By David Cruz
NJ Today
Scenes of violence today have replaced the joyous scenes of celebration in Egypt as the Egyptian military today opened fire on protesters supporting ousted President Mohammed Morsi, recalling, for some, the days of Hosni Mubarak, who used the military to maintain his grip on power.
“We have to call a spade a spade; this is definitely a coup,” says Mohamed El filali, outreach director for the Islamic Center of Passaic County.
On the final Friday before Ramadan, the congregation of the center in Paterson gathered for prayer, the turn of events in Egypt not far from their minds. Most of the members are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and were not celebrating this week’s events.
“To me, we are going back to the rule of the military in the region and we are setting the precedent to other nations around that are looking forward to democracy,” El filali adds. “If this is the result that we are going to be going through, then a lot of people are going to be reluctant, and we’re going to live again through the tyranny for I don’t know how many years to come.”
That bleak assessment is widely held among Muslims here, who acknowledge the governmental shortcomings of the Muslim Brotherhood, but decry the forced removal of the country’s first freely-elected president. Omar Awad is a biomedical engineer, born in the U.S., who lived in Egypt for nine years, before the January 2011 Revolution. He says the military tactics this week recall the worst of the Mubarak days.
“And we saw that immediately after the announcement, four, five actually, channels that were pro-Morsi were shut down, and Al Jazeera got shut down immediately, after the announcement was made and a lot of people were thrown in prison,” Awad says. “You wonder if people are going to connect the dots and be like, ‘Oh my god, are we going back to the dark ages again?’”
At the Islamic Center in Jersey City, Ahmed Shedeed has two TVs going. One, tuned to Al Jazeera, shows the bloody events of today. The other, tuned to Egyptian state-run television, is broadcasting children’s programs. Shedeed says if the military government wants to have legitimacy, it must promote democracy, and should start by allowing everyone freedom of expression.
“Let them show the other pictures,” he said. “Give them the freedom to talk. Let the Al Jazeera office open. Let other Islamic channels open and talk to the people. Give the people the freedom of speech, the human rights. That’s all we need.”
There is a sense, here at least, that a line has been crossed, that what millions were cheering as a further manifestation of Egyptian people power, is actually the first step toward the return to the dark days of military rule and repression.