CAIRO – A deep sense of betrayal is blowing through liberal revolutionary circles a few hours after massive demonstrations across the nation saw Egypt's Islamists flexing their muscles by sending hundreds of thousands of protesters to the places where the demonstrations were held. The liberal revolutionaries say the Islamists had promised not to hijack the demonstrations by brandishing their Islamist slogans and demanding the application of Islamic Law (the Sharia). But they didn't keep their word. “This shows political immaturity on the Islamists' part,” Sherif Mekawy, a liberal demonstrator who has been camping out in Tahrir Square for three weeks now, told The Egyptian Gazette. “Egypt's Islamists are just a bunch of political opportunists.” What was planned to be a demonstration of unity last Friday turned into an Islamist show of power, even as the liberals and the Islamists had agreed hours before the demonstrations to focus on the things that unite them, not the ones that separate them. The Islamists mobilised hundreds of thousands of bearded supporters and bussed them to major squares across the nation to demand the application of the Sharia, something that has angered the liberals, making people across the nation worried about the future of this country. Holding placards with slogans such as “Why are you afraid of Islamic Law?” and chanting their customary Islamic slogans, the Islamists, including Salafists and Jamaa Islamia and Muslim Brotherhood members, took the nation by storm on Friday. “Egypt is an Islamic country already,” said Gamal el-Gheitani, a renowned novelist in a phone interview with Egyptian TV on Friday. “Why are the Islamists so anxious to state the obvious, unless they really mean to cause polarisation here?” But the polarisation seems to have already happened in Egypt, in what some people call a struggle over this country's future. As soon as the Islamists chanted their slogans on Friday, some 34 revolutionary alliances withdrew from the Square in protest. It seems that this didn't upset the Islamists. Some Islamist figures scoffed at the liberals and said their withdrawal did nothing to thwart their demonstration. “Has the Square emptied because of the withdrawal of the liberals?” Abdel-Moneim el-Shahat, the spokesman of the Salafist movements in Alexandria, asked rhetorically on Friday. The Salafists say their slogans were natural and did not reflect a desire on their part to break away from the main demands of the revolution or even manipulate it. They add that the slogans they chanted during the demonstration were not meant to underline the importance of an Islamic context for Egypt in the future. A painful slap on the Islamists' wrists, however, came from a caller to a State TV talk show, who said the Islamists had collected money from their supporters in the run-up to Friday's demonstrations. “They asked every supporter to pay LE20 to pay for buses to ferry them to the demonstrations,” the caller said. “They told their supporters to join in the demonstrations to fight against the liberal infidels.”
