August 15, 2013

Life During Wartime [UPDATE: Many Egyptians blasé about the Muslim Brotherhood]

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The new normal: Egyptians at the beach while #matrouh city burns in the background #egypt pic.twitter.com/ZHnKbZ4LSA In Egypt - Business Insider

UPDATE: Muslim Brotherhood had to be dealt with. Working-Class Cairo Neighborhood Tries to Make Sense of a Brutal Day - NYTimes.com

Egypt seemed more divided than ever after a brutal day of violence here that left hundreds of people dead. Supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, mourned those killed, vowed revenge, planned their next moves. Many other Egyptians, though, directed their ire at the protesters who had camped out in the streets for weeks. For them, what occurred made sense.

“It was necessary,” Akmal William, standing in his auto-detailing shop on Talaat Harb Street, said of the raid by soldiers and police officers. “They had to be strict.”

In Imbaba, a neighborhood that seems to catch all the nation’s political currents in its congested alleyways, many people regretted the bloodshed. But they asserted that the alternative was worse. The Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Morsi’s political party, was holding back the country with endless sit-ins and protests, many said. And the longer the army waited to act, the weaker Egypt seemed to them.

That conviction only grew stronger amid reports about Islamist violence, including the storming of a government building in Giza early Thursday. Mr. William, a Coptic Christian, was preoccupied by a spate of attacks on churches and Christian homes across the country, a spasm of collective scapegoating by some of Mr. Morsi’s supporters.


Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 15, 2013 4:51 PM
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