Thomas Doherty

Responding to attacks on El-Sayed is like playing a game of whack-a-mole, they just keep popping! El-Sayed did not sign a letter explicitly in support of the Muslim Brotherhood. He signed a letter in support of President Morsi and the Egyptian revolution which had pushed the dictator Mubarak out of power. Context is important. Mubarak had been dictator of Egypt for 29 years (following the dictatorship of Sadat). In 2011, as part of the Arab Spring movement, Egyptian protesters had forced Mubarak to resign and forced the military which had backed his government to agree to Egypt’s first fair elections. In those elections, Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had won against the chosen candidate of the military (Air Marshal Shafik). The letter El-Sayed signed (when he was a medical student) did not explicitly support the Muslim Brotherhood, but did support Morsi’s presidency, including (controversially) his decree saying he could ignore judicial limits on his power. Some supporters of the Egyptian revolution accepted this because they feared that if Morsi fell, the military would return to power, but it was a risky bargain. The letter called for the purging (not jailing) of police and media. It’s fair to wonder what exactly the letter meant by “purge” but the desire to get rid of some officials is understandable. (In this interpretation, “the media” means “state media,” but that could be debated.) Police (and other officials) had been chosen by Mubarak and were believed to be loyal to the military and if not removed from office they might be part of coup to end Egypt’s brand new democracy. The fear was reasonable: Seven months later (July 2013), the military staged a coup and ended Egypt’s democracy. The military then chose their own guy, General Sisi, to be Egypt’s new president. Now, 13 years later, General Sisi and the military still rule Egypt. Morsi was imprisoned and died during his trial (under allegations of poor medical care). To be clear, from the start this was a messy situation and trying to figure out who the good guys and bad guys are is difficult. Morsi might have turned into a dictator himself! But, in the midst of the Arab Spring, agreeing to sign a letter in support of a government which had (hopefully) ended a military dictatorship does not make El-Sayed an extremist. Side note: Check out the documentary “The Square.” It’s a great film on the 2011-2013 protests and the reactionary violence of the state from the view of pro-revolution participants (it has a fairly strong anti-Muslim Brotherhood POV). Do NOT confuse it with the weird Swedish arthouse film “The Square.”