"90 percent of those in Tahrir were affiliated with the Islamists, & at least half of those were Salafis..."

"... The Salafis' slogans were provocative. I didn't hear the "Obama, Obama, we're all Osama" or "Shut up secularists!" lines that journalists reported, nor did I see Saudi flags. But the tone of what I did here was pretty defiantly affirmative of an Islamic identity for Egypt, ie, not a civic one. "Raise your head high! You're a Muslim!" might not sound so bad unless you realize it's a variation on a far more Christian-friendly original, "Raise your head high. You're an Egyptian"...

The Ikhwan for its part has denounced the Salafis' Islamist slogans. Some activists however have been asking on Facebook why the Ikhwan, who after all had a speakers' platform and loudspeakers, did not try harder to quiet the radicals. I'm not sure if they would have had much luck. The mood of the crowd was pretty self-assertive. I heard one speaker try to rally the protesters in a unifying chant of  "Muslim! Christian! One hand!" but there did not seem to be many takers...It would be nice to think that all problems could be resolved by dialogues like this one, but of course that's not going to happen. The Salafis seem to be a mixed bag, including some who want very much not to be demonized and to be considered within the pale of reasonable political discourse, and others who fly Saudi flags -- an act which they must know is not going to endear them to non-Salafis. But if all the Salafis together are pushed out of the dialogue surrounding the constitution, either by supra-constitutional principles or by any other means, Friday's demonstrations show that they can probably cause some masssive disruptions. Again and again, Salafis have asked me: isn't Egypt now supposed to be democratic? Shouldn't our voices be heard too? I'd argue that one subtext of yesterday's demonstration was this: If what it takes to be counted is to seize control of a square, we can do that."