and it generates two diaries, in Egypt the Islamists are showing where things are headed, along with violence and deaths, and the liberals are in retreat.
Calls for an Islamic state have taken over Cairo’s Tahrir Square as the largest demonstration since February has been mobilized by the country’s Islamist organizations. Ultraconservative Muslims turned out in force Friday as hundreds of thousands filled Cairo's central Tahrir Square in a rally marked by a growing rift in the protest movement.
[...]
Instead of "Peaceful, peaceful," which demonstrators have chanted during confrontations with security forces, they repeated "Islamic, Islamic." And instead of "The people want to topple the regime" — a chant made famous in Tunisia and adopted across the region — they yelled, "The people want to implement sharia," a strict form of Islamic law.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...
Later there were a number of casualties when violence broke out in a separate incident in Sinai.
“We have two bodies of civilians in the morgue now and 12 police conscripts being treated for injuries in hospital,” Hisham Shiha, Egypt’s deputy health minister, told state television.
Around 100 armed men drove around the city of El-Arish, shouting Islamic slogans, and firing into the air, before attacking a police station.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Elsewhere in Egypt, some of the Islamic protests turned violent.
Gunmen fired on a car carrying five Christians in the province of Minya south of Cairo, killing two and injuring two, a military official said. It was the second killing in two weeks in the predominantly Christian village of Roman.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...
For anyone interested, besides the BBC and AP reports, the NY Times and Reuters provide further details, including the distress of Egyptian liberals. The sexy part of the Arab spring has apparently sprung, but the masses at Daily Kos look elsewhere.
Egypt has been showing increased signs of polarization, Mr. Shadid reports, and the rift between religious and secular factions was clearly in evidence on Friday as many secular Egyptians responded to the scene in Tahrir Square on social media sites.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/...
I suggest reading the social media entries from the above link, and the larger piece referred to, which is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Reuters reported:
More than 30 political parties and movements withdrew from a rally on Friday that was organized to send a united message to the ruling army about reform, saying the event was hijacked by Islamist groups.
"Islamic law above the constitution," read banners in Cairo's Tahrir Square that was packed with tens of thousands of people. Protesters who fear Islamists will seek to dominate plans to rewrite the constitution demanded they be taken down.
"Islamic, Islamic, we don't want secular," they chanted in the square filled with many followers of the strict Salafist interpretation of Islam.
"There are so many (Islamic) beards. We certainly feel imposed upon," said student Samy Ali, 23. He said Salafists had tried to separate women and men camping there.
http://www.reuters.com/...
Al Jazeera provided a video report:
So, more power to the Israeli protesters, peacefully seeking economic justice and showing the health of the Israeli democracy, many times over. What happens next door, however, provides a perspective that is too often absent here, and portends something more grave for democracy in the Egyptian state, the region, and the international community.
PLEASE NOTE: I am off to an engagement and will not participate until much later, if at all. However, I mainly wanted to provide a juxtaposition. As liberals, to see the developments in Israel provide an uplift. To see the same in Egypt is not something to overlook or feel good about, at least from my perspective.