An Honest Conversation about the Arab Spring

Apologies if I'm beginning to sound repetitive or if you've already read the kinds of things I'm posting elsewhere, but I wrote something for Regent College's student paper for the one-year anniversary of the Egyptian "uprising" (I'm not even sure what to call it anymore) on January 25, and I thought I would share, albeit a little late.

An Honest Conversation about the Arab Spring

Tomorrow, January 25, 2012, marks the one year anniversary of the protests that sparked the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution, part of a larger movement now known as “The Arab Spring.” Before last January, my four years in Egypt and the wider Middle East were marked by a sense of hopeless resignation among Middle Eastern friends. While behind the scenes, activists were organizing and educating and analysts were talking about the Arab world “waking from its sleep,” the average Egyptian scoffed at the thought of fair elections, Syrians shrugged nervously at questions about political freedoms, Libyan friends joked about Gaddafi’s immortality, and visa applications continued to pour into Western embassies across the region. Politicians, journalists, and scholars who came to speak to the American students at the organization where I worked told us of grinding poverty, extreme government corruption, vast unemployment and underemployment and entrenched regimes who consistently violated the human rights of their people.

But in December 2010, something happened: in Tunisia, people poured into the streets in opposition to their government, and they didn’t go home. As Egyptians watched, the conversations and imaginations on the streets of Cairo began to change. I started to hear about planned protests, but still assumed (along with most people in the country) that, as with previous demonstrations, more riot police would show up than protestors. I called a friend on the morning of the 25^th and he told me with characteristic Egyptian humour, “Nothing’s happening. I think we Egyptians need a ‘Revolution for Dummies’ manual.” But by that night, there were thousands in Tahrir (Freedom) Square in Cairo and similar squares across the country, and the same friend was jubilant as Egyptians, like the Tunisians before them, refused to go home. Three days later, the government had cut all cell phone and internet communication and had imposed a 3 pm curfew across Cairo in attempts to quell the protests. However, newly-found voices would not be silenced and 15 days later, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, scenes of demonstration and opposition were repeated. Hope and optimism swept the region. As one British-Egyptian journalist noted, “People talked about the revolution as if it is a living, breathing, tangible thing . . . they also said, we are the revolution, or, when hearing about a positive political development, the sacking of some entrenched regime figure in a government institution somewhere, the revolution is everywhere.”

One year on, that optimism has dissipated, and many are questioning whether these movements can really be called revolutions at all. If you want bad news, there is plenty of it. In Syria, the United Nations reports that over 5000 Syrians have been killed in the last ten months of conflict, with the Assad regime refusing to back down. In Egypt, the military seems to be a dictator in another uniform, and the economy is precariously unstable. Of particular concern to many in the West is the rise of Islamic groups, including the overwhelming success of Islamic political parties in recent Egyptian Parliamentary elections.

With this in mind, how might we look at the Arab Spring, and Egypt in particular?

We can start with remembering the words of Christian historian David Bebbington, who emphasizes that how we view the direction and outcome of history affects how we sees history in general. He points out that “a Christian understanding [of history] supplies something that [other views] lack: confidence in the future.” Quite simply, what we have to offer is hope.

Egypt does not need more pessimists or fatalists. As one Egyptian wryly noted on Twitter following the elections, “Dear West: no need to freak out over the Islamists’ win. Many, many Egyptians are doing that for you just fine.” It would be easy to join the camp of those apocalyptically predicting another Iran, or those who imply that Egyptians “aren’t ready” for a voice, or those who assume that Muslims are a monolithic entity and therefore Egyptian Christians should “get out while they can.” However, this is hardly a way forward.

We do Egyptian Christians and other minorities a disservice by reinforcing reactionism instead of encouraging movements towards active engagement. “We must stay involved in re-building our country if we want it to be a country for all Egyptians,” commented one Egyptian Coptic bishop I met as he organized civil society education for Christians. He echoes Egyptian evangelical Anne Zaki who wrote for the Canadian Christian Courier, “My prayer for the church is that we remain engaged and invested in the present and future of our country, holding in tension the truth that we are in the world but not of it. To do otherwise is to tear ourselves from the forming fabric of the new Egypt, only to find ourselves living on a margin of our own design.”

We also risk losing sight of other voices, including the many Egyptian Muslims who disagree with the Islamic parties’ mixing of religion and politics, or some Muslim Brotherhood leaders themselves who are engaged in both political and religious dialogue with Coptic leaders about the best way forward (and attended this year’s Christmas Eve mass as a show of support). Additionally, some Egyptian activists rightly point out that in the media flurry over the rise of religious parties, some of the critical motivations behind the revolution – namely economic injustice and corruption – are being pushed to the side.

And what of the financial aid given by our own governments? Prior to the resignation of Mubarak, Egypt was the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel. Canada’s record is similar. At that time, we said little when Mubarak’s government tortured and detained hundreds without trial, when it kept in place an emergency law giving it unprecedented power, or when it rigged elections and intimidated voters. Foreign aid continues to flow, now to the ruling military council which has continued with human rights abuses. These are our governments’ policies and our tax dollars: we need to have something to say. If we’re going to give millions, we should push Egypt’s new government to protect its minorities with new laws and constitutional provisions that ensure full protection of human rights and equal citizenship.

Finally, the practical working out of such complex issues as democracy and the relation between religion and politics takes time. You only need to sit in one History II lecture here at Regent to discover how true this is. As Mona el-Ghobashy blogs at “Steal This Hijab,” “the revolution will undergo phases of setback, real or apparent. For Egypt’s revolutionary situation to lead to a revolutionary outcome, existing structures of rule must be transformed. Citizens must be free to choose their presidents, governors, parliamentarians, faculty deans and village mayors, their trade union, student, and professional association leaders. The coming years will reveal how much of that will happen and how.”

Still, I can’t pretend that things might not get worse before they get better. I don’t know what tomorrow’s anniversary will bring in Egypt, or what this year will bring elsewhere in the Middle East, but I continue to remember what one Egyptian friend told me last week after expressing his own concerns: “What we need is an honest conversation.” As change continues in the Arab world, it’s my hope that we can stay critically, actively, and hopefully engaged in this conversation. As Christians, we’re called to nothing less.