When historians consider the crisis of liberalism in Egypt, our gaze turns back to the second decade of the parliamentary era, a period of political unrest and intellectual upheaval in response to the unfulfilled promises of the 1919 revolution. For many, particularly the youth who came to be defined as the generation of the 1930s, this was an era of exhilaration and militant anthems. Few doubted that Egyptian liberalism was in crisis. Neither parliament nor the political parties had delivered democracy or independence. This failure produced deep divisions within the liberal intelligentsia, particularly over the issue of how to galvanize popular support within an increasingly fragmented body politic.
Looking back, from the perspective of the authoritarian state that emerged after the 1952 Free Officers revolution, Western Orientalists constructed a liberal “crisis of orientation” rooted in a perceived retreat from secular nationalist liberalism in favor of a growing socially conservative, defensive, and ultimately reactionary religious impulse. Hassan al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood represented the definitive threat with its “mentality of Mahdism” that was “inspired and activated by a negative nationalism” rooted in “unwavering faith” that a “perfect Islam” provides all the answers to mankind’s problems. But the emblematic figure of the liberal “crisis” was Muhammad Husayn Haykal, a prominent secular intellectual who produced a series of works on Islamic history that seemed to constitute an attack on Western ethics and culture and “contributed to the initiation of an era of great intellectual confusion.” Standing firm, valiantly withstanding the tide but forced at times into tactical retreat, was Taha Husayn, himself clerically trained but dead set on combatting “a drift into intellectual chaos” and promoting an “unequivocal Western orientation.”1
Subsequent generations of scholars rejected the binary of this crisis and painted a far more nuanced picture. Charles Smith reread Haykal as a committed liberal utilizing Islamic history to speak to the masses.2 There is irony to be sure, as Haykal had abandoned the majority-based Wafd Party for the Constitutional Liberals, a minority party with a narrow, property-owning base. This suggests an alternative critique of Egypt’s liberals as elitists detached from, even fearful of, mass culture, including popular religious expression.3 For Haykal, the real crisis of liberalism was the consolidation of military rule by the new Nasser regime in 1954, which for him represented the rejection of liberal values by a new generation. For Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, the test of liberal commitment has little to do with religious orientation, but rather how Egypt’s liberals stood on the real issue of the day, the challenge to liberalism represented by fascism and Nazism: “the relationship between democracy and dictatorship; between an open, pluralistic society and a closed, totalitarian society; between a constitutional parliamentary multi-party system and an authoritarian one-party system; between individual freedom of expression and protection of civil liberties and rights and a police state...between racism and racial tolerance.”4 By their reading, Egypt’s liberals passed the test, the familiar flirtations of rebellious officers with German agents notwithstanding.5 Whether or not the liberal crisis of the parliamentary era was fact or Orientalist fiction, it is clear that, by January 1952, the year Egyptians took to the streets to burn down central Cairo, many had lost faith in party politics and began to articulate the call for a “just tyrant.”6 The sentiment cut across political and social boundaries and produced the foundations for military rule that continues to dominate Egypt.
The liberal crisis that we examine today is, I would suggest, different. Rather than turning toward (or bowing to) religiously conservative social trends, those who have adopted the mantle of liberalism, who promote themselves as the exclusive progenitors – and therefore legitimate inheritors – of the 2011 revolution (and who have been so uncritically regarded as such), articulate a pronounced hostility toward Islamism that ultimately undercuts the ability to work together toward building a new political order – in effect, to share the revolution – despite divergent social agendas. While it is true that the Muslim Brothers did not officially join the movement in Tahrir Square until the protests had taken on a degree of momentum, it is also indisputable that many Brothers, especially younger members, had already decamped to Tahrir and other centers of popular dissent throughout the country. Whose revolution was it really? What happened between June 2012, when Egyptians freely elected Mohammad Morsi president, and June 2013, when many of those same voters returned to Tahrir Square to set in motion a series of events that, willingly or not, set the stage for military intervention, the arrest and deposing of Morsi, and the excommunication of the Brothers, defined legally as terrorists, from political life?
Both sides surely share blame, especially in so volatile a revolutionary moment. Having toppled a thirty-year dictator, can young self-identified secular revolutionaries be faulted for persisting in viewing the streets as the primary political stage? The Muslim Brothers in power proved at times to be equally intolerant, and their faith-based rhetoric, however exaggerated by opponents, raised concerns about the face of the new Egypt.7 Yet they surely paid a price for having successfully exerted political muscle through the ballot box. It is worth noting that all Islamist forces, not only the Muslim Brothers, had “adopted party politics and democratic competition as a basis of their activism.”8 If secular liberals argue that the Islamists turned authoritarian, Islamist liberals can argue that, caught between the military, state security, a more conservative self-righteous Salafi bloc, and a secular intelligentsia that articulated its own exclusionary legitimacy as inheritors of a post-Mubarak Egypt, they had little chance to advance any agenda.
