One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of democracy is that stupid people have the same freedom to speak up. After the revolution the Islamists expressed what was really on their minds, and it was like giving them the rope with which to hang themselves. Thoughts that were discussed for decades only in their closed circles were surfacing freely on the airwaves.
Out of nowhere the Islamists started to attack the pharaohs. Yes, you got that right. They were attacking people who had been dead for thousands of years. A Salafi went on television calling for the Sphinx to be destroyed and for the pyramids to be demolished. He claimed that these were idols and should be destroyed like the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. While he could be viewed as a crazy man who had no weight and no real merit in the Islamist community, when we at the show dug deep, we found very interesting opinions about the issue from their well-known and more popular leaders. The principles and the dogma were one and the same as those of the crazy extremists in Afghanistan or ISIS. The only difference was that the Islamist leaders were diplomatic when they spoke about our ancient civilization. No matter how smart you think you are, your bat-shit crazy opinions could surface and come back to haunt you.
The stupidity went beyond that Salafi guy with plans to destroy the pyramids. It ran deep into Islamist history. In the past, people used God and Islam as excuses to destroy whatever human heritage there was, under the pretense of the monuments or objects being pagan. In all honesty, the Muslim Brotherhood leaders didn’t share the same stupid opinions, at least not openly. But when you are running on an “Islam is the solution” slogan and your biggest ally in the elections and in writing the constitution are Salafis, you risk the generalization. It especially doesn’t help when you are an Islamic authority and you generalize against your opponents, calling them degenerate, sex-hungry liberals. Well, it goes both ways. So when one of your allies speaks in favor of pedophile marriages and female genital mutilation, and allows for the harassment of women because she “brought it on herself by not covering up,” yet you still join forces with this ally and appear on their TV shows, well, I really don’t feel sorry for you. You earned the same stupid reputation.
Anyway, back to the pharaohs. My show’s researchers unearthed more videos and stumbled upon a Salafi party leader who had run for parliament in the recent elections saying that the pharaohs’ civilization was rotten. He went on to espouse that since Islam had entered Egypt, we didn’t need to study or care about this ancient “rotten” civilization that worshiped stones and idols. I commented that it is true, if it wasn’t for Islam entering Egypt we would all be stuck in Cairo’s horrible traffic on a daily basis trying to get to the pyramids to show our respect and give our offering to our pharaoh gods. Thank goodness we could call to prayer from the comfort of our own homes.
Islamists were up in arms against me, saying that I had taken the Salafi leader’s words out of context. So I got more videos of him saying that we should ban receiving money from tourism at our ancient Egyptian monuments because it was haram, and if we really needed to keep those statues we could just put wax masks over them to hide their features. That was a brilliant idea, of course! I suggested why not put masks in the form of his lovely, bearded, peaceful face? Surely it wouldn’t melt under the hot Egyptian sun.
We then got more videos of one of the most credible and respected Salafi leaders suggesting that early Muslims, when they originally took on Egypt, should have destroyed the pharaonic temples and statues.
There was one problem, though; the pyramids and the temples were buried under the sand and it was because of the French invasion of Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century that these monuments were unearthed. So basically the early Muslims didn’t see them and if they did, the “Muslim thing” would be to destroy them. Thank god for sand!
You might think that only the backward Salafi sheikhs were in on this ridiculousness. But it was more of a general way of thinking. As a matter of fact, a “serious” Islamist researcher, with a suit and tie instead of your typical Taliban-like outfit, came out and claimed that the pyramids were built through money paid in return for sexual favors! He said that the daughters of the three kings who built the famous three pyramids of Giza slept with men for money that was later used to finance the building of the pyramids. Given that there are more than two million stones in the Great Pyramid alone, well, that’s a lot of sex. Imagine if the pharaohs continued to rule, we would have built a totally new infrastructure through our harem of royal hos.
When we hear now that ISIS is demolishing a temple or demolishing thousands of heritage sites, it doesn’t come out of nothing. They all come from the same pitiful, extreme source. In Egypt, the Islamists, despite choosing their words carefully, still managed to show their real face.
This is actually why I have a bit more respect for the Salafis than the Muslim Brotherhood. At least they are straightforward with their stupidity and bigotry. They are our Muslim rednecks. They are the ones waiting for the Rapture and have no problem showing their hate and disdain for others. The Muslim Brotherhood are just power whores sugarcoating their extreme views with fake political correctness, but when you pull back the curtain they behave like any regular Muslim hillbilly.
Their sugarcoating and “tolerance” couldn’t hold up forever. Something had to give. They went after their enemies, and I was one of them.