a milieu had formed in Ayn Shams which identified with and supported the Islamist movement, including their political criticism against the Egyptian government – a milieu to which, at that time, a considerable part of the area’s residents seemed to belong. Their support for the Islamist groups included protests against the police operation, which was regarded as unjustified repression against all Islamist groups and against the entire neighborhood. People in Ayn Shams, another resident emphasized, never informed the police about members of the Islamic groups, and nobody cooperated with the police, with the exception of criminals and drug traffickers who had been paid for their cooperation. People even provided refuge to members of the Islamic groups when members were pursued by the police. The Islamist groups, Ahmad’s father emphasized, were just the young people from the neighborhood, and they did nothing wrong. They had just defended themselves against the arbitrary attacks by the police: “And because of what happened, the arrests [. . .] and the torture, and the suffering, and they were humiliated and tortured to death – it turned into some kind of revenge between the victims’ families and their friends [and the police].” He added that: “I myself don’t regard what has happened as terrorism because the word terrorism was an invention of the police. The events started in the form of revenge.”