The assassination of Ehab El-Sherif revealed the volatility of public sympathy for the Iraqi "resistance". Gihan Shahine gauges reactions Sherif Fahmy, a 38-year-old engineer, was anxiously following the coverage of last Thursday's London bombings when news broke that Al-Qaeda had killed Egypt's top envoy in Iraq. Fahmy's initial reaction -- "a mixture of deep shock and grief" -- was typical. Those emotions, however, soon gave way to horror, as images from an Al-Qaeda Web site were aired. They showed the helpless and blindfolded Egyptian diplomat just before he was beheaded. The video did not show the actual murder, but it did include a statement calling Ehab El-Sherif "the ambassador of the infidel", and accusing him of "apostasy". In the meantime, images of El-Sherif's veiled wife and elder daughter began appearing all the over the place -- in newspapers and on TV -- grieving over the death of "a beloved husband and father" who had taught his daughters the "morals and ethics of Islam". At that point, Fahmy told Al-Ahram Weekly, the shock, grief and horror suddenly transformed into something else: anger. It became clear, Fahmy said, that El-Sherif's murder was "an unforgivable crime". Just as suddenly, the sympathy and support for the Iraqi resistance that Fahmy and so many other Egyptians felt, also changed. The Egyptian diplomat's assassination seems to have opened a Pandora's box of questions about the legitimacy of resistance acts in Iraq. Prior to last Thursday, the armed attacks against US occupation forces -- which have ironically claimed more Iraqi than American lives -- were, for the most part, applauded by the general public. News of resistance seemed to serve as a sort of emotional counterbalance to the constant stream of tragic reports of Israeli atrocities committed against the Palestinians. In many ways, they absorbed some of the public's increasing sense of humiliation and anger over the way fellow Arabs were being treated not so far away. Almost all those interviewed by the Weekly slammed El-Sherif's murder as a "terrorist" and "barbaric" act, "a bloody crime" committed under the banner of Islam. Many called for "revenge". According to the angry owner of a downtown grocery shop, "no religion would justify the killing of an innocent, unarmed man, who was simply doing his job. I really felt like my own brother was killed. This is terrorism, not resistance." The most prevalent logic being bandied about was that for the Iraqi resistance to be legitimate, it should only target the US-led occupying forces. Kidnapping and killing civilians, including Iraqi people, was generally unacceptable, even if those acts were meant to help resistance fighters achieve a legitimate target. Very few people were able to differentiate between Al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Mosaab Al-Zarqawi, and Iraqi national resistance groups targeting US interests. For many, all the resistance groups were simply stereotyped as scattered, unorganised factions with "no leadership, no agenda or strategy, and no clear target". A porter angrily said that after El-Sherif was killed, he lost his "previously intense interest" in the goings-on in Iraq. Karim Abdel-Galil, a grocer, said he used to support the Iraqi resistance "wholeheartedly". Now, he "simply can't forgive them". For Said Ahmed Hamed, a government employee, Iraqi resistance fighters no longer deserve his sympathy. In fact, "they actually deserve what's happening to them." "Who decided that El-Sherif was an apostate?" exclaimed electrician Mohamed El-Hawary in anger. "This will only mar the image of Islam and increase worldwide negative feelings toward Muslims." Similar expressions of public ire inundated the Internet, where chat rooms and discussion forums were turned into platforms for heated debate on the issue. "I feel an inferno inside me," was Ahmed El-Shaheed's comment on a discussion forum on amrkhaled.net, a Web site belonging to popular Islamic preacher Amr Khaled. "Egyptians used to regard resistance fighters in Iraq as heroes, but now it's clear to everybody that they are no more than a group of blood-thirsty murderers. They just kill everybody: Muslims, women and children." Another forum participant, Ghada Shehda, asked if "killing the Egyptian ambassador and accusing him of apostasy [was] an act of resistance? There is a difference between real resistance and terrorist groups who act under the banner of resistance." A participant named El-Qassam, also from Egypt, agreed with Shehda: "There are always those who try to mar the image of Iraqi resistance, but it is hard for the simple man on the street to grasp it. Now the situation is getting more complicated. The murder of our ambassador will be a real crisis: it will negatively affect Egyptian people's sympathy for real Iraqi resistance." Prominent commentators like Wahid Abdel-Meguid, of Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said that the Iraqi resistance had already forfeited much of its public support for "having no clear agenda, leadership or