Published by The Black Sphere March 14, 2013
First day of CPAC Kevin Jackson interviewed me, and it has been one of the most fun interviews I had! KJ is awesome! Listen to the full interview here.
We discussed Egypt, U.S. foreign policy and how I left Egypt to America.
This is the first personal blogpost I write.
I spent the past few days reunited with two of my best friends from Egypt, who visited me after almost two years of separation… many of us were forced out of our homes in Egypt – yet they were not really our homes, as you never actually fully legally or psychologically own anything under tyranny- many of my friends and I are now scattered on 3 different continents, and still no home…
Sometimes we envied those who died in battle among us, only to shortly reaffirm our stance, and remember that our victories were worth our losses; our vigilance prevails beyond our despair.
Yesterday was our last night together; the three of us were sipping single malt and laughing at ourselves, each other and the world, and one of them paused and told me: “Last time I met you in Cairo I feared that I might never see you again.”
We often wondered when we saw the people we cared about if this was the last time we’ll ever see them… What does this do to you? When the only place you’ve ever known is where young men leave their homes with their hand written wills in their pockets…
He then asked me, “What did it feel like? To be forced to pack your life and identity in a suitcase, go to a continent you’ve never visited before, and not sure where you’ll spend the night upon your arrival… What do you pack? What was going through your mind?”
I told him I just sat silent in every corner where I had great memories trying to imprint every detail in my mind… I was aware that I might never see it again, going alone to a place I’ve never seen before.
I sat on the dining table where we worked on monitoring state-run media coverage of elections.
I had a drink on the bar I designed where I often hosted parties during the month of Ramadan, when serving alcohol was banned.
I touched the books in my library. I listened to Bach in the living room that was bugged and our conversations were recorded by state security, and smiled as I remembered how we laughed and trashed them as they listened.
I sat for hours in my study and sanctuary that smelled like tobacco, vanilla-scented candles, single malt and mahogany, my bedroom, my antiques, my mother’s white-washed bedroom that always smelled like fresh laundry, soap and perfume. The kitchen where my grandmother, my mother and I cooked great food, my art … the family pictures on the walls…That’s what I took with me, and a coat, some clothes and underwear.
The suitcase is now empty, but I still haven’t unpacked…
Posted by allenwestrepublic on
To grow up as a woman of Coptic Christian faith in the Muslim heartland of Egypt is to live as a fourth-class citizen. To embrace the mantle of activist in that atmosphere is worse still. Cynthia Farahatknows because that was her life.
Now an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum in the United States, Farahat chatted about the trials of her life with Next Generation TV’s Michelle Fields this week, and they have been numerous.
Farahat realized as young as age 6 that Egypt under then-President Hosni Mubarek was oppressive. “Being born under a dictatorship, it never feels normal and it never feels usual,” she said. And by her teen years she took an interest in political affairs.
Farahat wanted to be an artist, but that was the surest way not to become one in Mubarak’s Egypt. She said the government forced her instead to study law in college. Learning about Sharia law there awakened the activist within her, and then Islamic terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
“When 9/11 happened,” Farahat said, “I decided to actually take a step and do something about it because America was our safe haven.”
Conversations with others that started anonymously online soon led to in-person meetings and a new political party. “Of course we were getting a lot of attraction from the hounds of hell” in the form of dozens of death threats a day, she said.
But the next generation of Egypt grew evermore restless for change until the perfect political storm materialized in the “Arab Spring” of 2011. The convergence of pro-democratic protests and a “Down with Mubarak” military coup briefly created hope for a better life in Egypt for youth like Farahat.
So why is Farahat in America now? Watch the interview for the scoop.
My interview with Lt. Col. Allen West on Next Generation, PJTV.
The Arab Spring began two years ago and was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy in the Middle East. While Egyptians were able to oust Mubarak and install new leadership, can we really call their coup a success? Find out as Col. Allen B. West talks to Egyptian political activist and Middle East Forum associate Cynthia Farahat.
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=517
The Algerian bloodbath that left 32 terrorists and 23 captives dead has to be viewed in the light of Algerian history.
The Algerian military just like the Egyptian army, is an Islamic military and not a secular one. The modern Algerian army emerged from the FLN (Front de libération nationale) established in 1954, which is the political wing of the national salvation army that basis its values on Pan Arabism and Islamic socialism.
