The constitution has taken center stage this week in Egypt’s fraught political transition. On Tuesday, Cairo’s Administrative Court referred the matter of the Constituent Assembly’s legality to the Supreme Constitutional Court, and the SCC is not expected to rule on the matter for at least two months. Advocates for the Assembly saw the Administrative Court decision as affording the constitution-writing body an opportunity to wrap up the work it has undertaken in the past four months.

Ever since the Assembly released a partial draft of the proposed Constitution on 10 October 2012, the body has remained subject to almost continuous attack by political forces of nearly all political stripes. Among the most potent attacks was that mounted by Helwan University lecturer Sherif Younis, who announced in the title of his now much-cited article that there was “Fascism in Our New Constitution.”

To my mind, just as disturbing as the flaws expertly exposed by Younis is the procedure the Constituent Assembly has apparently adopted to gauge the reaction of Egyptians to their work. Egypt Independent has reported that the Assembly will mount a ‘constitution awareness campaign’ with a budget of LE60,000, citing the director of the Assembly’s media center, Reda Abdel Aziz. A subsequent report from Ahram Online put the figure for the campaign, dubbed “Know Your Constitution,” at LE100,000, citing the Constituent Assembly member Amr Abdel Hadi.

The economic difficulties that Egypt faces are well known. But to think that Assembly members regard their work as worthy of so little exposure is, nonetheless, rather bewildering. After all, how much advertising space or air time will a paltry LE100,000 provide for? If the LE100,000 figure is indeed accurate, the Assembly will spend roughly one-tenth of a piaster or 1.2 milliemes per Egyptian, to raise awareness about the Constitution. That amounts to roughly 0.02 US cents per Egyptian.

I fear the meager sum allotted to awareness speaks not so much to the Assembly members’ poor regard for their work as for their poor regard for the Egyptian people. Much as was the case under the military dictatorship, a narrow elite has commandeered political power in Egypt to impose change on millions, whom this elite regards with a barely concealed contempt. How else can one explain the absence of the nearest semblance of public consultation during the writing process? Has Egypt in fact unearthed in the Assembly a caste of philosopher kings who can divine the will of the Egyptian people through force of thought alone?

The derisive tone is borne of contempt for an institution made possible by revolution, but which has, as Manal al-Tibi eloquently explained in her letter of resignation from the Assembly, perversely come to serve the purposes of counterrevolution: “Eventually, the process would create a constitution that would maintain the same primary foundations of the regime that the revolution had risen up to overthrow, while only changing the personnel.”

All of this is to say, above all, that process matters. If Egypt were indeed able to unearth a caste of philosopher kings to devise a constitution that flawlessly reflected the will of all Egyptians, that would still constitute a betrayal of the revolution. Egypt needs a constitution not merely for the people and of the people, but by the people. Rather than foster and steward a substantive public debate about the future that Egypt so desperately needs, the Constituent Assembly has elected to deliberate behind closed doors, in isolation from Egyptians.

Indeed, until recently, the only substantive details about the document that flowed from the Assembly came in the form of rumors. In this, the Assembly once again emulated the politics of the old regime, whose careful management of information led to the proliferation of rumors about all manner of issues from subsidies to succession – rumors that all too often divided the opposition from within and dissipated the potential for protest. In an important sense, rumors are the antithesis of revolution, insofar as they reflect a lack of transparency in the workings of government.

So much of the media coverage of the Constituent Assembly has focused upon conflicts between avowed Islamists and secularists over the character of the “second republic” that the Constitution will yield. Yet again, this seems a diversion from what is in fact at stake in this constitution-writing process: How can a democratic, pluralistic system of government possibly emerge from an Assembly that stands above rather than among Egyptians?

استهوتني قصة المشاريع العقارية الضخمة والمدن الجديدة التي سيطرت على النشاط الاقتصادي في دول الخليج العربية، لأنها تجسد في طياتها كل أوجه الخلل المزمنة التي تواجهها المنطقة. فيتجسد الخلل السياسي والاستئثار بالسلطة في الفساد الذي استشرى في صفقات الأراضي وعمليات ردم البحر (الدفان) الذي تطلبته هذه المشاريع، بالإضافة إلى انعدام دور غالبية المواطنين في التخطيط والموافقة على هذه المشاريع.

أما الخلل الاقتصادي المتجذر في المنطقة؛ فيبرز في الكميات الهائلة من الأموال التي أتت أساساً من الريع النفطي لتنصب في هذه المشاريع (حوالي 1.2 تريليون دولار)، والتي هي بدورها أيضاً نوعٌ آخر من الريع «العقاري». هذا بالإضافة إلى التركيبة المتشعبة من الشركات الاستثمارية والمطوِّرين العقاريين والبنوك التي تشكلت حول هذه المشاريع.

في المقابل؛ يتجلى الخلل السكاني المزمن في هذه المدن الجديدة الموجهة في الأساس لشعبٍ جديد ليسكن فيها، حيث تغيّرت رؤية ومعاملة متخذي القرار؛ إلى ظاهرة تدفق الوافدين من النّظر إليها كظاهرة عرضيّة لابد منها، هدفها سد متطلبات الإنتاج، إلى تبني استقطاب الوافدين كهدف أساسي ينبغي تبنيه لزيادة الطلب الاقتصادي عليه في دول المجلس.

تبين هذه المدن الجديدة بشكل جلي أن أوجه الخلل المزمنة في المحاور السياسية والاقتصادية والسكانية مترابطة وتغذي بعضها بعضاً في جدلية مستمرة، حيث لا يُمكن فصل هذه المحاور عن بعضها بعضاً والنظر إليها منفردة. وهذا التشعب المتعمق بين العوامل السياسية والاقتصادية والسكانية الحادة ينذر بخلطةٍ متفجرةٍ من الصعب التنبؤ بتبعاتها، بل إنه من شبه المستحيل على صنّاع القرار أن يتحكّموا في مسارها في خطط مرسومة مسبقاً.

طبيعة هذه المشاريع العقارية تشير إلى مسارين: إما أن تنجح هذه المشاريع العقارية، وبذلك تتحول الى مدن جديدة ضخمة يقطنها الملايين من السكان الجدد. في المقابل، قد تفشل المشاريع العقارية فشلاً ذريعاً، وتتحول إلى مبانٍ خاويةٍ ينبذها الناس، وتكون في نهاية الأمر مشاريع فيل بيضاء white elephants وعملية نصب كبرى مصيرها أن تكون مدن أشباح.

كلا الخيارين لايزال مطروحاً، ومن الممكن أن يحدث الاثنان على مر الزمن. فكثير من هذه المشاريع قد تم إيقافها في خضم الأزمة المالية العالمية. في المقابل؛ فإن الكثير من هذه المدن الجديدة؛ قد تم بناؤها فعليّاً وأصبحت مأهولة، كمنطقة المارينا في دبي وأمواج في البحرين. والقول بأن رؤوس الأموال والمتنفذين بها ستقف مكتوفة الأيدي وسترضى بأن تبقى هذه المشاريع شاغرةً؛ يعبر عن فهم ضيق لمنطق رؤوس الأموال وتحركاتها. وكما رأينا، فقد سمحت البحرين لملاك العقار الدولي بالتصويت في الانتخابات البلدية للعام 2010، كما مدّدت الإمارات مدة الإقامة المرتبطة بشراء العقار من ستة أشهر إلى ثلاث سنوات في العام 2011. كما تدل تصريحات المسئولين عن هذه المشاريع على أنهم يتطلعون إلى إعادة المشاريع التي تم إيقافها متى ما سنحت الفرصة، هذا بالإضافة إلى نية لبناء مشاريع عقارية ضخمة جديدة.

النقطة الرئيسية هنا؛ هي أنه من المستحيل أن يتواصل الخلل السكاني في التراكم من دون أن تكون له تبعات جذرية مصيرية على المنطقة في المستقبل غير البعيد. بعض هذه التبعات تمت مناقشتها بإسهاب، بما فيها ازدياد أعداد الوافدين في سوق العمل، وتهميش دور المواطنين إنتاجيّاً وعدديّاً، بالإضافة إلى تشوّه الهوية العربية في المنطقة وازدياد حدة التعصب xenophobia بين صفوف بعض المواطنين. في المقابل؛ ستتواصل حالات الاضطهاد التي يتعرّض لها الكثير من العمالة الوافدة وتدني حقوقهم على المستوى الاقتصادي والسياسي، والتي بإمكاننا تلخيص هذه الإفرازات في حالة شديدة من «الاغتراب» التي يعيشها المواطنون والوافدون معاً.

أما بالنسبة إلى ظاهرة المشاريع العقارية؛ فلها معطياتٌ تختلف كمّاً ونوعاً عن ظاهرة توافد العمالة الأجنبية. ولعل الخاصية الأهم؛ هي بروز ظاهرة «المجتمع المغلق» أو ما يمكن تسميته «بالمدينة داخل المدينة». حيث يتم خلق مجتمع من «الكانتونات» المنفصلة، تعيش كل مجموعة منها في منأى تام عن باقي الأطراف، لا يربطها ببعضها أي انتماء قومي أو ثقافي أو سياسي، ولا يكون هدفها الجامع سوى النمو الاقتصادي وتحريك رؤوس الأموال تحت إطار اللغة الانجليزية الحاضنة. هنا تصبح المدينة مفهوماً بالإمكان بناؤه وتجديده وإعادة تركيبه بشكل سريع بناءً على أهواء متخذي القرار والخبراء المنفذين للمشروع. والحالة الأساسية التي تميّزها؛ هي التغير المستمر في ملامح وعمران وحتى سكان المدينة، فلا البيوت ولا النخل ولا حتى البحر في مأمن من الهدم والاقتلاع والدفن. كل هذا قد يحصل في سنين بل أشهر معدودة، فلو قُدّر لأحدٍ أن يشد الرحال إلى الخارج طلباً للعلم؛ لما عاد بإمكانه التعرف على المدينة أو سكانها عند عودته من الدراسة.

فالمدينة في الخليج لم تعد تعكس وتعبّر عن رغبات ونمط حياة أهلها وساكنيها، فهم عامةً مهمّشون ومن دون أي دور فعال في تحديد ملامحها العمرانية والاجتماعية. فها هم يشاهدون العمارات تعلو من حولهم وليس في يدهم إلا أن يراقبوا ويتأقلموا، فقد لا يكونون هم حتى من ساكني منطقتهم الحالية في المستقبل القريب. وهكذا تم هزّ واقتلاع الجذور التي كانت تربط السكان بمدنهم، وفي المقابل أمست المدينة مفهوماً متقلباً قد يتبدل هو وساكنوه في غضون أيام معدودة. وهكذا أصبح ما يحدّد شكل وحتى جغرافية المدينة ليس سكانها، والذين يتغيرون بنفس سرعة تغير المدينة، بل المردود المادي وتطلعات متخذي القرار.

Earlier this year, London’s Tate Modern acquired “Sabra and Shatila Massacre” (1982-83), an epic mural-sized drawing by pioneering Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi. Sprawling as it is towering and engulfing, the artist began the massive work after news surfaced that between two and three thousand Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were strategically murdered in and around the refugee camps of southern Beirut in 1982. While creating “Sabra and Shatila Massacre,” al-Azzawi was also moved by Jean Genet’s “Four Hours in Shatila,” a written dispatch of the hell on earth that was the site of this civil-war era carnage, the violent details of which are impossible to take in without periodically searching for respite by turning away from the page.

Al-Azzawi recreates this frenetic energy in four large panels, establishing visions that, like Genet’s text, become immovable to the mind’s eye. Two vertical side rectangles frame a pair of larger horizontal scenes, and within these physical demarcations images are uncontained. A boot, two chairs, a plane, a “USA” missile, and barbed wire are interspersed between the ravaging expressionism of shaded forms and the darkened areas of nothingness that toss, eject, and dismember bodies until they are buried. There is no beginning or end to the composition but to the right and left of the center are two upright figures, gods of war who flank a netherworld that has already claimed its victims. Scant moments of color appear as though time has frozen into a mere memory: a ceaseless nightmare.

                       ["Sabra and Shatila Massacre" (1982-83). Copyright Dia al-Azzawi. Image courtesy of Tate Modern.]

Within a labyrinth of death and the mundane (the remnants of domestic structures), the artist is relentless in his indictment, what he refers to as “a manifesto of dismay and anger.” Areas of white, where the eye would normally rest in a monochromatic composition, ignite horror, become corpses. Instances of Cubism are employed not as a means of communicating the dynamic movement of form but as a system of measure through which to count out cyclical disaster.

At first, this dismay and anger took on a compulsory drive as he recalled the constrictive grounds of the Beirut neighborhood and began to draw:

I had at that time a roll of paper and, without any preparatory sketches, the idea for the work came to me. I tried to visualize my previous experience of walking through this camp, with its small rooms separated by a narrow road, in the 1970s. (Art Daily, July 5, 2012)

                                                                [Dia al-Azzawi in his Highgate studio, London (1983). Image courtesy of the artist.] 

The resulting drawings were produced as micro components of a larger whole and covered the width of his London studio. These fragments (or vignettes, rather) are organized in a manner that is similar to the broken narrative structure of Genet’s writing on the subject—except that in al-Azzawi’s work there is no way out and no room for pause. When completed in 1983, the pieces were mounted onto stretchers and shown in a Kuwait gallery as part of the series “We are not Seen, but Corpses,” which included a set of copper engravings.

                         [Dia al-Azzawi at the opening of his 1983 solo exhibition in Kuwait. Image courtesy of the artist.]

In “Four Hours in Shatila” Genet interrupts graphic reports of the massacre by intermittently removing his focus from the bloodstained streets of Lebanon, withdrawing to romantic portrayals of Palestinian fedayeen in Jordan ten years prior as he escapes his own haunting and divides his account into a binary tale of “love” and “death”:

These two words are quickly associated when one of them is written down. I had to go to Shatila to understand the obscenity of love and the obscenity of death. In both cases the body has nothing more to hide: positions, contortions, gestures, signs, even silences belong to one world and to the other. (Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1983)

Although freed from grotesque accents, al-Azzawi’s figures are siphoned by that which inhibits the ambit of love, abjection. Genet describes the abject as he passes through catastrophe without specifically identifiying it, perhaps due to his propinquity to the aftermath of the mass killings:

In the middle, near them, all these tortured victims, my mind can’t get rid of this “invisible vision”: what was the torturer like? Who was he? I see him and I don’t see him. He’s as large as life and the only shape he will ever have is the one formed by the stances, positions, and grotesque gestures of the dead fermenting in the sun under clouds of flies.

The writer provides knowledge of the abject, the painter gives us the means of confronting that knowledge, what Aaron Kerner explains as the “visceral charge” of the rhetorical devices that are capable of deciphering the abject  (Representing The Catastrophic, The Edwin Mellen Press: 2007).  

The main springboard for Kerner’s study of how visual culture can lend to reckoning with unimaginable suffering and incomprehensible events is Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror (Columbia University Press: 1982), which outlines several types of abjection—all of which are rooted in primordial repression. Without delving into the depths of psychoanalysis that the latter utilizes to arrive at such definitions, abjection exists as neither subject nor object, an intangible but ever-present force that plunges reality into chaos, a realm in which reason is discarded: “that breakdown of clarity between what sustains life and the destruction of life, the boundary between life and death itself” (Kerner). It is the non-space that fuels, orders, and commits catastrophe.

For Kristeva, narcissism lies at the root of abjection and when it is swayed and untamed, the consequences are calamitous:

The abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts; uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them. It kills in the name of life—a progressive despot; it lives at the behest of death—an operator in genetic experimentations; it curbs the other’s suffering for its own profit—a cynic (and a psychoanalyst); it establishes narcissistic power while pretending to reveal the abyss… Corruption is its most common, most obvious appearance. That is the socialized appearance of the abject. 

There are political implications in exploring the presence of this non-space in so far as power, abjection, and catastrophe are intrinsically connected phenomena, an interdependent trinity; and in the modern history of the Arab world, it is an entity that has lurked over virtually every aspect of life.

Throughout his artistic career, which began in Baghdad in the 1960s, al-Azzawi has returned to such scenes as a quiet sage who treads through the deluge. What distinguishes this individual work, however, is the scale with which he brings forth the state of abjection that surrounds (and led to) massacre in order to oppose it. In lieu of focusing on its significance as a historical moment through realism, or the particulars of the crime, what appears is a “poetic release of drive energy,” to borrow a phrase from Kerner.  

In retrospect, this energy had been building in al-Azzawi’s previous works. “The Body’s Anthem” (1978-79), a series of forty drawings depicting the deadly 1976 siege of the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in northern Beirut, displays the heavily stylized forms that would guide his subsequent manifesto; and in an introduction to a collection of limited edition silk screen prints, the artist summarizes a theme that has driven his oeuvre:     

The Body’s Anthem: pictures I chose of that siege. It is not a dirge, nor is it the document of a dark massacre—It is an expression that seeks to create a free memory persisting against oppression, until a time when it can exhaust oppression’s evil.

A time that will summon the blood of friends and brothers, hastening the return of the martyrs. When the nation will be bread clean of soil and blood. A space unhindered by black treachery and the nets of disguise. When feet will cross safely over beautiful times. And men will not sell their dreams. (Dar Al-Muthallath: 1980) 

"Sabra and Shatila Massacre" is currently on view at the Tate Modern. 

معلوم أن المحن تٌوحد ضد الخطر المشترك أما وقت الرخاء فيظهر فيه الخلاف بين المصالح أو الأيدلوجيات أو الأولويات وحتى على مستوى التيار الواحد أو الأحزاب الكبرى التي تتأسس في ظروف استثنائية عقب الثورات أو الاحتلال تجد الاجتماع بسبب الظرف الاستثنائي ومع مرور الوقت يحدث انفصال بين الأجنحة المختلفة التي سرعان ما تنفك عن أحزاب أصغر كما حدث مع الوفد في أواخر العشرينيات من القرن الماضي حين انفصل عنه حزبا الهيئة السعدية والأحرار الدستوريون.

لذا لا يعد ما يحدث داخل حزب النور من معركة ساخنة بين جبهتين تكاد أن تشطره نصفين مفاجأة حيث يعبر عن تطور طبيعي في الحركة السياسية السلفية وانعكاس لحركة اجتماعية متباينة ولكن ربما يقابله البعض باستغراب نتيجة لوقوعه فريسة لإطار التنميط stereotyping حيث يتحدث من خلاله صورته الذهنية عن السلفيين والتي يغلب عليها التسطيح بغض النظر عن مدى دقة هذه الصورة وارتباطها بالواقع فهم مجرد ألآت لا تفكر وتأتمر فقط بأوامر المشايخ أو هم ناس يمثلون الطهر السياسي لا يمكن أن تصدر منهم مخالفات أو يحدث بينهم شجار سواء كانت هذه النظرة بصدق أو لكي يستغل ذلك في الدعاية المضادة وتصويرهم في صورة أنهم من خدعوا الناس بالدين رغم أن السلفيين ليسوا بدعاً من القوم بل يسري عليهم ما يسري على غيرهم في الحياة السياسية.

 يعاني المحللون السياسيون غالباً أثناء البحث في الشأن السلفي نتيجة نقص المعلومات عن التيار السلفي ككل بخلاف نظيرتها جماعة الأخوان المسلمين التي صنفت العديد من المؤلفات عن تاريخها وأدبياتها سواء بأيدي أبنائها أو من يعارضوها وحتى الجماعات الجهادية التي حظيت بقدر لا بأس به من التغطية الإعلامية نتيجة لنشاطها ضد الحكومات السياسية المختلفة.

لذا يقع هؤلاء الخبراء إما في خطأ دراسة الجماعة في قوالب جاهزة خاصة بدراسة الإخوان أو المجموعات الجهادية و بالتالي لا تناسب السلفيين. لن نفهم أبعاد الأزمة قبل النظر لظروف نشأة التيار السلفي في مصر وحركتهم السياسية قبل الثورة .

ترجع نشأة التيار السلفي في مصر إلى عهد بعيد حيث واكب ظهور الحركة الوهابية في الجزيرة حركة سلفية في مصر وظهرت أسماء سلفية كبيرة في هذا الوقت كرشيد رضا ومحب الدين الخطيب بل إن ظروف نشأة الإخوان تدل أنها نشأت كجماعة وسط بين تيار سلفي ممثل في جماعة أنصار السنة وبين الجماعات الصوفية التي كانت تسيطر على جزء كبير من المشهد الديني في مصر وقتها.

هذا التيار السلفي منذ تواجده على الساحة قد نشأ كتيار قام على فكرة تعظيم الدليل ولا يوجد إمام أو قائد تُتبنى أقواله في جميع المسائل إلا النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم وهو ما يعبر عنه في أدبياتهم بالقول المأثور"كل يُؤخذ من قوله ويترك إلا النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم " فلا قدسية للأشخاص ولا يوجد من تٌلغي قرارك لقراره مما أوجد مشكلة في مسألة الالتزام الحزبي بخلاف جماعة  منظمة مثل الإخوان ينبني أمرهم على مسألة الطاعة والبيعة.

هذه صورة مقبولة جدا في الدين ولكن في السياسة فنجاح أي تيار في السياسة مهما كان صغر حجمه يتوقف على مدى نجاحه في تحقيق هذا الالتزام الحزبي وأن يتحول لكتلة ضاغطة مؤثرة حيث أن تحركه ككيان واحد يجعل الجميع يحسب له حساباً ويستطيع أن يدافع عن مصالحه وفكره.

 وكل هذا يتطلب من الفرد طبعاً تعظيم قيمة الجندية والالتزام بالقرار الجماعي على حساب القرار الفردي وبالطبع لا يعني ذلك إلغاء الأفراد ولكن لأن القرار يتم بعد مشاورات وتأن فإن مسؤوليته جماعية ويتم الدفاع عنه بمجرد اتخاذه من قبل جميع أفراد الكتلة حتى الذين عارضوه وهو ما افتقده غالباً التيار السلفي.