strategy". This state of ambiguity, Abdel-Meguid said, has resulted in a chaotic situation where people can hardly differentiate between legitimate national resistance and insurgents. "Now it will definitely take Egyptians some time to overcome their grievances over the murder of El-Sherif, because the hurt was so deep." According to Abdel-Aziz El-Husseini, the media coordinator of a series of international anti-war conferences that have been held in Cairo by the International Campaign against American and Zionist Occupations, because Egyptians are emotional by nature, public support for the Iraqi resistance is only likely to further decrease. "The state-owned media has further fueled such passions," El-Husseini said, "by repeatedly airing emotional interviews with El-Sherif's family in order to distract the public from blaming the government for sending an ambassador to an occupied territory in the first place." This last point was indeed controversial. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has vehemently denied that El-Sherif was to be Egypt's ambassador in Baghdad, while remaining silent regarding the official Iraqi announcement, just two weeks prior to the murder, that Egypt would be the first Arab nation to post an ambassador there. Many of those spoken to by the Weekly were in fact equally angry at the Egyptian government for having sent such a high-level envoy -- a former deputy ambassador to Israel -- on such a dangerous posting, which many suspected was done to "please the US", which has recently been urging Arab countries to upgrade their diplomatic missions in Iraq. Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayyat is not as worried as Abdel-Aziz about the potential long- term decline in Egyptian public support for the Iraqi resistance. "The anger will cool down when people realise that Iraqi resistance is not all about Al-Zarqawi," he told the Weekly. Despite their current fury, El-Zayat insisted, people still believe in a legitimate Iraqi right to resist. "The situation in Iraq is so chaotic and abnormal that one can hardly expect people to act normally," El-Zayat said. "We cannot condemn all resistance groups for Al-Zarqawi's mistake, since Al-Qaeda does not represent more than 10 per cent of all resistance fighters." Abdel-Aziz El-Husseini would also rather dwell on what he termed "the positive side" of the Iraqi resistance, which has caused the US "10 times the harm that is being officially announced. Resistance has turned the life of US soldiers in Iraq into hell to the extent that the US is now seeking dialogue with armed groups." El-Husseini, however, admits that by killing civilians "some resistance groups have committed a mistake, having adopted the same immoral US logic of the end justifies the means. Resistance groups apparently wanted to pressure governments to pull back their diplomatic envoys, just like the US justified killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan in its war on terrorism." For El-Zayyat, the ideology some resistance groups have adopted is a matter of equal concern. The Islamist lawyer would ask the same questions the public has asked: Who decided El-Sherif was an apostate? And were those who passed that verdict religiously and legally qualified for the job? This "farce", according to El-Zayyat, is also "a sad outcome of Al-Azhar's dwindling status as the Sunni world's most prestigious seat of learning." The mufti of Al-Azhar, Ali Gomaa, condemned the killing of El-Sherif on the grounds that "the sanctity of a Muslim life is more precious to God than that of the Kaaba." Meanwhile, leading Muslim scholars at an International Islamic Conference held in Amman last week, including Al-Azhar's Grand Sheikh, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, similarly condemned the practice of accusing Muslims of apostasy and killing them in the name of Islam. El-Zayyat said that those "brief" condemnations, however, seemed to have "fallen on deaf ears, since people now put little stock in Al-Azhar, which is largely viewed as a mouthpiece for the government." The government, itself, seems to be bearing the brunt of criticism. El-Sherif's murder is "a slap on the Egyptian government's face", El-Husseini said. "Iraq is already an occupied territory and the current Iraqi government is widely regarded as a US agent. The resistance's reaction was, thus, expected." On a discussion forum on egyptsearch.com, a despondent user named Ahmed also blamed the Egyptian government for wanting "to appear good in front of the US by sending him [El-Sherif] to such a turbulent place." Mahmoud expressed similar sentiments on bbcarabic.com: "The Egyptian government has, again, proved that Egyptian blood is cheap... Not only did the government send our ambassador at a time when killing is rife, it also didn't take any action to save him. The government's attitude is a far cry from how the Italian government reacted when two of its journalists were taken hostage." Additional reporting by Salonaz Sami, Sara Abou Bakr, and Amira El-Nakeeb
