Saad is worried about Egypt and I am worried about Saad

I first met Saad Eddin Ibrahim at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. I was a sophomore sociology major and he was the exotic new Egyptian professor joining the faculty after earning his doctorate from the University of Oregon. In several ways he rocked my world. Those were heady times, protests against Vietnam, struggles with fraternity integration, radical religious thinking, drugs, sex and love! I still remember how he introduced me to “power-dependency models” and a friend and I did a joint research paper about how students who had more personal power over their finances or whatever demonstrated more independence from their parent’s views.

I always remembered Saad because he was so supportive of the students. Back then I was an emerging folk singer – he was at every one of my performances at our local coffee house, the Fluttering Duck. He supported others as well.

After I left school, I began to work with international development issues. I later learned that Saad had moved back to teach at the American University in Cairo. At that time, my spouse and I were involved with local village projects across the world and while we were working in Micronesia, we learned that he had been very supportive of our team in Egypt.

Hey! I knew that guy.

Back in the United States, one night I was watching Ted Koppel’s Nightline and sure enough, there was Saad being interviewed about pending elections in the Middle East.

In his capacity at the University, Saad formed a democracy research think tank, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, which monitored various elections throughout the region and promoted the process of change.

Some 7 years ago, after Saad would not publicly support the future succession of Mubarak’s son, Gamal, he was arrested in the middle of the night by armed security forces and spent the next couple of years in prison. Last Tuesday, Saad recalls this time in a chilling Washington Post article. He writes,

Between 2000 and 2003, the center's offices were ransacked by the State Security Agency, and 27 employees were jailed. It took three years, multiple trials and three tours in prison -- where my health deteriorated -- before Egypt's Court of Cassation, the country's sole remaining independent court, acquitted us of all charges. The egregious nature of the case led the court to rebuke those responsible, citing abuses emanating from the presidency.

Many of us worked in conjunction with Amnesty International and other groups to put pressure for Saad’s release and we all celebrated in Greencastle in 2003 where he and his wife, Barbara Lethem Ibrahim were able to join students from those early days. We recreated the Fluttering Duck and I even dusted off my guitar and sang a couple of songs from the 60s. I especially chose Alan Comfort’s telling lyrics –

One man’s hands can’t tear the prison down,
Two men’s [sic] hands can’t tear the prison down,
But if two and two and fifty make a million…..
We’ll see the day come round,
We’ll see the day come round.

Saad’s op-ed piece reveals how worried he is about his home country Egypt. He writes:

This month marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal. Rumors about the involvement of a secret government death squad tasked with silencing detractors of the ruling Mubarak family in this and other disappearances -- such as that of Libyan dissident Mansour Kikhia in Cairo in 1993 -- have spiked in recent weeks.

On Aug. 8, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported that it had confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths -- three of which took place this year -- that the group "strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment." The organization previously found that while Egypt's population nearly doubled during the first 25 years of Hosni Mubarak's regime, the number of prisons grew more than fourfold and that the number of detainees held for more than one year without charge or indictment grew to more than 20,000.

Egypt has become a police state. Human rights organizations have reported about torture in Egyptian prisons. In 2006, the annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion. This is larger than the country’s national health budget. The Egyptian security forces are four times the size of the nation’s army.

Saad fears for his country, yet I fear for Saad – he is worried as well. Again he writes,

Sadly, this regime has strayed so far from the rule of law that, for my own safety, I have been warned not to return to Egypt. Regime insiders and those in Cairo's diplomatic circles have said that I will be arrested or worse. My family is worried, knowing that Egypt's jails contain some 80,000 political prisoners and that disappearances are routinely ignored or chalked up to accidents. My fear is that these abuses will spread if Egypt's allies and friends continue to stand by silently while this regime suppresses the country's democratic reformers.

I have been doing a study of Mark’s gospel and the narrative draws a picture of large crowds gathering as Jesus preaches, but also small groups conspiring to destroy him. It becomes clear, not by any power of clairvoyance, but by a reading of the signs of the times, that it is not going to go well for Jesus. There is no atonement in Mark, just the lynching of God’s herald. Like others Jesus dies as a martyr.

I hope my friend does not return to Cairo – but he is a stubborn man. We must find a way to transform the Middle East – our present policies in Iraq are destroying whatever capacity to lead we had as a nation. The neo-cons are daily feeding articles beginning to build a slow drum beat of a third war in Iran.

Please join with me in praying not only for peace and democracy in the region, but for my friend, Saad Eddin Ibraham.

Read whole Washington Post article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082001500.html?referrer=emailarticle