MENA Opinion: What The "Crime" of Alber Saber Reveals about the "New Egypt" (Moremi)

The scene at the arrest of blogger Alber Saber

---

The significance of the demonstrations in Egypt denouncing the US-produced film "The Innocence of Muslims" is not about tension over "America". The incident has also brought latent political faultlines --- and fears over President Morsi's intentions --- to the surface.

On 12 September, away from the spectacle of the protests near the US Embassy, a mob gathered outside the house of Alber Saber, a Coptic Christian blogger. Police arrived and the crowd told them that Saber had circulated "The Innocence of Muslims" on social media. Saber was arrested and taken to jail.

No evidence was found to support the allegation. However, according to Saber's lawyer, fresh blasphemy- related charges were issued, based on a video found in the house, in which Saber is critical of religion. Saber remains behind bars.

The next hearing in the case is on 17 October.

In a bold, angry, entry on his blog, Jonathan Moremi uses the incident to forcefully question whether "All is Well in Egypt".

---

Imagine it is night. In the darkness outside a mob is congregating around your house. They scream, they hurl death threats, they say they will burn down the house and kill you. You and your mother are scared to death. Your mother calls the police by phone. They must come and protect you or something terrible will happen. Then the police come. They intrude into your apartment, but instead of calming the crowds and stopping their illegal doings --- the police arrest you, drag you out of the house and through the cheering crowds that continue in their death threats while shouting Allahu Akbar. Your mother is left behind without someone protecting her. And you cannot do anything, because the police have handcuffed you and drive you away. It is almost midnight and the horror has gone on for hours. You are scared stiff and don't know where the police is taking you and what will happen to your mother....

Then you hear that the mob has told the police officers that you had posted that anti-Islam movie about the Prophet from that disgusting American on your facebook site. But you know you didn't and you know they are lying. And you don't understand how you can almost die in front of the police who never investigated anything when they where called to save you from the mob, but instead threw you in jail. Without evidence, without any reason. In Cairo. In 2012. In September.

And later you learn that the investigations of the prosecutor indeed show that you have not posted that shitty film on your facebook page, and that therefore they should never have arrested you and thrown you to the furious inmates inciting them to injure you. And you learn too that the General Prosecutor, who has already done his evil work under Mubarak and never cared for the murders of almost 1000 innocent Egyptian protesters, is still allowed to be evil and still allowed under President Morsi to continue in his evil work. And you think about the promises of this new President, who said that all murders of the revolution will be solved and all martyrs will get justice. And you know this will never, ever happen with this General Prosecutor, who did not care about the young protesters getting killed and who does not care to do what the new President tells the world in his interviews, and who still does not get sacked but can continue to be a felool, while the President just allows it to happen....

And the President says nothing. Only big words on television. And grins. Like the General Prosecutors grins. And you wonder why in God's name – yes, in his --- you and your mother so often have risked your lives back then in Tahrir, when you fought for the revolution --– that now eats you up like the regime before wanted to eat you up. And you ask yourself why so many died in Tahrir and around Egypt when what you got is only what you had. And you think that if you had wanted to be thrown in jail for nothing, you might as well have achieved this under Mubarak and that you would not have needed a revolution for this. Because what you get today is the treatment you could have gotten before. So why the fight and the many deaths? It has all been futile.

You are 27 years and of Coptic origin. You are not dumb. You have been taught to think and use your brains to question. And you have questioned. You have looked at the three big religions with their contradictory statements and their unequivocal belief only they are right, only their God is the one and only right God, and you looked at all that and were confused. Yes. You were a young man and you were confused. Now they hold that against you. Your crime, they say, is that you asked questions, that you tried for your life to find answers you could live with. Your crime, they say, is that you dared to use your own brains, that you not simply behaved like a sheep and said "blah, blah" when all demanded you to say "blah, blah" and not think, and not question, and obey blindly under the sword of religion that to you is not solace but confusion. Your crime, they tell you, is that you did what hundred thousands of people and philosophers have done before you in thousands of years that this world exists, trying to find answers to riddles that are so difficult to solve, trying to see light in dark tunnels, trying to find a personal way to understand life.

That was your crime. In Cairo. In 2012. In the 21st century after a revolution and under a President who says that now all are equal in Egypt. And he tells it to the world in staged interviews, grinning and smiling as if everything is in order. But he does not tell to that world that he is lying, that the Muslim Ahmed Mohamed Abdallah (known as Sheikh Abu Islam), who burned a Bible at the U.S. embassy protests and who was filmed doing that and who said that next time he will "urinate on it" and who too is charged with blasphemy, is free and not in jail and not beaten and not slashed with a razor across the neck and does not have to sit in a cage like an animal for all to watch and scorn at and has no mother who had to flee the angry mob threatening to kill her and burn the house down and who cannot return to her home because the Egyptian police is only protecting the mob but not the innocent woman. And who is not sitting in a dark, infested, dirty cell at night with unruly fellow inmates and is scared stiff that he will be sentenced to years in prison and never see his mother in freedom again and will not be able to protect her from the mob that still wants to kill her. In Egypt.

Read full article...