THE EGYPTIAN UPRISING AGAINST MUBARAK ADMINISTRATION

THE EGYPTIAN UPRISING AGAINST MUBARAK ADMINISTRATION

CHAPTER ONE

ISSUES, POLITICS AND RELIGION IN EGYPT

The Arab Republic of Egypt is the official name for Egypt. It is located in south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa. Although Egypt’s easternmost region, the Sinai Peninsula, is widely thought of as belonging to Asia and serves as the only physical connection between the two continents, the majority of the country is located in Africa. The Nile River divides Egypt’s geography into two unequal portions, with the majority of it being desert. The main areas of habitation are the Nile Valley and Delta. Cairo is the nation’s capital and largest metropolis. 1

Since about 3200 BC, Egypt has existed as a cohesive political entity. The Nile Valley was home to one of the earliest civilizations to adopt literate culture, irrigated agriculture, urbanization, and complex political systems. The yearly flooding of For a steady agricultural society, the Nile was there. Egypt was a significant center of global trade due to its strategic location between Asia and Africa and on the route from the Mediterranean basin to India and China. A succession of conquerors, starting in the 4th century BC, introduced new religions and languages to the region. Nonetheless, Egypt has maintained a high level of cultural continuity due to its abundant agricultural resources, strategic trade location, and long-lasting political unification. Even though Egypt is mostly an Arabic-speaking and Islamic nation today, it also has significant remnants of its old Christian, Greco-Roman, and indigenous heritage.

Egypt was invaded by Muslim Arab invaders in AD 641, and ever since, Egypt has been a part of the Muslim and Arab worlds. Muhammad Ali, viceroy of Egypt from 1805 to 1849 while Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire, laid the foundations for the present state. In 1882, Britain invaded Egypt. Egypt was directly ruled by the British for 40 years before it gained independence as a monarchy in 1922. Yet, its freedom was restricted by British policies that were imposed by an ongoing military occupation. Gamal Abdel Nasser led a group of military commanders who ousted the monarchy in 1952 and reestablished Egypt as a republic. By 1956, Nasser had secured the departure of the last British soldiers from Egypt. Under the presidency of Anwar al-Sadat in 1979,

Egypt was the first Arab country to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel, the Jewish state. Egypt continues to play a significant role in the political and cultural life of the entire Arab world. Egypt’s first-ever multiparty presidential election took place in 2005. 3

The world’s oldest continually operating civilization is found in Egypt. The majority of academics concur that the Egyptian kingdom was first united around 3100 bc. Egypt maintained its independence and unity for many centuries thereafter. It suffered disunity now and then and experienced brief periods of foreign domination—by the Semitic Hyksos in the 17th and 16th centuries BC, the Assyrians in the 7th century BC, and the Persians in the 6th and 5th centuries BC—before the arrival of Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Alexander made Egypt a part of his vast empire. Alexander’s empire broke up after his death in 323 bc. One of his generals, Ptolemy, became ruler of Egypt, and in 305 bc he assumed the title of king. Ptolemy founded the Ptolemaic dynasty. Under these rulers, Egypt became a center of the Hellenistic world—that is, the vast region, encompassing the eastern Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, in which Greek culture and learning were preeminent from Alexander’s conquest until the 1st century BC. Although the Ptolemies preserved many native traditions, they remained unpopular because they kept Egyptians from important governmental posts.4

The Romans conquered Egypt in 30 BC, ruling it as a province of their empire for the next several centuries. One of the first countries to be exposed to Christianity, Egypt became predominantly Christian by the end of the 3rd century ad. In 395, when the Roman Empire was divided, Egypt was included in the Eastern Roman Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire. By the 5th century a bitter religious dispute over the nature of Christ, involving a doctrine known as Monophysitism, had developed in the Eastern church.5 This dispute pitted the Coptic Church, Egypt’s indigenous Christian body, and other Middle Eastern Christians against the Byzantine rulers. The conflict weakened Byzantine rule in Egypt and helped open the way to the conquest of Egypt by an Arab army in 641. Many Egyptians welcomed the Arab conquerors as liberators.