فقد اختلف التيار السلفي في توجهاته السياسية بين من يرى الحكام هم ولاة أمر شرعيين تجب طاعتهم ولا يجوز الخروج عليهم ومن يرى عقم المشاركة السياسية من الأساس لأن الأنبياء إنما بٌعثوا ليؤسسوا دعوة لا دولة وأن الجماعات والأحزاب هي سبب تفرق الأمة ومن تبنى العمل الجماعي كسبيل للتمكين ومن يسمى بالسلفية الجهادية بالإضافة لدعاة الفضائيات الذين يشتركون في المنهج ولا ينتمون تنظيمياً لأي فريق مما سبق مما أوجد فرقاً في ديناميكية العمل الجماعي والتنظيم والهيكلة بل حتى المحاولات التي قام بها البعض قديماً لتوحيدهم اصطدمت بعقبتين وهما الضغوط الأمنية ورفض الكثير الانضواء تحت راية عمل جماعي موحد بدعوى عدم الحزبية.

الجزء السلفي الذي تبنى العمل الجماعي أسس ما يسمى المدرسة السلفية في بداية السبعينات التي تحولت فيما بعد لاسم الدعوة السلفية والتي نشأت في الإسكندرية قبل أن تنتشر في باقي أرجاء مصر. الدعوة السلفية رغم تبنيها خيار المقاطعة السياسية إبان فترة النظام السابق لقناعتها بأن ما يحدث إنما هو محض تمثيلية لتجميل وجه النظام وأن سبيل التغيير هو إصلاح المجتمع من قاعدته فاهتموا بالعمل الدعوي والاجتماعي على حساب العمل السياسي واختاروا التوسع الأفقي وسط الجماهير وهو ما ظهر من  انتشار متبعي مبادئهم في مختلف الأنحاء

لذا لم يظهر لهم نشاط في الانتخابات قبل الثورة حتى خلط البعض بينهم وبين من يحرمون السياسة ويرون عدم الخروج على الحكام إلا أنهم اعتادوا ممارسة السياسة عن طريق مقالات ومؤتمرات يوضحون فيها وجهة نظرهم في مختلف القضايا كقضية تحكيم الشرع ومؤتمرات السكان وحرب العراق ولبنان وغزة وغيرها.

لذا كانت المعاملة الأمنية للدعوة تتجه نحو التعرض للملاحقة الأمنية المستمرة والتضييق في مجالات العمل الدعوي بعيداً عن الإعلام للتحجيم داخل الإسكندرية ووضع سقف للعمل محدد من قبل جهات الأمن مع بخلاف الأخوان التي كانت مواجهتهم الأمنية موسمية ترتبط بالانتخابات. مع حدوث الثورة اختارت الدعوة عدم المشاركة ككيان في أحداث 25 يناير حماية للثورة من الإبادة إذا ظهرت بصورة دينية مع مشاركة الأفراد بصورة فردية واكتفت بأداء الدور تجيده من خلال حماية الجبهة الداخلية عبر اللجان الشعبية والأسواق.

بعد الثورة انصبت جهود الدعوة في اتجاهين الأول: هو إعادة ترتيب البيت من الداخل حيث تم تشكيل الجماعة بطريقة مؤسسية لها مجلس إدارة ومجلس أمناء وآخر للشورى ووضع لائحة للعمل ونظام لترقي الكوادر مع إشهار ذلك في العلن وتحولت الدعوة لجمعية خيرية مشهرة تحت اسم جمعية الدعاة بعد تعنت وزارة التضامن في إشهارها باسم الدعوة السلفية وكان ذلك الإشهار تحسباً لوجود دولة القانون عما قريب حيث يتم التضييق على أي عمل خارج عن مظلة القانون. الثاني: هو إحداث حالة من التقارب مع السلفيين الآخرين الذين لا ينتمون للدعوة مع الاحتفاظ بالدعوة السلفية كمركز للعمل السلفي دون الاندماج في كيانات أخرى.

على الجانب السياسي ونتيجة لحالة السيولة السياسية عقب الثورة ومع ظهور خطاب علماني قوي داخل وسائل الإعلام وظهور تخوفات على هوية البلد الإسلامية في ظل تصريحات مقلقة للسلفيين عن تغيير المادة الثانية من قبل مسؤولين رسميين مثل د.يحيي الجمل وبلوغ الاستقطاب داخل المجتمع أقصى حالاته لاسيما فترة الاستفتاء على التعديلات الدستورية ظهرت إشكالية هل يتم تشكيل حزب للسلفيين أم يتم الاكتفاء بأن يكون السلفيون لوبي ضاغط داخل المجتمع وحدث نوع من استطلاع الرأي على مختلف المستويات لاتخاذ هذا القرار.

استقر الأمر على تشكيل الحزب بسبب عدم الثقة في قدرة الأخوان على تمثيل وجهة النظر السلفية نظراً للخلافات الفكرية بينهما وأيضاً عدم رغبة السلفيين في اختزال المشروع الإسلامي في فصيل واحد لو تم ضربه انهار المشروع بالكلية أضف إلى ذلك تحولهم إلى عامل ضغط على الأخوان لعدم تقديم تنازلات في قضية الهوية أمام ضغوط العلمانيين مع وضع في الاعتبار أنه مازالت نظرة السلفيين للأمر أن الأصل هي الدعوة وهي طريق التغيير والتمكين وليس السياسة وبالتالي لا يمكن إلغاء الدعوة لصالح الحزب بل الحزب مجرد درع واقٍ لحماية الدعوة وإضفاء صبغة أكثر إسلامية على المجتمع من خلال التشريعات. رغم أن عبء إنشاء الحزب وقع بالكلية على الدعوة وكوادرها إلا أن الفترة الأولى من تشكيل الحزب شهدت صيغة أن حزب النور إنما هو حزب مقرب من الدعوة وليس ذراعاً سياسياً لها حسب تصريحات قياديين مثل المتحدث الرسمي للدعوة وبالتالي ضم الكثير من السلفيين ممن لا ينتمون للدعوة حتى في الهيئة العليا.

ظهر أول صدام بين الطرف المحسوب على الدعوة والطرف المضاد لها داخل الحزب على خلفية التصريحات التي تخرج من الحزب ويتم انتقادها علانية من الدعوة مثل تصريحات د.محمد يسري سلامة حينما كان يشغل منصب المتحدث الرسمي عن أدب نجيب محفوظ وعلى الجانب الآخر تصريحات الدعوة في قضايا تثير جدلاً مثل تغطية التماثيل بالشمع ويرى أفراد الحزب أنهم يتحملوا عبء الدفاع عنها بدون داعٍ وأن الأفضل لمشايخ الدعوة أن يلتزموا الصمت فيها خاصة أن مواقف الدعوة السياسية المعلنة كانت في غالبيتها تنطلق من منطق الفتوى والحلال والحرام وليس من منطق العمل السياسي وما يتطلبه من موائمات ومرونة واختيارات بين تفضيلات متعددة في حين ترى الدعوة أنها لابد لها من الجهر برأيها في كل قضية لأنهم دعاة بالأساس يبينون للناس ما يرونه حقاً وبالتالي غاية ما يمكن حدوثه لعدم حدوث تعارض أن يبين حزب النور الحكم الشرعي كاملاً ثم يبين أن لا يستطيع تطبيقه في الوقت الحالي لمحاذير معينة خصوصاً وأن الجميع متفق على أن التنازل لا يمكن إلا من خلال فتوى شرعية.

عندما خشيت الدعوة من انفلات التوجهات داخل الحزب أرادت ضبط الأمور داخل الحزب وهو ما عده الطرف الآخر محاولة الهيمنة على الحزب وإن كان ذلك عبارة عن تحصيل حاصل حيث أنه رغم آلية القرار منفصلة في الحزب عن الدعوة إلا أن غالبية أعضاء الحزب هم أبناء الدعوة وبالتالي هم المتحكمون في مفاصله لذا تسيطر رؤية الدعوة على الحزب.

الاتهام بمحاولة السيطرة على الحزب تهمة اختص بها الشيخ ياسر برهامي والدائرة المقربة حوله دوناً عن باقي مشايخ الدعوة وهي تهمة قديمة يتهمه بها دائماً خصومه من السلفيين بأنه المسيطر أيضاً على الدعوة وهي تهمة بالأساس راجعة للسمات الشخصية للشيخ وطبيعة دروسه التي دائماً ما تتناول القضايا الفكرية والأشخاص والجماعات المناوئة للفكر السلفي بالنقد مما أكسبه عداوات عديدة على أصعدة مختلفة أضف إلى ذلك قربه من الشباب نتيجة لأنه في الفترة منذ عام 1994 يتحمل معظم العبء الإداري لإدارة أنشطة الدعوة السلفية في مصر كلها بحيث أن جميع المجموعات التي تقوم بالأعمال ترتبط به شخصياً مما أوجد بطانة كبيرة متعصبة له.

لاشك أن العمل في الدعوة يقوم بشكل مؤسسي إلا إن الواقع يؤكد أن شبكة علاقات الشيخ ياسر الممتدة مع العاملين والقوى الأخرى دون عن باقي أعضاء مجلس إدارة الدعوة أدى لوجود تأثير كبير له على معطيات أي قرار يتم اتخاذه في الدعوة مما أكسبه سمعة بأنه الرجل القوي داخل الدعوة ومن يتحكم بالأمور خلف الستار داخل الحزب وهو وصف يفتقد الدقة وبشدة.

نفس هذه التهمة –سيطرة الشيخ ياسر- كانت لها آثار على قضية أخرى سببت مشكلة كبيرة لحزب النور ألا وهي موقف الدعوة والحزب من تأييد المرشح حازم صلاح أبو إسماعيل حيث سيطر هاجس لدى الكثير –ربما روج له أيضا بعض مناصري الشيخ حازم – أن الخلاف شخصي بينه وبين الشيخ ياسر لرفضه الانصياع لسيطرة الشيخ ياسر أثناء أحداث محمد محمود الشهيرة مما فتح أضعف كثيراً موقف الحزب وفقد الكثير من مؤيديه وكان هذا أيضاً سبباً لزيادة الشقاق بين طرفي الأزمة داخل الحزب ولا يعني هذا أن الدعوة لم تكن ترغب في ترشيح الشيخ حازم إلا أن القرار النهائي لم يكن في يد مجلس الإدارة بل ما تسفر عنه نتيجة التصويت في مجلس شورى الدعوة.

هذه الأزمة بالذات أظهرت خطأ ما يتحدث البعض عنه من أن الأزمة بوصفها صراع بين السياسيين و المشايخ داخل الحركة السلفية وهو وصف تعوزه الدقة والعمق في تشخيص طرفي الخلاف وأسبابه وسياقاته حيث كانت خيارات المشايخ سياسية بحتة حيث رأوا أن الشيخ حازم ليس هو الخيار الأنسب سياسياً فيما كانت خيارات الجمهور تميل للمرشح الذي يجيد خطابهم دينياً فقط.

ولأن جمهور حزب النور الذي لا يقتصر على سلفي الإسكندرية فقط يختلف عن جمهور الدعوة السلفية من ناحية ارتباطه بالمشايخ فهم لا يحملون لهم نفس القدر من التبجيل لذا حاز مشايخ الدعوة على قدر عالي من السخط بسبب اعتقاد مؤيدي التيار الإصلاحي أنهم وإن كانوا فقهاء إلا أن تقديراتهم السياسية سيئة وأيد ذلك تحفظ هذا الجمهور على موقف المشايخ السياسي من الثورة منذ البداية.

لعل فقدان الثقة في القيادة هو أسوأ ما يصيب الجماعات تكوينية الاختيار هي التي تكون فيها الرابطة التي تجمع الأفراد بالقادة هي مسألة الثقة بالقيادة ولأن الجماعات الدعوية هي من هذا القبيل حيث تكون الثقة هنا هي في التزام القائد بمبادئه وهذا ما افتقده قطاع كبير من جمهور النور الذي فقد الثقة في قيادته.

رغم أن خيارات المشايخ كانت هي الأوفق سياسياً إلا إن الحزب دفع ثمنها من شعبيته وتجلت أزمة السلفيين في الرئاسة في عدم قدرة القيادة على إقناع الأتباع بالمرشح في ظل حالة من تشتت التيار السلفي في مصر بعد أزمة أبو إسماعيل مما أدى لعزوف الكثيرين عن الانتخابات ورغبة البعض في ترشيح محمد مرسي مرشح الأخوان مقابل د.أبو الفتوح الذي تسانده الدعوة وحزب النور.

بالطبع لا أحد يستطيع أن يعفي الخطاب الإعلامي للحزب والدعوة من المشاركة في تحمل جزء من هذا الخطأ حيث يوجد ما يشبه أن يكون عجزاً متكرراً عن استباق الأزمات فلا تخرج التصريحات إلا بعد حدوث الأزمات فمثلا كان من الممكن تلافي قدر كبير من الشقاق الذي حدث من ظن الكثير أن الحزب والدعوة يأخذان موقفاً معادياً من الشيخ حازم صلاح أو أنهم يؤيدون خيرت الشاطر إذا تم التصريح للجميع منذ البداية بآلية الاختيار وأن كليهما سيخضع لفرص متساوية في التصويت الحر المباشر داخل مجلس الشورى العام للدعوة والحزب. 

إذن هناك فريق منذ البداية ضد سيطرة المشايخ أتبع ذلك أزمة ثقة في المشايخ عقب انتخابات الرئاسة من قبل قطاع كبير من الأتباع فهل يتوقع إلا انفجار أزمة كبيرة عند أول بادرة خلاف وهي مسألة الانتخابات الداخلية للحزب التي بدأ الخلاف على موعدها وعلى أن من تم دعوته لحضورها هم أتباع الدعوة فقط رغم أن الدعوة كانت مفتوحة وتم إعادة الانتخابات للمتخلفين ومع ذلك لم يستطع تيار الإصلاح حشد أنصاره أن هذه الأزمة تم تصعيدها بشكل غير متوقع من قبل هذه الجبهة بسبب إحساسهم بضعف حجم مؤيديهم فاختاروا خيار شمشون بهدم المعبد على رؤوس الجميع وليكن شعار المرحلة علي وعلى أعدائي.

الخلاف الإداري حول اللائحة أو هل رئيس الحزب يتعامل بصيغة انفرادية أم لا؟ ما هو إلا ستار لخلاف منهجي بالأساس وإلا فإن الجبهة تعلم يقيناً أن حزب النور بدون الدعوة السلفية لن يعدو أن يكون رقماً على الهامش مثل الأحزاب الصغيرة كالأصالة حتى أن الجبهة التي تزعم أنها تريد الانفصال عن الدعوة حين اختارت من يحكم بينها وبين المؤيدين للدعوة اختارت مجلس أمناء الدعوة كحكم بين الطرفين! الانتخابات ليست قطعاً هي السبب الرئيس فيما حدث من انشقاق ولكنها رأس جبل الجليد الذي تكون عبر شهور في حزب النور وسنوات في التيار السلفي ككل بدلاً من أن تستغل في الدعاية الإيجابية للحزب كأول حزب يقوم بعمل امتحانات تثقيفية لأعضائه كشرط لترقيهم فيما يعد سابقة في الحياة السياسية.

خسائر السلفيين لاشك أنها فادحة من هذه الخلافات مثل عدم قدرة السلفيين على إدراك قيمة أن يتحولوا إلى كتلة مؤثرة ضاغطة ففي الوقت الذي يثني فيه السلفيون على غيرهم أياً كان الغير سواء أخوان أو حتى ألتراس بسبب تجمعهم وعدم تفرقهم تجد الكثير منهم يرفض رفضاً باتاً الانتظام في عمل جماعي منظم وتجد البعض لم يدرك مدى إنخفاض وزن السلفيين وتأثير قدرتهم التفاوضية  نتيجة تفرقهم وهو ما يلقي بالظلال على القضية الأخطر وهي هل سيأبه أحد لمطالب السلفيين حول الدستور؟ وهل سيخشون من قدرتهم على حشد الجماهير لمنع أي مواد تغير هوية البلد أو تجمد قضية تحكيم الشريعة على سبيل المثال؟كذلك لا أحد يدري ما أثر ذلك على منافستهم في الانتخابات القادمة عما قريب.

أيضاً مازال حزب النور يعاني من القصور في الأداء الإعلامي حيث لا توجد قنوات اتصال بينه وبين القواعد إلا عن طريق المساجد مما جعل قادته لا يستطيعون حشد أتباعهم حول رؤيتهم وخسارتهم مزيد من الأتباع لمصلحة الأحزاب الإسلامية الجديدة وأصبحت نتيجته المتوقعة رهناً بمدى قدرته على مواجهة ضغوط الفصائل الإسلامية الأكثر تشدداًً وراديكالية على يمين الجسم السلفي الرئيسي وخاصة إذا ما فشلت السلفية السياسية وممثلها الحالي حزب النور في تحقيق نجاحات ملموسة من المنظور السلفي مثل ضمان هوية الدولة في الدستور الجديد.

الفشل في تحقيق ما سبق لن تؤدي فقط إلى زيادة الوزن النسبي للقوى الإسلامية المتشددة على حساب النور ولكنها قد تؤدي أيضا إلى يأس جماهير السلفية من العمل السياسي و انصرافهم عن السياسة والتفرغ للدعوة مرة أخرى في ضوء ما يرونه من ”عدم جاهزية الواقع المصري لحكم الشريعة الإسلامية“ وهو اتجاه قد بدأت بوادره في الظهور مؤخراً عند البعض منهم. لعل في هذه الخلافات دروسًا لأولئك الرموز التي هدمت أو أضعفت كيانها بنفسها لعلها تفيق قبل وقوع كوارث عما قريب.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.]  

“A Look at Egypt's Draft Constitution”
Bassem Sabry says that the second draft of the new constitution resembles a more conservative version of the 1971 constitution.

“Suspect in Libya US mission attack killed in Cairo: Police”
Interior minister claims police raid on an apartment in Nasr City killed a terrorist involved in the attack on the US embassy in Libya.

“Angry mob bars church goers in Beni Suef”
Muslim residents claim Christian women do not follow proper dress code.

“France 24 journalist Sonia Dridi attacked in Tahrir Square”
Another female journalist gets sexually assaulted by the notorious Tahrir crowd.

“Anti-harassment activist 'depressed'”
Despite a number of anti-harassment campaigns, the incident of sexual harassment against women during Eid is still high.

“Hawks and doves: FJP election signals conservative trend”
With the loss of Essam al-Arian to Saad al-Katatny in the Freedom and Justice Party elections, the conservative Muslim Brotherhood leadership strengthened their positions against the reformists.

“Egypt: The Future Awaits”
Tensions in the April 6 Movement rise as some members oppose the group’s decision to continue supporting the new president.

“Ahead of court ruling, Brotherhood invites dialogue on new constitution”
The Muslim Brotherhood call on other political forces to join in a debate over the new constitution, days before the court is scheduled to rule on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.

“Ten liberal, leftist political parties boycott dialogue with president Morsi”
Political forces associated with Mohamed ElBaradei and Hamdeen Sabahi reject the president’s call for a national dialogue, while Abd El-Moneim Abou El-Fotouh joins but criticizes the effort.

“The unbelievers: Post-Alber Saber, more atheists struggle to assert their identity”
A year and a half after the revolution, there is little discussion in Egyptian society about acceptance of atheists.

“Aswan governor resigns after protests”
Activists protested against Governor Mostafa al-Sayed’s connections to the dissolved National Democratic Party.

“Egypt's Constituent Assembly referred to High Constitutional Court”
Constitutional Court has forty-five days to investigate whether the Constituent Assembly is constitutional.

“Okasha found guilty of defaming Morsy, gets four months in prison”
Controversial talk show host gets a prison sentence for insulting the president.

“Brotherhood official resigns to protest Morsy letter to Israeli president”
Ahmed El-Hamrawy calls the letter “national and religious treason.”

“What is at Stake in Egypt’s upcoming Constitution?”
IRIN outlines the most contentious issues in the constitution drafting process.

“Egypt’s Syrian refugees live on the edge”
Egypt’s foreign ministry estimates the number of Syrian refugees to have reached 150,000.

“Has the balance of power shifted within Egyptian political life?”
Farid Zahran sees Egypt’s political scene divided into three main players: former regime, Political Islam and socio-democratic forces.

“Even if there were Martians in #Sinai , it is not an Excuse”
Zenobia comments on the government’s allegations that militants in Sinai are connected to Hizbollah and the Syrian regime.

“Fascism in our new constitution”
Sherif Younis writes that the proposed draft constitution limits citizenship in Egypt to people with predominantly Islamic identity.

In Arabic:

“«الحرية والعدالة» يختار قيادات لمنافسة”
The Freedom and Justice Party start the process of putting together election lists.

“لمن تُقرع أجراسُ الجيش؟”
Khalid Al-Bary discusses what motivated the army to approach the media recently.

“حمدين صباحى يطالب ممثلى القوى المدنية فى "التأسيسية" بالانسحاب”
Hamdeen Sabahy calls on members of the Constituent Assembly to leave their posts and rejects the president’s invitation for national dialogue.

“الحكم يقتل المشروع”
Ibrahim Al-Houdeibi says the Islamic Project is in danger of destruction because of internal disagreements among Islamists.

“بالفيديو.. خلافات واشتباكات بالأيدى حول إمامة الصلاة بين الإخوان والنور فى بورسعيد”
Clashes erupt during the Eid prayer between supporters of Salafi Al-Nour Party and the Muslim Brotherhood in Port Said.

“مبادرة "شُفت تحرش" ترصد حالة تحرش جماعى بميدان التحرير”
An anti-harassment campaign launched during Eid El-Adha to monitor incidence of harassment at Tahrir Square.