When anti-government demonstrators reoccupied Tahrir Square on June 30, 2013 (while Morsi supporters decamped at Rabaa Square in Heliopolis), they made what history may judge to be a Faustian bargain with the military. When we look back on these events, we may well reorient the liberal crisis from a defensive turn toward conservative Islamism to an unyielding dread of an Islamist threat that many had earlier blamed the Mubarak regime for cynically fomenting. Rather than judge the wisdom – or honesty – of those who so feared an Islamist turn under Morsi, I seek to understand the degree to which this dread turned so many liberals into “unlikely allies of the army.”9
To fathom this new “crisis,” I intertwine the pronouncements of two powerful voices of the “liberal” opposition, Alaa al-Aswany and Bassem Youssef. Neither should be regarded as an intellectual or necessarily a deep thinker. Yet their impact on popular culture as well as their global reach – one as a widely translated author and editorialist, the other as recipient of a prestigious international award for journalistic freedom, and guest, multiple times, on The Daily Show, as well as the subject of a stinging critique of the Egyptian government by its host, Jon Stewart10 – is important. Al-Aswany’s and Youssef’s stories, as well as their artistic approaches, differ significantly. Each in his own way found himself facing a new public sphere in which rules had changed and political grounds were fast shifting. Al-Aswany’s championing of popular dissent against the Morsi government and later validation of the reassertion of military rule may well be a cautionary tale for those who seek to move Egypt forward toward a true democratic orientation. Youssef’s meteoric rise and fall is the story of a suddenly open media with unprecedented freedom to pillory the ruler, one who happened to be an Islamist and, for a comic, an easy target.
Alaa al-Aswany – “Democracy is the answer”
Al-Aswany gained prominence in Egypt with the publication of his bestselling 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building, a blistering depiction of the reigning order in late-Mubarak Egypt. Translated into over twenty languages, the novel brought international fame. A 2006 film adaptation, featuring a bevy of super stars, brought him wider exposure. Already juggling dentistry and fiction writing, he became a regular op-ed columnist for al-Dustour (weekly) and al-Shorouk (daily), two privately owned newspapers associated with opposition to the regime. A collection of his pre-revolutionary columns have been translated into English for a volume that appeared in April 2011. These essays chronicle a society that had lost its way, mired in corruption, official indifference, and increasingly less concerned with veiling its violent underpinnings.11
Al-Aswany’s primary targets were the regime and the likely succession of Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal as president. He emphasized national unity and anomie. The Muslim Brothers were part of the politically diverse campaign to thwart hereditary impulses: “Despite our political and ideological differences, we have come together to perform our national duty.”12 It was the regime that “has deliberately exaggerated the role and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood for use as a bogeyman against anyone who calls for democracy.”13 Ordinary Egyptians “usually have an infallible compass by which they determine the correct political position.”14 If the Brothers won open elections, “wouldn’t that be the free choice of Egyptians, which we should respect if we are true democrats?”15 Nonetheless, he concluded every essay, as he would through 2014 when he stopped writing, with the proclamation that “Democracy is the answer” (al-dimuqratiyya hiyya al-hal), an unveiled play upon the Brotherhood slogan, “Islam is the solution” (al-Islam huwwa al-hal).16
On January 25, 2011, al-Aswany concluded a writing session and turned on the news. Stunned by the size of the demonstrations, he headed to Tahrir Square and for the next eighteen days “lived” alongside millions of fellow Egyptians, only heading home for short breaks.17 He was not the only celebrity on site, but he enhanced his popular standing with speeches and informal press conferences, and in the following months through writings and a famous television appearance in which he boldly confronted standing prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, who resigned the next day.18 As with his literature, chastised by some as overly melodramatic and pandering, he spoke to a popular pulse. His English language fluency makes him particularly accessible to foreign reporters, and in the fall of 2013 he became a contributing editor and columnist for the New York Times. In late 2014, a second collection of essays appeared in English translation, this time replicated in strict chronological order.19
The latter essays provide a window into the evolution of his thinking between March 1, 2011 and June 16, 2014, revealing pendulum swings between optimism and pessimism, an escalating dread of what might constitute majority rule and, eventually, a confrontation with the realities of renewed military rule. There are several key themes that accentuate al-Aswany’s – and by extension the liberal – predicament.
