was a progressive, tolerant, open and increasingly democratic society.
If that song was remade today, 50 years later, Cairo would not feature in it. The worldly capital of the 1940s and 50s has lost its glamour. Cairo’s descent mirrors the regression that different aspects of modern Egypt have experienced. But a crucial part of that regression was the wearing out of that rich cloth. In the last 50 years, gradually and slowly, different fabrics — the components of the rich Egyptianism of the past century and a half — have been torn away, or left to wither and fade. Egypt, the state and society, became culturally and intellectually poorer.
The current, protracted crisis in Egypt is hardly about specific articles in the new constitution; rather it’s about very different views of the shape of society and the future of the country. At heart, the crisis is a heated — and at times violent — debate about Egypt’s identity.
Many in Egypt’s new political elite, and especially within the Islamic movement, emphasise the mandate given by the electoral polls and referendums: the unrivalled legitimacy of the views of the majority. But the views of the majority today are limited in time and scope; they will change, especially in a country where over 45 million are under 35 years old; this huge social segment will grow older and the views of many among them will change.
And crucially national identity is never about the will of a slight majority at a moment of immense social transformation. Identity is about very widely shared national feelings and frames of reference. And in modern Egypt, throughout over a 150 years, these have always been plural. Never in the past century and a half did a majority of Egyptians, let alone slight, marginalise other niches of society. Egypt persevered through acute challenges — military defeats, economic calamities, and a serious wave of internal terror — by maintaining a significant part of its traditional rich fabric.
One political movement backed by a majority today might succeed in imposing its views on current politics. This is the nature of representative government. But a limited number of electoral victories, coming after decades of lethargy, lack of a national project, at a moment of turbulent economic conditions, and in a dramatically young society, will not change the overriding frames of reference and heritage of an old society like Egypt’s.
As the society’s long-restrained potential energy is unleashed, it turns into immense kinetic waves that create a period of polarisation, confrontations and chaos. On occasions, the rapid eruption of such energy and its channelling into multiple routes could seem perilous. But that energy will gradually fade out and society will return to its established norms. The diversity, tolerance and co-existence of vastly different ways of life that have always characterised modern Egypt will overshadow the views of any one political movement. As Egypt’s leading geographer, Gamal Hemdan, once put it: “Intrinsically, Egypt has many shades.”
Is Egypt's identity crisis to do with current political confusion and the chaos unleashed from revolution, or has it more to do with something lurking in the national history?
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