the political situation here

Things change in Egypt so rapidly now that it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening if you stop following it for even a couple of days.

It’s safe to say that the secularist-minded intellectual portion of the country was dismayed both by the referendum result, and by the fact that the vote was so overwhelmingly in favor. People expected more of a 50-50 sort of vote.

The Western media is now awash in stories about the Muslim Brotherhood’s increased power, but the Western media was obsessed with that even during the Revolution itself, when the Brotherhood wasn’t doing anything other than contributing their share of brave Tahrir occupants.

More worrisome was the multi-page in the English al-Ahram Weekly, which I was browsing today. They made it sound like the Revolution was already going down the drain of religious extremism. It was hard not to be depressed by most of the story.

However, one of the positive voices happened to be the Chair of our Department of History, Khaled Fahmy, a prominent Egyptian historian who was at NYU until taking a job with us this year. He’s certainly no Islamist, to say the least. But he openly stated in the article that he was in favor of the referendum, making the point that he’s more afraid of the army than of the Brotherhood, and he wants the army back in their barracks as soon as possible. His other point was that he’s disappointed at fears by Egyptians of the Brotherhood. Egyptians should have more faith in themselves and their democracy, and so forth. He’s long been on record as saying that the religious parties deserve a seat at the table.

Then again, ElBaradei said the same thing, but then he was attacked by Salafists when he went to his polling place.

My own direct experiences, I must say, have been positive. There have certainly been some very ugly incidents, especially the March 9 outrages on the grounds of the Museum, when male Tahrir protestors were beaten and female protestors were subjected to “virginity tests,” and that needs to be vigorously investigated, especially given reports that some army units were directly involved. There is also concern at a proposed law to ban protests that “harm the productivity of Egypt.”

But my personal experiences have been that the free speech climate is dramatically different from what it was, even on campus. People are now tending to say whatever they think, and that was by no means the case before. I’m not saying there aren’t still consequences for this, due to some occasional thuggery like that of March 9. I’m just saying that a political space seems to exist now in a way that was never true under the old regime.