Manal el-Jesri recently wrote the following article for Egypt Today. It offers an analysis of Kareem’s outcome and the message it sent to other bloggers and activists.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
Never mind that Amer is just a kid who is foaming and frothing at the mouth as he harangues against The Establishment. Never mind that his foaming and frothing took place in the sanctuary of his own bedroom, probably while wearing his pajamas and shibshib.
The Pajamahideen, as local bloggers are known among themselves, had emerged as a threat. Something had to be done.
And so it was that the good folks at Al-Azhar got together and decided that the best way to stop the blasphemous fiend in his tracks was to give him publicity. Lots and lots of publicity — so much publicity that the whole world would start paying attention to him.
Even better than publicity, they reasoned: Let’s turn him into a martyr.
[...]
We have a popular saying here in Egypt: idrab el-marboot, yikhaf el-sayeb, which basically means if you strike the one that is tied down, you scare off the free ones. In sentencing Amer to four years of prison, you scare all the other bloggers out there. Unimportant as his blog may have been in comparison with the blogs mentioned earlier, Amer gave the authorities the excuse they needed to scare off the more active bloggers, those whose work is more widely noted and who cannot be imprisoned because they largely focus on recording the truth. Although many of them have been arrested in the past, it was very difficult to build a case against them and they were consequently released.
Amer was easy prey and the court that ruled against the young offender hoped to show bloggers the rod.
But let us look at the publicity that such an action has brought: Hot on the heels of last year’s inclusion of Egypt on Reporters Without Borders’ blacklist of countries considered “enemies of the internet,” Amer’s verdict was a rather defiant action, albeit one forecasted by international media.
[...]
Did Al-Azhar want to set an example? I am sure it did. Is this really the outcome it wanted? I do not think so.
Ultimately, Al-Azhar’s bid to set an example has backfired: While attempting to sidestep criticism at home, it has only managed to unleash a storm of dissent abroad.
The international media attention and concern has made blogger Karim Amer’s name synonymous with the fight for freedom of expression. The FreeKarim campaign has circled the globe. Hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — have seen it, and hundreds of blogs carry a link to it. He has become a martyr, a symbol for many of Egypt’s youth — and for activists around the world.
