Why did they revolt? Clues from my Visit to Cairo in November 2010

I took my Washington Semester class of Islam and World Affairs to Egypt in November 2010. Cab drivers, hotel staff, and even the government-appointed security escorts, each blamed Mubarak for low incomes and lack of political freedom. I thought they were probably personalizing the blame to play on my emotions in the hope for better tips. When the revolt began demanding that Mubarak leaves, I thought at first this was a copy of the Tunisian revolution’s targeting of Ben Ali. Of course, the Tunisian revolution sparked its Egyyptian counterpart. Although Egyptians had lived different economic circumstances compared to Tunisians, both nations had dictatorships that were more similar than different. Looking back at what I experienced two months earlier, it would seem that public opinion in Egypt has been shaping around who to blame for socioeconomic problems.
As we began our field study, we were overtaken by the extreme contradictions in Egyptian political life. We visited the Egyptian Medical Syndicate (EMS) to learn about associational life. We were allowed to meet with the president, the Mubarak regime’s man. Two-thirds of the syndicate’s board members consist of leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). But we were not allowed to meet with them although they are duly elected by Egypt’s doctors and ably run the affairs of their profession. The president told us that one of his mains functions was to make sure that the EMS is not entangled in politics. Board members (of the MB) had used the EMS as a platform to conduct political activities; they were denied public space elsewhere.
At the National Democratic Party (NDP) headquarters, Ali Dean Hilal, a top NDP strategist told us that despite pressure from the West, the Egyptian government will not allow the Muslim Brotherhood to become a party. His reason: MB candidates would tell people that voting for their party would grant them places in Heaven. If this were an insurmountable obstacle for democracy, then MB members should have been banned from politics altogther. But they were allowed to engage in the said anti-democratic practice as indepedent candidates. So denying them legal status meant to limit their reach, not to preclude the manipulation of religion in politics.
Then I took my class to the Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, Egypt's oldest and largest think tank. Dr. Dina Shehata predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would lose big in the coming election, scheduled to be held in three weeks. She was right: the MB did did not participate in the second round, but in the first round their seats in the Parliament declined from 88 seats in 2005 to 2 in 2010. Egyptian courts issued 1500 orders invalidating election results--not a great obstacle to convene the legislature. A senior colleague of the Ahrm Center told us that the NDP is a huge, diverse umbrella and that it would win big in any election even if it was separated from the state. One student asked him whether it would be prudent then to separate party from state, he declined to entertain the thought. I asked him why doesn't Egypt follow the Turkish model in dealing with the MB. Turkey has been ruled by the AKP, an Islam-based party, for the last decade. The Ahram Center scholar said that Egypt does not have a history of democracy found in Turkey. Nearly twenty years earlier I did field research for my doctorate degree in Egypt. An old, poor farmer told me the NDP was corrupt and would be trounced if it lost state support. In today’s uprising, the NDP, with all its resources, has not been able to mobilize a fraction of number of people who paid their way into the downtown of each governorate capital. The pro-Mubarak thugs who rioted in Tahrir square and other cities are of the same type of thugs whe had been used by the NDP in the past three decades to scare opposition voters.
I took my students to the office of the Islamic Thought Institute in Zamalek, where Mr. Khalid Abdel Menem told us he wished Egypt had the sort of secularism enjoyed by the Turks. Today the Muslim Brotherhood has replaced their “Islam is the solution” slogan with “Change, Freedom and Social Justice.” But the problem with Egyptian Islamists is not the slogans but the lack of clarity and specificity of their political discourse. Now they are proceeding carefully, stressing that the revolt belongs to all Egyptians. It remains to be seen how this sentiment will shape the writing of the new social contract in Egypt (If the military regime ever allows this to happen.
Watching the events of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 on television, I see pride, dignity and self-confidence on the blooded faces of the Egyptian protesters, a sharp contrast to the body language that I could observe among the Egyptians I encountered two months ago. One particular scene caught my eye is a bearded young man being taken for treatment while chanting “We will die for our freedom!” In another scene, there is a woman engineer who told CNN reporters that she is doing well economically in Egypt, but she is camping in Tahrir Square for a better future for Egypt as a country for all Egyptians. Her daughter said she is there because she felt Mubarak treated her like an animal. Also, there was a middle- aged man with shabby clothes. His face is lit up; his reason for being in Tahrir Square: “So that someone poor like me can walk in the street with my head high.” No wonder the February 4th Friday sermon at Tahrir Square was as much a spiritual event as it was a political expression."This is not a revolution with religious goals; the revolt of the youth is an Egyptian movement of Muslims and Christians," the bearded imam said. Famous Egyptian actress Sherihan told al-Jazeera anchorman: "All shades of Egyptian society are here: Muslims, Christians and Muslim Brothers. All of us are here!" Cleary, all signs show the degenarate political culture of the NDP has given way to the rebirth of the modern Egyptian nation.