At 2 a.m. on a tense night just before Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak was toppled, Yehia el Sherif and other members of his ad-hoc neighborhood watch group noticed a car carrying two men with long beards approach their checkpoint in the port city of Alexandria.
The watchmen didn’t order the car to stop ”” the men inside turned off the engine, offered a vehicle search and presented their ID cards without prompting, Sherif, a 21-year-old college student, recalled. After the search, the bearded men passed out pamphlets espousing the rigid ideology of the Salafis, an ultraconservative branch of Islam whose literalist interpretations are anathema to Muslim moderates and liberals.
The car sped off into the night, leaving Sherif and his neighbors slack-jawed as they realized the Salafis had engineered the episode as a chance to proselytize ”” they were driving the dark and menacing streets to spread the message that Islam was the only way out of Egypt’s political crisis.
And so, as feared, it begins.
Dennis,
There’s nothing wrong with being prepared for the worst, but can’t we allow for the possibility that ordinary Egyptians may still be capable of making the same sort of distinctions that the Turks appear to have done?
For now we should be encouraging civic groups to promote the case for a pluralist society on as many fronts as possible.
Jeremy – point well taken. However, I worry in Egypt (as in Libya, if the rebels find a way to overthrow the government there) that because no strong, organized opposition to the former regime exists, the vacuum is a set-up for Islamic extremism to rise to prominence. I pray I am simply being unduly pessimistic and appreciate your willingness to call me out on such a view.