- For weeks now we have watched and read the appraisals
of pundits of all origins for whom the basic message is: "An Arab
Revolution has begun." Looking at the national situations of the
Middle East overall, and especially at stirrings in Libya, Bahrain, Djibouti,
and Jordan, that may indeed be the case. However, the interesting wrinkle
is that Egypt is not an "Arab" country. Perhaps Egypt is being
viewed by the world at large as an "Arab" country because it
is largely Muslim in its religious preference. In fact, until that law
is changed or repealed, Islam is Egypt's state religion. However, let
us look at the demographics of the Egyptian population.
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- According to the CIA World Factbook, in 2010 Egypt had
a population of roughly 80.5 million people. By western standards the population
was young. Almost 32% of the people were under age 15; roughly 63.5% were
between 15 and 64, and only 4.3% were 65 and older. Easily half of the
living Egyptians had been born since Mubarak came to power. That high proportion
of youth was seen on the streets and in Tahrir Square in recent weeks.
Let's be clear though, the uprising from the start was a thing of the indigenous
Egyptian young.
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- On ethnic composition, the Factbook says that over 99%
of the people are ethnic Egyptians (Only one element of that mix is Arab)
and various minorities in the country include Arabs, Bedouins (desert Arabs),
Greeks, Berbers (indigenes but not Egyptian or Arab), Coptic Christians,
and a few others including Jews. The latter probably descended from the
Sephardi Jews who migrated from Spain centuries ago. In the early 1960s
I found a small Jewish population in Cairo most of whom still spoke a classical
Spanish in the household.
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- Religiously, over 90% of the people are Muslims, the
great majority Sunnis. This seems to be where the confusion about who
the Egyptians are arises. In the Middle East, given that the majority of
the population consists of Sunni Muslims who are Arabs, it is an easy leap
to assume that since most Egyptians are Sunni Muslims, they are also Arabs.
Islam in Egypt is indeed a complicated story that began virtually within
a decade of the death of Mohammed in 632 CE, when Islam itself was fairly
primitive. A second strand appeared during the Fatimid period of Islam
when the followers of Mohammed's daughter Fatima captured Egypt in the
10th century CE. The victors established their headquarters at what is
now Cairo. A most enduring achievement was founding of Al Azhar University
which is still a great center for Islamic learning. While the conquest
of Egypt resulted in an empire that held sway for 200 years more or less,
Egyptian beliefs evolved around the Sunni beliefs that are most common
in the world, even though the Shia are widely represented in Islamic societies.
Sunni Islam's less hierarchical practices would seem to have suited Egypt's
large rural population.
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- This is not the only area of confusion about Egypt's
place in Middle Eastern affairs. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was himself
the son of Saidi (Arabic word for upper Egyptian) parents, put himself
wholeheartedly into promoting a Pan Arabism movement with, of course, Egypt
at its heart. That movement eventually failed, but in his time Middle
Eastern oil producer countries, mainly Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia with the
participation of Venezuela formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) and took regional oil production away from foreign firms.
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- In that period, the early 1960s, Nasser's realm was called
the United Arab Republic, a combination of Egypt and Syria. Due both to
physical separation and history this was a very loose republic. I was on
diplomatic assignment (temporary duty) in Damascus, Syria to look into
some disputed (American claimed) oil properties in the border region with
Iraq when the founders of the present Bashir al Assad regime shut down
the republic. With only a little gunfire and a few hours of uncertainty,
they put Nasser's man, Col. Hakim Amer, on his plane and sent him back
to Cairo. I stayed to help our Consul General get ready to be Ambassador
to the reestablished state of Syria.
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- The call of Pan Arabism was Nasser's thing, but it was
not a clarion voice for Arabia, and it has not really been sounded since.
Part of the hang-up, visible at the time within the Arab League, was the
ethnic difference between the Egyptians and the Arabs of the region to
north and east. In those areas, simply put, Egypt was not seen as the natural
heart of Arab Islam. None of the apparent eligible leaders, e.g., Saudi
Arabia, has stepped forward to take up the mantle. Meanwhile, US and Israeli
interventions in the region have thoroughly muddied the waters of Arabian
identity and spirit. That lack of clarity will not dissipate merely because
young Egyptians have rebelled. How successfully remains to be seen, but
other downtrodden Middle Eastern people are being encouraged by the attempt.
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- **********
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- The writer is the author of the recently published work,
A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist
on rense.com. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US
Department of State whose overseas service included tours in Egypt, India,
Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Brazil. He will welcome comments at <mailto:wecanstopit@charter.net>wecanstopit@charter.net.
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