First is the suspicion, from the outset, that entrenched old regime forces would work to “abort the revolution.”20 On the eve of presidential elections, al-Aswany warned that “if it is not possible to impose their candidate, the military council will cause problems and total chaos that will prevent the presidential elections from taking place, leaving the military council in power indefinitely.”21 This fear vanished with the election of Morsi and the conviction that the new government, in cahoots with the old security apparatus, was moving to impose a dictatorship that was at once new – Muslim Brotherhood driven – and old. The speed with which al-Aswany adopted a hostile approach toward Morsi’s rule accentuates the degree to which he held no faith that the president could speak to all of Egypt – something he challenged Morsi to do as part of a delegation that met with the new president right after the elections. He often rooted his critique of the Brotherhood in their deep past history more than their political evolution under Sadat and Mubarak: “Each time the Brotherhood participate in national movements, they will at some point break away from the national ranks and move closer to those in power, who inevitably use them to undermine the national opposition.”22
It is a superficial reading at best, but a common narrative espoused even by radical Salafi critics and contains two primary themes. One emphasizes the violent wing of the movement and its militant proclivities; a second describes the Brothers’ historical flirtations with power, particularly during the late liberal era, as endemic of a fundamental lack of commitment to democratic ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood “has always violated the national consensus and allied with despotic rulers against the will of the people....Those adherents of political Islam will never shy away from forming an alliance with any power, no matter how oppressive or unjust, if it enables them to establish what they believe is God’s rule.”23 Al-Aswany also characteristically prefaces talk of the Brotherhood with warnings about “Saudi” or Wahhabi Islam, painting their Islamist agenda in starkest colors and contrasting it to “the moderate Islam of the Egyptians.”24
As he watched the presidential elections unfold, al-Aswany held his breath – and then his nose. “From the very beginning, the Muslim Brotherhood has put its political interests above the aims of the revolution,” and now it outright lied, “went back on their promises” to not run a candidate and “obscured the truth.”25 At the same time, “The liberals and leftists must learn that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are not a bunch of reactionary fascists, but in fact are patriotic citizens who took part in the revolution and sacrificed martyrs. They also happen to possess an Islamic political agenda, which we should respect even if we disagree with it.”26
Al-Aswany, who supported the Nasserist candidate Hamdan Sabahi in the first round, feared that the deep state would fix the vote to ensure Morsi’s defeat to Ahmad Shafiq in the runoff.27 Nonetheless, he emphasized that, however “rigged” the process, the revolution “realised a great achievement in voting Shafik out of office and electing Mohammad Morsi.” The new president’s task “will not be easy because he is confronting the Mubarak regime which still controls the state and which I expect to put up stiff resistance to any change.” Thus, Morsi “will need the support of all Egyptians, something he will only get if he is seen to be fighting for all of Egypt and not just for the Muslim Brotherhood.”28 “My ‘violent feud’ with political Islam should not stop me from helping them if they are injured or from supporting them if they wage a nationalist and legitimate campaign.” The primary enemy remained the Mubarak regime.29 Al-Aswany criticized “liberals and rightists who failed to realize that the core of the conflict” was now “between the elected president and a dictatorial power and whose hostility toward the Brotherhood has pushed them into supporting the military council against the elected president” – an argument he would later retract.30
Al-Aswany’s conversion, which he attributes to Morsi’s deceit, occurred over a three-month span. His initial charges related to the government’s failure to curb the “brutal repression” of the Interior Ministry, the insular composition of Morsi’s cabinet, the familiar control of state media, and the Islamists’ domination of the Constituent Assembly.31 In characterizing Morsi as a president for whom Egyptians had been “obliged” to vote, he ignored the broad base that voted for him out of ideological conviction.32 After Morsi declared “quasi-divine powers” in order to curb the judiciary, he turned into a “dictator, therefore an enemy of the revolution” who was following instructions of the Brothers’ Guidance Council “to placate the old regime instead of fighting it.”33 By the start of the New Year, al-Aswany seemed to have lost faith in the democratic process: “how can we have elections when they are run according to a law passed by the useless upper house according to instructions from the office of the [Muslim Brothers’] supreme guide?”34 After protests to mark the revolution’s second anniversary turned violent, al-Aswany asked, “Why is Morsi killing Egyptians?”35 By spring 2013, he proclaimed that Egyptians had traded “military fascism for religious fascism.”36 In a fanciful view back from the future, he predicted a second revolutionary “wave” that would topple Morsi – but through early presidential elections – and end Muslim Brother rule.37 Soon after, the Tamarod petition drive to recall Morsi was in full swing. Al-Aswany now regularly described the Brothers as “full of treachery and opportunism,” and a “secretive and fascist religious sect,” with whom there could be “no dialogue or compromise.”38
Early elections quickly vanished from the agenda as the stage was set for the mass gathering in Tahrir (June 30), the deposition and abduction of Morsi and suspension of the constitution (July 3), the clearing of Rabaa Square (August 14), and the decrees that followed. For al-Aswany, this constituted the corrective to a revolution long gone astray. The army had performed its “national duty” to crush a “delusional jihad.”39 Al-Aswany became an unapologetic international spokesperson for what he now termed the revolution’s “third wave.”40 “We have finished with Hosni Mubarak, then Morsi’s rule, now with political Islam,” he told a German journalist.41 Robert Fisk, one of many who challenged the legality of the intervention, described him as a “happy man.”42 The forceful clearing of Rabaa was “unavoidable” and the Muslim Brothers bore responsibility for casualties. Critics of the action underestimate the threat posed by the “terrorists.”43 Eerily reminiscent of Islamist claims about anti-government protesters in late 2012, he related equally specious urban legends about a lawless, armed encampment. He supported the criminalization of the Brotherhood, equating this with European statutes against terrorism: “Egypt is waging a war against a criminal organization committed to terrorizing and killing innocent people, to bringing down the state and spreading chaos.”44
However disillusioned he has grown with Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi – and that started well before Sisi was elected president in May 2014 – al-Aswany has not budged in his hostility to the Brotherhood, his reading of their history, and his depiction of Morsi as a dictator. What were Morsi’s inexcusable – potentially “capital” – crimes as head of state? And how willing was someone like al-Aswany to allow an elected government, however inept in rule or unpalatable in agenda, to run its course, especially given he knew the entrenched security forces still pulled strings in the country? In his version of Animal Farm, published on the eve of June 30, the lion saves the jungle from savage wolves and evil sheep and then graciously returns to his den.45 Should he be forgiven as blindly optimistic?
