MIDDLE EAST

The organization of the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood announces the launch of a social network dedicated to the exchange of ideas, photos and contacts. Experts: "The more a site to support a closed community and a means of proselytizing." But Mubarak's scary FRANCESCA CAFERRI

Not a challenge to Facebook, but an alternative network, where you can find not only "friends" generic, but also people who think the same way. With this premise, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in recent days have announced the launch of Ikwhanbook.com, the Islamic version of the most popular social network in the world.

The site, as announced by Mosab Ragab, one of the creators, in an interview with UAE daily The National, will be officially launched in the coming weeks, but it is already running: by typing this address and registering - but you can choose also the option to import photos, contacts and friends from Facebook - you enter a world very similar to that proposed by Facebook with friends to look for, to share events and photos to be posted, with instructions in English. But for the most part composed of people who share a similar background: that referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement conservative, the main opposition group to the government of Hosni Mubarak officially banned for years but in fact widely spread in Egypt. The site is still in experimental stage, but already recorded thousands of hits, many of its members are from Europe or the states of North Africa, some are Egyptian, but had to register to use imaginative methods. The site, in the country of origin of the Muslim Brotherhood, is already locked.

At The National Mosab Ragab, 22, a member of the Brotherhood, said that the sense of the project is not to proselytize, or copy the most popular sites. Rather, we say that the brothers are and can be a reference: in the virtual world. "When Hassan Al Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood ed.) Began to ask the people to return to Islam, began spreading the idea in cafes and at places where there were people. Today we turn to people who frequent the Internet (...). It is not just a place for me, for us, we are here to say: it is a way to reach people and move towards them. "

But it is also a way to make opposition in Egypt in recent years the network has become a powerful means of alternative information, to wage political battles and deal with taboo subjects. It was a campaign via the Internet, with lots of photos on Facebook spread to the bar to bring the two policemen accused of killing Khaled Mohammed Said, a young man of 28 years, died from the beating he received on June 6, after two plainclothes had stopped in front of an Internet cafe from where he had just posted a video on trafficking police. And it is on the web - with a big question: Will you reach the real people? - Who was born and nourished the campaign to a candidate who wants the presidency in next year's Nobel Peace Prize Mohamed ElBaradei. And more is on the Internet that the Brotherhood (Ikhwan in Arabic, in fact) has created a number of sites - from Ikhwansearch to IkhwanTube up to IkhwanWiki - to those who make the original Islamic sauce.

It can make people smile, but it should not: the fact that access to these sites is blocked for most of the time Egypt says much of the fear that raise between authorities. "Do not replace Facebook or Wikipedia - says Issandr El Amrani, Egypt keen observer of things on his blog, The Arabist - are rather closed communities, for people who think the same way. The Muslim Brotherhood supporters tend to socialize together, work together, marry each other: it is a support group, as well as a political organization. It makes sense to seek an ecosystem is also closed on the Net not as an alternative to Internet freedom, but along with this. " If, therefore, these sites themselves do not pose a threat to Mubarak, their presence is still important, because a signal of vitality and openness that the procedures for official missing.