While jihadists and Algerian military definitely have different methodologies, they don’t have very different ideologies when it comes armed Arab jihad against Western forces, and the situation should be looked in the light of the military’s history and involvement and backing of jihadist elements previously in a Dirty War (1993-1997) just to discredit them, and not be taken at face value as an isolated incident.
Published on Friday, 04 January 2013, Coptic Solidarity
By Cynthia Farahat
Horrific reports from Cairo prove that not only Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is involved in mass killings, established torture chambers around Egyptian presidential palace, they also established torture chambers in Al-Azhar controlled mosques.
But of course, the MB doesn’t stop there, they go as far as attempting to steal corpses of the victims they kill and torture to use their pictures and dead bodies for propaganda purposes to lie and claim that they victims were members of the MB!
Here are three documented incidences, out of many:
- Al-Nahar TV channel reports that during a conference held by the supreme guide of the MB Mohammed Badei on December 8, 2012. Badei was giving his speech with a picture of a wounded man behind him called Mohammed Faisal, while stating that he is one of the Muslim Brotherhood martyrs! The truth was Faisal was injured and not killed, and not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and moreover a member of an opposition movement against the MB!
- Dr Emad Gad, renowned Egyptian researcher stated on Egyptian TV, that the Muslim Brotherhood militia performs “beating parties” where they gather around children or boys and beat them after abducting and interrogating them.
Mr. Gad told the TV host: “Here is the number of the former member of parliament, Khalid Abdul Aziz Shaaban, please call him, he has a victim in his neighborhood from the civil opposition movement, the (Muslim Brotherhood) visited his family and offered to bribe them to say that their dead son was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
- The Muslim Brotherhood killed a 15-year-old child, protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood called Islam Massoud, after abducting him and swearing he will never return. The MB later claimed that the child was a martyr of the Brotherhood!
- The MB militia killed the journalist Al-Husseini Abou Addif, while protesting against them according to renowned Egyptian TV presenter Wael Al-Ibrashi, than later the MB claimed he was one of their martyrs!
The Muslim Brotherhood international terrorist organization makes the American science fiction horror movie look like a children’s movie.
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Coptic Solidarity
Egyptian protesters gather outside of the presidential palace in Cairo on Dec. 4. While American media coverage of Arab Spring protests was thorough, Egyptian activists say the truth of widespread protest and violence under President Morsi is barely acknowledged. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)Egyptian protesters gather outside of the presidential palace in Cairo on Dec. 4. While American media coverage of Arab Spring protests was thorough, Egyptian activists say the truth of widespread protest and violence under President Morsi is barely acknowledged. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON—Egypt’s liberal Arab Spring veterans are disappointed at what they are calling American media’s unaggressive coverage of last week’s protests that turned violent and deadly.
As Facebook newsfeeds and YouTube channels are filled with images of anti-government protesters covered in blood, activists complain that the U.S. media and government seem largely unmoved by their plight. The activists say American media and officials barely acknowledge the beating, abduction, and killing of liberal Egyptians in a return of Mubarak-style violent politics.
“I expect the Western press to report the events and the surrounding narrative as if it were happening in the West, not with a logic that assumes that ‘things are different in the Middle East,’” said Aly, one of the founders of a Facebook page dedicated to the issue titled Bring the Noise Egyptian Revolution 2.0, in a Facebook chat. Aly is an MIT graduate currently protesting in Cairo.
According to Bring the Noise, Western media outlets appeared indifferent when suspected Muslim Brotherhood (Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s party) militia attacked and wounded members of the liberal opposition, including journalist Husseini Abu Deif on Dec. 5.
Abu Deif is now hospitalized and in critical condition, according the Egypt Independent.
Egyptian dissident and associate fellow at the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum Cynthia Farahat spoke at a rally in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Listen :
Mr. Mark Tapson quotes my post about the abduction of Ambassador Yahya Najm in Front Page Magazine
December 12, 2012 By Mark Tapson
As New York Times critics wring their hands over the depiction of “enhanced interrogation” in Zero Dark Thirty, the upcoming film about the raid that eliminated bin Laden, the newspaper glosses over the very real torture taking place at the hands of President Obama’s allies in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whom the Timescontinues to describe as “moderate politicians.”
My three hour interview with Tom Trento on Trento Vision TV on December 10, 2012
Part 1: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27634069
Part 2: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27634846
Part 3: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27635624