Bassem Youssef – one hour a week
A consistent concern articulated by liberals such as al-Aswany was that the Morsi government, by monopolizing power, would fundamentally change the face of culture in Egypt. Although the government did lend a friendlier ear to complaints about public decency in the arts, little of substance really changed. In early June 2013, prominent artists staged a sit-in to protest at the replacement of several key figures, including the director of the Cairo Opera, by the newly appointed minister of culture.46 However, fears that the broadcast media would become fully faith-based proved to be totally groundless. Instead, the media experienced a dramatic opening – not totally, but substantially – as old rules about public expressions of disagreement, and especially political satire, seemed to vanish in a renewed flood of private secular and religious channels.
The case of Bassem Youssef provides a notable – perhaps the notable – case in point. Youssef is a real product of the 2011 revolution, even more than al-Aswany. A heart surgeon by profession, he too went to Tahrir Square, where he helped treat the wounded. In May 2011, he began uploading five- to seven-minute segments of a program he called B+ (after his blood-type) featuring satirical commentary mixed with snippets from daily media broadcasts.47 As his weekly segments doubled in length, surpassing ten minutes by the eighth and final episode, his audience grew exponentially. During late summer, he inaugurated al-Barnameg (The Show) on a liberal private channel, ONTv. Episodes ran for approximately twenty-five minutes. In December 2012, he began his second season on a new network, CBC (in his opening episode he quipped it stood for “Choose Bassem Youssef”) in the refurbished downtown Radio City Cinema and for the first time faced a live studio audience. The nods to The Daily Show, from the set to the edited news clips, down to Youssef’s delivery and facial expressions were now striking. He is not Jon Stewart’s only international clone, but he is arguably his closest.48
What allowed Youssef to flourish, in addition to his talent, were the new rules at play in television broadcast. The red line during the Mubarak era, whether in print or broadcast media, was criticism or satire of the standing head of state. After January 2011, that line evaporated. ONTv, Youssef’s inaugural network, had gained particular notoriety in March 2011 for the live segment of the talk show Akhar Kalam (Last Word) on which al-Aswany confronted Ahmad Shafiq. Youssef aimed his satire at numerous targets, not only state officials but also fellow media figures, especially old regime holdovers. After June 2012, especially in his second season, a standing, elected president stood within his range. An unseasoned, uncharismatic, often tongue-tied politician, Morsi made an easy target. So did a wide array of fiery television preachers and Islamist-Salafi spokespersons, most of whom were not accustomed to such open mass-mediated mockery and close-cropped editing of their utterances.
Youssef had a field day poking fun at them, but how much of this fun was directed at rhetorical excess – and fumbling – and how much more generally at an Islamist worldview that had galvanized a large proportion of the Egyptian electorate? To what extent was Youssef propounding, even mimicking, a self-assured secular worldview, one in part bolstered by a proprietary hold on the “revolution” but also rooted deeply in the official secularism of the state?49 Youssef’s approach is zany but crafty. His editors are able to capture and/or edit people at their worst, and the rapid-fire delivery punctuated by a comedic pictorial depiction or a comic grimace leaves little room for pause.
During his first year’s run, starting with B+, Youssef had lampooned exaggerated fears of Islamism, which his targets often lumped in with the threats of foreigners, Zionism, internet hackers, and sexual deviants. In his seventh, penultimate B+ episode, in April 2011, he announced that he had voted against the March 29 constitutional referendum, but insisted that its approval would not spell the end of the world, the presumed Islamic state that many dreaded. Instead, he criticized a prevailing “atmosphere of Islamophobia, Christianophobia, Liberalophobia, Democratophobia, any phobia you want.” In an early ONTv episode of al-Barnameg, he even broke format to interview the Salafi comic Mohammad Tolba.50 Nonetheless, following the presidential elections a year later, Youssef made less effort to promote bipartisanship; on the contrary, his subjectivity was pronounced, especially as the partnership that elected Morsi fragmented and the government found itself on the defensive.
