CAIRO — Immediately after Egypt's decision to brand the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, the Ministry of Interior announced a hotline for citizens to report suspected members of the outlawed organization. The act was reminiscent of a budget Malta hostel I lived at in 1998. Back then and there, illegal immigrants reported each other to the authorities when disputes broke out among them.

But in that Malta hostel, only the state authorities dealt with the offenders, raiding the hostel to arrest everyone except the Maltese owners and whoever carried a passport emblazoned with a valid visa. This wasn’t the case in Egypt's Dakahlia province in the aftermath of a bombing that targeted the security department late at night on Dec. 23.

For more than 12 hours after the bombing, dozens of anti-Brotherhood civilians, enraged by the bloody scene, torched a few homes of prominent Muslim Brotherhood officers and destroyed some 20 businesses allegedly owned by members or affiliates of the former-ruling, now-terrorist organization.

As the volatile situation continued around the city of Mansoura — where the security department building stood charred as a massive funeral procession carried the corpses of 17 police officers and civilians — Egypt's popular TV show host and owner of al-Faraeen channel, Tawfik Okasha, applauded the vigilantes and called for more attacks on Brotherhood members across the province.