“هيكلوا الداخلية أو أرسلوهم إلى المصحة”
Ahmed Tagi criticizes the persistent lack of reform in the interior ministry which leads to the same problems with the police forces in Egypt.  

Recent Jadaliyya articles on Egypt:

نظرة داخل البيت السلفي
Islam Mohamed Abdel-Bari writes about the internal tensions between two ideological groups in the Salafi Al-Nour Party.

Egypt’s Constituent Assembly: Contempt and Counterrevolution
Paul Sedra criticizes the constitution writing process and a recent allotment of state money to promote the draft constitution among the Egyptians.

مقطع من رواية التماسيح
An excerpt of Youssef Rakha’s recent novel Crocodiles.

Currency Crisis in Iran; Copts in Egypt
Paul Sedra speaks on the difficulties the Christian Coptic minority in post-Mubarak Egypt.

 This is a selection of what you might have missed on Jadaliyya last week. It also includes a list of the most read articles.  Progressively, we will be featuring more content on our "Last Week on Jadaliyya" series. 

• ميليشيات الإخوان الإلكترونية: تحميل الأيديولوجيا على الفيسبوك
• Jon Stewart's Theater of the Absurd
• Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Arab Studies Journal on "Cultures of Resistance: The Case of Palestine and Beyond”
• London Event -- The Arab Uprisings: Between Change and Continuity (29 October 2012)
• "من المآسي المضاعفة للنزوح:فتيات سوريات للزواج "بثمن بخس
• Jadaliyya's First Book is Now Available from Pluto Press
• What is a Car Bomb?
• Four Poems by Sargon Boulus
• Letter Concerning Removal of Professor Rula Quawas from Her Post as Dean at the University of Jordan
• Egypt’s Constituent Assembly: Contempt and Counterrevolution
  

• نظرة داخل البيت السلفي
• Letter Concerning Removal of Professor Rula Quawas from Her Post as Dean at the University of Jordan
• Four Arab Artists and Intellectuals Receive 2012 Prince Claus Fund Award
• Dia al-Azzawi's "Sabra and Shatila Massacre"
• سياسة الاستئثار واقتلاع الجذور
• Reports Roundup (October 27)
• Egypt’s Constituent Assembly: Contempt and Counterrevolution
• A Boiling Kettle: Kuwait's Escalating Political Crisis
• Human Rights Organizations Call for Investigation of Migrant Worker Abuse in Lebanon
• Amnesty International Calls for Release of Bahraini Teachers
• New Master of Arts in Middle East and Islamic Studies at George Mason University
• The Syrian Refugee Crisis Intensifies
• Maghreb Media Roundup (October 25)
• المدن الجديدة في الخليج العربي و«الخلل السكاني»
• ملف من الأرشيف :أحمد محمد الخطيب
• Open Letter on Israeli Beverage Company Operating Illegally in Palestine
• مقطع من رواية التماسيح
• Morocco: Restore AFP Reporter's Accreditation
• وردة على قبر سركون بولص
• Currency Crisis in Iran; Copts in Egypt
• Syria Media Roundup (October 25)
• Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Arab Studies Journal on "Cultures of Resistance: The Case of Palestine and Beyond”
• المدينة و«الدفان» في الخليج العربي
• New Texts Out Now: Rikke Hostrup Haugbolle and Francesco Cavatorta, Beyond Ghannouchi: Social Changes and Islamism in Tunisia
• Call for Women's Right to Abortion in Lebanon
• "Community is Based on Justice"
• The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies Announces New Website
• Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (October 23)
• Des trucs, des machins et des choses
• الاستئثار بالسلطة... الفساد الكبير نموذجاً
• New Details of Israel's Gaza Food Consumption "Red Lines" Presentation
• O.I.L. Media Roundup (22 October)
• Egypt Media Roundup (October 22)
• Global Public Health and the Ghosts of Pilgrimages Past
• ‎التغيير قادم إلى دول الخليج... عاجلاً أم آجلاً
• Samiha Al-Khalil: A Profile from the Archives
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (Oct 15-21)
• محكمة جنايات القاهرة وقضية موقعة الجمل
• The North Caucasus: The Challenges of Integration (II), Islam, the Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency
• Four Poems by Sargon Boulus
• London Event -- The Arab Uprisings: Between Change and Continuity (29 October 2012)

As Occupy Wall Street (OWS) celebrates its first anniversary and Arab revolts continue to unfold, it seems a propitious time to ask why the Arab Spring has been such an inspiration for the global left. What was so novel in the occupation of Tahrir square? Do these uprisings signal a new form of political mobilization and protest? Is there, in particular, a philosophy that, despite some differences, unites the Arab Spring and the American Fall?

Some have said that the Arab revolts, which have now touched almost all Arab states, show that a truly combative civil society is back. They are right: The revolts’ spontaneity and grassroots organization displays the counter-power of civil society, of a force operating outside the framework of formal political institutions. However, they often forget to add that this is a civil society very different from the reformist one depicted by western political theorists: it is a civil society in revolt.

In the Arab world, this combative civil society is patently different from the professionalized, liberal civil society that western political theory praised for a long time and that many Western donors sought to promote. Two decades of patronizing Western attempts to create “a vibrant civil society” in order to export democracy and nourish appreciation for free market capitalism vanished in the first days of the revolts: The civil society that combated its own past complacency as much as the regimes in power was a largely spontaneous aggregation of people, rather than a movement led by human rights organizations and NGOs that the most influential donors have selectively funded for decades.

Spontaneous, however, does not mean unprepared. Protestors did not need organizational structures and funding to coalesce. The revolts were by and large leaderless, even if their most active components had from previous protests, and labour strikes in particular, learned to canalize popular resentment. Thus, without knowledge of the history of trade unions in Egypt or Tunisia, one cannot fully grasp the dynamics of the Arab protests. It is worth noting that trade unions had never been favoured recipients of large Western donations and were in fact targeted under neoliberal restructuring programs.  

[Presentism at play: People enact a Tunis Hurrah [free Tunisia]. Image from Tunisian activists on Facebook.]

Spontaneity went hand in hand with new media. But the Arab revolts have taken only a visible form through them, not because of them.  Transnational satellite channels, for instance, facilitated the domino effect of revolts spreading from one country to the other, but we should not mistake the finger for the novel political substance to which it is pointing: a new political language mixing social justice, dignity, and the end of fear in front of ruthless authoritarian regimes.

The soaring prices of basic commodities in late 2010 also helped trigger what were originally bread riots. We should anticipate more such riots, as prices of basic food commodities once again reach January 2011 levels. We must not forget that the Arab uprisings are as much about access to basic food and services as they are about political freedom. Accordingly, much emphasis has been placed on the practice of sharing foods and services in the squares, as we have seen in Tahrir and onward.

Since its Greek inception, direct democracy has been plagued by the dilemma arising from the fact that the participation of some in the deliberations taking place in the public square implied the exclusion of “Others” (e.g., women, slaves) who had to take care of (re)production. The new logic of occupation breaks this vicious circle by making the collective care of basic needs not simply a pre-condition for democracy, but also an expression of democracy itself.

Another specificity of the Arab revolts that seems to have inspired protests in other parts of the world, from the Spanish indignados to Occupy Wall Street (OWS), is the urgency of a renewed sense of citizenship. Even though some elements are particular to the Middle East, where there has been little overlap between the state and the its people, the protests in Arab countries signified a radical break in terms of a new sense of citizenship based on two general revolutionary principles. [1]

The first is the logic of intersectionality and inclusion: People did not protest for their own sake and interests alone. They were unified and willing to assume the attendant risks for other socially vulnerable segments of society. Women and youth were ubiquitous in the protests. People expressed their willingness to defend different classes and minorities. Hence, there was a high level of national identification (think of the national flags displayed everywhere) throughout the Arab countries, something that Western commentators have mistakenly presented as traditional nationalism. 

The second is what we can call “presentism,” that is, the attempt to reclaim the present time and refuse the alienation of a jobless future and bleak political prospects. Presentism is a philosophy that stresses the priority of the present as well as a method of deliberation and dialogue chosen by the people occupying public squares: action is here and now, no deferral is acceptable. As a consequence, such an attitude, which places human dignity at the heart of the protests, points to the fact that re-presentation as a political method has largely failed to convey the urgency of the people’s demands. The counter-revolutionary strategies are visible precisely in their attempt to   prevent the intersectionality of the demands to emerge, and to kill the pace of political change. It is not by coincidence that monarchies of Morocco and Jordan have specifically invoked slow and steady reforms to try to allay revolts spreading to their countries. Other regimes have nipped in the bud the outburst of presentism by conjuring external threats (e.g. Bahrain) or paternalistically accusing protestors of immaturity (e.g. Egypt during Mubarak’s final days). 

This philosophy of the present, according to proclamations on the official OWS website, also inspired the occupations that began in September 2011 in New York City and soon spread all over the United States and Europe. Despite the crucial differences between the two strands of political protests, significant convergences emerged.

Similar to the Arab revolts, OWS has been a spontaneous and leaderless movement. Unions and other sectors of traditional civil society certainly played an important role, but the logic of organization has not been dictated by them. Instead, this organization has been horizontal and network-like, as opposed to the hierarchical and vertical structure of traditional parties and organized interests. Absence of leadership does not however mean lack of organization, but rather the existence of a different logic of organization made possible by new media. New web-based technologies, such as Facebook and Twitter, enable bodies to move in an urban space according to a logic that is both spontaneous and dictated by actual possibilities on the ground.

Yet, spontaneity does not mean lack of a project or a vision: Occupation is both the means and the end of the movement. A political event can be revolutionary with regards to its means, ends, or effects. OWS is revolutionary in all of these aspects. The means were revolutionary: tents, food, and humor, instead of guns--quite unusual for an occupation. Sure, those means were not new in themselves, going back at least to the civil rights struggle, but what was new was their association with the notion of occupation. Employing symbolic means, protestors occupied a square symbol of Wall Street, a virtual space that is, in turn, also just a symbol of contemporary capitalism. As such, they occupied a symbol of a symbol of a symbol. Herein, perhaps, lies their difference from the Arab revolts for which the symbolic dimension was overshadowed by the political urgency of overthrowing autocracy and dictatorship.

Again, however, the use of symbolic means does not imply that OWS has no precise political project. The symbolic nature of the revolt does not indicate a lack, but rather an abundance: occupation itself is the revolutionary end. Revolutionary precisely because it turns the logic of occupation, with its military smell of death, into the constructive practice of a democracy aimed at sustaining life. Hence, as in the case of the Arab revolts, the centrality of needs was from the very beginning coupled with the practice of taking care of them in a collectively shared space.

One of the most significant consequences of the term “Arab Spring” has been the evocation of a constructed timeline that placed the protests in the North Africa and the Middle East within a limited spectrum of time and space. The desire to enforce problematic nominal labels produces a narrative that shapes the way certain events are understood and discussed. The result is the acceptance of what is or is not considered legitimate dissent and the denial or reduction of historically embedded forces that continue to shape realities in the Middle East and North Africa.

Since last year, Noam Chomsky has argued that the so-called “Arab Spring” did not begin in Tunisia, but rather, it began in the Western Sahara. Chomsky slips into a dangerous framework that assumes the ongoing events in the region can be marked with a beginning, and an inevitable end that many have attempted to impose from Morocco to Yemen.

In several media appearances, Chomsky pointed to the October 2010 protests in Gdeim Izik as the beginning of the “Arab Spring.” Moroccan security forces brutally repressed the protests, resulting in the death of eleven people, and several hundred others were injured. If the “Arab Spring” refers to the recent wave of popular uprisings throughout the region, rooted in socioeconomic grievances and the opposition to authoritarianism, placing the Western Saharan struggle on this spectrum is dismissive of a long history.

The Western Saharan struggle, while also comprised of socioeconomic grievances and a desire for political freedoms, dates back to the mid-twentieth century and grew out of a colonial context, involving territorial disputes that have continued to last into today. It was entrenched in the Cold War politics that fueled many conflicts throughout the world. Moreover, placing the Western Saharan struggle at the forefront of the so-called “Arab Spring” dismisses the focal point of the conflict, which has for decades been a fight for self-determination. The matter of self-determination is an aspect of the struggle that cannot be categorized under the generalizations of what the “Arab Spring” narrative assumes: that the protests, uprisings, and movements in the Middle East and North Africa emerged from a vacuum and that they can all be labeled as a collective phenomenon with a common goal and shared outcomes.

What the use of the term “Arab Spring” does is allow for these sweeping generalizations that deny the presence and role of powerful actors and forces that heavily contributed to the sustenance of institutions being protested against today. Moreover, the term itself perpetuates an understanding of the region that does not necessarily deviate from the orientalist literature that views the region as a monolithic blob. Even when there are clear differences, such as the uprisings and protest movements that overthrew dictators in some countries and forced regimes in others into reforming—these uprisings and protests movements that continue to develop in varying ways with varying demands exhibit pluralism and diversity that are lost in the term “Arab Spring.” It becomes a term that imposes a particular narrative unrepresentative of the realities on the ground. It also becomes a term that sustains the very forces being opposed in these uprisings and protest movements.

It was Michel Foucault who aptly debated Chomsky on a similar point regarding the use of terms constructed by and within the dominant power structures of society during their 1971 debate:

“You cannot prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realization of the essence of the human being, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilization, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and that one cannot, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should—and shall in principal—overthrow the fundamentals of our society.”

[This post was originally published on الشرقية في الغرب]

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Arabian Peninsula and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Arabian Peninsula Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to ap@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.]

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani’s Historic Visit to Gaza

Emir of Qatar begins historic Gaza visit Harriet Sherwood describes the first visit paid by a head of state to Gaza in more than five years and Qatar’s investment in the Hamas-controlled enclave, in The Guardian. 

Qatari emir urges Palestinian unity A news report on the Qatari royal visit to Gaza, on Al-Jazeera English.

Gaza and Qatar: Bringing gifts to the Holy Land An article on the royal visit and Qatar’s investment program in Gaza, in The Economist.

Qatar’s foray into Gaza politics: Bad for Iran, good for Israel? Max Fisher analyzes the regional implication of the Qatari emir’s visit to Gaza, in The Washington Post.

Qatari emir’s visit to Gaza is a boost for Hamas Ian Black and Harriet Sherwood argue that the royal visit constitutes a political victory to Hamas, in The Guardian.

Hamas hails diplomatic victory: Cheering crowds greet Emir of Qatar as he becomes first foreign head of state to visit Gaza since group seized power Catrina Stewart reports on the arrival of the Qatari emir in Gaza.

Qatar emir in landmark trip to Gaza Simeon Kerr and Vita Bekker report on the Qatari royal visit, in Financial Times.

Thank you, Qatar! Rami Khrais maintains the Qatari royal visit represents both a political and humanitarian gesture that sets it apart from other humanitarian projects in Gaza, on Al-Akhbar English.

Reports and Opinions

UAE Political Islamists Are Not ‘Human Rights Defenders’ Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi argues against the depiction of political Islamists as human rights activists in the West, and characterizes them as xenophobic, racist and sectarian, on Al-Monitor.

UAE Authorities Step Up Smear Campaign against Political Prisoners A press release issued by the Emirates Centre for Human Rights condemning the Emirates Human Rights Association’s portrayal of the treatment of political prisoner in the Gulf state.

Saudi Arabia’s secret Arab Spring Kevin Sullivan describes the protests in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province as a sectarian uprising despite his acknowledgement that the protesters are demanding basic rights, in The Washington Post and The Independent.

Can law firms with offices in Saudi Arabia take women’s rights seriously? Laura Paddison argues international law firms with offices in Riyadh are more concerned with lucrative business than with gender equality, in The Guardian.

Building a Yemeni state while losing a nation Silvana Toska argues that official discourse on dialogue does not reflect genuine inclusion, in Foreign Affairs.
 
Protests and the Election Law in Kuwait

Kuwaiti democracy: A desert flower wilts An article on the political crisis over the election law in the so-called most democratic Gulf state, in The Economist.

Kuwait bans gatherings of more than 20 after street clashes Martin Chulov reports on the recent banning of public gatherings in the Gulf state, in The Guardian.

Kuwait Seaside Protest Kept at Bay Yazan al-Saadi examines the implication of “The March of the Dignity of the Homeland” for both the government and the opposition, on Al-Akhbar English.

A Roadmap to Kuwait’s Dignity March Mona Kareem provides a political background to “The March of the Dignity of the Homeland,” on Al-Akhbar English.

Repression in Bahrain

Beneath Bahrain’s Shia-versus-Sunni narrative, only the tyrants benefit Maryam al-Khawaja writes a critique of the sectarian discourse on the protests in Bahrain, in The Guardian.

Bahrain policeman dies from protest injuries A news report on the death of a policeman from injuries sustained in April, on Al-Jazeera English.

Urban Landscapes in Mecca and Medina

The Changing Face of Mecca A photo article on the changes in the urban landscape in Mecca documented by artist Ahmed Mater, in Foreign Policy.

Why don’t more Muslim speak out against the wanton destruction of Mecca’s holy sites Jerome Taylor criticizes the silence on the destruction of historical buildings in Mecca, in The Independent.

Medina: Saudis take a bulldozer to Islam’s history Jerome Taylor writes on the demolition of historical monuments to build a colossal mosque in Medina, in The Independent.

What have they done to my hajj? Ajmal Masroor laments the commercialization of hajj and the destruction of Mecca’s history and heritage, in The Guardian.

Human Rights Watch

UAE: EU Condemns Emirates Rights Climate A report on a resolution condemning human rights abuses adopted by the European Union despite pressures from the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia: Stop Prosecuting Peaceful Protesters A statement by the organization condemning the harsh treatments meted out to Saudi protesters.

Education

U.A.E. Moves Toward Paperless Classrooms Sara Hamdan writes on the transformation of classrooms and texts through the use of technology as an academic tool in the Gulf state, in The New York Times.

Arabic

[This is Part 2 of “As Syria Falls.” Part 1 can be accessed here]

Amid the mounting and tragic violence, loss of life, and loss of Syria, it seems difficult to write about history and causes. Yet it is equally difficult to write critically about the current chaos, precisely because of the information gap. One also wonders, what can be said about Syria anymore? In this vein, and following the despair in the first part of this article, I retreat to the basics, to what we think we know a little better. in the first part, i addressed what I called "Stubborn Factors" that animate the uprising, and discussed the complexity of the Syrian case with an eye on its regional role. Here, I address some structural causes of the uprising. The next and final post will address the question of sectarianism.

3. Some Structural Causes of the Syrian Uprising

A methodological note on causality is in order.

Most serious treatments of this topic—those based on long-term historical and analytical engagement with developments in Syria—will remain inadequate, including this one. The first objective is to evade the outlandish treatments (those proceeding from some idiosyncratic political or cultural essence) and monist treatments (those that reduce outcomes to one variable). The second objective is to recognize the limits of our ability as informed analysts in pinning down the right mixture of weighted variables in explaining such outcomes. But explanatory despair should not be the takeaway from these precautions. The trick is to refine the conversation on the question of causes, with time. Revolutions, or uprisings, are not a science—even according to Political Scientists! But we surely can do much better than the outlandish and the monist.

My first task is to disembody the notion of the “Middle East” or even the “Arab World,” as we often unintentionally speak of the uprisings across the region in monolithic terms. We usually receive a steady explanatory diet with either generic “economic” arguments about poverty or unemployment, or with arguments about intolerance of decades of authoritarian rule. Little attention is given to the interaction between political and economic variables, and even less attention is given to the particularities of every case and their political-economic trajectories. Even when we do have a nuanced analysis, we forget that having the necessary ingredients has not been sufficient to produce the kind of mass mobilization that we are now associating with revolutions and uprisings. Focusing too much on structure without recognizing agency and its role in making people go to the streets and fight bullets with their bodies (at first, that is) is like watching the right ingredients of a particular recipe lying around the kitchen table, with no meal in sight. In short, there is much that cannot be predicted, to the chagrin of social scientists. Hence, the advice for analytical modesty.

In the Syrian case, facile and essentially inadequate arguments often take the form of the old and tired “sectarianism” or “sectarian rule” argument, where the Alawite minority is pitted against the Sunni majority—and usually without much mention of history and legacy of interaction prior to the coming to power of the Ba`th Party. Even more sophisticated arguments that recognize the inadequacy of the “sectarianism” narrative fail to indicate that almost half of Syrian society is itself comprised of minorities of sorts. Finally, in the Syrian case in particular, the question of Syria’s regional role and “resistance to imperialism” credentials is vexing on two opposite fronts: first, it is introduced by some to blur or mar the anti-authoritarianism protests in favor of regional and international issues that may or may not impinge on the very raison d’être of the uprisings; on the other hand, those oblivious to such nationalist credentials (which do exist, and reasonable analysts can debate their extent), or those who stand opposed to what such credentials stand for, proceed as though what goes on in Syria is unrelated to the existence and policies of equally unsavory actors nearby and beyond, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States. 

All the above—the generic political, economic, and communal arguments, or the “resistance” factor—often form an amorphous explanatory lens through which the battle on the ground is interpreted. In most narratives, we end up focusing on symptoms rather than tangible causes that instigated the confrontation—for the post-initial period has taken a life of its own. It is true that regional and international interference clouds the domestic setting and often alters the “conflict,” but such factors should be integrated into the analysis to reveal the complexity of the Syrian case, and should not simply replace or hijack the essential narrative of causes for the uprising. If the external forces lined up against the Syrian regime are problematic, it does not mean that the original anti-regime sentiment is problematic: if the goals of overthrowing the regime are aligned, the motives do not have to be so. And this is a major part of the current dilemma, political, analytical, and humanitarian. 