Youssef asserts to this day that as a satirist his function is to poke fun at those in power. Early in his second season, in late 2012, as he came under increasing fire from government loyalists, he countered that he had only targeted the Brotherhood in five percent of his jokes (he was surely understating). He also noted that the rules governing satire had changed overnight. In the fifth episode of season two, he turned serious to conclude his opening segment:
When we talked about...the old regime...sarcasm was funny. But with the Islamists in power and in parliament, and out in the streets, we shouldn’t talk about them, because sarcasm has become taboo....Make [Muhammad] el-Baradei president, Hamdan [Sabahi] prime minister, and the Copts the ruling party, and I’ll talk about them every episode!
Why are most episodes directed against one group? And this is the last time I’ll say it – because this group holds power, controlled the writing of the constitution, and holds the majority in parliament. Despite all this, they don’t want us to talk about them!51
He tried to remain critical of the troubling behavior (and laughable errors) of an opposition with which he openly identified: “We say provocative things too – we are impolite toward the other side and say things about them that shouldn’t be said.”52 Yet he remained adamant that the binary opposition of “us and them” that so infected Egyptian daily life was rooted in an intolerant rhetoric espoused by the Islamists who characterized their antagonists as unbelievers: “That is why we deserve to be insulted and scolded, even if it comes down to beatings and torture and even, God forbid, murder.”53
Youssef’s targets (in addition to old state media stalwarts) were far more often the clerics and lay preachers on the new religious channels than Freedom and Justice Party or Muslim Brother spokespersons. He ridiculed outlandish claims that opposition protesters were sexually depraved – marching against the government armed with condoms and other birth-control devices – and/or homosexuals. He particularly defended the tenuous position of Christians, in a sinister voice comically elongating the Arabic plural (masihiyin). He took great pleasure in “mistakenly” posting images of Brotherhood leader Muhammad al-Badie as Egypt’s president, underscoring a common liberal critique of where real power, and where Morsi’s real loyalty, lay. Of course, Youssef took regular potshots at Morsi who, arguably, provided great comic fodder.
Underlying this was an ongoing contest over who could or should speak on behalf of religion. Youssef, who has always self-identified as a Muslim, held up clerical and lay antagonists to scorn, challenging their credentials, inferring that most Egyptians were comfortable in their religious skin and were in danger of having their faith hijacked. In one graphic, the Security Police (Amn al-dawla) were referred to as the Protectors of the Brotherhood’s “Call” (Amn al-da’wa). He was not, he insisted, insulting the faith. In a politically charged country, he was, however, insulting some of the faithful.
Bassem Youssef should be remembered, wherever his talents take him in the future, for bravely trying to straddle the divide between old regime media powers – and personalities – many of whom also sat in his crosshairs, and a new government, which happened to represent a worldview he found anathema. If he aimed his humor too widely, linking frenetic, sycophantic preachers and untrained spokespersons with serious political elders, he could be forgiven in part because of the haphazard way the process was unfolding. To those who complained, he asserted the sanctity of free speech. And with a self-deprecating twinkle of his eye, he asked, if it was so unfair, in the face of the non-stop, round-the-clock onslaught from the pro-government channels, to ask for one hour a week of alternative programming.54
It is vital to note that, despite calls for him to be shut down, Bassem Youssef remained on the air through the onset of the Tamarod movement, which he implicitly supported. In March 2013, he was called before a magistrate, and accused of insulting the president and religion, but the case did not proceed beyond a perfunctory fine. There is strong reason to believe that Morsi’s advisors were embarrassed by the magistrate’s action and unsure how to react. The outpouring of support for Youssef in the streets outside the precinct station where he appeared in compliance with the court order – sporting the oversized version of the ceremonial hat that Morsi had worn during a state visit to Pakistan and that Youssef had spoofed on air – demonstrated the scope of his impact.55 Youssef continued his partisan spoofs right up to the moment when Egypt exploded. One of his last routines was a musical send-up of Morsi’s fading appeal staged to imitate Nasser-era extravaganzas on national holidays. The song’s chorus, “We chose him and we’re stuck with him” (ikhtarnah wa akhadnah) spoke directly to the momentum of the Tamarod campaign, and verses reprised many of the themes Youssef had covered on his show, including clever puns relating to the Brotherhood and their religious call.56
Al-Barnameg did not air amidst the turmoil that followed. On July 16, two weeks after Morsi’s arrest and nearly a month before Rabaa Square was cleared, he wrote a column for al-Shorouk (quickly picked up in translation by CNN online) in which he cautioned secular liberals to temper their “victory high”; those who justified, even celebrated the violent attack on Muslim Brotherhood supporters betrayed a “fascist” nature “no different from that of the Islamists who think that their enemies disappearance off this planet would be a victory for God.” The Brothers, he cautioned, had “lost their moral compass a long time ago. Do you want to follow suit?” Youssef warned of a return to the security mentality of the 1990s.57
Youssef returned to the air in late October 2013. In his first episode, he tried to find humor in a country in which many had stopped laughing. He poked fun at both pro- and anti-Morsi camps’ exaggerated estimates of their support in the streets the previous summer and parodied the ongoing debate over whether or not the army’s intervention constituted a coup d’état. There was little humor to be generated, however, at the expense of a movement that had been brutally suppressed, not by people power, but armed force, and an elected president, however cartoonish, who now sat in prison. In the second half of the episode the show shifted gears to target, if indirectly, those who now held power, focusing on the grandiose proclamations and displays of affection for the army and General Sisi.
