Two-sided Egypt

How much longer can we deny that Egypt is fundamentally split, and that politics, society and our national unity are affected, asks Galal Nassar

Egyptian society seems split into two camps. On the one side, the Muslim Brotherhood and its religious visions for life, society and politics; its dream of establishing a religious state in Egypt in which Islam would be the "solution" and the Holy Quran our constitution. On the other side, the Copts, without exception, and a section of Muslims who do not share the Brotherhood's dream of a religious state or vision for life and politics, including intellectuals and artists in film, theatre, painting, sculpture, music, singing and dance who reject and defy the religious vision in essence. With them are many educated individuals who believe in the necessity of separating religion from politics, which is a secular position, as well as a section of the youth that favours individual and social freedoms and rejects religious piety in general.

Historically, the Copts were once side-by- side with their cousins, the Muslims, in one unified homeland where the slogan "My origin is the homeland" was popular. This was particularly true of the period in which the 1919 Revolution took place. The Nasserist era surpassed the intent of this slogan, offering to Egyptians a nationalist and pan- Arab discourse whose reference points were liberation, independence, human dignity, development, scientific advancement, and artistic creativity. The Nasserist era succeeded to a large degree in putting religion in its proper place -- outside the framework of nationalist politics. There was no longer a need for slogans as "Religion is for God, the homeland for everyone" that had been common before. This slogan became a felt and lived reality, the people moving on, creating new dreams to attain.

Yet the revolution's achievement of strong national unity during the Nasserist era was gradually eaten away, a process that accelerated with the beginning of Anwar El-Sadat's era. With unwise American approval, Sadat chose to fight what he imagined as a Nasserist-Leftist-Communist threat against him and American interests by embracing and encouraging religious powers in society. He fancied they were the only powers capable of protecting him from the Nasserists and Communists.

Thus the Brotherhood, and more extremist religious groups splitting from it, were able to transform Egypt from a secular state that believed in science, art, creativity and modernism into a society and state clad in severe, religious fundamentalist garb, viewing life and society through a religious lens that does not allow intellectual difference, religious liberalism or artistic creativity. As a result, the vigorous and youthful human spirit longing for creation, creativity and a full-hearted leap into modernism was stifled. This spirit in every person in society was smothered under the stifling garb that Egyptians have been convinced is the only one permissible. They succeeded in veiling the overwhelming majority of Egyptian Muslim women in a limited number of years, particularly in Alexandria, where the percentage of veiled women has grown high.

Thus the Copts looked around and found that their cousins and partners had changed in form and essence in what seemed the period between night and morning. The transformation in the 1970s was truly rapid; and how could it not have been, coming from above and below at once? It came from the government, led by the believing president -- Sadat -- and at the same time from the alleyways and streets in crowded cities and forgotten villages without services in which the state had no palpable presence. There, religious groups presented themselves actually, not metaphorically, as an alternative to the absent state. They offered health, employment, housing, transport, banking and investment services as well as social and family services, administering marriage, divorce and solving disputes according to Islamic law.

Naturally, these services excluded -- due to their Islamic character -- all Copts. The heavy presence of an Islamic voice and image in all aspects of Egyptian life automatically isolated Copts, pushing them out of the arena of the once common homeland. It was not necessary for the Brotherhood to have intended this isolation; religious extremists must always push away those who differ from them because they drag religion into all aspects of their lives, leaving no room for those who do not share their doctrine. This characteristic is not unique to Islam, for Christian extremists do the same and isolate anyone who is not Christian; not mixing with them because all political, cultural, artistic and daily activities have been removed from their lives, they spend their time in religious activities that do not bring them in contact with different religions.

This split in the body of Egyptian national unity began with the Muslim majority in Egypt giving in to the carrots and sticks of Islamic organisations and their being swept into the extremist religious current. The Copts, expelled from the arena of citizenship, have had no other choice than to retreat, protect each other, and hold tighter to their religious traditions. This has brought them, too, to religious extremism, with all of its negative effects, including withdrawing from an interactive life and creativity in the fields of thought, art and science. Due to their fear of a surging religious majority, they increase their prayers and fasts, seeking salvation in divine protection.

All over Egypt the Copts looked around and found their compatriots, who had the day before spoken, dressed and worked like them, gone with them to the cinema and theatre, sung and laughed with them, suddenly different from them in every way. Men grew out their beards, wore galabiyas, held prayer beads in their hands, placed miswak sticks in their mouths, and crammed the name of God between every other word. Some of them began to wear their watches on their right arms and enter rooms with their right feet because the left is impure. Some others began to not greet or sit to eat with Copts, because they had been told not to greet infidels or sit at their dinner tables.

As for Egypt's women, they had made great progress on the path of liberation, modernism and rebellion against the boorish control of men in a crude and patriarchal society. Extremists convinced them that their voices and hair are shameful; that they must veil, so that their satanic, insolent hair be unseen by God- fearing men who only seek the face of God Almighty. And so Egyptian women rejected their history and the revolution of Hoda Shaarawi, her throwing her veil into the Nile in that long-ago revolutionary age of renaissance. Now most Egyptian women choose between a headscarf and a waist-length veil- tunic while the youth in societies around the world, from India to China, Japan and North and South America, are dressing, thinking and acting in a manner more liberal than the generation of their parents. In Egypt we have the strangest occurrence in the history of civilisation -- a generation of Egyptians more conservative, traditional, extremist and religiously severe than the previous one. This is the scope of human catastrophe Egypt is facing today.

The majority in Egypt today -- leaders and followers -- deny that Egyptian personality is schizophrenic. One of the reasons for this denial is the ostrich approach that Egyptians, and Easterners in general, prefer. This approach fancies that not seeing reality will erase it. Another reason is the inability of the majority in any society to accurately perceive the feelings and problems of the minority. The majority is always protected by numbers, and finds no need to move beyond its crowded circle to understand the conditions of minorities present along its distant perimeter. These minorities close in upon themselves in private communities, pushed away by the majority.

In Egypt, no one is speaking today of the schizophrenia of Egyptian personality. Many dream that Egypt continues to live in the age of "my origin is the homeland" and "religion is for God, the homeland for everyone". They have grown accustomed to sleeping in the embrace of lies -- political, social, humanistic and historical illusions. Yet when Muslim youth are angry, they demonstrate within Al-Azhar University, not in front of parliament. When Coptic youth are angry, they demonstrate within Al-Morcosiya Cathedral and not in front of the Supreme Court or the Journalists' Syndicate. Each knows that they belong to a religious community specific to them and excluding the other. They are fully aware that there is a fundamental split in the body of Egyptian national unity.

In Egypt today, there are two separate, opposing societies living on the same land but not in the same time and not in the same spiritual moment. Egyptian officials and political and intellectual leaders would rather not acknowledge this fundamental divide.

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Source: Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 11 - 17 May 2006, Issue No. 794, Opinion page. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/794/op3.htm