Separating the Immediate from the Structural

One way out of this politico-analytical web is to separate the two tasks into two less messy questions: 1) What caused the uprising? And 2) What perpetuates the uprising? The answers are different. The first deals primarily with local factors and the second with a combination of factors tilting to external ones. 

Even in dealing with the first question of causes, we must separate the structural from the circumstantial, by separating between the large structural reservoir of causes that built over time and the immediate causes that instigated social mobilization on a large scale in Syria terms. Herein, I will address the question of structural causes. On the one hand, I have alluded to the second question under the above title “The Evident Complexity of the Syrian Case” (in Part 1), though a more detailed treatment is necessary elsewhere or by someone else. On the other hand, the question of what instigated the uprising is less complex, and merits a detailed treatment once more information is available, though the facts are not too controversial. Inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian experiences just one to two months prior, the narrative of the young kids who called for the regime’s fall on the walls of their school in Der`a constituted the first flame that ignited the heap of hay accumulating for decades. Surely, the local strongmen’s brutal response guaranteed the wider mobilization there at first, but it was bound to happen after a few such dissenting attempts. The same incident, if occurred one year prior, would have fizzled out within days, if not less. However, the regional domino effect and the continuing collective focus on the broader context gave that incident prominence while changing the calculus of individuals vis-à-vis the risk and potential success of taking to the streets en mass, especially in the more rural areas and small towns. The rest is bloody history. 

Highlighting the Spinal Cord of Structural Causes

The set of structural causes that I would like to highlight, beyond the constant factor of repression, relate to political-economic factors that have engulfed Syria since 1986, when the regime effectively began shifting its social and political alliances from labor to business. Namely, I am referring to the growing relationship in the past few decades between the political and economic elite in Syria, and its continued policy implications for nearly 25 years. This new nexus of power pervades most global political economies but produces deleterious effects to the extent that the context allows. In many developing countries, including Syria, it is associated with the protracted process related to the unraveling of the state-centered economy, which also constitute the rolling back of redistributive policies on which the masses increasingly relied in the absence of economic growth. I must caution in the same breath against the emphasis on such factors as singular causes for the uprisings, in Syria or elsewhere. Instead, I address this factor as a central, not the only, one. Thus, this cannot be a comprehensive account of structural causes.

Politically, the new nexus of power between the political and economic elite in Syria seems to have buttressed authoritarian rule in Syria over the past two decades, whether or not other factors contributed to this outcome. This is not simply a function of “support” for the status quo by beneficiary elites, for this is the norm nearly everywhere. It is also a form of legitimation of a changing status quo because the corollary of this particular nexus of power involves various forms of “liberalization” or state retreat: this includes a “budding,” “growing,” or seemingly “vibrant” civil society that may be considered a sign of political “opening;” a “freer” economic environment in which the state gives up its monopoly over some sectors of the economy; and a large “private” sector that purportedly grows at the expense of the state-run “public” sector, giving way to a broader dispersion of resources with economically democratizing effects. Though these outcomes are pleasing to some external actors (including that amorphous conception, “the international community”), they are not felt in any positive manner by the overwhelming majority of the population, who must fend for themselves as public provisions, jobs, and welfare dwindle. Quite the contrary, the majority of the Syrian people have seen their fortunes decline with the deepening of this alliance between state and big business since the mid 1980s. 

Economic Policy, Economic Structure, and Social Impact

The apparent social effects of the new elitism and the policies they engendered are even deeper, affect the lives of most Syrians, and were all too clear before January 2011. Discussed elsewhere in greater detail, the impact of this alliance had a tremendous polarizing effect on Syrian society, one that approaches, if not matches, the pre-Ba`th era. The effects proceeded at three levels: economic policies, economic structure, and social impact.

It is not too challenging to demonstrate that the policies supported by this new nexus of power are responsible for unduly removing or destroying various forms of social safety nets (e.g. welfare, subsidies, job provisions) that kept populations afloat or barely above water for decades. If these provisions were not removed altogether then either their quality has deteriorated significantly (e.g., health, education) or rations have shrunk (e.g., bread, flower, sugar). Such drastic changes contributed to two dangerously related phenomena: first, increasing poverty (including absolute poverty) and thus social polarization, whereby societies are increasingly losing their middle classes; and second, economic exclusion from the “market,” a phenomenon contributing to a dramatic increase of the informal sector, or those who are functioning, and living, almost completely outside the market, most of whom inhabit rural areas, small towns, and smaller cities. 

Meanwhile regime policies that emphasized the growth of the “private” sector by providing investors with privileges, distinctions, and exemptions did so without exacting reciprocity in practice in terms of added value, employment, and exports. More important is that the most lucrative new economic opportunities were monopolized by regime loyalists, relatives, or partners, all part of the same state-business networks that developed in the 1970s and 1980s and matured in the 1990s. The striking proximity of policy makers to policy takers made rent-seeking and structural corruption extremely efficient, producing a plethora of tailored policies that weakened, fragmented, and taxed the national economy.     

The broader societal impact was hard-felt in some important sectors. The incremental—and not so incremental—goring of workers’ and labor interests in the private and public sectors is another outcome that can be easily traceable to policies and political decisions associated with the new elitism. The shifting of effective alliances from labor to business was part and parcel of the unraveling of state-centered economies. Rights, rules, and regulations increasingly favored business at the expense of labor as time went by, starting in the 1970s (officially or unofficially). Trade/peasant unions and labor organizations were co-opted around that time by corporatist authoritarian systems of representation, but continued to enjoy some privileges. It is true that the political elite started this process of shifting alliances and privileging capital long before business actors became prominent, but the sort of change that took place in the past three decades years has a different character. Earlier, such stripping of labor rights was considered a function of problematic authoritarian arbitrariness, something that is frowned upon socially and viewed as a departure from a social (developmental) contract of sorts. More recently, and before the wave of protests and revolts, the incremental stripping away of labor rights was carried out in the name of “investment” and “growth.” 

The ideological context in times gone by was one of a socialist-nationalist coloring that provided a basis for judgment and norms. Hence, social polarization, poverty, and developmental exclusion were considered “wrong” and unacceptable. Today, such disturbing effects have become the new norm, a means to a “better” future, a legitimate station along the way to prosperity and efficiency. All such designations were short-circuited by the uprisings, but it is too early to sound the death-knell for growth formulas that are zero-sum in character. In some, it was this “positive”-sounding narrative of the new policies that camouflaged the deep discontent and resentment among the essentially voiceless.

Perhaps most significant were the developmental implications of a new elitism that vehemently emphasized urban development (at the expense of the neglected countryside and its modes of production) and non-productive economic activity, characterized primarily by consumption. The increase in shares of the tourism and service sectors at the expense of manufacturing and agricultural production (associated with land re-reform laws and other regulations) produced different kinds of needs in society. For instance, there was significantly less need for skilled labor, and the educational systems and institutions that would be required to train skilled labor. 

Whatever emerged in terms of the “new economy” and information technology fields lagged far behind other countries, was too small and too underdeveloped to substitute for losses in other sectors, and was certainly not competitive internationally. Employment of hundreds of thousands of yearly new entrants became increasingly a pipe-dream, pushing masses of disenfranchised youth to oblivion and circumstance. 

An interjectory note is in order, even if unrelated to “policy.” Since 2003, Syria has experienced an unprecedented drought that caused the internal migration of more than 1.2 million people, by conservative estimates. Tens of thousands of families migrated to the cities where they joined the ranks of the unemployed, especially in smaller towns/provinces like Der`a, Idlib, Homs, and elsewhere. This displacement exacerbated discontent on all those affected, directly and indirectly, and increased the social and regional polarization to levels Syria had not seen since the middle of the last century. Though this was a natural disaster, government’s chronic poor planning and mismanagement of water resources since the 1990s was one opportunity cost of the myriad of polarizing policies pursued during the same period.

The problem of development is not simply about rules and markets and will not be resolved as such. Nor is the panacea of “democracy” sufficient to treat the basic ills. Whatever else is at work, the most egregious problems stem from various and continuing forms of political and economic disempowerment and denial of self-determination at the individual and collective levels. Most of these problems were/are being exacerbated by a new nexus of power that was as unrelenting as it is/was essentially unchallenged (depending on the case). This new elitism and the policies that came with it were not the only source of discontent and dissent, but a guarantee that they will fester if alternative agencies, institutions, and social contracts do not develop, even under changed regimes. For our purposes here, we cannot underestimate the contribution of these resultant social effects on the structural reservoir that fueled the uprising’s origins, notably in the rural areas and small towns. 

In the next post, I will address the thorny issue of sectarianism and sectarian arguments in relation to the Syrian uprising.

One of the challenges of studying technology is learning how to deconstruct the tools from the political ideologies held by those who develop them. As Timothy Mitchell explains in his book on Colonising Egypt, the practice of science and systems of ordering national standards are modern projects that enable governments to maintain discipline and surveillance. A cog in the colonial project, the science of documenting every political act reflects a “tendency of disciplinary mechanisms, as Michel Foucault has called these modern strategies of control, was not to expect and dissipate as before, but to infiltrate, and colonise.”[1]

In this article, I will discuss a set of research methodologies that emerge at the intersection of both cultural and technical analytics in the fields of digital humanities and new media studies.[2] This analytic approach is born out of the contemporary, socio-historical moment as we face new scales of information that demand machinated computation and political influences on our cultural practices that are systematic, transnational, and mobile. I will also summarize the limitations of this new media approach compared to other methods of media analysis.  Given these challenges, how can we frame new cultural insights that we glean from the deployment of such methods? How can they act as a means of understanding contemporary media culture? 

My first objective is to provide some historical context for the growing interest in the analytic properties of social media content. I argue that the stock of “primary data,” though not determinant, is important in the process of conducting nuanced cultural analyses. I consider the work of data visualizations, especially in relationship to the stock of primary data (actual tweets, status posts, etc).

My second objective is to argue for the importance of paying attention to the specific language of the stock of primary “social media” data. In my work, I focus specifically on the use of Arabic online. Of course, there is the cultural moment of what the United States calls “The Arab Spring.” But most analyses of this so-called “social media” revolution had not taken into consideration the analysis of the meaning of actual Arabic language use. After harvesting and analyzing Twitter posts for more than three years (2008-2012), I became aware that the use of Arabic language online was steadily rising.[3] Hence, by presenting this work, I hope we can come closer to identifying and addressing the gaps in the textual analysis of digital information on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 

Fig 1. These weighted averages indicate a high level of Arabic tweets on Egypt since 2010. [Run your mouse over the graph to display comparative values]

Short Genealogy of Cultural Analytics

Within an already emergent field of digital humanities and new media studies, cultural analytics is a methodology employed by few and deliberated on by far fewer. There are virtually no peer-reviewed essays, nor any books on this approach to date. There are only a couple of significant publications on cultural analytics including – a blog post by Kurt Ralske and an interview by Kevin Franklin and Karen Rodrigues. Aside from these, what remains are just references to new media work by a handful of artists, and perhaps most famously, a proposal for funding by well-known new media theorist Lev Manovich where he outlines his vision in this trajectory.

It is no secret that cultural analytics, as defined and practiced by Manovich, grew out of a large National Endowment for the Humanities grant. In an interview he gave on the topic, Manovich said, “[my] idea of cultural analytics is related to the NEH Digital Humanities Initiative recently announced ‘Humanities High-Performance Computing’ (HHPC) initiative, but there are some important differences.”[4] In the interview Manovich went on to distinguish his methods from a previously NEH funded initiative in several ways: (1) he is not interested in “past cultures (the traditional domain of humanities), but in contemporary cultural areas;” (2) while others have focused on text, “he plans to focus on visual media;” and (3) “building on the exciting work in visualization done today both by scientists and by artists and designers, I want to use this work as an interface for computational analysis.”[5] Like database-driven publishing platforms such as Vectors journal and Scalar whose aim is to produce digital scholarship, the tool developed in this research project, ImagePlot, similarly aims to visualize collections of images and video of any size for the production of digital scholarship, specifically in the field of visual arts and culture.

While one of the intentions of Manovich’s project in cultural analytics is to create an interdisciplinary interface/tool, the focus of his work is firmly rooted in the humanities where the research receives its funding. Yet, a lack of balance between interpretive debate and technological production of the research flattens the significance in his analyses. For example, one of his early projects, One Million Manga Pages, produced groundbreaking visualizations of millions of Japanese manga pages that were collected from an online scanlation site: OneManga.com. However, the analysis presented did not provide much more information about the history of manga’s in Japan, nor the significance of this digital copying phenomenon in growing fan culture, or attempt semantic analysis of the these comics.

And this is where I believe more contextual analysis combined with computer analytics can provide scholarship that produces studies in both context and genealogy, while remaining able to analyze the digital structure itself across its “reproducibility” and “spreadability.” In circumstances and conditions where technical and formal restraints make rhetorical rigor and evocative description challenging, I suggest the alteration of preexisting forms of presentation and/or generating new forms.

Just a few days ago, Manovich published a nuanced reading of social media that builds on his earlier work. In his latest piece, “Data stream, database, timeline (part 1),” he described a shift from analyzing databases to analyzing data streams. “I want to suggest that in social media, as it developed until now (2004-2012), database no longer rules. Instead, social media brings forward a new form: a data stream. Instead of browsing or searching a collection of objects, a user experiences the continuous flow of events,” argues Manovich.[6] And though I do not necessarily adhere to the same scope and definition of analyzing large-scales of cultural data as Manovich does, I do agree that his pioneering efforts are critical as we move forward into progressively greater scales media production.

I caution future researchers to remain mindful of checks and balances between contributions by culture theorists and technologists. In his article on the subject titled “What is Cultural Analytics?” Kurt Ralske offers a description may be seen as an imposition of the scientific method onto the humanities, implying that quantitative analyses can provide more accurate, meaningful, and insightful commentary than qualitative analysis.

He writes:

Meaningful measurements can be developed to help describe the qualities of a work, which may be invoked to support a theoretical position. For example: one can reasonably theorize that, ‘the films of director Michelangelo Antonioni are slower than those of Frederico Fellini.’ Cultural analytic techniques could verify this hypothesis conclusively, and even provide a specific metric to quantify the exact difference in speed between the oeuvres of the two directors.[7]

This overt bias overlooks the cultural nuances of human expression and decontextualizes data, thereby endangering the accuracy of the analysis and strongly biasing the results. I argue that such methodological bias renders the quantitative approach equally subjective as the qualitative. It may be useful to note that several quantitative methods of media analysis, have failed in interesting ways that offers valuable insight through practice-based research. In fact, the gross inaccuracies themselves have led to new findings about using old methods of analyses on streams of social media content.

Identity and Sentiment Analysis

One example of an interesting failure in sentiment analysis occurred over a year ago in Cairo. In preparation for a conference at the American University in Cairo in June 2011,[8] I prepared sentiment analyses (English and Arabic tweets separately) on Egyptian likey presidential candidates based on a month of Twitter posts that included the hashtags: #Jan25 and #Egypt. Abdel Moneim Abou El-Fotouh, Hisham Bastawisi, and Amr Moussa were among the candidates who remained in the race through the first round, while candidates who were referenced in larger volumes of posts, such as Mohamed el-Baradei and Naguib Sawiris, dropped out earlier.

While the volume of tweets on each candidate is a precise representation of the data sampled, the accuracy of the sentiment values in these graphs remains questionable. The same technical process to determine sentiment was implemented in these charts on the English language tweets within the sample data where presidential candidate Mortada Mansour came out with a 100% positive sentiment. Anyone who had been following the Egyptian media scene knew such a statistic was wildly inaccurate since Mansour was both a notorious, controversial character and was perceived by the majority of Egyptians as a buffoon. Since most of the positive sentiment expressed in tweets reflected positive expressions about Mansour in jest or parody, the tool and process used to determine sentiment clearly failed to detect sarcasm and tonality.

Since then, I have developed my research with R-Shief.org to find new methods to analyze sentiment. Using its immense lexicon system, R-Shief is embarking on a project to crowdsource sentiment, semantic, and dialect tags in Arabic to extend the localization of semantic tools in a free and open source model in 2013. By then, R-Shief plans to provide a semantic open source API for Arabic as a critical building block and tool for networking and analysis in Arabic online.

Fig 2. This sentiment analysis was conducted on English tweets posted in June 2011 with the
hashtag #Jan25. The size of the bubbles represents the volume of tweets.

As I heard Edward Tufte aptly say in a keynote address on data visualizations: “you will always find what you are looking for.”[9] In Figure 2, I went looking for public sentiment and found it. However, the results indicated that method of research was blind to important semantic context. At that point I returned to exploring the landscape of social media, not through an aggregated set of procedures or tools that required a top-down approach, but through a more intuitive sense of “knowledge discovery” while building new tools and documenting what I find along the way.

One of the most timely and comprehensive research efforts to study the impact of social media, specifically on the Arab world, comes from the Dubai School of Government where they have published three series in their first volumes of their Arab Social Report in January, May, and November 2011. In their first report on “Facebook Usage: Factors and Analysis,” Racha Mourtada and Fadi Salem provide nineteen informative charts about the demography of Facebook users, and a breakdown of usage across the Middle East and North Africa by country. They sample data from April 22 to December 21, 2010 from Facebook Data team. This top-down approach to data mining allows you to find the answers you are looking for—the usage of Facebook by male or female gender, age groups, and nation states. However, these ways to breakdown identity leave no room for hybridity and shifting identities.

By the time Mourtada and Salemey write the third in the series, “The Role of Social Media in Arab Women’s Empowerment,” they start discussing netizens in more detail. However, the analytic approach to their data sets is unable to account for transnational netizens, nor for those who do not already fit into the predetermined categories. Each of their charts provide demographic breakdown by country.

In the second report in the series, “Civic Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter” (Mourtada, Salem, May 2011), Twitter analytics are introduced and build upon the previous Facebook research. It seems more apparent in the second publication that their intention is to make sense of Twitter by recoding it into geo-located information. With a sample of about 10,000,000 tweets and among 190,000 Twitter users, “estimating the size of a Twitter population was a simple two-step process: capture a number of samples (or «sweeps») of users from each country, and use a mark-recapture based technique to compute a population estimate."[10] The double step of recoding is a bit of work to make sure the data is expressed in terms of nation states and populations.

Comparatively, a similar study conducted in 2011 footnotes: “Outside Country” refers to Twitter profiles that had locations outside both the country and the region, and “No location” refers to profiles that either had no location data or had been deleted or suspended since archiving began. The blue bar indicates the period in which journalists began reporting that protests had reached the level of “thousands” of participants.

Another publication on digital media is a 31-page report by the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) on “Digital Media in the Arab World: One Year After the Revolutions.” The author, Jeffrey Ghannam, conducts his research through a series of “35 interviews in person, by telephone, e-mail, and Skype: primary and secondary documents; commentaries; websites; blogs, and other sources.”[11] At the end of his overly optimistic report, Ghannam concluded that “social media’s potential represents the brightest hope for the greater freedom of expression in the Arab region, enabling tens of millions of people, and ultimately many more, to actively pursue civic engagement, free and fair elections, political accountability, the eradication of corruption, as well as free, independent, and pluralistic media in a rapidly changing media environment.”[12] It seems to me to be glaring, but I cannot give much weight to an investigation on “digital” media that does not even employ any analysis of the primary stock of digital information. It is like publishing on France without knowing French. His choice of interviewing 35 key individuals, in my opinion, does not speak to the scale of the research question he poses. It also negatively reinforces the very top-down authority structures that these revolutions resist.

Cultural Research in the Petabyte Age

In 2008, WIRED magazine recounted the history of digital computation (2008):

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. Welcome to the Petabyte Age. The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to—and, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies. At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics.[13]

The Petabyte Age calls for an entirely different approach to cultural research. This approach requires us to stop thinking about data as something that can be visualized in its totality. Instead, it requires us to understand the data mathematically first, and only later can we begin to ask questions about context: people/place/time of data production. Let me explain what I mean by this.

In order to produce a database, bits of information are algorithmically processed and fitted into a database structure that enables the data to be “read.” This initial computational processing does not do much to account for the context of the production of the originary information. Basically, it might tell us about the patterns of information but very little about the meaning of this information.

When researching social media, for example, parameters such as time stamping or geolocation [14] offer pointers to the context of initial production, but in creating the database, the virtual bits are dramatically decontextualized. The database creation process simply cannot easily record the salient conditions of the production of the elements. Walter Benjamin might say that the “aura” of the data is unrecordable.

For this reason, I would argue that social media platforms—such as Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr—do not indeed capture social context. Although they are “authored” by those who are part of the literate world and disseminated to the world through the Internet, the data from these social media are strangely bloodless. And if this is the case, then the question remains: what do these community practices and technological affordances capture?

By the end of first decade of the 21st century, we have clearly moved from the world of “new” media to a world of “more” media. When we reached 2011 and the Egyptian revolution—which many hailed as the revolution brought about by Facebook—the ubiquity of computers, digital media software, and computer networks had led to an exponential rise in the numbers of cultural producers worldwide. No longer simply a matter of the rise of new media production in new global contexts, these social media platforms served as the database architectures for the accumulation of data on a scale heretofore unknown. With the dramatic increase in the scale and scope of data-making—where the data now takes shape as “tweets,” “likes,” “status updates,” and “shared links”—it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to understand the relationship between the production of data and original social contexts. In short, I argue that this shift in data production makes it difficult to truly understand global cultural developments and dynamics in any substantial detail using 20th century theoretical tools and methods. 

Fig 3. Network analysis of 500,000 tweets on #Syria by 60,000 users over 23 days in November 2011. Color key: 59% Arabic (Green), 30% English (Blue), 2.25% Hindi (Gold), 1.6% French (Red), .7% Urdu (Purple) and .6% Finnish. Everything else (Farsi, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) is less than .5%. Conducted by R-Shief, Inc.