Towards the end of the hour, the show reprised a routine that aired in late 2012 in which supporting actor Shadi Alfons played a coquettish woman named Gamahir (a take on the “masses”) calling in to the host of “al-Barnameg Love Line.” In the earlier incarnation Gamahir had traded her “pilot” (tayyar, a reference to Mubarak) for a lover with an Islamist “bent” (tayyar islami).58 Now she was separated from her husband and in love with an officer. To add spice to her new affair – and draw unmistakable parallels to real life, in which Morsi had appointed Sisi minister of defense – her husband had been the one who introduced her to her new lover. A series of gags ensued related to political discourse (the host asks if the officer’s intrusion into her marital life constituted a “coup” and she retorts by accusing the host of disparaging the army) and, ultimately, punning Sisi’s name, building to a bawdy climax, a double-edged mockery of public exhortations of the general’s virility and of the prurience of Morsi and his movement.59
Youssef was clearly pushing the limits. His second show, taped the following Wednesday, was cancelled before airing on Friday night due to “editorial policy and contractual differences.”60 The single hour of broadcast political comedy that Youssef had asked for, granted for a turbulent year by the Morsi government, was no longer tenable. Alaa al-Aswany wrote about Youssef’s predicament, circuitously admitting that the Morsi government had not pulled the plug because “everyone had stood up” to defend freedom expression. Now Youssef again stood accused of slandering the “leader of the nation,” but times had changed. “We will not be able to build a modern nation unless Egyptians believe that they are all equal, and that they do not need a leader who is above accountability or sarcastic criticism, even if it is General Sisi himself.”61 The following spring, after Youssef’s eventual return to the air, al-Aswany praised “Egypt’s ancient snark” in a New York Times opinion piece. Egyptians, he wrote, often take refuge in satire when “other means of expression are blocked.” The 2011 revolution “brought satire out in the open.” He again invoked Bassem Youssef who, after ridiculing Morsi for a year, had turned his sights to Sisi. He ended on an optimistic note: “most Egyptians, in spite of their travails and problems, can still appreciate a good joke.”62
Bassem Youssef tread lightly when it came to mocking Sisi. His edged his show more toward entertainment, but he could not ignore the outlandish claims, backed implicitly by regime officials, that military doctors had discovered a miracle cure for AIDS and cancer. A medical doctor by training, Youssef could not countenance such quackery, nor could he stand silent in the face of the rampant jingoism that such promises evoked. As the clock ticked down toward the promised delivery date, it also ticked for Youssef. On June 3, 2014, he announced that he could no longer bear the intensifying censorship and cancelled his show. Soon after, he left Egypt for the Gulf. The miracle cure for AIDS has slipped off the public radar, at least in broadcast media.
Two weeks later, in what proved to be his last Egyptian column, al-Aswany wrote in the name of a “young revolutionary” turned political prisoner:
Egyptians, I apologise for misunderstanding you; you didn’t need a revolution, you didn’t understand it and you don’t deserve it. I’ll leave you this stagnant water that we tried to clear for your sake and for which you accused us of being foreign agents and traitors....Enjoy corruption, favoritism, crippled justice and the media that have programs prepared in the corridors of the State Security.63
Following this, he decided to take a brief pause from writing.
THE LIBERAL CRISIS RECONSIDERED
I began by questioning the “crisis of orientation” expounded by Western scholars looking at Egypt during the interwar period. For them, the crisis entailed an intellectual retreat by self-proclaimed liberals from core secular beliefs toward a defensive “reactionary” worldview couched in religious garb. In reality – I accept the arguments of Charles Smith and others – they sought outreach to a broader population; their sin was flying in the face of perceived notions of progress and modernity. In more recent decades, many outspoken liberals seemed to have embraced that binary of secular progress/religious reaction.
Alaa al-Aswany and Bassem Youssef strike me as representative of this newer liberal crisis. Each, in his own way, got swept along by a revolutionary moment of enthusiasm, fueled by the cumulative euphoria of the Arab Spring, the rapidity with which the dictator surrendered and the infectious camaraderie of Tahrir. Al-Aswany’s accounts of standing in the crosshairs of snipers, an act he likened to playing Russian roulette, are chilling.64 Youssef’s eye for the absurd underscores the power of humor to advance politics. Still, both are culpable of solidifying boundaries between divergent worldviews that by summer 2013 became impenetrable. The writer, once hailed for a sympathetic literary portrayal of a jihadi militant, wound up caricaturing Islamists in ways reminiscent of Mubarak. The satirist occasionally, always gently, poked allies like Baradei and Sabahi. But in his campaign to make those in power appear ridiculous, he never found cause to again reach out, as he had prior to and early during Morsi’s reign, to fellow comics who may have been bearded and to seek common ground through laughter. When, after Rabaa, he warned secular readers against a “victory high,” he still rejected moral equivalency between the two camps. In an increasingly polarized country, the coalition that brought down Mubarak collapsed. Facing the specter of “Brotherhoodization” – arguably exaggerated – many secular “liberals” turned to a defensive, reactionary embrace of re-militarization, a new “crisis of orientation” from which Egyptians may well suffer for many years.
