By Hamdy Al-Husseini, IOL Staff

CAIRO, May 10, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - The wind of change blowing out in Egypt nowadays is becoming stronger and stronger as days go by, galvanizing the country’s elite into action, who for the past years steered clear of politics.

University professors have taken the train along with judges and journalists, demonstrating Monday, May 9, against the arrest of their colleagues for “no reason other than demanding political reforms and not cosmetic constitutional amendments”.

The arrest Monday morning of some 40 students and professors in Asiut University, 300km south of Cairo, for belonging to the outlawed but usually tolerated Muslim Brotherhood group, has indeed stricken a responsive chord with their fellow ones inside the campus.

A Brotherhood source told IslamOnline.net that some 2,000 supporters assembled in the southern Egyptian city of Assiut Monday to demand the emergency law – in force since 1981 – be annulled and a fair multi-candidate presidential election.

The peaceful march lasted for only 60 minutes after security forces threatened to disperse them by force.

A security source told Reuters that at least 79 demonstrators had been arrested.

High-Level Participation

A library photo of Egyptian demonstrators shout against a fifth six-year term for Mubarak.

The unmistakable sign, however, is the participation of presidents of state-run universities, who are appointed by the president of the republic.

Professor Ali Abdel Rahman, the president of Cairo University, took the initiative Monday and set an example for his counterparts across the country’s academic establishments.

The engineering professor took by surprise professors of the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, who were about to start a symbolic silent sit-in, as they found him joining them, in a show of solidarity.

The angry professors, mainly from the Faculty of Engineering, were calling for the release of their colleague Amr Darraj and halting the interference of security agencies into the university’s internal affairs.

The dean of the Engineering Faculty, Mohammad Kamal Al-Bedwei, has also joined the symbolic sit-in.

The professors carried banners denouncing the “security oppression” and stood for 60 minutes of silence in protest.

On April 19, some 100 dressed-in-black Cairo University professors demonstrated against what they termed the “blatant security interference in Egyptian universities.”

Darraj was arrested along with senior Brotherhood leader Essam El-Erian, at the latter’s Cairo flat Friday, May 6.

The group has staged and insisted on demonstrations with the state hitting back by detaining hundreds of its members.