Interviews with Mahmoud Salem

Now that Mubarak is gone we were left with the military running the place. And the Egyptian people– Egypt is kind of a cursed country. Everybody has tried to invade it at some point. So when it comes down to the military, lot of the Egyptians are hard believers that we need to maintain it, and no one actually attacks the military institution, because they believe that those people who are protecting us. Those are also the people who have stalled the revolution and have made everything very, very slow for the past nine months. And actually have attacked revolutionaries, and started military trials for civilians and most recently killed Coptic protestors at Maspiro, killed Christian protestors at Maspiro.

So I´m not sure that, as long as they are in power unchallenged, that the country has any real future until they die or get removed. I truly believe that this is also the battle of generations. Everybody in the Supreme Consular Armed Forces are all, like, 60 and above. So they´re not necessarily a revolutionary institution. The military is not a democratic institution by principle. So having it oversee the democratic transition is just ridiculous, when you think about it. But you´re caught in the catch-22 of all times: With the police, you know, refusing to do their job, you cannot take out the military. And then you´ll be left with a serious vacuum when it comes to security.

What I would like to see in 10 years, what I expect is next two years of just utter chaos, continuous. That they have intended it to be this way. They have wanted to ensure that there would be a divided Parliament and a constitution that would allow them to have complete autonomy over their affairs, which cannot be allowed in civilian overview. And basically we gain the trust of people, and then you have democracy. That´s our plan.

Mahmoud Salem is a blogger, activist, writer and a business development consultant. His blog is the most prominent English-language Egyptian blog, entitled: “Rantings of a Sandmonkey” it won the best Middle East and Africa blog awards in 2006 and 2007, and Best English Blog in the Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs award in 2011 and has over 6 million unique views and his Twitter account has over 87,000 followers. His human rights activism areas have been in freedom of speech, human rights, religious rights, and women’s’ rights.

In 2005, he started the first anti-terrorism demonstration in Cairo, and participated in monitoring the Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections.

In 2006, he was the principal organizer of the first Egyptian anti-sexual harassment demonstration and marsh after the Eid sexual harassment incidents. Incensed by Police torturing Egyptian people on videos and sparing them, he and friends collected the videos, posted them online and pushed for a public persecution of the police officers who committed those acts, leading to the unprecedented convictions of two police officers.

In 2007, he was a stage speaker at the Atlas Foundation’s 25th anniversary conference, head of the new media panel in the Qatar Foundation democracy conference and started the Tafkir project, an Arabic language blogging website to facilitate and promote ideas and online dialogue.

In 2008, he was an organizer and a team leader of 8 Egyptian bloggers for the “Egypt blogs America” project, which monitored the US elections and created a documentary film about it.

In 2009, he was picked for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference and the US Islamic Forum conference, and started the IRIS social campaign company.

In 2011, he was one of the leading voices of the January 25 revolution that brought down Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ran for Egyptian Parliament, started the Tweetback initiative which developed two impoverished communities in Egypt with a population over 700,000 and raised millions of pounds for social entrepreneurship projects. He also initiated the “Egyptian Bill of Rights Project,” which was later on sponsored by Mohamed El Baradei.

He co-authored two books – “Tweets from Tahrir” and “18 Days” and founded “7etan,” the first Graffiti School in Egypt. His writings have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and various online websites.