Efforts at Destabilization Seen : Mubarak Regime Grows Concerned Over Egypt’s Love for the Rumor Mill

Warning: This story contains descriptions of events that never occurred.

Event No. 1: An attempt was made recently on the life of President Hosni Mubarak in (a) Alexandria, (b) Heliopolis. Mubarak was in his car and (a) was wounded in the neck, or (b) hand, or (c) was not wounded at all; his driver was (a) shot in the neck, (b) shot in the leg, or (c) killed.

Event No. 2: Defense Minister Abdel-Halim abu Ghazala, in a separate incident, was shot and (a) wounded (b) killed.

Event No. 3: There is a prison on the outskirts of Cairo where the guards use one of the inmates, an old woman with long fingernails as hard as steel, to kill prisoners.

Important Role in Egypt

These tall tales--in all of the above versions--have been spreading uncontrollably throughout Cairo for the past couple of months. They are representative of a phenomenon that, while not unique to Egypt, plays an extraordinarily important role here: rumor-mongering.

Diplomats, who along with journalists spend a lot of time trying to check out the more interesting rumors, say that one reason for their spread is the high rate of illiteracy among Egypt’s 48 million people. More than half of the adult population is illiterate, according to Western estimates, and the lack of education breeds superstitions that give rise to numerous fantastic tales, many like the one about the woman with the killer fingernails.

But Egyptian rumor-mongering is not limited to the illiterate, as anyone who has done time on Cairo’s cocktail-party circuit can attest. Indeed, some rumors circulate at such respectable levels that even high-ranking government officials believe them and pass them along as fact.

Gas Station Dispute?

Such was the case last month with a rumor concerning an argument that supposedly took place between a policeman and one of President Mubarak’s two sons at a gas station in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria. This tale was given such credence that it worked its way up to the president himself before a denial was issued. As it turned out, both of Mubarak’s sons were out of the country at the time the altercation was said to have occurred.

Diplomats and others who have tried, in vain, to trace the routes that rumors take say another reason they spread is that Egyptians often do not believe what they read in their newspapers. “The state papers are always full of stories about how the government has solved all of Egypt’s problems until the year 2000. It’s ridiculous,” an Egyptian journalist acknowledged.

“Egyptians may be barefooted and illiterate, but they are not simpletons,” adds Aisha Rateb, a former ambassador to Denmark and West Germany. “One way or another, they try to explain certain things.”

Disinformation and Dissent

Some rumors are relatively harmless and run their course until, eventually, they fade away, unconfirmed and unconfirmable. But the fact that people often assign a greater degree of credibility to what they pick up by word of mouth than to what they read in the semi-official press also makes rumor-mongering an effective tool for the spread of disinformation and dissent.

Mubarak, in a speech earlier this month, accused Libya and domestic opposition groups he did not name of spreading rumors to destabilize Egypt. Denying that there had been an attempt on his life, he cautioned Egyptians not to believe “evildoers who whisper in the dark.”

Diplomats believe that Mubarak’s concern is not unjustified. At least one Western embassy has begun an investigation of the “rumor situation” to see if there is a pattern that might indicate an “orchestrated attempt to create a feeling of instability,” one diplomat said.

Sectarian Clashes in 1970s

In the late 1970s, Egypt witnessed bloody sectarian clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians that grew, in part, from rumors that the Christians were stockpiling arms in their monasteries. More recently, the government banned both Christian and Muslim religious stickers from car windows after rumors spread that Muslims were going to destroy all cars that did not have Islamic inscriptions on them.

The government is particularly sensitive to rumors dealing with Muslim-Christian relations because they are the kind most likely to lead to violence.

“Two years ago, there was an extraordinary rumor going around about a spirit guarding a treasure that he would give up only if people slit the throats of 1,001 Muslim children,” a Western diplomat recalled. “Well, soon there were rumors of Muslim children being found with their throats slit. . . . The Interior Ministry stepped in very promptly and denied it.”

To some, the most surprising--and disturbing--thing about such rumors is the fact that so many people seem to accept them as fact. “I must have heard the one about the attempt on Mubarak’s life a dozen times at cocktail parties,” a Western diplomat said.