Visualizing the “Now”

Philosophical underpinnings to the nature of a virtual world are neither new nor revelatory; nor does this argument purport that the “what” that is being expressed online in the digital world is necessarily representative of what happens on the ground. In places like Egypt where literacy rates only reach 66%,[15] analyses of Internet penetration bear less weight.[16] However, elements of the virtual become actualized under unique, local, temporal conditions that cannot be predicted. They only happen in the “now.” Approaching this logic from a visual arts lens, as Laura Marks does in her book, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art, she traces new media art along a unique historiography of Islamic thought from the birth of the algorithm in ninth century Iraq through fifteenth century Islamic mysticism and neoplatonism, or “beginnings of virtual reality.” One of the critical points Marks builds upon is a notion of events in time as unique and foldable, and therefore, transformative. Taking it one step further, similarly, Kant’s 19th century notion of the “sublime” event can be transformative. For an event to be transformative, it relies on unpredictable conditions. In other words, the act of Bouazizi lighting himself on fire in Tunisia was as sublime as it was horrible. The data visualizations below seek to illustrate and improve our understanding of the sensibilities and cultural logic(s) that are being expressed by the people on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.

 

Fig 4. Network visualization of tweets on #Egypt and
#Syria during July 2011. Conducted by R-Shief, Inc.

Rosetta Stones from Cyberspace (Fig. 3 and 4) and the mosaics (Fig. 5 and 6) are sets of images created by writing computer code. These images represent the immense and unwieldy social media activity during the month of July 2011. They draw upon one of the most rare and comprehensive archives of social media content from the Arab revolutions—R-Shief.org. This growing repository urgently seeks to critique historical information on the contemporary Arab world—information currently under siege, in real time and place.

I have been collecting and organizing content from all over the Internet in Arabic and English since 2008 (added Persian, French, German, Spanish in 2011, and soon Urdu)—this project is about archive. And then the revolutions began. As the revolutions and intifadas (Arabic for “uprising) spread throughout the Arab World, R-Shief’s technology was immediately employed to capacity. The sheer speed and size of this substance is necessarily remarkable. My intent to offer a new perspective on the microcosms within macrocosms of this world, somewhat unfinished, and unknowable—to bring these complex representations of movements of millions/billions of people with many leaders together in a way that allows one to experience through the senses what cannot be processed cognitively/rationally.

The image mosaics are a series of images created by writing computer code. They represent the immense and unwieldy social media activity from 2011 to 2012. Figure 5, “Riot Smoke,” is comprised of profile thumbnails from the top 987 Twitter users contributing posts on the hashtags #abbasseya #abasiya #abassiya and Flickr photos with the same keywords “Abassiyya.” The original photograph was taken by Jonathan Rashad, which he makes available on his Flickr stream under creative commons licensing. The caption reads: “6230 Riot CS Smoke, produced by US-based firm 'Combined Tactical Systems'. Used by police-backed 'thugs' on May 2 against protesters in Abbasiya near Egypt's Ministry of Defense.”[17]

Fig. 5. Created by VJ Um Amel, 2012. [Large view].

In Figure 6: “Walk Like an Egyptian,” I gathered profile thumbnails from the top 1,199 members contributing to the Facebook page, "We are all Khaled Said," from January 2011 to February 2012. (Facebook analyzed using R-Shief's tools.) Applying procedural techniques to manipulate color, chroma, luminosity, scale, opacity, direction, of this large scale of information, I composited the thumbnail images to imitate the popular meme of the man holding up a sign that reads, “Kefeya” (the Arabic word for “Enough”).

These are expressively artistic interpretations of particular moments. The theoretical form of these visual expressions is intentional—one signal image is never the totality of the moment. Instead, such iconic images come to stand for an infinite number of visual memories, some recorded, most not. The use of the mosaic mode of “assemblage” is intended to capture this notion of the infinite, reiterative algorithmic form of any single visual expression.

These mosaics demonstrate yet another layer of encoding and decoding of the data. In response to the fetishizing of technology, or data, or the Arab “Spring,” they represent a secret world of code in an abstract, algorithmic aesthetic, blown up and situated in and out of time. The mosaic images are not literal representations of this body of text; they are a stand in, a metonym for it. Thus, the aesthetics of the work I am proposing also trace back to choices made while creating the archive—understanding not only the text within the archive, but that the archive itself is a text is also imperative.

Fig 6. Created by VJ Um Amel, 2012. [Large view].

“What does all this mean?”

Though many people are positively intrigued by this digital arts-based research, they are often left with questions and repeatedly ask me—What does all this mean? Can you pinpoint people and predict events? By the summer of 2011, it had become clear to me that the fetishization of data had consumed many researchers to the detriment of the substance of what was being communicated, and the phenomena being investigated and described. What I am tempted to resist are overzealous prejudiced arguments that overstate the value of quantitative objectivity and accuracy to an extent that rhetorical indicators are flattened and there is no longer room for critical interventions.

In a Foucauldian sense,[18] the project of archiving tweets, posts, and comments became about recording traces of the genealogy in the online media—username of who posted, profile picture of user, various user settings (including language, gender, age, etc), when posted, latitude/longitude from where posted (with permission), from which server posted, which device was used, the tags of post, the title of post, the subtitle of post, and eventually the post itself. My contributions to the cultural production stem from an amalgamation of R-Shief’s database material and visual making through the processes of design, animation, illustration, compositing, lighting, performance, and programming. In the end, what is produced from this technologically-based art practice is editing the multitude of fragments intersecting over time—remixing the data stream.

Rather than attempting the impossible task of understanding the totality of what Arabic speakers are producing online—this archival process collects modest percentages of data and from within defines scopes of analysis. In other terms, then, discontinuity is a bifurcation, a switch from one virtual pattern to another. Critical research and artistic practices are all tied up together—they inform each other. I am suggesting an interdisciplinary approach to questioning and learning that incorporates an art research methodology. Research is the praxis of systematic critical reflection that focuses on compelling questions. And these questions can only be investigated when we unsettle the very tools we use to examine them.

Footnotes

[1] Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 35.
[2] Technology studied outside of the sciences must also face a fear among many academicians. As Franklin and Rodriguez introduce their argument, “Hypertext. Hypermedia. High Performance Computing." It's enough to make a humanities scholar hyperventilate. A debate has raged in the last decade (at least) about whether or not the Digital Age will see the death of The Book, The Library and perhaps, The Humanities more broadly.” Franklin and Rodriguez.
[3] For example in one month alone (April 2012), more than 80% of the tweets that used the English-language hashtags #Tahrir and #Jan 25 were written in Arabic.  More than 95% of tweets using related Arabic hashtags were written in Arabic. 
[4]Franklin, Kevin D. and Karen Rodriguez, “The Next Big Thing in Humanities,  Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics,” HPC Wire, July 29, 2008. 
[5] Ibid.
[6] Manovich, Lev. “Data stream, database, timeline (part 1).” October 27, 2012. http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2012/10/data-stream-database-timeline-new.html
[7] Ralske, Kurt. “What is Cultural Analytics?” July 2010.
[8] At the American University of Cairo’s Access to Knowledge for Development Center’s annual conference, I presented sentiment analysis I created using IBM tools through research under USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.
[9] In September 2011, Edward Tufte gave the keynote address at the Tech@State conference on Data Visualization.
[10] Mourtada, Racha and Fadi Salem.  (May 2011). Civil Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter. The Arab Social Media Report. Dubai School of Government. Vol. 1,  No. 2.
[11] Ghannam, Jeffrey. (28 March 2012). Digital Media in the Arab World: One Year After the Revolutions. A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Anderson, Chris. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired Magazine. June 23, 2008.
[14] A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself. And geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal. However, when it comes to Twitter, less than 1.5% of all users allow geolocation to be active on their devices.
[15] According to UNICEF’s statistics by country, the total adult literacy rate (%), 2005-2010 in Egypt is 66%.
[16]  According to Social Bakers, among Internet users in Egypt, the total number of FB users is reaching 10.7 million, which translates into a Facebook penetration rate of 13.26%.
[17] http://www.flickr.com/photos/drumzo/7144575985/in/photostream
[18] In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault attempts to define a method of historical analysis that is free from the formations of knowledge making. This debate on structuralism is aimed to question teleologies and cultural totalities…in the histories of ideas, science, philosophy, thought, and literature, the focus is on different types of ruptures and discontinuities, of "transformations that serve as new foundations."

Bibliography

Franklin, Kevin D. and Karen Rodriguez, "The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics,” HPC Wire, July 29, 2008.

Ghannam, Jeffrey. (28 March 2012). Digital Media in the Arab World: One Year After the Revolutions. A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke University Press, 1991).

Manovich, Lev. "Cultural Analytics: Analysis And Visualization Of Large Cultural Data Sets." A Proposal From Software Studies Initiative @ Calit2, September 30, 2007.

Manovich, Lev. “Data stream, database, timeline (part 1).”

Marks, Laura U. Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (2010). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Mitchell, Timothy. Colonising Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Mourtada, Racha and Fadi Salem. (May 2011). Civil Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter. The Arab Social Media Report. Dubai School of Government. Vol. 1, No. 2.

Mourtada, Racha and Fadi Salem. (January 2011). Facebook Usage: Factors and Analysis. The Arab Social Media Report. Dubai School of Government. Vol.1 No.1.

Mourtada, Racha and Fadi Salem. (November 2011). The Role of Social Media in Arab Women’s Empowerment. The Arab Social Media Report. Dubai School of Government. Vol. 1, No. 3.

Pang, B., & Lee, L. (2008). “Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis. Foundations and Trends” in Information Retrieval, 2(1-2), 1-135.

Ralske, Kurt. “What is Cultural Analytics?”  http://retnull.com/index.php?/on-cultural-analytics, July 2010.

Tufte, Edward. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy (1974). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Since January 2011, the Jordanian political scene has been significantly affected by the waves of change in the region collectively known as “the Arab Spring.” Emboldened by regional events, some fear barriers have been broken in Jordan as political and labor activists throughout the country have taken to the streets demanding greater governmental accountability, an end to neoliberal economic policies and economic corruption, and political representation.

Jordanian labor activism expanded exponentially in 2011. In 2011 alone, Jordan Labor Watch, an initiative of the Phenix Center for Economics and Informatics Studies, documented over 800 labor actions. Significant developments on the labor front actually began as early as 2006, but labor actions and activism have been propelled and emboldened by the new political climate in the region, a climate which has forced the Jordanian regime to cede greater public space and broaden parameters for political dissent. The scale of current labor actions is unprecedented with workers from just about every sector, with the exception of public security forces, engaged in some sort of labor protest—from teachers, to bank employees, to public imams, to workers in the phosphate and potassium industries, to university employees, to journalists, to taxi drivers, to publically employed nurses and doctors.

In addition to labor activism, after several months of almost weekly protests in the capital city of Amman, new political reform movements began emerging across the country. Although many of the protests of these self-professed “popular youth movements” have been small, they have been regular and geographically diverse, occurring in parts of the country frequently characterized as the regime’s traditional base of support. The Muslim Brotherhood, as the oldest and most organized opposition, continues to be a central actor in these developments, forming coalitions with some of these recently emerged movements (or, from another perspective, co-opting other opposition groups).

Some of the key political issues that the majority of reformers have coalesced around are electoral reform and limiting the power of the monarch to both appoint governments and dismiss parliament. In other words, opposition groups have demanded that the king should no longer appoint the government but rather, the elected majority in parliament should form the government. These demands are linked to broader discussions about limiting the power of the monarch and even demands for constitutional monarchy. In addition, political opposition groups have all demanded a halt to the interference of intelligence and security apparatuses in public life, and freedom of association and expression. Again much of this is undergirded by broad based anger at the extent of official corruption.

These developments have coincided with a burgeoning of independent online news sites and various forms of internet activism. Examples of the former include Ammannet.net, Ayanews.com, Sawaleif.com, 7iber.com, Khaberni.com, Ammonnews.net, Aramram.com (an Arabic-language web television program), Kharabeesh (a comedic Arabic-language animated cartoon production group that frequently discusses political issues), and Bathbayakha.com (a comedic Arabic-language web television program that often features political satire and critique), among many more. The latter are mainly youth-driven online activities such as those on blogs, videosharing platforms, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as privately-owned websites and forums). Both sets of online sources offer a relatively free platform for critique and debate. Though they existed before 2011, they have noticeably increased in both their numbers and the range of topics treated. This has been a result of recent economic and political developments. 

The internet enables many Jordanians—and particularly Jordanian youth—to vent and to share their experiences and frustrations. However, concern is growing that Jordan’s active cyber community will soon face a fate not unlike the country’s strictly monitored print press industry, mainly as a result of recently passed amendments to the 1998 Press and Publications Law.

Changing Regime Responses to Jordanian Opposition Movements

As political establishments were challenged from Tunisia to Yemen in 2011, it appeared as if the Jordanian regime’s first response was to sit back and let events unfold, allowing citizens to let off steam in the hopes that the relatively small protests would eventually dissipate. King Abdullah II has also repeatedly dismissed governments that he himself has appointed (four since January 2011) and delayed the implementation of some price increases that have been at the center of popular grievances. Then, in August 2011, the regime unveiled more than forty proposed constitutional amendments that it said would address the demands of reformists. In general, however, opposition groups have argued that these changes are not sufficient, do little to curtail the monarchy’s power, and fail to respond to the demands of the leading and steadily growing opposition movements. Alongside these measures, security officials have attempted to use their “powers of persuasion” to pressure activists to desist from pro-reform activities. For example, some activists have been offered bribes to desist with activities. Alternatively, others have been faced with threats of job loss – their own jobs or the jobs of their family members.

The regime also has employed more repressive tactics against protestors and opposition figures. One of the most violent incidents occurred in March 2011 when darak forces, as well as “pro-regime” protestors, attacked peaceful demonstrators at the Ministry of Interior Circle (duwwar al-dakhliyye) in Amman. The resulting clashes led to one death and close to a hundred injuries. Following this confrontation, so-called “regime supporters” began appearing at demonstrations and political marches with increasing regularity. In many instances, these “regime supporters” have attacked protestors, as well as local and international journalists covering protests, earning them the label “baltajiyye,” or thugs amongst opposition groups.

The regime security apparatuses have been particularly intolerant of any perceived breach of red lines related to direct criticism of the king and the royal Hashemite family. For example, a young man who burnt a picture of the king was arrested in Madaba. A group of protestors in Amman were arrested for reportedly calling for the removal of the king. However, persistent and blatant criticism of the regime has noticeably grown, not only in political protests but also in the daily discourse of Jordanians.

Throughout these events, journalists, online activists (many using social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter), and bloggers have been repeatedly targeted with repression and even direct violence. Between February and July 2011 alone, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported seventy attacks on journalists and news stations. These included some physical attacks on journalists committed by security officials or unidentified individuals, sometimes under the watch of police and security.

In July 2011, at least fifteen Jordanian and international journalists were beaten by security officials while covering a large demonstration in downtown Amman. This occurred after members of the press were asked by public security officials to wear orange reflective vests, purportedly for their protection – a move journalists said made them identifiable and vulnerable targets.

Some bloggers have been individually targeted with Internet hacking and other means of intimidation. In 2011, a masked assailant stabbed a young female blogger after she published a blog post responding to Prince Hassan’s derogatory comments about protestors. Also last year, the Ammonnews website was hacked after it posted a letter that contained thinly veiled critiques of the regime and royal family, written by thirty-six Jordanians from prominent families, referred to in Jordan as the “Group of 36.” In 2012, the editor of the online news site Gerasa was arrested for running a story in which a member of parliament claimed that the king directly interceded to prevent the investigation of a corruption case from going forward in parliament. Attempts to intimidate and censure journalists still occur relatively unabated, as indicated in a recent report by the local Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists.

Over the past several months, the regime appears to be making a more systematic effort to quell protests and criticism, as authorities cast an even wider net to contain insult to the regime. Alongside the arrest of over fifteen political activists in September 2011[1], the more recent move to censor the internet is particularly ominous.  

Extending Press Censorship to Jordan’s Vibrant Cyberworld

In August 2012, the Jordanian government approved controversial draft amendments to the 1998 Press and Publications Law that will have significant repercussions for online blogs, independent news sites, and social media in Jordan.  

While Jordan’s Press and Publications Law has been amended several times since it was first passed more than a decade ago, the most recently passed amendments introduce major restrictions for “electronic publications.” The law now broadly defines an electronic publication as “a website with an electronic address on the worldwide web that offers publication services including news, reports, investigations, articles, and comments” relevant to the kingdom’s internal and external affairs.

The newest series of amendments to the law’s Article 49 requires any electronic publication to register with the Ministry of Commerce and obtain a license from the Ministry of Culture’s Press and Publications Department. Registration and licensing require time and large fees (estimated to be about 1,000 Jordanian dinars, just above $1,400 US dollars), imposing new obstacles for independent bloggers and webpage managers.

Moreover, revisions to Articles 48 and 49 delegate to the Press and Publications Department the authority to block websites and close their offices if they are unlicensed or deemed to publish “defamatory” content. The Press and Publications Department can carry out these punitive acts without obtaining a court order, although affected parties can appeal the decision in the Supreme Court of Justice. 

Many Jordanians are especially baffled by changes to Article 49, which make the owner, editor-in-chief, and director of an electronic publication responsible for monitoring comments that independent users post on their website. Under the amended article, those responsible individuals are mandated to prevent the appearance of user comments that “contain information or facts unrelated to the news item,” include unverified information, or violate any other restrictive clauses in the amended Press and Publications Law.

A History of Press Censorship in Jordan

Jordan’s print media have been strictly monitored and censored by an array of governmental bodies for more than a decade, but this was not always the case. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as part of a broader governmental liberalization trend under former King Hussein, the Jordanian government tolerated the creation of dozens of new newspapers. Many of these privately owned newspapers flourished and attracted a large local readership, mainly because they covered sensitive and taboo topics, such as corruption cases, that government-owned newspapers typically avoided. 

The Jordanian government enacted a new press law in 1993 that, though far from perfect, guaranteed an individual’s right to independently own and publish newspapers. The law also allowed citizens to challenge governmental decisions that they felt infringed on press freedoms. Perhaps most significantly, the 1993 press law for the first time in Jordanian history prohibited the government from suspending or shutting down independent newspapers. However, the age that this relatively liberal media law ushered in was short-lived. 

In 1997, controversy erupted when the government imposed a temporary law (i.e., a law passed by the government and signed by the king when the parliament was not in session)[2] introducing new press censorship measures. Enforcement of this temporary law led to the suspension of several leading privately owned newspapers. Many journalists and other citizens organized demonstrations against these actions, and most of these protests were violently dispelled by police. 

The Jordanian Press Association initially dissolved itself in protest of the 1997 temporary law, but reversed its resignation after two weeks when it became clear that the government would quell any opposition to the new press restrictions. More significantly, five independent weekly papers filed a lawsuit to challenge the law. Against many policymakers’ predictions, the High Court of Justice ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, stating that no verifiable state of emergency warranted the government to change the 1993 press law in such a manner.[3] Meanwhile, various government officials were already writing an alternate draft law, incorporating many clauses and principles of the temporary law. The “Press and Publications Law,” which many critics dubbed “The Prohibition and Publications Law,” was fiercely debated but ultimately passed and ratified by Prince Hassan in September 1998.   

The 1998 Press and Publications Law is frequently criticized for including elastic provisions that can be arbitrarily interpreted and applied by the Jordanian government. In brief, the law criminalizes defamation—which it defines as libel and slander against individuals, governmental institutions, symbols, and religions—in print publications. The law also authorizes the Jordanian government to impose exorbitant fines for publishing material that it deems defamatory. With the broadly defined libel provisions that were introduced in 1998, the potential repercussions of running afoul to the Jordanian regime were greatly augmented. Consequently, most editors and journalists in Jordan (particularly in independent media) have adopted principles of self-censorship out of fear of government reprisal. Furthermore, the 1998 law states that journalists must belong to the Jordan Press Association to legally work in their profession. Unsurprisingly, those journalists who are critical of government policies are often excluded from membership and thus put out of work. 

Unfulfilled Hopes for Press Liberalization

In 1999, hopes were high that the new monarch, King Abdullah II, would follow through on his promise to liberalize press laws. Indeed King Abdullah II held a series of meetings with press union officials and journalists in the first months of his reign and spoke favorably of press law reform. In a meeting with representatives of the Jordanian Press Association concerning the introduction of press reforms, King Abdullah II infamously stated, “The sky is the limit for press freedoms in the kingdom.” However, significant reforms have failed to materialize. Last year, the Freedom House rated Jordan’s press as “not free,” and the country fared marginally better as “partly free” on the “Freedom on the Net” index.

Even before the Arab uprisings began to pose serious challenges to long-standing regimes across the region, Jordanian politicians such as former Prime Minister Samir al-Rifai singled out the country’s active cyberspace for new censorship measures. In 2010, the Jordanian government introduced a Cyber Crimes Law and temporarily blocked access to dozens of privately owned websites, stirring considerable controversy.

As a result of intense pressure from both the international community and Jordanian civil society, the Jordanian government dropped some of the law’s most controversial provisions, including one allowing police to search online media outlets’ facilities without a warrant. The government also significantly revised clauses that ambiguously defined what would constitute defamatory speech. The Cyber Crimes Law was modified to state that those who publish and disseminate information about issues that were not already available to the public could be penalized. Although this clarification of what constitutes “defamation” in electronic publications is still far from ideal for ICT professionals and online journalists, this event shows that the convergence of concerted public and international pressure can persuade the Jordanian government to modify and adopt less restrictive press laws. 

