Over the last two years, the political turmoil in Egypt has yielded a new cultural and social phenomenon: the use of Facebook as a social medium. Facebook users in Egypt use the social-networking site both as a way to follow up uncensored news and videos and as way to express their own political views by creating new pages. Tens of pages, both for and against the Muslim Brotherhood, have contributed to the recent polarisation among Egyptian Facebook users, to the extent that clashes can erupt inside families because one member adopts a pro-Brotherhood view and another one that is against. This has led in some cases to the loss of friendships among those of different views and a state of polarisation that the interim government has been arguing against. Some of the most famous and regularly visited Facebook pages, whether for or against the Brotherhood, are Ikhwan kaziboon (Brotherhood members are liars), Ishta ya man, ihna al-ikhwan (cool man, we are the Ikhwan), Ikhwani wa lya al-sharaf (honoured to be a Brotherhood member), Al-rais (the president), madanya la askarya wa la deeniya (towards a civil state, not a military or religious one), tawtheeq graem al-ikhwan (documenting Brotherhood crimes), and many others. While some pages were published before the advent of the ill-fated Brotherhood regime, many others ushered in Brotherhood rule in Egypt, along with its dangerous consequences, such as last year's fake constitution and the killing of young protesters at Al-Ittihadiya palace and in downtown demonstrations. The Brotherhood itself has sharpened its weapons in defence of its ideology of establishing an Islamic state. Following up the news feeds of pages affiliated to each camp can make readers feel torn in pieces. It can seem as if you are in a middle of a battlefield, where each camp is shooting bullets in your direction. The choice of the titles of the pages is not unusual, and they are mainly descriptive with almost no innovative sense. Meanwhile, the two camps are fighting each other with the same tools, both seeming to enjoy huge fan bases. Over time, Brotherhood pages have started to use the same trendy language used by the revolutionary camp, also adopting some of the slogans used in the 25 January Revolution. The same event is looked at from two different perspectives, each using sources and tricks for their own benefit. Brotherhood pages tend to use videos from Al-Jazeera, however, the news channel which has helped to tarnish the image of the 30 June Revolution. Ikhwan irhabyoon (terrorist Brotherhood), a group whose members exceed 4,000, is one Facebook page that called for the banning of political parties that are based on religious principles long before the current debate on the subject. The group also called for a totally new constitution, not the ratification of the existing one, which was drafted over a few nights under the Brotherhood regime. “Now that it is clear to everyone that the Freedom and Justice Party and the Wasat Party and the rest of the Salafist and Jihadist political parties are merely religious parties, it should also be clear that they are in conflict with the political system in Egypt. Any political activities based on discrimination between Egyptians according to their sex or origin should be eliminated,” reads one post on the page. The “Brotherhood members are liars” page, which has 14,575 members, goes further to call for the total independence of the judiciary and the closure of the ministry of information and Shura Council. Its latest call has been adopted as part of the first stage of amending the constitution. On the other hand, on the “Honoured to be a Brotherhood member” page, which enjoys up to 339,987 fans, the yellow Rabaa symbol appears as the profile picture in the aftermath of the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya and the Nahda Square sit-ins. Facebook pages like this one look like white boards spotted with yellow as a result. Pictures of Mohamed Ibrahim and General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, the ministers of the interior and defence, appear stained with blood accompanied by Quranic verses that encourage Muslims to have faith in God and incite hatred against the two ministers. In such virtual battles, the two camps use almost the same tools: videos, sarcastic pictures, insults, and humorous notes. While the liberal camp has many cartoons exposing Brotherhood lies, the Brotherhood's pages are notably short on similar materials against the other side, presumably because there are no artists or caricaturists in its camp. Instead, it uses Quranic verses and hadith to support its claims. While most pages and groups were created by anonymous individuals, or regular Facebook users, a few have been created by intellectuals. Sahafyoon did al-inqelab (journalists against the coup), for example, is one of the few groups created by journalists. Established by Salah Badawi on 13 July, the group aims at what it calls supporting the 25 January Revolution while considering the 30 June Revolution to be a coup. The page denounces incidents of the military and interior ministry's crackdown on journalists, taking the latest incident of the shooting of Al-Ahram correspondent Tamer Abdel-Raouf as evidence. In response, a page has been created by the other camp: Sahafyoon maa thawret 30-6 wa did al-irhab (journalists supporting the 30 June Revolution and against terrorism). However, there is little worth reading on it apart from its denouncing the Brotherhood's habit of attempting to terrorise journalists, especially those working for independent newspapers, supported with documentary videos. Days before the advent of the 30 June Revolution, General Al-Sisi acquired major popularity among the revolutionaries and their supporters among Facebook users. This popularity soared after 3 July, when the army answered the people's demand and toppled Brotherhood rule. Many Facebook pages were then created to support Al-Sisi's national role and to put forward his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections. Norasheh al-fareeq Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi raaesan li misr (we elect General Al-Sisi president of Egypt) is the title of a new page that supports the Egyptian army against “sheep and traitors”. The page, started on 3 July, has some 4,303 fans. Besides supporting the Egyptian army, the page boasts up-to-date news about the Brotherhood's fading demonstrations, and it makes fun of the group's leaders who have been arrested one after the other. One of the suggestions made by writers on the page is for the urgent revision of the school curriculum, which was falsified by Brotherhood