(Photo from OneArabWorld.)
Karim Eslahy has posted a link to photos of Sunday's demonstration against terrorism organized by Egyptian bloggers. We're still trying to confirm how many people attended, but Karim reports: “Very small turnout and the cops made them leave but proportionally significant coverage nonetheless.”
Attendees included The Big Pharaoh, Sandmonkey, Highlander, and Mindbleed.
The protest was the maiden activity of a new organization, Pray 4 Peace, which Karim started because he says he is sick of the cycle of violence in which everybody takes sides and obsesses over who started what. He writes:
I no longer care who started what. I only care how it ends.
If enough of us can get together, shed our differences, and unite in the face of violence we can make a difference.
20 comments
Hi there. This is DNA over at Mindbleed.
Just wanted to make to make it clear that I didn’t attend (as much as I would’ve loved to).
There was a big protest in Sharm alSheikh itself with more than a 1000 attending. Here’s the news: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L24382904.htm
Hi, this is Highlander, I wasn’t actually at the event( was in London at the time) however I was just as excited for all of my Egyptian brothers and sisters as if I had been there. I really wish I could have been with them physically ! They did a great job all of them :)
I wish that they had used ‘violence’ instead of ‘terrorism’. I think that it would have been broader, and less defensive. I don’t think Muslims should have to be defensive about the actions of extremists. I think taking a stand against violence, instead, would be more balanced and allow less polarization.
Let’s face it. The use of the word terrorism is now polarized.
Is there something similar for non-Muslims to show solidarity & support for the moderates & respect for Islam?
Right, I too want to be moderate about this but I don’t think erasing the word ‘terrorist’ from our vocabulary on political grounds would do any good. ‘Violence’ would have been an appropriate term if some people had been fighting outside Ghazala Hotel. This was a politically motivated attack so the term ‘terrorist’ is appropriate. And just avoiding using it because people who symphatize with the cause, in one way or degree or other, might get offended is not anything I believe in either, it sounds like a klich’e but sometimes you need calling evil for what it is. Yes, I do think dialogue is imperative to solving the issues behind this. That’s a different story though.
Is this really a moment to celebrate? In the wake of this fresh Al Qaeda style killing of 88 people, and in a 90% Muslim nation of 70 million, only 7 people showed up to protest.
The more Global Voices tries to showcase some infinitesimally small splinter of Islamic protest to the brutal jihadis, the more obvious it becomes that Islam as a whole is muzzled from any real moderating force by its violence-loving factions.
This is the real crux, it seems to me, of the global epidemic of Islamic terrorism. The successful suppression of would-be peaceful counter-currents within Islam by fear of violent retaliation and/or the spectre of apostacy.
And, as we well know, me pointing at this pattern of quiescent moderation makes me an Islamaphobe.
To Rufus,
No it does not make you an Islamophobe, it only shows that you don’t know how difficult it is to stage any kind of protest in that country of 70 million as you say, not because of the fear from ‘Islamist’ but of that from their own governements.
So you are saying that in just this one case the Egyptian government, the second largest midEast US aid recipient, was the reason all those terror-intolerant Muslms didn’t show up? Like they show up everywhere else? And they would have if Egypt didn’t deplore their message that blowing up its lucrative tourist areas is bad?
SandMonkey himself offers another explanation:
http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/07/story-of-protest.html
I think its a pattern beyond Egypt’s borders.