Jordan’s Transition from Print to Online Media

Prior to the advent of online journalism, the two main government-owned newspaper dailies (al-Rai and al-Dustur) as well as state television programming dominated the news scene. Partly owned by private investors, the newspapers are semi-official in ownership but are largely considered to be official in their reporting. Interestingly enough, this “official” status was challenged in the spring of 2011 when major growth in labor activism spilled over into the field of journalism. Journalists at both of these semi-official newspapers held sit-ins and partial strikes for the first time in their history in February and March 2011. Initially, newspaper employees’ demands focused on increased salaries. However, their agenda eventually expanded to include an end to the interference of intelligence officials in the day-to-day editorial decisions of the newspapers. Thus, what began as a strike about wages grew to include calls for increased press freedoms.

Although the protestors gained some victories in terms of new ownership, editorial leadership, and increases in pay, freedom for these publications remains restricted. In early October 2012, Ahmed al-Zu’bi—a columnist with al-Rai whose work often contains mild satirical critiques of the Jordanian government—announced he was not going to write his regular column for one day to protest the censoring of recent columns that he has written.

In many respects, however, the real challenge to the official discourse comes from new sources of media that are independent of government controls. These media are almost entirely internet-based. A large and quickly growing proportion of Jordan’s total population—estimated at approximately 6.6 million—seeks alternative information via a multiplicity of online news sources currently available to all Internet users. For example, a survey conducted in 2009 found that 50% of Jordanians were reading news online. More than one hundred independent news sites, some of which are registered abroad, have been created in recent years. They offer a plethora of viewpoints. Many of these websites permit unmitigated discussion via comment features that often grow into the type of animated debate that is absent from government-controlled newspapers.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that the government’s most recent efforts to reign in protest are aimed at controlling online media. In recent months, after some Jordanian community activists began calling for the censorship of pornography sites on the Internet, the regime floated the idea of censoring the Internet on moral grounds. However, the new amendments to the 1998 Press and Publications Law are clearly designed to have a much broader reach than the restriction of sexual content, with serious repercussions for online media. 

[This graphic has been widely circulated by Internet activists. Referring to the recent Press Law amendments, it says: “It begins with blocking websites under moral pretexts. Then it develops to blocking websites under security pretexts. Then it comes to the function of blocking websites under political pretexts. Then it comes to function [of censoring] you.” The phrase in the box is the last line from a fable about a lion and four bulls (or three bulls depending on which version). When the bulls fail to stand together in the face of the lion, and betray each other, each is eaten in turn. When only one bull is left, the lion says “I will eat you.” The bull replies, “I was eaten the day you ate the white bull (i.e., the first to be eaten after his fellow bulls sacrificed him hoping to be spared). Image from 7oryanet.com]

Protest Against Recent Press Law Amendments

In August 2012, the regime announced its intensions to amend the Press and Publications Law under the pretense of censoring immoral websites. Once the substance of these amendments became known, web managers and online activists began mobilizing awareness campaigns. 

On August 29, a group calling itself 7oryanet (Freedom Net) organized an internet blackout campaign in which more than five-hundred Jordanian online news and social media websites participated. These websites went black, displaying only the following: “You may be deprived of the content of this site under the amendments of the Jordanian Press and Publications Law and the governmental Internet censorship.”

[Screen image for websites participating in internet blackout campaign.]

In response to governmental claims that the Jordanian people need censorship to ensure that only “moral” content is available to the public, another group created a Facebook group called “I Know How to Protect Myself -- Censoring the Internet is Not the Government’s Job (Business).” Numerous journalists and online media figures have also staged protests in front of Parliament. Extensive critique and commentary was circulated online in an attempt to rally domestic and international opposition to the amendments and prevent their passage.

Despite this opposition, the amendments were passed by the Parliament on 11 September 2012. Forty of the sixty-nine MPs present voted in favor. The king officially approved the amendments on 17 September, but protests continue. 

The Jordanian Press Association (JPA) has organized a “protest tent” in which journalists stage a sit-in on a daily basis. On 9 October, representatives of the JPA discussed the possibility of taking their case to the new constitutional court. However, the provisions for this new court will make this difficult, given that only government bodies have access to that court. 7oryanet also has posted links to a manual on how to avoid state censorship. It remains to be seen whether groups like 7oryanet and the JPA can have any impact on what now appears to be a done deal. In a move to organize themselves to address such laws, journalists working for on-line news sites announced in mid-October 2012 their intention to form an independent union. 

Issues of Enforcement and Economy

Although the situation is quite grim in terms of Internet freedoms in Jordan at the moment, the regime may face obstacles in actually enforcing the amendments. There is speculation about the degree to which the measures will be enforced, and some observers speculate that the amendments were passed primarily to pressure website maintainers into self-censorship. 

In over nearly a decade, Jordan has built a reputation as one of the region’s ICT capitals, and this may curtail the government’s ability to rein in Internet speech. The Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union estimates that Jordan hosts nearly seventy-five percent of all Arabic-only Internet content in the world, leading the ICT industry to dub Amman “Silicon Wadi” (meaning “Silicon Valley” in Arabic).

Unofficial unemployment figures are above thirty percent and Jordan’s steadily growing ICT sector crucially employees more than 16,000 individuals, generating 12.1% of Jordan’s GDP. The tightening restrictions on web-based media are likely to threaten Jordan’s ICT competitiveness in the region and generate even higher unemployment. So much for becoming an ICT hub.

ICT investors will think twice before putting their money in a market where web managers will likely have to walk a fine line to avoid incurring major punitive measures that would endanger their organization’s or company’s online operations. Successful start-ups and ICT companies that are currently based in Amman may move their offices to other Arab cities where online press laws are less restrictive, such as Dubai. 

Beyond the potential economic repercussions, the new press law is clearly designed to reign in dissent. Whether it can achieve this goal remains to be seen.

[Left Image: "No to censoriing websites." Right Image: 7oryanet logo. Images from 7oryanet.com]
 

Since we first launched our New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) page a little more than a year ago,  we have had the opportunity to feature an astonishing range of books and articles for Jadaliyya readers. With authors generously agreeing to discuss their new works, offer background information on their research, and allow us to post excerpts from their books and articles, we have been able to offer first looks at some of the most important new work in the field, from established names and rising stars alike.

This seemed like an opportune moment to look back at the previous year and offer a review of some of the most significant work that has been featured in NEWTON. This is work that spans disciplines, regions, and methodological and theoretical approaches. We offer it for scholars working in the field, as well as teachers and students looking for recently published sources in Middle East Studies.

As always, if you wish to recommend a book to be featured in New Texts Out Now, or if you have just published a book or a peer-reviewed article, please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com.

Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao, Women’s Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent

Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, “Between Nationalism and Women’s Rights: The Kurdish Women’s Movement in Iraq”

Paul Amar, “Middle East Masculinity Studies: Discourses of ‘Men in Crisis,’ Industries of Gender in Revolution”

Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance

Julie A. Carlson and Elisabeth Weber, Speaking About Torture

Ayça Çubukçu, “On Cosmopolitan Occupations: The Case of the World Tribunal on Iraq”

Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism

Rochelle Davis, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced

Stephen Day, Regionalism and Rebellion in Yemen: A Troubled Union

Hilal Elver, The Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion

Nergis Ertürk, Grammatology and Literary Modernity in Turkey

Belén Fernández, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work

Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915

Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States

Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North

Karima Khalil, Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution

Roger Owen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement

Zakia Salime, Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco

Joseph Sassoon, Saddam Hussein’s Ba’th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime

Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation

Joshua Stacher, Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria

Shahla Talebi, Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran

Saadia Toor, The State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan

The Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs and United Nations Legal Counsel, Patricia O Brien, recently addressed the American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting at the University of Georgia School of Law. In her representative capacity, O’Brien dedicated her luncheon remarks to a discussion about the still-developing concept of responsibility to protect. (She contributed the full remarks as an IntLawGrrls post.)

Also known by its shorthand abbreviation, R2P, the doctrine of responsibility to protect suggests that sovereignty is not a privilege that shields states from accountability, rather, in addition to international privileges, sovereignty entails responsibility towards a state's population. It gained increased media and diplomatic attention during the Libyan uprising, when states deliberated whether or not to use armed force to suppress regime violence directed at civilians. Proponents of humanitarian intervention prevailed, and as IntLawGrrls posts have chronicled, the rest is history.

O’Brien characterized the intervention as a “successful” exercise that marked another step in the evisceration of the “barricade of sovereignty.” In fairness, she also highlighted that moving forward in situations that implicate the concept of R2P, “sober judgment is needed before undertaking any operation which places civilians at risk.” Her overall assessment, however, did not adequately deal with the details of the Libyan intervention that may mute enthusiasm for similar operations in the future. 

She did not dwell, for example, on the critique that the NATO operation far exceeded its UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorization to prevent a massacre in Benghazi and became a campaign explicitly aimed at regime change. She quickly dismissed criticism of NATO’s alleged criminal violations, by citing a UN Report that hardly acquitted the North Atlantic armed forces of significant wrongdoing. Nor did she address the substantial backlash by African nations, whom supported the Libyan operation for politically expedient reasons, but quickly redoubled their efforts to assert the inviolability of African sovereignty.

O’Brien’s account captures certain critical aspects of the Libyan uprising and the international community’s response to it. However, I think it is only one side of the argument and overlooks important facts and consequences that should be considered today in similar discussions about Syria, which the UN Legal Counsel went on to discuss. 

O’Brien’s account captures certain critical aspects of the Libyan Uprising and the international community’s response to it. However, I think it is only one side of the argument and overlooks important facts and consequences that should be considered today in similar discussions about Syria, which the UN Legal Counsel went on to discuss.  The Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011 and which the Red Cross has declared a civil war, has taken the lives of an estimated 20-30,000 people. That the situation merits international attention and vigor is an understatement. The problem, however, is the particular form of this international attention.

O’Brien does not provide a prescription for the situation in Syria. She simply makes clear that “the Syrian authorities have disregarded their responsibilities,” and that the international community must find ways to “stop the violence.” She leaves for question how to do that but emphasizes that the Security Council must take “collective action in a timely and decisive manner” as part of the R2P doctrine. The vagueness of these comments, together with the discussion of the Libyan intervention, leaves open to interpretation whether human rights practitioners and diplomats should consider humanitarian intervention in Syria. 

For the sake of adding clarity and to address the implicit suggestions made by the open-ended nature of O’Brien’s comments, I want to highlight why Syria is not like Libya, why intervention in Libya remains controversial, and how that should shape our thinking around what can and should be done to stop the violence there. In particular, we should consider why intervention in Syria, similar to the collective action taken in Libya, is inappropriate:

• Syria, unlike Libya, is not constituted of vast swaths of sparsely populated land. To the contrary, it is densely populated and relatively small.
• Unlike Libya, Syria is not surrounded by regimes happy to see it fall. Its survival, or lack thereof, implicates regional and international relations in a myriad of significant ways, i.e., the conflict involves the question of Palestine, the question of resistance involving the Syria-Iran-Hizballah axis, the question of balance of power in the region involving Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the opposing camp, and the question of international forces that are attempting to leverage their power in a changing region – including the United States, European countries, Russia, and China.
• Also, unlike Libya’s opposition, which was at least nominally united as a single body within the National Transition Council, the opposition’s local military wing – the Free Syrian Army – and the principal political opposition outside Syria – the Syrian National Council – are not united as a single body. Moreover, the internal opposition, now comprising some two hundred factions, is fragmented and some groups within harbor goals that are fundamentally antithetical to others. They adopt methods that mirror the regime's brutality and some of these factions are wholly or partially comprised of foreign fighters with no roots in Syrian society On whose behalf will the international community intervene? Which civilians will be spared and which will be labeled as legitimate targets for their ongoing support of, and involvement with, the Syrian regime?

Most significantly, while no one can disagree with O’Brien’s sweeping assertion that the “violence must be stopped,” this raises questions about the particular kind of violence with which we are taking issue, and whether or not intervention, for example, has the capacity to stop it. 

Consider that between the beginning of the Libyan uprising and the passage of Resolution 1973, approximately 1-2,000 civilians were killed. By the end of the NATO bombing campaign, 30-50,000 lives had been lost. This number pales in comparison to the casualties among its Arab counterparts whose regimes were similarly overthrown i.e., Tunisia – 338; Egypt – 846; Yemen – 2,000.

Moreover, due to the heavy militarization of Libyan opposition groups, today violence, and the struggle for power more specifically, continue to characterize the Libyan landscape. While intervention may stem violence meted out by the Syrian authorities, it is almost certain that it will not stop the violence altogether – that will continue to subsume Syria in its aftermath. 

This in no way is meant to make equal the violence meted out by regime and opposition forces. The state has responsibilities and duties to protect its civilians, duties that make it morally more culpable in all instances. That does not diminish, however, the shortsightedness of applying cookie-cutter prescriptions, in this case forceful intervention, to the Syrian conflict. While O’Brien did not explicitly advocate for intervention, the open-ended nature of her comments together with her characterization of the Libyan operation left intervention as a viable possibility in the minds of her audience.

My critique is meant to temper such persuasions for intervention, if they indeed exist, and to appeal for more constructive and nuanced responses. The well-being of Syria, its people, the Arab region, and humanity writ large is dependent on the care we take to address a crisis we failed to prevent in the first place, and have the potential to make much worse.

[This piece was originally posted on IntLawGrrls]

As much as images of violence, civil war, and sectarian strife become prominent in the media narrative of the Syrian uprising, little gems of innovative cultural production, artistic resistance, and creative disobedience continue to sprout across the virtual alleys of the Internet. These creative gems are also the germs of a viral peer-production process at work at a grassroots level in the new Syrian public sphere. Such acts of creativity—mash-ups, cartoons, slogans, jokes, songs, and web series---are probably too small and inconsistent in impact compared to the horrific magnificence that shelling, bombing, sniping, and killing scenes that provide daily fodder to global television viewers. It is also challenging to discover them; in fact, as remarked by Tunisian blogger Sami ben Gharbia at the Arab Bloggers meeting in Tunis (3-6 October 2011), Facebook is not the most suitable platform for activists to store, archive, tag, search for content, and give it a context.

Facebook`s chaotic flow of people’s relationships enmeshed with information and updates probably matches the mess and instability of Syrians’ daily life, but clashes with standard media routines made up of practices like tracking original sources, archiving, and planning schedules. From time to time, these daily exercises of creativity manage to find their way out of the Internet overflow and get noticed, analyzed, and framed in a broader discussion, usually centered on art and dissent in a time of unrest.

Since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, my attention was caught by one of these creative works, namely an advertising poster. The poster started as a regime-backed advertising campaign and then took the unexpected shape of viral peer-produced work, still being shared and re-manipulated by users more than a year after its creation. The outdoor campaign, which started just a few weeks after the first demonstration hit the center of Damascus on 15 March, was clearly aimed at restoring order in the streets and discouraging people from participating in further protests. Billboards featured a raised hand declaring: “whether progressive or conservative, I am with the law,” “whether girl or boy, I am with the law,” and other similar slogans, all matched with multi-colored, raised hands. At some point, with all these colored hands raised everywhere in public spaces, cities had a sort of Orwellian atmosphere, a sort of “Big Brother” watching citizens and reminding them to comply with the law.

Soon thereafter, parodies of these posters started mushrooming in cyberspace. Depicting the very same raised colored hand, each virtual poster carried a different slogan. “I am free,” said one raised hand on a Facebook group.

["I am Free" Uncredited Image from Facebook]

“I lost my shoes” echoed another---suggesting that the shoes had been thrown at the dictator, a way to express scorn and dissent in the Arab world. “I am not Indian,” joked another poster, meaning “I am not stupid”, “you cannot fool me.” By answering “I am not Indian” to the “I am with the law” poster, citizens were using a colloquial, ironic – and rather racist—saying to re-affirm their “Syrianness.” Syrians didn`t want to be fooled as if they were foreigners in their own country; being very much aware that the regime had exclusive control over the formal meaning of “law” and “lawlessness.”

["I am not Indian" Uncredited Image from Facebook]

At some point, probably after realizing the problematic nature of the word “law” —and the ambiguous relationship between ruler and ruled that it entailed in the country – the campaign was re-designed to reflect a more neutral, sober form.

This time, the raised hand simply said: “I am with Syria.” The colors used were those of the Syrian national flag—red, white, black, and green—and the slogan declared: “my demands are your demands.” It was probably safer to try to win citizens’ hearts and minds by appealing to a middle-way, a generic form of “nationalism,” as if all the Syrian people’s demands would have to be exactly the same.

In a way, the “I am with the law” raised hands campaign’s switch to a generic “I am with Syria” slogan could have been a direct response to the “I am not Indian” poster which invited the advertiser —and the ruler — to re-frame the issue in the direction of a shared “Syrian” common ground. Yet the new, more accommodating campaign registered another novel wave of user-generated responses over the Internet, and beyond the virtual spaces. Armed with a marker (and probably at nighttime), some citizens took the courage to descend from the virtual alleys of Facebook to the real streets of Syria. They deleted the second half of the slogan—“my demands are your demands”—and changed it into: “my demands are freedom.”

[Modified billboard reads "My Demand is Freedom." Uncredited image from Facebook]

When I present this witty example of Syrian user-generated creativity at conferences or public talks, I usually get two different types of comments. The first praises this category of creative acts as the tangible signal that the “wall of fear” has been broken and that Syrians are now able to express their opinions freely, hitting back at the regime with multi-sided messages of their own. The second type of comments, beyond admiring the creativity behind this user-generated counter-campaign, dismiss it as too small and insignificant to challenge the regime at a political level. This type of criticism also deems user-generated creativity irrelevant to counterbalance industrially-produced forms of arts and culture, like television fiction (the well-known musalsalat), whose regime-tolerated content and messages reach a much wider audience than any viral campaign online. Here both comments are focused on the content of user generated creativity, whether in its political or artistic dimension. However, by doing that, they miss its context, i.e. the environment where this creativity is generated and the relations it entails.

Instead, I argue we should rather analyze the context of the Syrian user-generated creativity in order to understand what this implies and reveals, on both political and artistic dimensions, i.e. the existence of a pro-active citizenship movement comprised of peer-creators who are able to manipulate regime-backed messages and re-inject them into public space.

In this perspective, Syrian user-generated creativity is a victim of what American scholar and Internet expert Clay Shirky (2010) calls “the milkshake mistake.” Shirky refers to an American researcher who, when asked to study consumers’ habits vis-a-vis milkshakes, decided to focus exclusively on the social behaviors of the purchasers rather than on the product itself. Focusing on the context of the purchase rather than on the object purchased, he noticed that the majority of the milkshake buyers had bought the product in the early morning to take it away during their long commute to workplaces. What inspires Shirky in this story is that products do not exist in isolation but are enmeshed in cultural and social environments where purchasers “hire” them to perform certain “jobs.”

Like Shirky’s milkshakes, the Syrian user-generated counter-advertising campaign should be understood for the “job” it does on behalf of Syrian citizens. By analyzing the user-generated raised-hands counter-campaign as purely a piece of content, the result would be to dismiss it as something trivial or irrelevant, both in the political and in the artistic sense, as they would not be able to compete with any spectacular contentious action—such as a demonstration—or with industrially-led media production—as musalsalat. Instead, we should perhaps focus on the context that has generated it, following Shirky`s remark that even “the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act;” and asking ourselves why and to what purpose this “stupid” yet creative act is still useful.

Japanese entrepreneur and Director of MIT Media Lab, Joichi Ito, speaks of the Internet as a context-oriented environment where people and information are interconnected. This interconnection generates memes, i.e. units for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices that spreads virally from person to person. Memes are like ongoing open-ended conversations. They replicate information and produce copies of themselves; yet not exact copies, as in the user-generated raised hands of the Syrian counter-advertising campaign.

Cognitive systems’ expert and scholar Francis Heylighen identifies in “collective utility” one of the main criteria that makes the meme travel from one individual to another and get to be re-used: “the meme is useful for the group, without necessarily being useful for the individual.” Joichi Ito reinforces this idea by stating that “it is the use, familiarity and reproduction that makes a meme powerful and proves its aesthetic quality.” Going back to the context of Syrian user-generated creativity, how can the reproduction, sharing, and re-manipulated rendering of these memes be useful to Syrian citizens? Which “job” do these memes do on behalf of Syrians? And what do they tell us about grassroots communities and creativity in the context of politics and cultural reproduction?

Initially, as a premise, drawing from sociologist Charles Tilly’s work, we must be aware that over-emphasizing these practices of grassroots resistance and creativity bears the risk of producing “populist analysis.” To avoid romanticizing user-generated creativity’s political contribution and overestimating its scope, it should be reiterated that these everyday-life practices of cultural resistance are not the only form used to express dissent in the country. User generated creativity does not operate in a political and social vacuum; as much more visible practices of public defiance and unrest are currently at work, like demonstrations, civil disobedience acts (random roadblocks, general strikes, etc.), and even armed resistance. The creative resistance expressed through user generated creativity like the “raised hands” campaign works in tandem with other, more political, practices and it is to be considered an important public venue to express dissent and defiance; yet not the only, nor the most important, one in political terms.

Secondly, the meme phenomena sheds light on the existence of what American scholar Lawrence Lessig defines as “read/write culture” (RW) as opposed to “read only culture” (RO). The latter qualifies itself around content, produced by a small group of people and consumed by the larger masses with the latter having very little possibility of interaction and intervention on it. Alternatively, RW culture—which Lessig dubs as “remix culture”—is defined by the possibility for the users to add, change, influence, and interact with a piece of content which is produced by one but can potentially become reproducible by many. In this perspective, the content—as something produced by few and transmitted to many—loses its prominence; while the context, being defined by the relations and interactions of peers who exchange, modify and manipulate a piece of content, becomes central.

It is precisely in this context-oriented framework where content loses prominence that even “the stupidest act of all” emphasized by Shirky becomes a creative act; as it gains importance within the network of people that are replicating, re-using, and re-manipulating it.