In January 2016, Egyptians marked – they were not allowed to celebrate or demonstrate – the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and the communitas of Tahrir Square. Egypt’s prisons hold some forty thousand political detainees, Muslim Brothers and their confederates, and a growing number of secular activists, many of whom have come to question the degree and speed with which they supported the military takeover of June–July 2013.65 Alaa al-Aswany wrote his last New York Times op-ed piece in October 2014, a generic essay on “Traveling while Arab” with no nod to Egypt.66 The English translation of his third novel, The Automobile Club of Egypt, appeared in 2015. A potboiler set in the waning days of Egypt’s constitutional monarchy, the story makes only one passing, and historically dubious, reference to the most visible opposition movement in the country. One of his lead characters, who attends a meeting of a dissident organization, narrates: “There was a long agenda and a discussion of recent events, including the stance of the nationalist workers and the war against the independent trade unions being waged by the palace, the English, the minority capitalist parties and the Muslim Brotherhood, who were well known for their opportunism.”67 Fearing arrest, Bassem Youssef fled Egypt for Dubai following his show’s cancellation and forty-eight hours after a court found him liable for $15 million in court fees. He spent the spring of 2015 as a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has emerged occasionally to speak out against the Sisi regime and in January 2016 initiated a Twitter campaign to honor the memory of the revolution’s martyrs, the incarcerated, and the disappeared.68 He has kept his promise to not revive al-Barnameg outside Egypt. In February 2016, he signed on with Fusion Media Network to star in a new comedy series, The Democracy Handbook, a sendup of American, rather than Egyptian, politics and society. His “journey across the US,” during which he “discovers that the land of the free and the home of the brave is actually much more a hotbed of corporate-owned politicians, and gun-toting racists,” premiered on July 14 with ten episodes, each approximately five to six minutes long. Youssef introduces each episode by noting that,
In my native Egypt I was a surgeon, until the Arab Spring, when I realized my country itself had fallen ill. So I created a comedy show to help the nation heal. The people liked it, but the government, not so much. And before things got worse, I left for the land of the free.69
Whether he can reinvent himself as an Egyptian-American social satirist in a much more competitive comedic political field remains to be seen.
NOTES
1 The primary proponent was Nadav Safran, Egypt in Search of Political Community: An Analysis of the Intellectual and Political Evolution of Egypt, 1804–1952 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961); quotes are from pp. 231–2, 173, 175.
2 Charles D. Smith, “The ‘Crisis of Orientation’: The shift of Egyptian intellectuals to Islamic subjects in the 1930s,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 4 (1973): 382–410; and Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983).
3 Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism Without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
4 Israel Gershoni, “Egyptian liberalism in an age of ‘Crisis of Orientation’: Al-Risala’s reaction to fascism and Nazism, 1933–39,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (1999): 553.
5 Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
6 Joel Gordon, Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Chapter 1.
7 Mohamed Elmasry, “Unpacking anti-Muslim Brotherhood discourse,” Jadaliyya, June 28, 2013, www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12466/unpacking-anti-muslim-brotherhood-discourse
8 Abdullah al-Arian, Answering the Call: Popular Activism in Sadat’s Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 234; see also Hesham al-Awady, The Muslim Brothers in Pursuit of Legitimacy: Power and Political Islam in Egypt under Mubarak (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014).
9 Negar Azimi, “The Egyptian army’s unlikely allies,” New Yorker, January 8, 2014, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-egyptian-armys-unlikely-allies
10 Youssef won the 2013 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Stewart’s defense of Youssef aired on April 1, 2013. He visited Youssef’s show in June 2013, weeks before the military coup.
11 Alaa al-Aswany, On the State of Egypt: What Made the Egyptian Revolution Inevitable (New York: Vintage, 2011).
12 Ibid., 6.
13 Ibid., 96.
14 Ibid., 62.
15 Ibid., 9.
16 Regime banners often retorted: Islam is not terrorism (al-Islam laysa al-irhab).
17 Al-Aswany, On the State, vii–ix.
18 Wendell Stevenson, “Writing the revolution,” New Yorker, January 16, 2012, 39.
19 Alaa al-Aswany, Democracy is the Answer: Egypt’s Years of Revolution (London: Gingko, 2014).
20 Ibid., August 2, 2011, 89–93.
21 Ibid., April 16, 2012, 230.
22 Ibid., November 15, 2011, 145.
23 Ibid., January 31, 2012, 185. This historical reading of the old regime was highlighted by Ayman al-Zawhiri in al-Hisad al-Murr: al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun fi Sittin ‘Aman (Amman: Dar al-Bayariq, 1999), Chapter 1.
