The organized campaign to see Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who was jailed this month for insulting Islam and the government, is quite a thing to behold. Between FreeKareem.org, online petitions, blog posts, and articles in huge publications like the Washington Post, rarely has there been such an interest in the blogosphere as a whole on one human rights issue involving one person in a country so far away.

I think it’s great! Bringing attention to these kinds of things is exactly how to get them changed. Otherwise, the Egyptian government will continue to its war campaign against civil society and human rights in its country. If democracy and liberal ideas are ever to take root, they cannot be ripped from the ground and thrown in jail as Kareem has been.

But what about all the others?

The only political alternative to Mubarak at this point that has any credibility and influence is the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that seems willing to work within a democratic framework minus liberal ideas. Yet since they scored 20% of the seats in Egypt’s parliament during the last election, Mubarak has cracked down on them hard. Hundreds if not thousands of its members have been rounded up and tossed in jail, left to face beatings from inmates and torture from guards, all the while awaiting their fate to be handed down to them from a military tribunal.

Where is the outrage at this? Who is standing up for them?

The hard truth is that nobody is. There are probably many reasons for this, but here are a couple that I’ve thought of when compared to the campaign to free Kareem. They are listed in order of importance, without mentioning limited time and resources:

1. The American blogosphere and Kareem are more ideologically similar especially when compared to the Muslim Brotherhood, so the sympathy leans toward Kareem.
2. There is a high amount of interest in Kareem to a large degree because he is a blogger, so there is a great connection there.

It only makes sense that American liberals will rush to defend their fellow liberals who are under attack from their despotic governments. Kareem’s sentencing is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the Egyptian government. Defending him highlights these issues, bringing them to the table, with the hope that both Kareem will be freed and the Egyptian government will begin to liberalize. However, when members of the Muslim Brotherhood are jailed, never is such a stink made. Simply said, most American bloggers are not going to sympathize with Islamists, so they are either unwilling to publicize such things or just don’t care to do so to such a degree as we do with Kareem. Does a Republican read the New York Times editorial page just for fun? Of course not. Kareem’s own father wants the security forces to treat him extra harshly so that the ideas will be beaten out of him. This is not a guy that’s easy to sympathize with.

Unfortunately, the word “universal” is attached to the phrase “human rights,” and regardless of political orientation, Kareem as well as the Muslim Brotherhood alike should be defended on equal grounds based on equal rights. Otherwise, we only serve to affirm those who believe the United States to be hypocritical in its application of pressure regarding human rights. We have to do it, even if we know they might not do the same for us in the future.

Being a blogger also gives us a reason to fight for Kareem. There are currently many issues revolving around blogging in the United States, and with its inherently cheap freedom of expression under attack in many countries, we want to make sure that everyone has the ability to blog. That Kareem is being prosecuted for what he has written on his blog is particularly heinous and a terrible precedent for what is to come. Yet it is not the only precedent. As Marc Lynch points out, there are plenty of bloggers out there who are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can bet that they are being monitored and prosecuted as well for sharing their ideas. What if one of them is put in jail for criticizing the government, as Kareem did, but instead also took on Christianity or Judaism?…

Kudos to FreeKareem.org for the great work they’ve done trying to get him free. It’s not their fault people don’t care about the whole picture. But who is there to defend the rest? That’s why I highly doubt we’d see a reaction from the American blogosphere, which leads me to believe, in the end, it is less about blogger solidarity and more about highly selective application of outrage.