It is important here to recall that RW culture has existed for centuries and it is not an Internet-generated phenomena. According to Lessig, in fact, it’s only during the twentieth century that, as a result of an industrialization process, culture becomes professionalized and turns it into “read-only,” i.e. “a culture less practiced in performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable […] with simple consumption.” In his view, before culture had been mass-industrialized and professionalized, users had the possibility to consume content but also to generate it; everybody had the chance to be a producer and a consumer at the same time.

The possibility for the users to be able to read and write culture again is brought back with the new century, thanks to Internet-enabled technology. This technology provides the tools that make the remix culture happen again and on a mass scale; yet remix culture is not itself technologically-determined.

Communities and cultures are influenced by the underlying technology, yet “grow far beyond the technology itself,” as MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito remarks. By providing easily accessible and cost-effective production tools, the Internet simply brings back, on a mass scale, a way of producing and understanding culture that has existed from time immemorial. Yet the exception to this trend is in fact the 20th century, which is the only period in history when cultural production became professionalized and industrialized, pushing forward a class of people who retained a de facto monopoly over cultural production, i.e. the professionals.

The boom of user generated creativity in the Syrian uprising signals that Syrians are seizing again the read-write culture which was long monopolized by the regime and elite-driven cultural production. Cultural forms of dissent have long been engineered or allowed by the regime, in what miriam cooke calls “commissioned criticism” in her in-depth analysis of Syrian seemingly-dissident creative production. The blossoming of user generated production in the Syrian cyberspace reveals that Syrians enjoy a new relationship with creativity that is a new relationship with power and authority, too.

This relationship now entails a feedback mechanism which is well illustrated by the raised hands campaign where the advertiser and the ruler are obliged to modify the original message as a result of the failure to communicate it or because of the miscommunication it had generated. On a strictly political level, this might lead nowhere if the ruler is not willing to take into consideration the ruled’s opinions and feedback. But on a social, cultural level, this tells us a lot about the kind of culture emerging from the Syrian uprising, which the Internet does not determine but helps to frame and pushes forward. Therefore, an important “job” done by user-generated creativity in the Syrian uprising is to put into bold relief the existence of a locally-grown remix cultures which were previously hidden or underground.

Furthermore, the peer-produced raised hands campaign going viral over the Internet and, sometimes, even in the Syrian streets, is itself an indirectly political job. In her enlightening analysis of jokes, cartoons, films, and everyday life practices of cultural resistance under Hafez al Assad, political scientist Lisa Wedeen explains how these expressions of political dissent work to undermine public rhetoric and the disciplinary effects of the leader’s cult. The regime, in fact, disciplines its citizens by demanding from them evidence of obedience and pushing them to act “as if” they were believing in the cult. This merely external compliance based not on belief but conformity actually reinforces the regime’s coercive power by generating mistrust, uncertainty, and suspicion among Syrian citizens.

Defiant art and creativity can counteract the atomization that Hafez al Assad’s cult produced in Syrian society. As remarked by Wedeen, transgressive cultural works help undo the social fragmentation and re-connect people. She explains that “when a joke is told, when laughter resounds in the room, people are also canceling the isolation and atomization manufactured by a politics of as if.” All these forms of creative resistance—jokes, caricatures, films, and TV serials—are successful because of “the viewer and the artists who have managed to speak to each other across the boundaries of censorial prohibition and restraints.”

Yet, in this perspective, arts and culture—even if expressing dissent and defiance—paradoxically become functional to perpetrate the regime’s symbolic and coercive power; as these practices shed light on what Wedeen calls “shared circumstances of unbelief” that bind citizens and make them repeatedly comply with the leader's cult, albeit only formally.

Moving from Hafez to Bashar al Assad’s era, what can the forms of peer-produced art and user generated creativity tell and teach us in the emerging political context of the uprising? In which ways do they differ from the previous artistic forms of dissent described by Wedeen? And what role are they playing in the political context in the making? I argue that the most important “job” done by the user generated creativity sprouting from the Syrian uprising is revealing a new concept of active citizenship where citizens recognize themselves as peers enabled to create and master the language of read-write culture.

In the cultural resistance forms born under Hafez al Assad, it was the content of the creative acts---whether industrially-produced like a TV comedy, or grassroots-generated like a joke—that pointed out to both artists and citizens their shared conditions of unbelief vis-a-vis the regime; by doing this, it established the connection between the two parties, otherwise living in atomization and fragmentation. The connection between citizens and artists, or citizens and citizens, were formed through the content of the artworks. It was a temporary connection in the sense that it did not exist above and beyond the content of that very joke or TV comedy; and it had a dramatic counter-effect, i.e. to reinforce the cult of the leader and the coercive power of the regime.

On the contrary, user-generated creativity expresses a link between peers that might eventually generate a piece of content. This link exists despite the content which is created: as it is developed in a context-based environment, the Internet, where relations and interconnections are at the very core of the system. User generated creativity is the expression of these direct connections between people that have become peer-creators: the context defined by these networked relations becomes prominent and takes the place once assigned to content.

In this way, the distance between artists and audiences, between producers and consumers, between one citizen and another, fades away, being replaced by a unique figure, i.e. the user who is able to create, even through Shirky`s “stupidest possible creative act;” a Facebook page, an Internet meme, or a viral cartoon. 

As MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito remarks: “it is more about creating life that creating a non-living piece of art”. In this sense, the memetic engineer/Internet artist Ito describes is very close to these active citizens and peer creators emerging from the Syrian uprising `s user generated creativity. He continues:

The memetic engineer seeks to have the particular meme copied and replicated where traditional artists are protective of their work. It is the use, familiarity and reproduction that makes a meme powerful and proves its aesthetic quality.

The raised-hands counter campaign is built around a meme that has been reproduced, re-manipulated, shared, and remixed for more than a year and a half. It goes beyond any artistic or aesthetic judgment; it is a citizens' forum which includes and displays the most disparate opinions and political positions.

['I Want to be Martyred" Uncredited Image from Facebook]

“I want to be martyred,” says one of the user-manipulated raised-hand, expressing the position of those who are willing to die for Syria. Another user-generated poster, featuring two hands that are about to shake each other, declares: “whether anti or pro-regime, you are still my brother and we care for the country,” evoking a middle ground proposal as a solution to the crisis.

[“Whether Anti or Pro-Regime, You Are Still My Brother.." Uncredited Image from Facebook]

Also extreme pro-regime positions are featured within the user-generated “raised hands” counter-campaign; a poster with Bashar al Asad`s picture stating: “whether you like it or not, I love him.” 

["Whether you like it or not, I love him." Uncredited Image from Facebook]

Finally, the raised-hand user-generated campaign is revelatory of people’s connections that are not built through shared unbelief anymore; but, rather, thanks to a shared awareness of their ability to create, re-create and actively contribute to an open-ended citizenry's forum. Here citizens match with peer-creators, and peer-creators with citizens, both engaged in “creating life” more than non-living artistic objects.
 

[Collage of remixed versions of the original posters. Some are satirical, others are ironic.
For instance one reads "My was is your way but the tank is in the way" and another
"I am with the law, but where is it?" Image courtesy of Ammar Alani]

-----------------------------------------

Footnotes

[1] Clay Shirky (2010) Cognitive surplus: creativity and generosity in a connected age. Penguin Press. 
[2] Joichi Ito (1997) Aesthetics of the Internet – Context as a medium, paper for Ars Electronica Festival
[3] Francis  Heylighen (1996) Evolution of memes on the Network: from chain-letters to the global brain, paper for Ars Electronica Festival.
[4] Joichi Ito (1997) quoted above.
[5] Charles Tilly (1991) Domination, resistance, compliance...discourse, Sociological Forum, vol 6, n 3
[6] Lawrence Lessig (2008) Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy, Penguin Press. 
[7] Clay Shirky (2010) quoted above. 
[8] Lawrence Lessig (2008), quoted above. 
[9] Joichi Ito (1997) quoted above. 
[10] See Donatella Della Ratta (2012) Dramas of the authoritarian state, Middle East Report online, February
[11] miriam cooke, 2007) Dissident Syria. Making oppositional arts official, Duke University Press, Durhan & London 
[12] Lisa Weeden (1999) Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
[13] Lisa Wedeen (1999) quoted above 
[14] Lisa Wedeen (1999) quoted above 
[15] Lisa Weeden (1999) quoted above
[16] “Communities, multi-user games systems, markets, search engines and router configurations are all context oriented. The aesthetic of context is the design of such context-oriented systems which are outstanding in their nature. A good context-oriented system causes the network of living connections to converge, interact and grow. It adds value to the network and attracts users and connections.
[17]Joichi Ito (1997) quoted above.
[18] Joichi Ito (1997) quoted above. 
[19] Joichi Ito (1997) quoted above. 

In a couple of weeks, Jadaliyya will launch its first regular online radio show. Media on the Margins is a weekly program dedicated to the stories behind the news, on the fault-lines of journalism and the fringes of public discourse. In each episode, winner of the Society for Professional Journalists' 2012 Community Journalism Award, Malihe Razazan, speaks to reporters, editors, citizen journalists, and photographers to unpack their craft, interrogate their work, and uncover how the news comes to represent the world. The show shines a spotlight on stories missed, ignored, and omitted as well as the people who tell them. "Media on the Margins" is where "journalism grapples with journalism." 

Linda Herrera, “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.” Harvard Educational Review (Fall 2012).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article?

Linda Herrera (LH): Schools once served as temples of citizenship education, but this is no longer the case. I came to the realization of the diminished role of schooling in the lives of young Egyptians during a visit to a public high school in 2006. I arrived at a school in the Delta in the middle of the day to interview teachers about curriculum reforms. What I found was a school populated by the teaching and administrative staff but without students! It turned out that with end of year exams approaching in two months, students did not want to “waste time” at school; they preferred to study at home, in private lessons, and at for-profit exam preparation centers. I asked myself, “If students were disengaging from the school, how were they learning citizenship dispositions? Who was ‘educating the nation’?” These questions led me on a new trajectory of research towards youth learning in the information age.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the article address?

LH: This article traces five stages of generational change relating to the communications opening that began in the 1990s. It argues that while the bulk of theorizing on the “net generation” or “e-generation” comes out of North America and Europe, fully understanding the generational shifts taking place in the digital age requires a more inclusive lens. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) provides an ideal vantage point to understand the intersections between communications, generations, and citizenship. In this article, I ask how members of this generation, who have been able to trigger revolt, might collectively shape the kind of sustained democratic societies to which they aspire. How can formal and non-formal education address the pressing needs of a generation that finds itself politically and economically marginalized but digitally empowered?

J: How does this work connect to and/or depart from your previous research and writing?

LH: Some of the big questions that informed my previous work had to do with youth and power, culture and globalization, the politics of international development, and the universal pursuit of freedom; these all remain integral to this work. Where I depart in this research is that I move outside of formal schools and universities into youth communication spaces. I also draw theoretically on the sociology of generations, which is distinct from the sociology of youth and the anthropology of education.

J: What methodologies did you use in your research towards this article?

LH: I conducted biographical research with Egyptian youth in the sixteen to thirty age-range. In particular, I drew on a methodology of learning and communication biographies, which are principally concerned with how, in a period of advanced globalization, individuals learn, socialize, and “do politics” both inside and outside of formal institutions.

J: Who do you hope will read this article, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

LH: I hope this article will speak to three groups of people, starting with young citizens who are involved in various freedom struggles, whether struggles against political oppression or economic marginalization, in the MENA and beyond. Second, I hope it will resonate with educators who are grappling with new models of learning and teaching in the digital age. And third, I hope it will be of interest to people interested in the Arab uprisings and will contribute to an understanding about the relationship between youth cultural politics and communications change. There is a need to move the conversation away from uncritical postulations about the causality between social media and liberation or democracy, and towards the more complicated questions of power and counterpower.  

J: What other projects are you working on now?

LH: I am co-authoring a book with a former student from Egypt who works in the high tech industry, on the complex role of social media, especially Facebook, in the lead up to the Egyptian revolution. We are exploring questions relating to how power and counterpower operate in the age of social media. The book will be published by Verso. I’m also working on a co-edited volume on youth and citizenship in the digital age in the broader Middle East and North Africa, which comes out of a workshop of the Mediterranean Meetings of the European University Institute.   

Excerpt from “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt”

To fully understand the rise of an active generation requires moving outside North America and Europe, where the bulk of research and theorizing about generations has occurred. A more inclusive global lens should reach to soci­eties where high proportions of wired youth live under conditions of politi­cal repression and economic exclusion, where the stakes for change are at their most pressing. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), characterized by authoritarian regimes, surging youth populations, and escalating rates of both youth connectivity and unemployment, provides an ideal vantage point to understand generations, justice, and power in the digital age.

[…]

Overall, this research shows that “ordinary” youth in Egypt and much of the region have been learning culture, forming a generational consciousness, and more actively engaging in politics away from schools and adult author­ity figures. In the process they have been gaining a greater awareness of their place in the world and experimenting with ways of challenging the status quo.  

[…]

Egypt’s wired revolutionary generation that emerged on the world stage fol­lowing the January 25 Revolution contributed in no small measure to the success of the first stage of the revolution, namely the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. But like their generational counterparts engaged in various struggles throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States, young Egyptians grappled with questions about how to move forward.

[…]

Egypt’s young cyber citizens have been crowded out of the power game and are now struggling to find ways to more deeply dismantle and penetrate the old power structure. For all the dexterity and creativity they have shown in horizontal organizing, persistent civil disobedience, and networking and mobilizing across lines of difference—ideological, religious, class, gender, and otherwise—citizens of Egypt’s wired generation have exhibited serious limita­tions when it comes to strategizing for the long term in ways that allow them to achieve their vision of a good society. This generation of young Egyptians faces debilitating obstacles resulting from the entrenchment of old power struc­tures, the growing sophistication of surveillance systems, and the uncertainty that comes with long-term economic insecurity.

[…]

The democratic movements of Egypt’s wired generation have yet to develop an aptitude for planning over the long term; exploiting educational, eco­nomic, and political resources; and cultivating strategic leadership. At this critical juncture, it is important to consider how to best support citizens of Egypt’s wired generation in their pursuit of deep democracy by developing educational systems—informally and formally—that provide the conceptual, methodological, and critical tools necessary to understand how power and counterpower operate. In the absence of critical and collaborative educational endeavors, the fear is that a dreaded counterrevolution, with its regressive and antidemocratic tendencies, may very well prevail.

[Excerpted from Linda Herrera, “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt,” by permission of the author and Harvard Educational Review. © 2012 President and Fellows of Harvard College. For more information, or to access the full issue, please click here.]

In April of 1954, less than two years after the military ousted Farouk’s monarchy, it became apparent that the men in uniform would not be relinquishing power in Egypt. The “Free Officers” coup d’etat paved the way for the constitution of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), a supra-legal body with executive, legislative and judicial power wielded over every branch of government including the media. Before the RCC decided to exercise its hegemony and muzzle any criticism in the media, there was a 20-month period where Egypt’s press flourished. During this transition period, Gen. Mohammed Naguib, the most senior of the coup’s leaders, had committed to surrendering power to civilian control, resigning Egypt’s military to a non-sovereign role in the post-transition, and encouraging public deliberation over these issues in the press. This would not come to fruition. The wiggle room ceased abruptly as the RCC grew increasingly comfortable atop the food chain.

To silence dissent against their ascent to power, the RCC would have to reform Egypt’s media once and for all. Such an abrupt action, clearly inconsistent with their original claims of press openness, would have to be justified politically. By elbowing Mohammed Naguib out of the picture, Gamal Abdul Nasser and the remaining officers turned to the renewed threat of Western imperialism and the neighboring adversary in Israel to explain the need for a centralized media system. The continued injustice of settler colonialism in Israel as well as a hardened Anglo-Franco-American stance to the new administration was treated as grounds to warrant vigilance, unanimity, commitment, and obedience from Egypt’s press corps. Anwar Sadat would be tasked with overseeing much of this process of “press rehabilitation.” He set up the self-proclaimed “revolution’s paper” Al-Gomhouria, created the protocols that made state media completely submissive to the military’s directives, seduced and coerced all of Egypt’s independent press into compliance, and used nepotism, intimidation, and competition to extinguish the flame of introspection and inquiry among journalists and opinion leaders.

The military had no time for self-professed heroes in the press. Ihsan Abdelkodous, a prominent journalist and later editor with then-independent magazine Rose El-Youssef, had acquired respect, clout, and a substantial readership during the brief transition period. One of the press’ rising stars, he took the ultimate risk of “independently” reporting on the military. Following interviews with members of the RCC in an attempt to surmise a common vision, ideology, perspective, philosophy, or worldview between them, he concluded with surprise that such a discordantly unimaginative group could not be described as anything but a gang. He ran the article under the titled “The Gang that Rules Egypt.” Abdelkodous had crossed the red line and tested the military’s limits. They felt inclined to act. Copies of Rose El-Youssef were pulled off the stands with only a few thousands circulating and Abdelkodous was arrested for 3 months (and later pardoned). This incident would be the last time anyone from the press would break from military’s protocol.

For 55 years, the military has survived without having to give the media any unfettered access, let alone scrutiny. Any mention of the Egyptian Armed Forces in the media comes after a very rigid and paranoid vetting process and scrupulous attention to connotations. Interviews given to journalists by military officers were extremely infrequent and were limited to hyperbolic lofty statements about its discipline, power, patriotism, and heroism. However, the level of secrecy with which the institution operated, turned it into a black box for the media—a fourth branch of government beyond transparency, accountability, or criticism. Insulated by layers of inaccessibility, the military was able to deflect attention from its growing assets in virtually every sector of Egyptian society—from the economy and politics to security, governance, and industry.

So when the January 25 uprising began in Egypt, the military was forced into the spotlight, against its intention and better judgment. As the tanks and armored vehicles rolled into Tahrir Square on the Friday, January 28 (known now as the Day of Rage), Egyptian protesters had no reason to believe that this was an adversarial posture. With no negative sentiments or even the mildest of criticism ever expressed in the state or private media in Egypt about the military, they were greeted as protectors of the public and impartial intermediaries in a standoff with the "supposedly-civilian regime” of the NDP. With little more than their vocal chords before a heavily-armed force, protesters often chanted “the military and the people are one hand” whenever a face-off with the army seemed impending. The large number of protesters, their fervor, their determination forced the military to avoid confrontation with them—a position the ruling military council would use as a rhetorical tool to convince the public that they were in fact the “Guardians of the Revolution” despite their ardent attempts to empty Tahrir and curb further protests.

It was during the days that followed that some protesters began expressing skepticism about the military’s so-called neutrality as evidence on the ground was proving otherwise. For instance, on 2 February 2011, in the incident now infamously known as the “Battle of the Camel,” videos collected by civilians and citizen journalists clearly show military vehicles clearing the way for armed Mubarak supporters on horse and camelback as they descended onto Tahrir Square. Other videos collected by journalists documented visits by high level military officials where they disparaged the protesters, questioned their motives, dismissed their concerns and accused them of having destabilized the country. However, footage of this kind never ended up on the airwaves. With a media blackout on the military’s cold stance vis-à-vis the protesters and a dramatic shift in the public discourse after the resignation of Mubarak, it was entirely unclear how this institution would affect things on the ground.

Unseasoned Precedents

In the first major address, known as bulletin #3 by Gen. El-Fangary, a member of then-ruling Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF), in an attempt to sound strong-willed and decisive, ended up overstating his posturing suggesting hesitance and lack of confidence. As he stuttered in an uncomposed fashion. Not only did El-Fangary commend and thank “President Mubarak” for his 30 years of service to the country, he offers the “martyrs” of the revolution a reassuring military salute. It was evident at this point that he had not received any media training and that the armed forces were not ready for prime time just yet. They had not understood that they cannot hold the stick in the middle between Mubarak, their commander-in-chief just weeks prior, and the protesters. Nevertheless, despite its unseasoned nature, the first address precipitated a sentiment of comfort among Egyptians who trusted that the military would defend the revolution’s goals and see it through to fruition. This fact of revolutionary framing was intended to signify a commitment by the military to the revolution and the memorialization of the fallen. From this point onwards, SCAF would employ a multi-prong and shifting strategy in their relationship with the media in the country.

Yet this was the opening salvo in what was to be become a turbulent relationship between SCAF and the media over the next eighteen months. El-Fangary would become famous for a SCAF public statement he gave on 12 July 2011 where he spoke in an ominous Darth Vader-like tone which exuded power and resolve, either to intimidate, frighte, or calm those looking for comfort in safety. Most notable about the speech was its peculiar delivery where the general projected and changed the tone of his voice in an awkward and unpredictable manner which suggested either nervousness or inexperience. But the notoriety El-Fangary (whose name in Arabic sounds like the English word “finger”) acquired was a result of his seemingly reprimanding and threatening finger-waving throughout the speech. Since this speech, several Facebook groups were created in response, the most popular being “Fangary, You Cannot Threaten Us.”

Throughout the first year after the toppling of Mubarak, SCAF focused on celebrations of military accomplishments and success and deviate attention away from the celebration of the uprising. These included three festivities, one on the anniversary of the July 23, 1952 coup d’état and twice the celebration of the 1973 war with Israel, once on the Gregorian calendar date of October 6 and again on its Hijri date of Ramadan 10th, with SCAF-head Tantawi making public statements on both occasions.

The Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) has had a short but extremely eventful time in power following Mubarak’s fall. It is worth examining given its contradictions and importance for future evaluations of civil-military relations in Egypt and beyond. While the council rose out of the remains of the Mubarak government—each of the 19 members served under his rule and benefitting greatly from their loyalty to the regime—they have nevertheless attempted to rebrand the council as an independent institution with no links to the NDP bureaucracy. Since I will be unable to cover the structure, politics, management, and economic viability of military power in Egypt in any depth here, my intention instead is to examine the manner in which the country’s executive board and surrogate president addresses, curbs, manages, cajoles and responds to the media.

