it's always hard to get valid information out of these sorts of events, but it doesn't seem like much actually happened today in egypt besides a round-up of some protestors. it almost seems like a sting - and, yes, they'll do that.

i want you to be careful not to fall into the narrative that the protests are being driven by "islamists". for all it's backing by the theocratic regimes on the peninsula, egypt is actually a fairly secular society that is more like turkey than saudi arabia or iran. egyptians are not particularly religious people, and islam is not particularly popular, there. broadly speaking, egyptian society doesn't even seem to have much of an aversion to restrictions on "religious freedom" that many westerners would consider a little over the top - they have stricter rules on islamic dress than most western countries do, and at times have even passed laws against beards. you'd be surprised, if you don't know about it. so, when you see or hear the egyptian government blame the protests on "islamists", it's essentially a smear - and a transparent one that's set up by design. the real threat to the rulers are of course the leftists, but the regime will actually demonize the religion as a conscious control tactic.

this is of course different from what happened in syria, when you had an actual, literal invasion of foreign backed terrorist groups into the country. there's nothing like that happening in egypt, which has a substantive defense force that could wipe out such a thing pretty quickly.

the 2011 protests were largely driven by secular leftists to start with, before the security force co-opted them. and, even as the government blames the unrest on islam, it will send agents to try and rouse up religious sentiment, both because it will make the protestors unpopular and because it will make them easier to control. if there are any protests allowed to continue at all, those protests will be at the mosques.

which is why i would present the following proposal to my egyptian comrades as a tactic: avoid organizing on fridays. it's a setup. pick any other day. pick saturdays!

again: it's hard to get information out of these places, but you should assume that this is a secular protest for basic rights for now, regardless of what the state broadcasts, and regardless of how the western media picks it up. we'll see how that develops over time, and what kind of character it takes on - and whether it's still worth your moral support or not. but assume secularist, a priori.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/a-tense-and-divided-egypt-braces-for-more-protests-on-friday/2019/09/27/a7b779d4-e086-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.