Many thanks to Miriam Asnes, Constantino and others who showed up to this rally! Here are some pictures:

Miriam writes about the rally:

Free Kareem demonstrators received at Egyptian Consulate, NY

There is a lot for all of us to think about after our very small but controversial demonstration today to ask that Kareem Amer’s sentence be shortened. The most interesting thing that happened was when we went up to the second floor of the set-back building to let the consulate know that we were downstairs. As we prepared to walk out the door, the receptionist motioned to me.

“Would one of you please come and meet with someone?”

Which is how I ended up in the office of Mohammad Khalil, an assistant to the Egyptian consul. He was very polite and wanted to know all the details of Kareem’s case. “What is he charged with?” he asked me in Arabic. “Writing incendiary comments about the president and the religious establishment,” I told him, and then was quick to point out that the Free Kareem campaign isn’t about his views, but about the appropriate response to someone criticizing the government or Islam. He promised to look into the matter and I gave him my email address so he could follow up. This might mean that I will have a very interesting time at border control next time I visit Egypt

However, the argument that the issue is not the content of Kareem’s posts but rather freedom of speech got us into a heated argument on the street. It started quite innocuously; two gentlemen who had been at the consulate on personal business pointed out that I had misspelled the phrase “Utluqu Sirah Kareem Amer” as “Utluqu Sira3 Kareem Amer” (I do so much writing about “Al-sira3 al filistini” that I mistakenly wrote the word for “struggle”.) It turned out that Mr. Spellcheck had taken a personal interest in Kareem’s case and knew all the details. “You know, it was all completely legal, according to the laws. Not an emergency law or anything,” he said. “He got a year for criticizing the president, and okay, this I think is wrong. But criticizing Islam? He is threatening the fabric of society. He is threatening the values that we teach our children. He should be put in jail; this is the law in Egypt.”

We respectfully disagreed, saying that there should not be limits on free speech and that surely he agreed that Islam was powerful and respected enough in Egypt to withstand some dissent. But his comments did bring to light something I didn’t quite realize beforehand as a newbie to the Free Kareem campaign; technically, this is a campaign that is saying that the Egyptian laws by which Kareem was sentenced are unjust and therefore it is a legal reform campaign directed at Egypt. If I am mistaken on this point, please do let me know.

The second gentleman was really a piece of work. He claimed that America was run by “the Jews” and that they were the source of his own personal woes (getting rejected for a license by the school board) as well as America’s foreign policy. “The majority of the businessmen, the majority of the government are Jewish,” he told me. People like this are always in complete disbelief to learn that Jews account for under 2% of the US population.

“This is bad for Egypt,” he yelled at us. “Not at all,” I tried to tell him. “We like Egypt. We know that Egypt wants to respect people’s rights. We’d like to help her do that.”

And then, as usually happens, even the most bigoted and obnoxious heckler sometimes has a point. “If you are standing here for Kareem,” he told us, “then you must also demonstrate for everyone who is experiencing injustice from the government here.” I bowed my head. How many times did I go out and demonstrate against the illegal detentions after 9/11 or the current detainees of my own government in Guantanamo? I’m much more likely to run a program like the Middle East Community Outreach Panel series we founded at UMich than show up with signs and a megaphone. Is that preference or cowardice?

For me, the best moment of the afternoon happened as I left the consulate. The receptionist who had managed to get us an audience with someone on staff stood as I walked out the door.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No, thank you” he said sincerely. I could tell then that he had probably heard of Kareem Amer.

Excellent recap of the rally. Thanks to everyone who was involved.