They had accepted the need for the state and private media to criticize the old regime but to maintain the immunity of the military from such scrutiny. To their advantage, there was already a legal doctrine in place to insulate them from public criticism. This is the law number 313 from 1956 which was passed down as presidential decree and amended in 1967 and heavily restricts coverage of the military. The law reads as follow:

This decree prohibits publishing or broadcasting any information or news on the armed forces and its formations, movements, equipment and personnel. In other words, all matters related to strategic and military aspects, can't be published or broadcasted by any means without obtaining the written consent of the Director of Military Intelligence, or his deputy in his absence. The decree also identifies the penalty for violating its provisions.

In the first case of its kind since SCAF took over, a military court sentenced blogger Mickael Nabil to five years in jail in a swift tribunal for criticizing the military in his blog post entitled “The Military and the People are Not One Hand.” Under such conditions, and with SCAF formally administering the country, it would have been practically impossible to meet the demands of the decree as the military now had a hand in every aspect of governance. But the existence of the law resulted in a significant reluctance by the media to discuss matters related to the military. Instead, the private media sought commentary from the military regarding various developments on political, economic, security, and social matters.

The first few months of SCAF rule can be characterized as a period of media shyness. Officials and members of SCAF were very reluctant to go on air, many avoided interviews and preferred private conversations with television producers, journalists over formal interviews. Statements could not be released without permission from superiors and given the growing burden on SCAF, there was a genuine concern that messages would not corroborate one another. Instead, the military attempted to position itself in relation to the inner circuit of the private media professional, to befriend them, build rapport and offer support to ensure favorable treatment. This was a rather successful period for the military as confrontations with protester demands had not reached a high point and they were able to maintain a low profile, thereby scapegoating to the interim government.

When it became evident by the summer of 2011 that little progress had been made on many fronts, from continued military trials of civilians to the reluctance to try Mubarak and other NDP officials for crimes committed during the January uprising, the media sensed that the government of PM Sharaf was actually incapable of addressing any concerns and may not have had the authority to execute on the demands of the revolution. This was when the military became the subject of much curiosity and inquiry by journalists and reporters. Additionally, questionable actions by the military became more frequent with little redress, raising more questions about their conduct, thereby putting more pressure on the media to pose poignant questions.

The performance of SCAF and its media arm during the first year of the transition (with every blunder between 11 February 2011 and 23 January 2012 including Maspero attacks, Balloon theater, both Mohammed Mahmoud battles, the Cabinet sit-in battles, and several rounds of confrontation in Abbaseya) was totally catastrophic. Not only was the cost in lives in the hundreds and injuries in the thousands, with every public statement from SCAF, their image in front of the public was deteriorating swiftly. By dismissing what would otherwise be observable realities documented extensively through videographic evidence, SCAF’s press conferences looked amateurish, one-sided, overly scripted and rehearsed, and completely one-sided. This has a significant impact on their believability in each of incidents. This was akin to an ostrich burying its head in the sand to avoid the public wrath.

Shaky Hands, Quivering Voices

Prior to the public disappearance of SCAF from the public eye, Field Marshal Tantawi had always maintained a very low-profile, with other members of the council given permission to communicate on behalf of the armed forces on Egyptian state and private media. On the government networks, their interviews went smoothly and without tumult. On the private networks, they were met with difficult questions that they often either overreacted to or dismissed entirely or answered clumsily. Examples of media blunders abound including one program where SCAF member El-Ruweini accidentally admitted on a private network that he was responsible for spreading rumors during the 18 day protest in January to encourage demonstrators from leaving Tahrir. On another occasion, SCAF member Gen. Shahin gave conflicting accounts of the constitutional principles and the conduct of elections for different channels and at different times. These interviews exposed SCAF as an institution incapable of asserting its clear unequivocal message and ill-equipped to handle a free and independent media environment. This was extremely obvious when two SCAF members gave a lengthy interview following the Maspero clashes in mid-October where they were hardly capable of deflecting criticism.

The head of SCAF, Tantawi has been camera shy throughout. He has only given three speeches since assuming leadership of the country. Other videos are very carefully chosen and are often orchestrated. One video released some months ago shows him in civilian clothes walking in downtown Cairo and being greeted by passersby and was meant to illustrate his popularity and accessibility. The other two were taken at various ceremonies and events each showing him speaking candidly about the state of the country and calling for an end to protests, sit-ins, strikes and other acts of civil disobedience. The clumsiness of these videos is evident from their inability to present him as a coherent interlocutor. In one of these videos, SCAF member and the Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces, Sami Anan, is seen dictating to Tantawi and completing his sentences for him. In another video, Tantawi is visibly hesitant and disfluent. And in yet another video dated October 2, he is seen as a more authoritative figure verbally reprimanding any Egyptians who continue “destabilizing” the country with protests. He speaks to his subordinates with a paternalistic voice, turning often to then-PM Essam Sharaf whose head hangs in a dejected fashion as he stares at the ground. When Tantawi asks Sharaf if he agrees with him, Sharaf responds compliantly with muted head-nods. Otherwise, it is often other members of SCAF tasked with addressing the media.

Few members of the SCAF seem to have survived the barrage of criticism due to media incompetency. The most notable of the few is the second man after Tantawi, Gen. Sami Anan. By avoiding the media entirely and serving only as an interlocutor on behalf of the Field Marshall in meetings with political actors and public opinion heavyweights, he has effectively avoided any scrutiny and remains a mirage, beyond incrimination. He has no faults on the record and is walking away from the transition with a seemingly pristine slate, which may position him to not only survive the transition but withstand any calls for justice against SCAF in the immediate or long-term future. With Tantawi at the center of most SCAF criticism, in addition to his subpar public displays, his long tenure under Mubarak, and his advanced age, Sami Anan’s media invisibiity may be serving him well as the man-in-waiting.

In many instances, their interactions with reporters and journalists angered the media professionals because they were expected to comply with the military’s rules when that was considered occupationally unacceptable. There are plenty of accounts and testimonies from journalists regarding inappropriate correspondences or phone calls from military agencies with differing tones, from appeasement to blanketed threats. As time has gone on, SCAF has gone from using the carrot to win over the private media to the stick in attempts subduing their will to proceed.

As the conflict between the protest movements and SCAF escalated, so did the military’s desire to control negative messages broadcast locally, regionally and internationally. This meant that in cases where there is significant violence and loss of life (a frequent occurrence since September 2011) involving the military, the SCAF turns from benevolent to malevolent. In such occurrence, SCAF often publicly criticizes the private media, holds press conferences where all accusations against them are completely dismissed against credible photographic and videographic evidence. 

Wired Junta

On 17 December 2011 SCAF entered the new era in its media messaging—the online video/citizen journalism realm. There is evidence that the military had infiltrated the protester campsites and collected content. In many instances, plainclothes military recruits are sent into protester ranks to shoot footage that can then be used to incriminate them. This video was disseminated widely online and sent to the television networks for broadcast to “counter” propaganda against the military. The state media presented it as fact, while most private media subjected it to close examination and scrutiny.

This “head in the sand” technique, akin to Mubarak’s approach for at least a decade, has so far served SCAF well as they capitalize a growing public distraught at unrest in the country. They have also effectively raised the Egyptian public’s desensitization towards violence committed against protesters by the military. While in the summer of 2010 there was public outrage at the death of Khaled Said at the hands of the police simply through the image of his contorted face, the regular circulation of gruesome photos and videos of protesters killed with live ammunition, crushed under military vehicles, stripped and beaten, and sexually violated women are aplenty enough that the public threshold for outrage has increased dramatically. Coupled with what looks to the average Egyptian as a military shepherding the country towards free elections and democratic civilian rule, the plight of the protesters, while just, has become far less sustainable in the eyes of the majority of Egyptians.

Hence, SCAF effectively created enough discord between political parties, movements, youth, and revolutionaries, effectively demoralizing the public about the revolution. In the end, the Egyptian public may have accepted military rule in the face of what looks like “protest-sponsored chaos.” Yet SCAF’s greatest hurdle besides a growing social justice-oriented protest movement in factories, industries, and labor groups and syndicates, remains the private media who have yet to relent under the growing pressure to accept the military’s directives. In on decree, newspapers whose were licensed before the law were asked to reapply in the Morale Affairs Directorate of the Military and acquire approval. Furthermore, all topics, news, statements, complaints, advertisements, pictures pertaining to the Armed forces must be approved before publication. Committee to Protect Journalists described it as the single most serious setback to the freedom of the press since the fall of Mubarak. Few publications complied. So in the face of the appointment of a military censor for the press, many columnist responded rejectingly. Some independent newspapers have violated it entirely, thereby blatantly calling SCAF bluff and taunting the military to take action against them.

The phenomenon that SCAF used from December 2011 onwards was the growing cult of expertise. SCAF deployed, and continue to deploy, what are called the Strategic Expert---members of the military usually come out to the defense of SCAF. This ia an attempt to distance and insulate SCAF from criticism, as a result of consecutive failures of the council at explaining itself on air. It is also an attempt at sounding impartial and objective as professionals. Also allows a margin of error whereby the failure of the expert to communicate convincingly or in the event of confrontation or scandalous gaffes, the outcomes do not backfire on SCAF. A good example of this is Gen. Kato’s now-infamous case regarding military’s treatment of protesters and the interview with Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. When Gen. Kato spoke to the media he was speaking from a position of close proximity to SCAF and the council encouraged him to be an interlocutor for the military. This is not a haphazard process. The military is extremely cautious and paranoid about who represents it. Kato began communicating on behalf of the military as early as January 28th, 2011 where he encouraged protesters to return to their homes. At no point was he considered persona non grata until he stumbled publicly, which led to SCAF abandoning him as a spokesperson and openly denying any affiliation with him. Even SCAF’s representative in the US, Gen. Mohammed Keshky declared that Gen Kato did not represent SCAF in any way or at any time.

Both SCAF and the government have made marked progress in this online arena. Both have adopted social media to relay announcements, gauge public opinion in the form of polls, press releases, bulletins, and experimental decrees. In many instances, SCAF has released announcements on their Facebook page before delivery to the state media. Most recently, in the recent clashes with protesters at the Cabinet buildings, SCAF has even released edited videos of the clashes taken from among the ranks of civilians that they claim were protesters. So the military has itself recruited “amateur military journalist” brigades and social media teams to counter online activists.

When the page first appeared, most of the comments on it were very complimentary of the military and there was genuine fear that any contrarian message would pose a threat to one who posts it. As SCAF’s popularity waned (especially within Egypt’s cyber-community) due to consecutive acts of mismanagement and miscommunication, more critical voices have used the page to express their anger, frustration, and disdain for the military’s actions. This is a marked transformation in the page’s traffic. Much like SCAF’s traditional media approach which focuses on misdirection and ignoring criticism, the Facebook page also rarely engages with critics. Instead, postings are confined to bulletins from the highest ranks of SCAF. The absence of any nimbleness and the seemingly hierarchical approach to information dissemination, forcing every expression to be vetted by the higher ranks, has left page woefully anachronistic and out of touch with contemporary online discourses. Furthermore, its usage of classical Arabic, compared to colloquial and slang Egyptian dialect on many activist pages, has made it uninviting and extremely old-fashioned. Yet SCAF seems to have successfully recruited using the Facebook page as was described by one of the administrators in a status posting.

Despite this, SCAF’s greatest challenge both online and offline came courtesy of an activist campaign known as Kazeboon whose objective was to transfer evidence against SCAF from the online social media echo chamber to the 75% who do not use the internet. On hundreds of occasions, activists and volunteers took videos gathered by citizen journalists and protesters detailing violence committed by the military and held flashmob-style street screenings using mobile projectors in heavy traffic areas in Cairo and Alexandria. On at least a handful of occasions they were met with violence by SCAF supporters, both organized and spontaneous. In every such incident of attack (in most instances, these are attacks against the equipment rather than persons), the commotion drew more attention to the Kazeboon campaign and turned the settings into impromptu anti-SCAF rallies. For this reason, it was important for SCAF to go from denying said accusation to complete disappearance.

Yet a crucial turning point for SCAF’s public image came after the swearing in of the newly elected parliament on 23 January 2012. On this date, with the parliament garnering all the attention especially its surprising composition of 75% Islamist, much of the limelight was drawn away from the ruling council. Around the same time, public criticism of SCAF began to drop drastically as both media and public attention diverted to the elected body. Even SCAF-related hashtags on Twitter dropped significantly. The ostrich had gone from having its head in the sand to camouflaging its body as well. This was confirmed when on 31 January 2012, it was announced that Gen. Ismail Etman, SCAF member and Head of Morale Affairs in the military (a task that makes him the chief intermediary with the media), was relieved of his job in a public statement that claimed he had reached retirement age.  Despite this, for the following days Etman appeared to continue serving as a SCAF spokesperson to the media, giving several interviews and releasing statements on the Port Said Massacre and ensuing violence. But this was the beginning of a phasing out of SCAF media presence.

The commencement of the Parliament’s operations in January 2012 ushered in a new period in SCAF’s management of their public image during the transition. The ruling council has effectively disappeared from the public eye. More reluctant than ever to make public statements and avoiding the limelight at all cost, they were able to defer attention to the interim government on issues of mismanagement and violations by the security apparatus, thereby insulating themselves from public criticism. Simultaneously, the parliament, dominated by the Islamist camps of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and Al-Nour Party, turned into an arena for cacophonous deliberation and combative interaction. The spectacle of dischord and competition in the Parliament shifted the public eye away from the government and SCAF and towards the elected body in an attempt to obfuscate what had quickly begun looking like a junta unable to manage the country. Furthermore, there seemed to be a genuine effort to resuscitate in Egypt a deep state that is insulated from public purview and admonishment.The parliament’s extremely explosive sessions in its first few weeks illustrated the growing polarization between political forces critical of SCAF and those who are willing to excuse them.

In the end, while SCAF had begun its tenure with significant tremors as they improvised their way through the first few months, slowly discovering their weakness in utilizing the media and working towards rectifying this. Rather than investing in improving their public image, SCAF expedited their public disappearance. It should be no surprise to anyone if the military council tried to orchestrate a weakened presidency, a crippled parliament, and a loyal judiciary all of whom can serve as the façade of legitimacy concealing the same military power that has ruled the country since 1952 and to reseal Pandora’s box.

Wrench in the Wheel

Despite having seemingly orchestrated a slow and gradual recession into the background of Egyptian politics, thereby avoiding the media limelight and subsequently the blame for a deteriorating economic situation in the country, the ruling SCAF committed some major blunders shortly after the assumption of the parliament. By offering the Islamists (the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Nour) defanged institutions and withholding administrative and legislative power from them, the facade of legitimacy of the elected body angered these parties. With a rapidly declining public image following the palpable mismanagement of the country, frequent attacks on protesters, their own clunky and contradictory rhetoric, and successful anti-SCAF campaigns, then ruling military junta were facing their greatest challenge just as they were becoming more opaque. So when the Brotherhood and the Salafis racheted up their anti-SCAF rhetoric ahead of the presidential elections, the top generals' ostrich strategy had already cost them their position atop the food chain.

Their ambiguous dealings with the competing political groups and opacity, not to mention the absence of media savviness, cost SCAF their once revered position in the Egyptian polity. One cannot overstate the impact of negative press on the image of the junta internationally who were becoming scandalized on a weekly basis, to the point that even the U.S. administration was keen on deferring to the Brotherhood or any civilian government to manage the country in the post-Mubarak period. In a last gasp attempt to ensure they have a horse in the race, SCAF pushed the late VP and intelligence chief into the presidential nominees pool only to disqualify him later once the crescendo of opposition became too loud. Nevertheless, their top contender, SCAF-favorite and Mubarak's last PM Ahmed Shafik, a man who has committed more media gaffes than the average slapstick comedians, became their front-runner against the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsy. He went on to lose by a narrow margin in a contest that effectively ended the military's time atop Egypt's political pyramid.

Upon his assumption to the presidency, and in an historic move, Morsy retired both Field Marshal Tantawi and the Chief of Staff Sami Anan, to effectively ensure the military is at least on par with or even subservient to civilian rule, and his dominion, particularly. From this point forth, the military has essentially disappeared from the media limelight except in ceremonial processions, securing officials and establishments, and in communicating military matters such as the conflict in Sinai. It is perhaps easy to assume that under the current configuration, the military establishment has become completely professionalized and incorporated into the architecture of the state which is currently government by the Muslim Brotherhood. This assumption implies that the civil-military relations between the armed forces and the state infrastructure is one of concert, common interests, and synergy. I would argue otherwise.

Camouflaged Generals and Islamist Limelight 

Instead, it is clear that the military establishment does not see eye-to-eye with the Muslim Brotherhood. Not only do they have competing economic interests, they also have different long-term visions for the country. With the military establishment, both directly and indirectly, investing in at least 40% of the Egyptian economy, the Brotherhood, themselves venture capitalists par excellence, are vying for a larger stake in this domain. And while there is currently a laissez-faire attitude towards the military's control over this segment, the armed forces are weary of the Brotherhood's intentions. On an international strategic foreign policy front, the Brotherhood, currently overseeing a country in decline, are forced to succumb (against their popular doctrine) to a regional policy of peace and cooperation, even with Israel. Their chummy discourse towards the United States, is exceptional for an organization that has spent decades demonizing the great hegemon. So on face value, it appears the two poles of Egyptian power, not politics, are in unison. Yet with growing discontent in the country on almost every level, it is in the interest of the military that the Brotherhood bear the brunt of people's anger and inherit the blame for its mismangement.

While yesterday's protest chants were "Down down with military rule" and "The people want the fall of the Field Marshal," today most protests state "Down down with the rule of the Supreme Guide [of the Muslim Brotherhood]." At a time when Egypt's media are deeply empowered, fearless and playing the watchdog role as never before, SCAF passed on the baton to the Brotherhood in the most opportune moment. Today, Morsy, the Brotherhood, and the FJP are the new media pariahs. Caught in the same struggle as their predecessors in SCAF, they are neither able to manage the message or control it. Through a complex network of government control of the public media, a party media platform (Misr25 for television and FJP newspaper for print), a plethora of online portals (ikhwanonline and ikhwanweb), as well as legions of online footsoldiers and sympathizers, the Brotherhood will certainly fair better than did the disjointed, hierarchical, and exclusivist SCAF. Nevertheless, the tidal wave is against them as they are unable to deflect widespread criticism. What they do share with the military is the pandora's box relationship to the media.

For decades the Brotherhood has been vilified by the press, which often led the organization into absolute secrecy. Both the military establishment and the Brotherhood wore camouflage over the past 60 year, the former because of its priviledge role in power and the latter because of its adverserial position from power. In the end, both have been burnt by the media limelight. A predicament not so unfavorable for a revolutionary Egypt and a promising sign of the awakening of Egypt's media.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Syria and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Syria Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to syria@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.]

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Michel Kilo writes about the mistakes that Al-Asad Jr. had committed that compromised his rule and his regime. 

Jadaliyya is hereby launching its new Media page! This page provides a critical lens from which to explore and analyze the media landscape in and about the Middle East and North Africa. It spotlights new and traditional media players, platforms, and reporting at the local, regional, and global levels. Original articles featured in this page expand the disciplinary boundaries of media studies and communication to look at the intersections of the arts and all forms of representation. The page also features audio interviews and extensive video segments on various topics pertaining to the Middle East. Also forthcoming from the page is a weekly radio show "Media on the Margins" led by VOMENA's award-winning host and Jadaliyya co-editor Malihe Razazan.

Our first bouquet of articles include a stellar report from Basma Guthrie and Fida Adely titled "Is the Sky Falling? Press and Internet Censorship Rises in Jordan," a critical intervention from VJ Um Amel on the methodologies of social media analysis "Studying Social Streams: Cultural Analytics in Arabic," a telling case study by Donatella Della Ratta about regime and opposition discourses in Syria titled "Syrian Hands Raised: User-Generated Creativity Between Citizenship and Dissent," Adel Iskandar's an assessment of Egypt's military performance in "Year of the Ostrich: SCAF's Media Experiment," and an interview and preview of Linda Herrera's recently published "Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt" from Jadaliyya's NEWTON page. It also includes the latest media roundup on Syria  (November 1).

Click here to visit the MEDIA PAGE

For a look at our previously published original media-related works, visit the popular articles below:

Saeeds of Revolution: Demythologizing Khaled Saeed by Amro Ali

Al-Jazeera's (E)evolution? by Vivian Salama

E-Militias of the Muslim Brotherhood: How to Upload Ideology on Facebook by Linda Herrera and Mark Lotfy

Pioneer Bloggers in the Gulf Arab States by Sultan Al-Qassemi

Marketing Agency, Branding Hope: War, Kony, and "Three Cups of Tea" by Sarah Lazare and John Wesley Jones

Adorning Afghan Walls by Nagmani 

Free at last: Charting Egypt's Media Post-Mubarak by Adel Iskandar

Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: Critique of an Emerging Phenomenon by Amro Ali and Dina El-Sharnouby

Egypt's Presidential Elections and Twitter Talk by VJ Um Amel

Click here to visit the MEDIA PAGE

Also visit Jadaliyya's Multi-Media Interviews

The Future of Media in Egypt: An Interview with Hesham Kassim

Currency Crisis in Iran, Copts in Egypt: Interviews with Hamid Zangeneh, Mohammad Moeini, and Paul Sedra

Mediating Bahrain---Hotsopt, Bloodspot or Blindspot: Interview with Alaa Shehabi

"We are All Palestinian Prisoners:" Interview with Hafez Omar

The Role of Workers and Labor Unions in the Egyptian Revolution: Interview with Hossam El-Hamalawy

And for the Latest Roundups from the Media:

Latest on Syria (1 November)

Latest on the Arabian Peninsula (31 October)

Latest on Egypt (29 October)

Happy reading, listening, and watching!
Jadaliyya's Media Page Editors