today it is a ghost city, abandoned by tourists. Like the giant skeleton of a whale, on the shore there was a barge burned by the “brothers”, in which a restaurant was equipped. “Doctors tried to disconnect two charred corpses, which were inside, but unsuccessfully. Both, a Christian and Muslim, died, hugging, ”the author told the restaurateur from the barge, who was saved from the fire.
In El-Minjan, the rage of Islamic extremists embodied in the fire reached the climax: a list of destroyed churches, houses and shops here is much longer than in other provinces. In just two days, 70 churches, 83 stores and houses are erased from the face of the earth. Christians-cops, forced to hide and leave the house secretly, found themselves other places for prayer. Almost all the places that have been attacked are now surrounded by tanks: the army is trying to protect what (and to whom) managed to escape. But few doubts: the Copts will be victims of a powder barrel periodically exploding in Egypt more than once. The upper Egypt is a bottomless reservoir that will give the Islamists the desired result more than once when voting, and the right number of “jihad warriors”.
In Egypt, the struggle for power did not end with the elimination of President Mursi, which the whole world was witnessed. It goes much less lit and accessible places for foreigners. This is a Sinai, where the army continues to apply air and ground strikes on jihadist groups (over the past few weeks, as a result of intense battles, according to incomplete data, 100 Islamists and 20 Egyptian soldiers have been killed). And this is the upper Egypt, the cradle of the Muslim Brothers, and until recently, the place of their greatest accumulation. “Now half of them is arrested, the other fled to Cairo,” says Mikael, a Christian-copot from El Manya, he is still afraid to give his last name. “But a little time will pass, and they will grow again here, as from the ground.”
Pay to live
When the Muslim Brothers set fire to all the “wrong” in Upper Egypt, General al-Sisi, the head of the Egyptian military junta, certified the Egyptian army on Facebook: “We will protect Islam in its exact interpretation, but we will not remain indifferent when the churches are burned.” The army arrived when ruins were already smoking around. As-Sisi wins the political, military and information battle in Cairo. In the regions remote from the capital, he suffers defeat in each of these battles, including ideological. This happens, for example, in the city of Delga - here even the army does not dare to stick his nose. Dozens of Christian families live here, as if prisoners in their own homes, afraid to appear on the street. “Now in Delga those few Christians who survived in the massacre are obliged to pay jisa,” explains Kopt Peter Edvar, with whom we talk in one of the bars in El Minjan.
Jizya is a compensation for the right to live and practice their faith. Jizya was in these places hundreds of years ago, but supporters of the overthrown President of Mursi in cities such as Delga, forgotten by the press and international politics, returned her to use: the Copts must pay if they want to continue to live here. And if Christians do not pay money, they pay their lives.

The ruins of the Coptic Temple in the ICUT. August 2013
“One Christian after the attack of the“ brothers ”went to the hospital, where the doctor, a supporter of Murcy, instead of treating, killed him with an oxygenator; Another man who tried to protect his church was tied to a tractor, behind which tens of kilometers dragged him, after which his corpse remained on the ground for another five days, ”says Peter. Many Egyptian Christians, unlike Muslims, wear English names. And many have crosses on the wrists. In short, they are not so difficult to distinguish and make the targets for the Salafis.
In the ICUT, where dozens of churches and houses were set on fire by the “Molotov cocktails” and were attacked by thousands of fanatics, in September the priest-digit was stolen. “At the beginning of 2011, there were protests against the power of Mubarak in the ISCUT, almost 30 Christians were killed in clashes with army units near the television center,” says Kopt named Bishoy. “But now I ask myself: who actually owns a democratic revolution?” After all, the "Muslim brothers" have already introduced the laws of Sharia in the hiccup. "
The first place against which the Salafitov March was directed was for some reason an orphanage was an orphanage. Children began to be beaten with whips right during lunch in the dining room, which also fed many homeless people, of which most of which were Muslims.
Christians in the Asyut swallow dust on the altars of destroyed chapels and pray on carpets from burned Bibles. Egyptian society is divided into secularists, Islamic integrist, Christians, young cyber revolutionaries from Tahrir Square and the military. Who will reconcile them? Attempts to answer this question are useless, especially if you take into account a high dose of violence with which they are accompanied.
“The story of Egypt of the last two years is a set of mistakes made by the military,“ brothers ”, revolutionary youth, by townsfolk-second-classers, between whom, however, there is also no unity,” says Copt John Gilad, theater actor and director who returned from Canada to his hometown of El Fayum, where he began to work in the theater. But in September, the Salafites burned his theater. Moreover, before arranging a fire, the Islamists stole a computer, lighting equipment and an audio system.
Now from Cairo to the upper Nile, twilight barely falls, where the hookah was once smoked before dawn, now it is dark and empty - the commandant hour. Egypt, the country of rebellious spirit and revolutionaries now, goes to bed early.
Wax for the pharaohs
On November 4, the trial of ex-president Mursi, who is accused of violating the Constitution, will begin in Cairo. Mursi came to power, relying on 13 million votes. A year later, 22 million spoke out against him-exactly so many signatures collected the Tamarod protest movement under the petition in favor of the resignation of the Islamist president. The irony is that General al-Sisi overthrown Mursi is the choice of Mursi himself. Like Mursi, As-Sisi studied in America-he graduated from a military college there, and one of his written works was interpreted as the Muslim brothers close in spirit. Now As-Sisi, who overthrew the first postmubarakovsky, legally elected President of Egypt, has become the personification of "mubarakism without a mubarak." America refused him military assistance because he overthrew the legally chosen president and delays the elections. Russia stopped exporting him grain, because he has nothing to pay. The Copts who once supported him refused this support, because his soldiers each time are near the Christian churches after they burn to the ground. From the dictatorship of the military - to religious and again to the military.
Copts is 10 million from the 83-million population of Egypt. Copts - like an arrow on the scales of the Egyptian power: now to the right, then to the left and almost never strict in the center.
At the very beginning of the summer, when the face of Mohammed Mursi was still the face of the president, the “brothers” decided to cover Voca's images of too bare, in their opinion, pharaohs and free the country from desecrating pre -Islamic art. How? In extreme cases, destroy the pyramids. The authorities seemed to slip out from the hands of secular society forever. Saudi Arabia promised Mursi $ 12 million, against which the American military aid of Mubaraku looks like a real trifle.
Now, on Tahrir Square, no one screams Saura (revolution), as a few months ago. This symbol area is now open for movement and is filled with a symphony of car crasons. However, every Friday, on the day of prayer, Tahrir is surrounded by barbed wire and tanks - at the request of that old military bureaucracy, which never actually let out the reign of the reign in Egypt from the hands of the brothers. The young Egyptians who took to the streets in 2011 against the omnipotence of people in the form are now forced to justify the cruelty of the soldiers who freed them from the oppression of the Muslim Brothers. "

