Yesterday I tweeted (@justworldbooks) about this amazing, 9-minute video clip from the Egyptian paper Al-Masry al-Yawm, which shows the large-scale confrontation across, I think, the broad expanse of Qasr al-Nil bridge on, I think, Saturday. It is shot from high up, and with some amazing lenses that on occasion give amazing close-ups. There are also some shots taken from ground-level, particularly at the end.
Go and look at the whole thing if you possibly can. You see unarmed, unprotected protesters coming from the left-hand side of the bridge, being met by heavily protected Amn al-Merkezi (Central Security) phalanxes coming in from the right. The Amn people are supported by a few of their large, very well-protected (light-armored?) people-carriers, which careen toward the protesters and then slew around in their midst, scattering those they run into (and running right over more than a few) before they bumble back to their own lines.
The ‘frontline’ on the bridge shifts back and forth throughout the footage. First the protesters have the advantage, then the Amn.
But watch what happens for the half-minute from about 3:40 on. The protesters are right up against the Amn lines, on the ‘near” side of the bridge. The Amn bring up a couple of their very powerful water-hose trucks to try to break the protesters’ line. The protesters form into tight prayer lines and there, while being repeatedly basted by the ice-cold water from the trucks, they perform an afternoon prayer. One man in a white gellabiyeh has gone out in front of them to lead the prayer.
He– and all of them– have the amazing courage of “Tienanmen Square man”. But they are not acting individually. They are acting in a very deliberate, corporate, and disciplined manner.
I think I understand what they were doing. Engaging systematically in familiar, small actions can be a great way to calm panic and collect your thoughts. (Ask any woman who’s ever done natural childbirth; or the protesters in the U.S.’s own civil rights movement who sang hymns to calm themselves in the face of the attack dogs.) And there is no doubt in my mind but that performing corporate prayer is something these protesters are very familiar with. It does, after all, take quite a bit of practice to know “almost instinctively” how to form up into those lines without pushing or shoving, and while focusing on the rhythms of the prayer actions.
But I think this collective prayer action also had a couple of other effects. It held the line of physical space for the protesters on the bridge. It also, quite likely, served as a simple but powerful reproach to the water-cannon shooters. “Here we are, on this bridge, praying. Are you truly going to continue to blast as with water as if we were dirt?”
Well, I don’t pretend to read the minds of the water-cannon shooters. But what was evident, by the end of the clip, was that the protesters had “won” the Battle of of the Bridge and had pushed the Amn people away from it. Using disciplined, nonviolent mass action.
And then what did they do after they had won? You’ll have to watch to the end of the clip to see… (Or maybe you can guess.)
8 thoughts on “Tactical deployment of Muslim prayer in nonviolence”
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This is MK Bhadrakumar in ATOL, today:
“The people who reportedly briefed Obama on the Middle Eastern fires over the weekend didn’t include a single specialist – National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, chief of staff Bill Daley, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, National Security Advisor to the Vice President Tony Blinken, National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough, assistant to the president John Brennan and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Robert Cardillo. Indeed, as Helena Cobban blogged, it is a first-rate policy breakdown of the “blind leading the blind and the blind advising the blind” in the Oval Office.
“The time may have come for the “State Department Arabists” who were kept in the wilderness on ideological grounds to replace the long-time pro-Israel activists who surround Obama as advisers.”
thanks bevin, here is the link to asia times.
go helena!
Amazing video. I saw the latter stages of that battle from the eastern bank and the protesters won! Thousands upon thousands streamed across the bridge into Tahrir Square and I rejoiced
Pity the media -western-did not even care to show this brave act while Tianamen is still remembered!This shows the biased nature…
Helena, great piece on Qasr Al Nile Bridge’s corporate prayers. These prayers help so much in galvanizing and unifying demonstrators in their actions.
Just reading the description here brought a lot of emotion. I can only imagine what the impact of watching the video will be.
Long live Egypt, and long live the Egyptian people.
This prayer-formation is actually a military formation wearing an ecclesiastic camouflage.
In addition to the psychological effects you mention, this tactic secures and holds “taken” territory. And it achieves this using trained squadrons of inductees adopting pre-planned defensive poses. Both are hallmarks of regular military formations.
In order to succeed, each troop must commit athletically to withstand the water-cannon. The individuals’ act of kneeling lowers the squad-members’ center of gravity, increases their contact with the ground, and it offers the spray-stream a ramped back (which effectively diverts the spray). Most likely, these religious squads were trained “shock-troops,” not Ghandi!
In WWI England found itself walled-up by the Axis powers in labrynths of trenches for years on end. The “Prayer-phalanx” on display in this video could entrench any of the feminized Western Democracy’s civil defenses in their own, interminable, parochial trench war-fare.
Don’t get all teary eyed about this video, folks. Residents in France’s cities and in America’s suburbs and in South Africa’s enclaves may soon face this effective phalanx-formation in their own backyards.
Lychnis, whatever it is you are going on about, it certainly sounds like a take on the standard ignorant islamophobic prattle.