CAIRO – The cacophony of voices chanting different slogans in Tahrir Square last Friday has renewed calls for serious dialogue. A concrete and constructive vision will only be achieved when different political and national movements, the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists (Muslim ultra-fundamentalists) and high-profile NGOs sit down together round the same negotiating table. Influential writers and thinkers should also be encouraged to stress the nation's supreme interests. Although July 29th was touted as the 'Friday of Unity', the unity fizzled out when the Salafists failed to keep their promise that they would not chant religious slogans or unfurl banners, whose slogans damaged the prestige of other political forces camping nearby. The Salafists provoked the ire of the liberals, the secularists and the moderates by demanding that Egypt should be a Muslim state. Although the Salafists had carefully planned to flex their well-oiled biceps for the first time since 1952 or even earlier, their strong participation last Friday can be seen as positive in many ways. For one thing, the Salafists and their womenfolk must have felt deeply relieved to have had the opportunity to express themselves safely in public. The Salafists and other Muslim fundamentalists, many of whom languished in prison without being charged under Mubarak's regime, must also have felt grateful to the young revolutionaries, whose uprising on January 25 helped them snap the shackles they'd worn for decades. That is why the Salafists and Muslim fundamentalists have declared themselves the leading players in Egypt's post-revolution political scene. This should mean that, when they sit at the negotiating table, they will be no less sincere and objective, regardless of their allegedly radical slogans in Tahrir Square, than everyone else. Attempts to reduce the influence of Salafists and other Muslim fundamentalists would surely fail.
