Muhammed Abdul Azeez fights relentlessly for Egyptian democracy in Northern California, giving speeches and leading protests.
Azeez is also manning the battlements of social media, communicating with Egyptians via cell phone and home computer.
"We're using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and text messages to send footage and pictures," said Azeez, imam at Sacramento's Salam mosque. "I make sure the youths in the trenches receive it on their cell phones."
Azeez, 35, has joined a cadre of influential Egyptian Americans who fled Egypt's dictatorship and are now breathing the fresh air of American democracy into the Egyptian revolution.
They hope to play an active role in the new Egypt, by helping train newly elected leaders in parliamentary democracy in Sacramento and providing legal, technical, financial and political expertise in Egypt.
"They don't need extra bodies right now, they need ideas," said Azeez. "But it's so personal. My wife, Kauthar, literally cries every day, not because she worries about heroes falling, but became she's not there."
Azeez's friends and cousins are among the tens of thousands of young people occupying Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square in the pro-democracy demonstrations that began in late January.
Last Wednesday night, when pro-Mubarak forces attacked the protesters, Azeez called his 20-year-old cousin Abdullah, whom he said had been "one of the most frivolous people I've ever known, a total fun lover who didn't finish college."
Abdullah, grazed in the shoulder by a bullet, told Azeez that people around him were being felled by sniper fire. "I said, 'Oh, my goodness, what are you doing?' " Azeez said. "He said, 'Don't worry about me, I am ready to die tonight – I am not leaving this place alive. I've wasted so many years of my life, and I'm finally doing something meaningful.' "
Azeez said he sees himself in the faces of the young protesters – 15 years ago he was at the helm of student protests there.
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