educational experts over the last year. This is a very good suggestion, though it is a pity that it comes only shortly before the start of the academic year. One of the most sarcastic pages is entitled al-midan al-rabea (the fourth square). Created on 29 July, the idea of the page is to make a stand against the religious state represented by the Brotherhood regime, against a military state that could be possibly led by Al-Sisi, against the Brotherhood, and, surprisingly, against the exclusion of Brotherhood members from political life and against the “concept of the state itself.” Following the small Brotherhood demonstrations last Friday, one page member commented in a sarcastic tone that the “Ikhwan's chant today is: people, police and army forces, one dirty hand,” instead of the commonly chanted slogan “people and army forces together, one hand.” Another post says that “we will kill anyone who assumes that Islam is a terrorist religion,” a statement signed by “a Muslim terrorist.” In less than a month the page has attracted some 20,000 fans. The polarised situation the country is now witnessing suggests the question of how far such Facebook pages have participated in producing this sort of division or polarisation in the society, to the extent that people are now talking about banning any political party based on a religious background. “Documenting the crimes of the Brotherhood and Morsi” is the name of a recent Facebook page started by the established short-story writer Ahmed Al-Khamisi. The group started a few months ago, its aim being to document crimes committed by the Brotherhood regime over the last year, so that they won't slip from national memory. “I was motivated to start this group because I know that human memory is fragile. Without this documentation of Brotherhood crimes, people could forget their recent past,” Al-Khamisi told Al-Ahram Weekly. “My aim was to make Brotherhood crimes available to anyone who might otherwise forget the miserable year Egypt has just gone through. I believe that otherwise in just a few months the Ikhwan could come back and argue that they didn't do anything wrong.” “I don't care about the number of fans who subscribe to my page. I was just keen on documenting the facts, so that researchers or new Facebook users would be able to benefit from this documentation,” he added. “I don't believe that Facebook pages have created an anti-Brotherhood atmosphere, because almost all Egyptians are already against Brotherhood members, and more than half of the society does not use the Internet and might even never have heard of Facebook.” “It was clear after 11 February 2011 that there was a sort of agreement between [former president Hosni] Mubarak's military camp and the Brotherhood regime to contain the Revolution and exclude the young revolutionaries. In the absence of the revolutionaries, it was easy to establish religious parties, something which I have fought against on all the pages I have created,” said Morsi Sultan, a freelance writer who has created more than 30 Facebook pages and groups over the past few years. Sultan sees himself as a store of ideas, saying that “When I created the “Brotherhood are liars” page, I was astonished to find that there was already another page with the same title, and it had more members than mine had. However, I considered this to be a major success as it was a step forward in exposing the crimes of the Brotherhood regime.” Sultan, who lives in Port Said, a city well known for its historical rejection of the Brotherhood, told the Weekly that he did not agree that there was a division in Egyptian society. “It is a deceptive word,” he said. “Almost all Egyptians have discovered the truth about this group, and they have managed to eliminate it from political life. Calling for dissolving the religious parties is the core issue and main demand put forward by the 30 June Revolution.” “Revolutionary movements usually start with ideas and then get supported by the people, exactly like what happened in the 25 January Revolution, which started with the Kulina Khaled Said page,” Sultan said. The latter page had called for resistance to the former Mubarak regime in 2010, and since then there have been recurrent calls for the establishment of a civil regime in Egypt on Facebook. Established on 16 February 2011, Misr dawla madaniya (Egypt is a civil country) is one of these very popular pages, where the number of fans exceeds 227,352. The language used is less provocative and more tolerant. Yet, despite its name and popularity, the page does not offer many real thoughts or suggestions on the concept of the civil state. Instead, most posts are reports or critical accounts of the confrontation between waning Brotherhood followers and supporters of the liberal trend in Egypt. Tasaloh, or reconciliation, is one of the rare pages that attempt to offer a moderate tone among the otherwise stringent pages to be found on the Web. Founded on 10 July, the first of Ramadan, by Mohamed Bartash, an artist and corporate general manager, the page is designed to support its founder's belief that “Egypt needs all its sects to work and live together respectfully. We need to diffuse this spirit of tolerance at such a critical juncture in the history of this richly diverse country.” Reconciliation's fans are very limited, however, and the page only has 67 followers. This could be because Facebook users tend to be for or against a certain camp. The site as a whole is a bit like the football league, with the fans of the two big clubs dominating the scene and other fans being left behind and tempted to support one club or the other. “There should be common ground for dialogue between the different political and religious trends if we want to have a true democratic discourse. It is insane that each group or camp is literally talking across each other, rejecting the other's voices. On Facebook, there is no common space for users from different ideological backgrounds,” Bartash told the Weekly. “Facebook users find it amusing to click ‘like' on one post or another and write a funny comment. This won't lead us to a common place where people with different backgrounds can peacefully exchange their thoughts.” “The Egyptian people are in need of a third revolution. This time, the revolution should be against laziness, disorganisation, and the declining level of educational services, and above all against intolerance,” reads a recent post on the Reconciliation page, echoing the neutral voice regularly found among the contributions. “This page is a preliminary tool to achieve this goal. I hope the page will be a step towards a more tolerant society,” Bartash concluded.
