Egyptians sit in a cafe-shop in the al-Azhar quarter in Cairo, Egypt. Bela Szandelszky /Press Association. All rights reserved.During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims are expected to abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise till sunset and behave in ways that compliment the month’s holiness.
At the beginning of the holy month in Egypt, policemen were roaming the streets closing down local cafes (kahawy), kicking customers out and fining the owners. On social media it was reported that the policemen invading these cafes used brutal tactics as well as offensive language, accusing those present of being “Kufar” or disbelievers whether they were Christian or Muslim. However, this is not an entirely new phenomenon: it had taken place once before a few years previously, in 2009, in Aswan.
In one of the videos circulated online, there was coverage of what the police had been doing. This video was obviously approved by security forces, as it painted a completely different picture to what had been reported by bystanders and those present. The coverage portrayed them as virtue groups that ‘command virtuousness and prevent vices’ – similar to those in Saudi Arabia. This went viral on social media and, as on many other occasions, turned into a virtual argument between the so-called ‘conservatives’ and the ‘open minded’.
