Last Thursday, a group of anti-Mohamed Mursi protesters performed the Harlem Shake in front of the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters in Mokattam, a southeastern suburb of Cairo, to protest what they described as the Brotherhood’s manipulation of power.
Some of the dancers wore “V for Vendetta” Guy Fawkes masks. The event was organized on Facebook and motivated, according to Al Ahram by “boredom.”
The video didn’t exactly go viral (not enough dancers?), but it did catch the attention of a few Muslim Brothers, who posted their own Shake on You Tube, dubbing it “Salvation’s Last Dance,” a dig at the National Salvation Front.
Egypt Independent explains that the video shows the Brotherhood members dancing while wearing masks of Popular Current head Hamdeen Sabbahi, Wafd Party head Al-Sayed al-Badawy, Hussein Abdel Ghany, and other opposition figures.
Ahmed al-Moghir, one of the Brotherhood members participating in the dance, posted the video on his Facebook profile, saying, “I know it would bring me many comments and headaches, but why not? Let’s try it.”
The video received intense criticism from other Brotherhood members and Salafis, leading Moghir to delete the video, saying that “it has achieved its goal.”
He also criticized his fellow Islamists for sticking to certain limits and red lines that he says have nothing to do with Islam.
“These limits cause a gap between [Islamists] and people,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), has been facing growing criticism since the second anniversary of the January 25 Revolution.
A number of FJP offices around the country have been attacked or torched by demonstrators in the past two months.
Recently, a number of activists organized a football tournament in front of the Brotherhood’s headquarters under the banner “glory to the martyrs,” a reference to a group of soccer rioters sentenced to death a few weeks ago.