24 Al-Aswany, Democracy, October 11, 2011, 127.
25 Ibid., April 2, 2012, 220–2.
26 Ibid., April 16, 2012, 230.
27 Ibid., May 21, 2012, 244–8; June 4, 2012, 248–52; he later wrote that he had not voted for Morsi; ibid., September 24, 2012, 305.
28 Ibid., June 25, 2012, 256–60.
29 Ibid., July 9, 2012, 265–8.
30 Ibid., July 16, 2012, 270–1.
31 Ibid., September 24, 2012, 305–9.
32 Ibid., October 8, 2012, 316.
33 Ibid., November 26, 2012, 337–42. Mohamed Elmasry notes this as one of five “unfounded myths” promoted to justify Morsi’s forceful removal: “Revisiting Egypt’s 2013 military takeover,” Al Jazeera English, June 30, 2013, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/06/revisiting-egypt-2013-military-takeover-150630090417776.html
34 Al-Aswany, Democracy, January 21, 2013, 366.
35 Ibid., January 28, 2013, 367–71.
36 Ibid., March 25, 2013, 404.
37 Ibid., April 29, 2013, 420.
38 Ibid., June 3, 10, 24, 2013, 435–53.
39 Ibid., July 15, 2013, 459; July 22, 2013, 466.
40 Ibid., July 29, 2013, 468.
41 Jannis Hagmann, “Mubarak’s regime remains intact,” Qantara, July 23, 2013, en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-egyptian-novelist-alaa-al-aswany-mubaraks-regime-remains-intact
42 Robert Fisk, “Alaa al-Aswany: The overthrow of President Morsi was not a coup, it was the third wave of Egypt’s revolution,” Independent, July 29, 2013.
43 “Morsi critic: What happens in Egypt is not very clear abroad,” NPR, August 15, 2013, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=212356278
44 Al-Aswany, Democracy, August 19, 2013, 478–80.
45 Ibid., May 27, 2013, 431–5.
46 See Thoraia Abou Bakr, “Culture and lifestyle during Morsi’s reign,” Daily News Egypt, June 30, 2013, www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/06/30/culture-and-lifestyle-during-morsis-reign/
47 See www.youtube.com/user/bassmyoussefshow/videos
48 Episodes of the show as it evolved are easily viewable online, some with English subtitles.
49 Joel Gordon, “Piety, youth and Egyptian cinema: Still seeking Islamic SPACE,” Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World, ed. Abir Hamdar and Lindsey Moore (London: Routledge, 2015), 103–19.
50 www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuZ2qbLAEEE&feature=youtu.be/. He and Tolba appeared on stage together in late September 2012 at Ayn Shams University in Cairo, hosted by the Faculty of Engineering Student Union.
51 Al-Barnameg, season 2, episode 5.
52 Ibid., episode 4.
53 Ibid., episode 5.
54 Ibid.
55 Morsi wore the hat when given an honorary degree by the National University of Science and Technology. Al-Barnameg, season 2, episode 18.
56 Joel Gordon, “Stuck with him: Bassem Youssef and the Egyptian revolution’s last laugh,” Review of Middle East Studies 48 (2014): 34–43.
57 Bassem Youssef, “Egypt’s secularists repeating Islamists’ mistakes,” CNN online, July 20, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/opinion/youssef-egypt-political-upheaval/
58 Al-Barnameg, season 2, episode 5; the two versions of tayyar come from different roots, with a different initial “t” but sound close enough to make the pun.
59 Al-Barnameg, season 3, episode 1.
60 Memorandum from CBC Network, October 27, 2013, displayed on the air during an interview with Yousry Fouda on Akhir Kalam (ONTv) broadcast on December 4, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwlx5SajVU
61 Al-Aswany, Democracy, October 29, 2013, 519–20.
62 Al-Aswany, “Egypt’s ancient snark,” New York Times, March 13, 2014.
63 Al-Aswany, Democracy, June 16, 2014, 638–39.
64 Stevenson, “Writing the Revolution,” 39.
65 Joe Stork, “Egypt’s political prisoners,” opendemocracy.net, March 6, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/joe-stork/egypt’s-political-prisoners
66 Aswany, “Traveling while Arab,” New York Times, October 14, 2014.
67 Aswany, The Automobile Club of Egypt (New York: Knopf, 2015), 329. The original Arabic edition appeared in 2013, prior to the coup. For the historical role of the Brothers in trade unionism and labor organization, see Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
68 Youssef admitted he fled in a recent interview (February 12, 2016) with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, http://www.npr.org/2016/02/06/465691577/fresh-air-weekend-bassem-youssef-homegrown-terrorists-babys-first-food/. He had previously denied this in interviews for the Egyptian press, “Bassem Youssef launches campaign for detainees, forced disappearance victims,” Egypt Independent, January 19, 2016, http://www.egyptindependent.com//news/bassem-youssef-launches-campaign-detainees-forced-disappearance-victims
69 Bassem Youssef, Democracy Handbook, fusion.net, http://fusion.net/series/democracy-handbook/