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Raymond Ibrahim: Sisi Revisits ‘Egypt’s Identity Crisis’

Jan 30, 2015 5:01 pm By Raymond Ibrahim

EGYPT-POLITICS-VOTE-SISI[FrontPage Mag, via RaymondIbrahim.com]

Of all the recent calls for reform made by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, perhaps most adamant has been his insistence that all Egyptians—Muslims and Christians—see themselves first and foremost as Egyptians.

This came out very clearly when he visited the St. Mark Coptic Cathedral during Christmas Eve mass.  Then, he passionately (see video) declared:

Listen, it is very important that the world should see us… that the world should see us, Egyptians… and you’ll note that I never use a word other than “Egyptians”….  It’s not right to call each other by any other name…. We are Egyptians. Let no one ask “what kind of Egyptian are you?” [Copt or Muslim]…  As I said, Egypt has brought a humanistic and civilizing message to the world for millennia and we’re here today to confirm that we are capable of doing so again…  This is why we mustn’t call ourselves anything other than “Egyptians.”  This is what we must be — Egyptians, just Egyptians, Egyptians indeed!

Ironically, back on February 14, 2011, when the first Egyptian revolution broke out (then called “Arab Spring”), I wrote an article making the exact same point, arguing that “Egypt’s future begins when Egyptians see themselves as Egyptians.”

Titled “Egypt’s Identity Crisis,” the article explored how the Egyptian identity was lost in stages.  (It also predicted the seduction/threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood—well over a year before the group came to power under Morsi’s presidency.  For more on this latter theme, on February 2, 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, I predicted in this article that “the Muslim Brotherhood will take over Egypt by default. And if that happens, the Middle East will rock like never before in the modern era”—which proved true after the largest revolution in human history ousted the Brotherhood in June 2013.)

Due to its exploration of the importance for Egyptians to see themselves as Egyptians—which Sisi is now adamantly calling for—“Egypt’s Identity Crisis” (first published February 14, 2011) is reproduced below…  Continue to article

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Filed Under: Egypt Tagged With: Abdel Fattah al-Sisi


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Comments

  1. gravenimage says

    Jan 30, 2015 at 5:28 pm

    This is why we mustn’t call ourselves anything other than “Egyptians.” This is what we must be — Egyptians, just Egyptians, Egyptians indeed!
    ………………………..

    Yeah—good luck with that:

    “Two-thirds of Muslims in Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan support unifying all Muslim countries in caliphate”

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/10/two-thirds-of-muslims-in-egypt-morocco-indonesia-and-pakistan-support-unifying-all-muslim-countries-in-caliphate

  2. mortimer says

    Jan 30, 2015 at 6:20 pm

    Egypt certainly does have a very old civilization and the Egyptians could claim to have an ancient culture, if most of it hadn’t been burnt or otherwise defaced and destroyed by Islam.

    President al-Sisi is on a very bold path which will have to include creating a reformed version of Islam if it is to succeed. Attaturk did this successfully, but it’s doubtful whether he can be ruthless enough to carry such a reform off.

    • Kepha says

      Jan 30, 2015 at 8:47 pm

      Speaking as a Christian and something of a linguist, I will have to admit that Christianity played its part in eradicating the ancient culture of Egypt. After all, to make the Scriptures accessible to the average man, Egyptian Christians adopted a modified Greek alphabet to write their native language. With the widespread Christianization of Egypt between perhaps 70-400 A.D., the tradition of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing went extinct, and with it, most of the pre-Christian heritage of Egypt.

      By contrast, a Christianized China would probably be able to lay claim to its most ancient past simply because the churches of Sinitic Asia read the Bible and engage in their own theologizing in Hanzi rather than in Roman letters. That the churches of China also played a disproportionate role in fostering mass literacy (again in Hanzi) shows that mass literacy does not depend on an alphabetic script. Maybe this is because Chinese Hanzi are easier to learn than Hieroglyphic Egyptian–but this is only a very tenuous and probably wrong guess on the part of Uncle Kepha, who learned Chinese Hanzi in young manhood, but never attempted Hieroglyphic Egyptian.

      In the Egypt of late antiquity, the Christian replacement of Hierogplyphic writing with Coptic had as large, if not larger, role in erasing the heritage of ancient Egypt as did Islam. After all, the Muslims conquered an Egypt that had been Christian for centuries and accustomed to writing Coptic. I further understand that Arabic did not completely supplant Coptic as a living vernacular until perhaps the 17th or 18th century; and I suspect that had Egypt retained a Christian majority, Coptic would probably still be a respectable language.

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 31, 2015 at 2:25 pm

      Mortimer wrote:

      President al-Sisi is on a very bold path which will have to include creating a reformed version of Islam if it is to succeed. Attaturk did this successfully, but it’s doubtful whether he can be ruthless enough to carry such a reform off.
      ……………………………

      Actually, Mortimer, Attatürk wasn’t able to create a reformed version of Islam—instead, he just marginalized Islam as much as possible.

      Of course, Islam never went away in Turkey, and under Erdogan Kemalism is fast losing ground to Islamization.

      Egypt, of course, is 90% Muslim, and most Muslims there very much support such things as Shari’ah law and death for apostates.

  3. Salah says

    Jan 30, 2015 at 11:08 pm

    “..the largest revolution in human history ousted the Brotherhood in June 2013”

    Unlike what many may think, the Muslim Brotherhood thugs were not ousted because of some economic problems. They were thrown out of power for one reason only: they tried to change the Egyptian people’s identity into a purely Islamic one.
    So, what al-Sisi is calling for is simply the will of the vast majority of the people, both Muslims and Christians (95%.)

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-end-of-muslim-brotherhood.html

  4. Jay Boo says

    Jan 30, 2015 at 11:45 pm

    If jihad is a struggle to make Allah ‘highest’ then Allah has absolutely no power to declare himself the greatest.

    Maybe the Muslim Brotherhood or even Anjem Choudary would wish to explain this.
    No wonder Muhammad disgraced himself by making a 72 virgin promise.

  5. Yeshayahu Goldfeld says

    Jan 31, 2015 at 4:32 am

    This is the leader to be assisted by the USA instead of the Muslim Brothers ousted by the Egyptian population .

  6. Angemon says

    Jan 31, 2015 at 8:46 am

    It’s not right to call each other by any other name…. We are Egyptians. Let no one ask “what kind of Egyptian are you?” [Copt or Muslim]

    Let’s see how egyptian muslims accept the (western) concept of equality before the law…

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