AUC’s Ibrahim covers role of young Egyptians in talk

Barbara Ibrahim, the founding director of the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo, gave a lecture titled “How Young Egyptians Made History: New Public Space in Cairo and Alexandria” before an audience of roughly 30 students and faculty on Tuesday afternoon in Robertson Hall. Her discussion marked the final lecture in an annual series hosted by the Workshop on Arab Political Development.

Ibrahim’s talk focused on efforts to understand the nature and historical significance of the youth-driven protest movement that forced the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak over two months ago after 30 years of autocratic rule.

“Egyptian youths had been characterized as apathetic and not prone to change,” said Ibrahim, who is from Cairo. “[It was predicted that] Egypt would make slow, evolutionary transformations, but would not take the risk for rapid change.”

The question that begs resolution, she said, is, “Why now? Why did it happen when it did? ... Why did it take on those characteristics: youthful, liberal and nonviolent?”

The corresponding revolution in Tunisia and an increasing number of college graduates were certainly factors, Ibrahim said. However, she also noted that recent acts of open cruelty had pushed the society to its “tipping point.”

Before 2003, Ibrahim explained, civilian protests had largely targeted outside figures such as President George W. Bush, with foreign invasions of Arab nations triggering “huge outpourings on the street” that were highly mediated by the nation’s police forces.

“When there were 300 of us, there would be 3,000 of them,” she explained of police involvement in earlier protests. “Where there were a few thousand of us, they would bring in tens of thousands from surrounding governments ... ominous guys armed with batons and shields and water cannons.”

These officers often arrested protesters and then interrogated and tortured them for days in detention centers, Ibrahim explained.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince’. Donate now »

“In the last six months, red lines were crossed,” Ibrahim explained, leading to protests against internal authorities.

For example, she said, while Egyptian elections over the last 30 years were always rigged in favor of the National Democratic Party and candidates who “did not understand the rules of the game” were often imprisoned, the most recent election was particularly corrupt because the NDP “did not even try to hide its activities.”

Fearing the influence of independent newspapers that were beginning to report governmental abuses, she explained, the NDP ensured that ballot boxes were already stuffed when local police arrived in the morning and no election monitors from inside or outside the country were involved, leading to results that were “appallingly lopsided.”

Ibrahim recalled that another catalyst for massive internal protest was the case of a youth who had discovered that police were selling drugs on the streets instead of confiscating them and began to document their activities by sharing cell phone pictures.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

After finding him, police dragged him out of an Internet cafe in broad daylight and beat him to death in front of dozens of people in a “visible act meant to intimidate everyone else,” Ibrahim said. His corpse was thrown into the back of a van, which sped away from the scene. When his body was recovered on the streets, drugs were found stuffed inside his throat.

The police claimed that he had died choking while trying to hide the drugs, but cell phone pictures of the young man’s bruised face suggested brutality, Ibrahim said. The pictures went viral, she explained, adding that, after people looked at the photos with their own eyes, they could “no longer hide the fact that [they] lived in a society that disgusted them, or that violence was not only directed towards the lower class.”

Ibrahim said that the 2011 Egyptian Revolution differed from other revolutions in that the protesters were apolitical, religious and liberal. “I noticed that, instead of chanting ‘Down with Mubarak, down with the regime,’ small groups of people were talking with police, saying, ‘This is why you should join us, the regime brutalizes us both,’” actions which left the police shocked, she said.

“To me, this was new, different,” she added. “It suggested that the protests might be of an organized thought.”

After witnessing the first outbreaks of protest in Tahrir Square, the revolution’s epicenter, Ibrahim returned in seven days and observed that the protesters displayed unusual social solidarity, she explained.

“I was greeted by lovely young women who frisked me and checked my bags, and then welcomed me to the revolution,” she said. “Before I had taken nine or 10 steps into the square, I was offered biscuits and tea.”

In addition, Ibrahim noted that while Muslims prayed, the Christians guarded them for safety and vice versa. She described this action as “symbolic for Egyptians because they had suffered sectarian violence under a regime” that did not encourage people of different faiths to live peaceably.

The image of the civil demonstrators juxtaposed against the brutality of police gave the movement international attention, she said, shaping more of a “satellite television revolution” than a social media revolution.

Ibrahim explained that the protesters may also have been aided by experiences in community organizing and volunteering. Although political organizations are prohibited in Egypt, Ibrahim explained, religious-based community development organizations were allowed because the government assumed that they were “antithetical to democracy.”

After conducting a series of interviews with protesters, Ibrahim said, she concluded that the youths’ motivations to organize were religious and reflected disillusionment with the promise of secular progress under Mubarak’s regime.

“There is a resurgence of Islamic piety, practice, discourse,” she said. “They said, ‘I do this for God, and for my country.’ ”

Moving forward, Ibrahim explained, the challenge will be seeing whether youth protesters can successfully become engaged in the political process and change the system.