The Egyptian Army may have booted Mohammed Morsi out of office, but the hearts of the Egyptian people are still up for grabs – and both the army and the Muslim Brotherhood are using all means at their disposal to convince 80 million Egyptians that they are better off with either the army or the Brotherhood, depending on who is doing the talking.
Among the weapons at the disposal of both sides is the conspiracy theory, a set of rumors, ideas, documents, and planted news reports that each side uses to defame the other. The theories have reached the media, and Egyptians, depending on their political sympathies, swear by either the army's or the Brotherhood's claims about the other side.
In one Brotherhood theory, General Abd al-Fatah Sisi, the leader of the Egyptian Army and now the temporary head of government, supposedly received a billion dollars from Saudi Arabia and other donors to “get rid” of the Brotherhood. Given Egypt's dire financial situation, this theory claims, there is no way the army could have afforded to wage battle against the Brotherhood and the entire government. The reason Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states donated the money to Sisi, says the Brotherhood, was to ensure that the Muslim Spring that the Brotherhood was leading did not make it to the Gulf.
The army has not stood by and let the Brotherhood get all the headlines; they, too, have theories about the Islamists, and according to one curious theory, Morsi, in an attempt to alleviate Egypt's financial situation, tried to “sell” most of Sinai to President Barack H. Obama. Egypt was to receive $8 billion for the Sinai. The U.S. would have set up bases and helped itself to Sinai oil, while part of the area would have been set up as a state for PA Arabs. It was only the intervention of the army that prevented Morsi from going through with the plan.
Both sides, of course deny the others' theories about them.