“Brothers” decided to cover with wax images of too exposed, in their opinion, the pharaohs and free the country from defiling pre -Islamic art

" Dreams about Russia
Mursi was overthrown, and many of Egypt began to blame America: both the “Muslim brothers”, and in support of the military regime, are now called the financing of terrorists. Antipathy in relation to the United States transforms into nostalgia for “socialism of Nasser”, which existed back in the time of the USSR. It is for this reason that part of the people on Tahrir Square in August and September shouted from time to time the name of one person - the one who, in their opinion, prevented a blow to Syria, and the only one who is able to say “no” to Washington: Putin. Some wrote on posters: Obama out, Putin in. “Islamic fascism”, it turns out, was fed from the White House, but the axis of Moscow - Beijing a mountain stood behind secular power.
The anti -Americanism, which always had roots in the Middle East, today transforms into the demand for the Egyptian military to go under the sphere of influence of Russia. “Russia in Syrian Tartus, Egyptian Alexandria could have lost the base in Syrian Tartus, which is not a transit node for Russian goods in the Mediterranean,” says Egyptian analyst Ahmed Valid. And he continues: “Isn't Putin’s dream to enter the waters of the Suez Canal? Now only the Americans do not pay a fee for passing their ships through this artery. What is bad if the Russians also do not pay? "
Moscow, through the lips of the Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, had already made it clear to Cairo that she could help the Egyptians reduce balance in the economy - "in the framework of the development of bilateral relations." The Kremlin is clearly not averse to spin an affair with AS-SISI, who did not rule out his participation in the 2014 presidential election.
Mistakes of the past
Egypt is still on fire. A wave of violence does not fall. Supporters of the overthrown Mursi and secular power kill each other. What to do? The Egyptian courts on the hint of the military are trying to squeeze the “Muslim brothers” on the side of the road, declaring them outlawed. Excuse: 54 Article of the Constitution forbids to participate in the elections to religious parties, which means that the “brothers” violated the law. Sounds false. Is this a way out?
“If the“ brothers ”find themselves outlawed, they will return underground, and underground, as you know, there is not enough oxygen, it requires the way out, they will try to go out again, and no one knows how,” the influential Egyptian political strategist Saad El-Den Ibrahim, who has the reputation of the “maker of kings”, argues in a conversation with The New Times. - At the top there is enough space for everyone and do not make mistakes of the past. We should not limit the “brothers” freedom, as they limited it to their political enemies. ”
The mistakes of the past is what? For some Egyptians, this is the ban on the “brothers” by Mubarak. For others - the murder of the "brothers" of President Sadat.
Today, about 2 thousand people from among the Muslim Brothers activists are back in prison. But for some reason, no one in Cairo calls what is happening dictatorship-they say, “military democracy”: law enforcement officers vigilantly guard everything and everything for the benefit of the people. Great. Only the saying of Juvenal immediately comes to mind: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? - Who will defend the watchmen themselves?

Photos: Michela Yakkarino