The Ramadan of Their Discontent

For nearly every Egyptian, the new moon that settled over the Nile Valley in mid-November brought with it a period of brooding and selfcriticism. It marked the advent of Ramadan, the Moslem holy month, when the faithful stop to fast, offer prayers and examine the fullness or emptiness of their lives.

This year it has brought troubled Egyptians to their mosques in unprecedented numbers. It has also presented their leader, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, with clear evidence that many young Egyptians are desperately unhappy with the quality of their lives. For the advent of the Ramadan moon brought a wave of anti-Nasser protests that culminated last week in bloody rioting.

Practical Step. The unrest stemmed in large part from Nasser's failure to deliver on his pledge of national rebirth, proclaimed just after similar rioting in February. His new National Congress has done little but issue loud exhortations for Egypt to mobilize, which is what it was set up to plan, and a Central Committee of 150 men has likewise spent most of its time in talk.

The most practical step Nasser took was to bring around the two leaders of the winter riot by, in effect, buying them off: Hassan Eid, the student organizer, became chairman of the na tional Students Union, and Helmy Murad, the leading faculty dissident, was appointed the government's new Minister of Education.

As Nasser soon learned, that was hardly what the demonstrations had been about. Egypt's students are chafing under harsh regulations of their conduct, including a ban on all public demonstrations. They have nothing but contempt for what they call "the society of coined slogans" produced by Nasser's controlled press. What is more, they bitterly resent the government's system of job placement, which often finally assigns them to fields for which they are unprepared.

Frog-marched from a Mosque. The current, renewed trouble broke out at Mansoura, a delta provincial capital 75 miles northeast of Cairo, over a decree is sued by the new Education Minister, ex-Professor Murad. Its effect would be to force marginal students to repeat their grade and expel third-year students who fail twice. Probably egged on by the violent Moslem Brotherhood, some 5,000 Mansoura high school boys, aged 14 to 17, went on a rampage against the decree. They were later joined by nonstudents, who turned the demonstration into a full-dress political protest with cries of "Down with Nasser!" When the mob marched on police headquarters, police opened fire at point-blank range, killing one blind high school student and three nonstudents.

Angry reaction quickly spread to Cairo and Alexandria, forcing authorities to close down Egypt's six universities and 14 other schools of higher education. In the capital, 1,000 Cairo University students were driven back when they armed themselves with bricks and palm branches and charged police barricades blocking their school. When 50 took refuge in the Mosque of Manial, horrified worshipers gasped as the cops raced inside without taking off their boots and frog-marched captives off to jail.

In Alexandria, students made a hostage of the provincial governor and seized the Alexandria University engineering campus. Two days later, police fought a pitched battle with 5,000 high-school-age youths. Enraged housewives joined the fight by pouring buckets of human waste and boiling water on police from their windows. At least 16 boys were killed.

By week's end the protest had ended, and Egypt could ponder the violence in prayer. For Nasser, the most troubling memory was the vehement turn that a majority of students have taken against him personally and everything that characterizes his regime--its dependence on the Soviets, off-and-on anti-Americanism and curtailment of personal freedom. He will scarcely be able to assuage their frustrations with his only answer so far--a meeting of the do-nothing Central Committee--and dares not risk more histrionics, such as his postwar "resignation" on June 9, 1967. At that time, student-led demonstrations of support gave him the rationale for staying on. As one sign warned him during last week's rioting: "June 9 will never happen again," meaning if he ever resigns again, Egypt's youth will be glad to see him go.

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