Egypt: Two Camps, One Caricature  · Global Voices
طارق عمرو

I have found no better summary of the current intriguing and backstabbing between the religious establishment on one side and their secularist counterparts on the other than this caricature, distributed first by the Islamists over Facebook, then altered by the other side to show their point of view.
The Islamists’ point of view
The text in the top panel says: “The military are liars” “The revolutionaries are thugs…the martyrs killed themselves…the police are innocent…it was us who protected the revolution…there are no snipers…there are no bullets…”
The text in second panel says: “The military tell the truth” “His mother is American!”
In this cartoon, the Islamists accuse the secularists of never believing anything that the military says but of accepting without question the military backed electoral commission's decision to reject the presidential nomination of the Salafi candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail on the grounds that his mother was American.
Many of Abu Ismail's supporters continue to stubbornly oppose the commission's decision while other people's opinions vary widely. Some consider what happened to have been a conspiracy, some are suspicious of certain aspects of the commission's decision, some agree with the commission's findings but want to see Abu Ismail pardoned all the same, and some have disassociated themselves from him as they no longer consider him to be a true Salafi.
The secularists’ point of view
The text in first panel says: “The military tell the truth”    “The revolutionaries are thugs…the martyrs killed themselves…the police are innocent…it was us who protected the revolution…there are no snipers…there are no bullets…”
The text in second panel reads: “The military are liars”    “His mother is American!”
The secularists on the other hand altered the cartoon to reflect their view of the Islamists and their perception that many of them made excuses for the military in the period after the revolution and only rebelled against them after Abu Ismail's disqualification.
It is interesting that both sides consider themselves to have made the greatest sacrifices and to be struggling against the military, and that they both accuse each other of colluding with the authorities and giving up on the revolution. This is particularly interesting as it follows a rise in tensions between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood as previously tensions had been only been seen between the military and the secular revolutionary forces.