Hosni Mubarak rose to power in 1981, after Anwar Sadat’s assassination. After a period of relative tolerance in the 1980s, Mubarak’s authoritarian rule deepened in the 1990s: civil and political rights were restricted; the party law was amended; press freedom was significantly limited and repression was used against political opponents, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).7 Owing to these restrictions and to widespread interference in the electoral process through fraud, repression and intimidation, the parliamentary elections of 1990, 19954

Egypt was a constitutional monarchy from 1923 to 1952, when military officers seized control of the government. Although Egypt became a republic in 1953, it essentially remained a military dictatorship dominated by a single political party. In 1978 a multiparty political system was instituted and Egypt became governed under a constitution that was approved by a national referendum in 1971. The constitution, which was amended in 1977, 1980, 2005, and 2007 provides for an Arab socialist state with Islam as the official religion. It also stresses social solidarity, equal opportunity, and popular control of production.

The presidency is where most political power is centered. Since 1952, Egypt’s presidents have come from within the military, which is a significant political force. With changes in the presidency, the direction and policies of the government have significantly changed. A constitutional amendment allowing for multiparty presidential elections by secret ballot was ratified by voters in May 2005. In the past, the president was chosen by the legislature and ratified by a yes-or-no referendum. In the election of 2000, the ruling National Democratic Party won with a historic majority (NDP).

Egypt began displaying increasing political dynamism in the early 2000s, coinciding with the second Palestinian Intifada and, later, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Protests increased in volume in 2004–2005, with a variety of opposition parties and movements (such as the Kifaya movement, the Judges Club, the al Ghad party, and the MB) calling for political reform, such as the abolition of the state of emergency, the removal of restrictive legal restrictions on the activities of parties, civil society organizations, and the media, as well as a free and fair electoral process. The dictatorship was consequently compelled to make certain, albeit minor, concessions in response to the aforementioned concerns, making a number of constitutional changes. 7 The eligibility requirements for candidates remained extremely rigorous, allowing the NDP to choose who might challenge the incumbent notwithstanding the constitutional amendments that permitted the direct public election of the president (Dunne, 2006).6

Furthermore, the party laws continued to make it unlikely that anybody else could win the election and take over the government. 8 As a result, Mubarak won the election with 87% of the vote even though nine candidates competed against the president in the first multi-candidate presidential elections held in September 2005. 8 Similar to this, the NDP proceeded to manipulate electoral politics during the 2005 legislative elections using vote buying, fraud, and intimidation.

While they were running as independents, Brotherhood candidates were permitted to campaign much more openly in the 2005 elections, and non-governmental organizations kept an eye on the results. Thus, the Muslim Brothers achieved considerable gains, for the first time, acquiring, with the success of 88 candidates, more seats, while the ruling NDP maintained its two-thirds majority  (20% of total) than any other opposition group.

The unexpected electoral success of the MB paved the way for the regime to take a series of deliberalisation measures: cracking down on political opponents and popular protests. Under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the political opposition in Egypt was very weak due to many factors. As said above, the regime implemented a number of instruments to weaken opposition: repression and harassment; refusal to legalise parties and organisations that could threaten the regime; electoral manipulation; and co-option of many non-governmental associations and trade unions. Furthermore, the long-standing emergency law, in place since 1981, served to prohibit strikes, censor newspapers and constrain any activities of the opposition in the name of national security. Aside repression, legal secularist parties were weak also because of internal deficiencies: lack of internal democracy, little organisational capacity, lack of resources and, most importantly, limited constituencies.

