Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi reacts behind bars with other Muslim Brotherhood members at a court in the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt May 16, 2015.Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
So common have mass death sentences become in post-revolution Egypt that the latest one, handed down this weekend, garnered international attention only because one of the roughly 120 condemned prisoners is a former Egyptian president.
Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated leader who won the only free election in Egypt's modern history by a tiny margin in 2012, was among 100 men sentenced to death for fleeing prison. The break-out took place during the 2011 Arab Spring revolution that ousted authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. More than a dozen other prisoners were sentenced to death for "espionage."
Unsurprisingly, it is Mr. Morsi's name that has been the focus of most news stories about the mass sentence. Egypt has seen several such mass sentences recently, including ones in which Egyptian judges condemned hundreds of prisoners to death in a single ruling. On its face, the case against Mr. Morsi bears all the hallmarks of institutional revenge, the climax of a campaign by the militaristic regime that replaced Mr. Morsi to wipe the Muslim Brotherhood off the Egyptian cultural and political map. That campaign already appears to have further radicalized at least some wings of Egypt's century-old religious organization, if not other Islamists throughout the country. Terror attacks on judges, soldiers and police officers – once a relative rarity in the country – have spiked.
But among the men sentenced this weekend, there is a case that is perhaps more telling of Egypt's trajectory than that of Mr. Morsi. It involves a political science professor named Emad Shahin.
A world-renowned scholar of Islam and politics, Prof. Shahin has served as a visiting professor and researcher in myriad universities, including Columbia, Georgetown and Notre Dame. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.
Prof. Shahin is among the men charged with espionage. (He fled Egypt before he was arrested and is currently in the United States where he was sentenced in absentia.)
"Such a verdict sends a message to the Egyptian people in general that the reign of terror continues and that it is extremely risky to oppose that regime," said Prof. Shahin, referring to Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's government, in an interview with AFP. "I can't say I was shocked, because of the rate of sentences handed down by the Egyptian judiciary … anything was expected."
Unlike many of the condemned, however, Prof. Shahin has previously criticized Mr. Morsi when the latter was in power. Indeed, on Egypt's political spectrum, he may well be described as diametrically opposed to many radical Brotherhood members on issues of democratic representation.
But it is not Prof. Shahin's criticism of the Morsi regime that has landed him in trouble. Rather, his troubles appear to stem from his criticism of what came after Mr. Morsi was deposed – a bloody, state-led crackdown on Brotherhood members and supporters that left countless dead, including roughly 800 or more people in a single incident in August, 2013.
Almost certainly as a result of his outspoken criticism of the current regime – led by Mr. el-Sissi – Prof. Shahin now finds himself sentenced to death. A parade of his colleagues and supporters have described the charges against him as ludicrous, and in a short statement, Prof. Shahin called the case against him a travesty of justice.
But his predicament – and that of others like him who, having no affiliation to the Brotherhood, nonetheless decided to speak up against the new regime – speaks to something more broad. It is, in a sense, a counterargument to the narrative – prevalent among large swaths of Egyptian society – that the state is concerned only with crushing the menace of the Muslim Brotherhood and letting everyone else speak freely.
In many ways, Mr. Morsi's brief stint as Egyptian president was marked by blatant miscalculation and incompetence. Elected by the slimmest of margins over a challenger with deep ties to the just-deposed Mubarak regime, he nonetheless ruled as though granted an overwhelming mandate.
In one infamous instance, he tried to grant himself essentially unchecked powers until the country's post-revolution political and constitutional infrastructure had been completely rebuilt. As such, when he was deposed in a military coup in 2013, it was a coup backed by a huge portion of the populace. Even now, as he faces potential execution for a prison break that probably constituted escape from illegal Mubarak-era detention, Mr. Morsi finds little sympathy outside of his core Brotherhood supporters.
For the same reason, his successor, Mr. el-Sissi, enjoys widespread backing. Many Egyptians are willing to give the current authoritarian administration carte blanche as long as it is seen as working to crush the widely loathed Brotherhood.
But the state's battle isn't with the Brotherhood, as the case of Prof. Shahin and others like him illustrates – it is with dissent. That the first target of that battle is the Brotherhood shouldn't come as a surprise – not only because the group effectively controlled the presidency via Mr. Morsi, but because it represents by far the largest, most organized opposition in Egyptian society.
In a country that has been ruled by military strongmen for the better part of six decades, all the liberal democratic groups formed since the Arab Spring are fledgling at best. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, has operated in the shadows and, when briefly allowed to, in broad daylight for roughly 90 years. But there exists no compelling reason to believe that, should any group – be it liberals, youth revolutionaries, members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, or anyone else – raise its voice in criticism of the current regime, the state's response won't be just as brutal.
It is still unclear whether all or any of the prisoners condemned to death this weekend will eventually be executed. The sentences must pass appeal, and be approved by the country's top religious authority, the Grand Mufti. It is also possible that the President or a higher level of the judiciary may choose to commute the sentences to life in prison, thereby countering the country's reputation as a mass execution state, while still locking the prisoners away forever.
Either way, the message is clear: Voiced loudly enough, dissent is a capital crime, regardless who voices it.