There are six things which the LORD hateth, yea, seven which are an abomination unto Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; A heart that deviseth wicked thoughts, feet that are swift in running to evil; A false witness that breatheth out lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. (Proverbs 6:16-19)
Egyptian activist Maikel Nabil, who sat in an Egyptian prison for 10 months following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, in an interview with The Times of Israel, warned that he does not see an end to the violence in his country in the foreseeable future. Nabil said he ws sure that, “his countrymen will likely take to the streets again soon to topple the forces which removed the Islamist regime of Mohammed Morsi last month.”
Nabil, who is now in Erfurt, Germany studying for his Masters Degree in public policy, told the Times that, like the events of January 2011, Morsi’s ouster on July 3 was “both a revolution and a coup.”
In a more alarming admission Nabil voiced his concern over the mounting atmosphere of fear Christian Copts have experienced during and after the Brotherhood era, which has caused scores of them to flee the country.“Some estimate that one third of Egypt’s 12 million Copts left the country over the past five decades, and that hundreds of thousands are leaving each year. They are being pushed out, and I fear they may even face a genocide and become extinct from Egypt,” Nabil said.
In this process, he asserted, the military has played as active a role as the Muslim Brotherhood. As churches burned across Egypt in the wake of Morsi’s ouster, Nabil said the new regime opted for inaction in a bid to drive Christians out of Egypt.
“The military isn’t secular, it’s Islamic, though in a different way than the Brotherhood. It’s racist towards Christians, who are discriminated against within its ranks. People in Egypt have wishful thinking; they believe the army will implement democracy and separation of religion and state. But people have already started to become disillusioned and they will continue to be disappointed in the future,” he said.
Nabil insists that the Egyptian military has failed the loyalty test. “The aid to Egypt’s army hasn’t created any kind of loyalty towards the US,” he said, despite the billions of dollars the US has poured into Egypt in military aid over the past few years. The moment the Americans criticized the pro-Morsi protesters, Nabil pointed out, the Egyptians ran to the Russians and the Chinese for support against them.
According to the Times, with his arrest in March 2011, Nabil — an active member of the grassroots movement No to Compulsory Military Service – became the first political activist to be detained by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which ruled Egypt following Mubarak’s ouster the previous month. Charged with “insulting the military” on his blog (which unusually contained a Hebrew section), Nabil went on a four-month hunger strike and was finally pardoned by the military in January 2012 following international pressure.
On the topic of the release to house arrest of former President Hosni Mubarak, Nabil remarked that, “the majority of Egyptians think about the future, not the past, so Mubarak is not the question,” he said. “Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Tantawi or Morsi are all essentially the same. The differences between them were very small in terms of the democratic freedoms they allowed.”
Nevertheless, a dramatic shift took place over the past year in Egyptian public opinion, Nabil opined. Egyptians moved from considering the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas legitimate political players to viewing them as “fascists and terrorists.” Asked whether he feared the return of the Mubarak era, Nabil said he’s “not sure whether returning to that regime is good or bad.”
Nevertheless, a dramatic shift took place over the past year in Egyptian public opinion, Nabil opined. Egyptians moved from considering the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas legitimate political players to viewing them as “fascists and terrorists.”