New movements such as Kifaya (the Egyptian Movement for Change – “Enough”), which appeared in the winter of 2004, initially appeared more dynamic than legal parties, engaging in numerous public protests, directly criticising Mubarak and his family, and opposing his re-election and Gamal’s hereditary succession. However, Kifaya was rather ineffective in obtaining concrete concessions from the regime and after 2006 became dormant. In addition to harsher repression by the regime, the movement also failed to mobilise large popular support, being limited to students, intellectuals and middle-class professionals; it lacked a clear long-term strategy, with no positive democratic demands. After 2007 it was weakened further by internal divisions that led to the resignation of the movement’s founder George Ishak.9

The lone opposition force with broad public backing, the Islamic movement of Muslim Brothers, was unable to mount a significant challenge to the government and push for actual political reform. The main reason the MB was able to win over many followers was because it assumed responsibility for delivering social services, a responsibility that had been gradually relinquished by the state between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. The MB was able to win an unprecedented number of seats in the 2005 elections thanks to its broad socioeconomic base. Yet after the Muslim Brothers gained significant representation in parliament in 2005, the government tried to exclude the movement from politics by stepping up repression and revising the constitution in 2007. Because the MB frequently experienced intimidation, leadership arrests, and financial resources It generally maintained a moderate, cautious, and non-confrontational posture towards the regime, especially in recent years, out of fear of being fully erased from political life. 10 So, despite still being the major opposition force in the nation, the movement resisted taking any overt action against the dictatorship and forging formal alliances with other opposition players, giving other opposition forces the opportunity to take the lead on political issues. As a result, the Muslim Brothers disregarded Muhammad al-call Baradei’s for a boycott of the 2010 parliamentary elections, failed to express a clear opposition to Hosni Mubarak’s re-election in 2005 and the potential candidacy of his son Gamal in 2011, and lacked a defined political platform, demonstrating their inability or unwillingness to stand for a steadfast political position. substitute for the regim11. Last but not least, the MB and several secular opposition groups were deeply divided along ideological lines, preventing the creation of a coordinated and organized political resistance to the state. More dynamism was seen in opposition that extended beyond the strict bounds of political activity. Social protests and demonstrations have become a common occurrence in Egyptian life since the middle of 2004 as a result of the population’s growing unhappiness. An unprecedented surge of street demonstrations, notably strikes, occurred in Egypt, reflecting the heightened hardship that vast swaths of Egyptians were facing.

Labor unrest persisted in 2010, especially affecting employees in the private sector whose businesses were impacted by the financial crisis. 12 The labor protests were successful in drawing a record number of participants, unlike political parties and other organized opposition organizations, but they did not result in a genuine political challenge to the administration or a call for political change. These protests, in contrast to those in January and February 2011, remained apolitical, emphasizing socioeconomic issues rather than putting up political demands.

The protests were also intermittent and completely dispersed, lacking any coordination with political organizations. The major opposition parties and other movements, like the Muslim Brothers, distanced themselves from the recent social and labor rallies, illustrative of interests of an alternative group, specifically the metropolitan upper middle class. The MB was also wary of a reconciliation with the labor movement because, as a result of its social makeup15 and conservative philosophy, it is opposed to class strife.

Endnotes

“Democracy in Doses: Mubarak begins his second term as president,” Ann M. Lesch. 1989, 11.4 of the Arab Studies Quarterly, p. 107.
Ibid.
“Revolution U: What Egypt Learned From the Students That Overthrew Milosevic,” Tina Rosenberg. 2011-02-16, Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution u (accessed October 24, 2012). (accessed October 24, 2012).
Ibid.
Democracy in Doses, by Lesch, p. 97.
Egypt’s Bloody Sunday: Middle East Research and Information Project, by Mariz Tadros. accessible at p. 7 of http://www.merip.org/mero/mero 101311.
Ibid.
The Developing Political Spectrum in Egypt, by Marina Ottoway, Houston: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011.
Egypt’s Bloody Sunday, by Tadros, p. 24.
Egypt under Nasser: Ideology, Politics, and Civil Society, by Kirk J. Beattie, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1994, p. 24.
Oliver Schlumberger, Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (Stanford,  CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 13.
Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy 4th ed. (East Boston, MA: Albert Einstein Institution, 2010.) p. 23.