Egypt in Books
Review Essay
by Jeffrey Azarva
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1679
Although its glory days may be past, Egypt
remains an important player in regional
politics. With almost eighty million people,
it has by far the largest Arab population.
While there may be twenty-two members of the
Arab League, one in three Arabs is Egyptian.
And although Islamists question the
legitimacy of many Arab states formed in the
wake of World War I, Egypt has a recognized
legacy going back millennia. Because Egypt
is one of only three Arab states to have
full diplomatic relations with Israel, it
retains an elevated position as a diplomatic
intermediary. Despite its importance,
though, recent literature on Egypt is
scarce.
Since the 1952 Free Officers' coup which
brought Gamal Abdel Nasser (r. 1952-70) to
power, the Egyptian government has grown
more opaque. Scholarly access is limited.
Most scholars divide modern Egyptian history
into three periods: post-French invasion
modernization, 1798-1919; the liberal
period, 1919-52; and the post-1952 order.
Recent books about Egypt generally cover
only three issues: history, politics, and
Islamism. Major topics remain unaddressed:
Few authors examine in depth Egypt's
religious minorities or internal regional
identities. Studies of the Egyptian
army—from which have come Egypt's past three
leaders—are sparse.
From Belle Époque to Revolution
Trevor Mostyn's Egypt's Belle Époque: Cairo
and the Age of the Hedonists gives context
to the rise of Egyptian liberalism.
Originally published in 1989 and reissued
last year in paperback, Mostyn provides a
glimpse of nineteenth century Egypt, a
romantic age when many European elites
considered Cairo to be the Paris of Africa.
The author, formerly the Financial Times'
Cairo correspondent, recounts an era that
Western scholars in recent years have
neglected. Under Muhammad Ali (r. 1805-49),
the father of the modern Egyptian
nation-state, and his grandson Ismail (r.
1863-79), Egypt would welcome European
influence, ending the country's image as a
primitive backwater of the Ottoman Empire as
architects and musicians flocked to Cairo
and Alexandria. The Egyptian taste for high
society would culminate in the lavish
festivities surrounding the 1869
inauguration of the Suez Canal.
But while nineteenth century Egyptian
decadence may contrast to the country's
social conservatism today, there remain
parallels between past and present. Egypt's
belle époque saw the Egyptian government
establish a world-class postal system and
create an efficient transportation network
although progress often came at the expense
of the average Egyptian. Muhammad Ali and
Ismail crushed dissent with brute force.
Royal courts dispensed swift punishment, in
many ways in parallel to the actions of the
regime's security courts today. In another
parallel to post-1952 Egypt, both Muhammad
Ali and Ismail staked the regime's survival
to the military.
Mostyn's narrative includes tales of
profligate spending. The government, he
writes, implemented development projects
with "inadequate knowledge at inordinate
costs." Nearly a century and a half later,
critics levy similar charges against current
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's Toshka
land reclamation project launched in 1997,
which they say is both infeasible and
expensive.
Mostyn's narrative contrasts with the
dominant narrative in university classes.
Here, New York University political
scientist Timothy Mitchell's Colonising
Egypt is a staple. Less incisive and
littered with deconstructionist jargon and
references to the late literary theorist and
polemicist Edward Said, Mitchell's book
rests on the theory that the roots of
colonialism are as much "internal" as
"external." Nineteenth century reforms and
modernization, Mitchell asserts, were
backdoor attempts to subjugate Egypt to
British influence. Urban planning enabled
subjugation.
Absent from his analysis,
though, is mention of the fiscal
irresponsibility which pushed Egypt into
debt and motivated British occupation. While
dependency theory and condemnation of
Western influence might be popular in
academe, theoretical jargon does not
substitute for fact-based narrative.
Another staple of university syllabi is Joel
Beinin and Zachary Lockman's Workers on the
Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the
Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954. Beinin, a
former president of the Middle East Studies
Association, and Lockman, its current
president, utilize a Marxist approach and
stress the importance of labor in shaping
modern Egyptian history. While labor did
coalesce during this period, their claim
that labor guided Egypt's post-World War I
nationalist struggle is exaggerated. Both
the British and the liberal Wafd party kept
labor under control.
Beinin and Lockman's argument that labor
charted the path of post-1952 Egypt does not
hold water. While Beinin and Lockman
characterize the working class as "a factor
to be reckoned with" in today's political
landscape, the voice of labor remains
quiescent. Wildcat protests may still occur,
but labor's conspicuous absence from the
reform movement is telling. Beinin and
Lockman's narrative is an example of the
danger of cherry-picking evidence and
limiting context to justify a political
theory.
The poor quality of such staples raises the
value of some new contributions.
Re-Envisioning Egypt: 1919-1952, edited by
Arthur Goldschmidt, Amy J. Johnson, and
Barak A. Salmoni, provides a more nuanced
treatment of early twentieth century Egypt.
Goldschmidt, Johnson, and Salmoni—
respectively, a professor emeritus of Middle
East history at Pennsylvania State
University, an associate professor of
history at Berry College, and a deputy
director of the Center for Advanced
Operational Culture Learning at the U.S.
Marine Corps Training and Education
Command—collect essays exploring Egypt's
"parliamentary age." Recasting this period
as one of "cultural vibrancy" and "societal
dynamism," the volume's contributors shatter
the conventional wisdom that the early
twentieth century marked a period of
Egyptian decline.
The various authors depict a society more
egalitarian than earlier accepted in the
academic literature. Though conflicts among
the British imperial authorities, Egyptian
monarchy, and nationalist Wafd party and its
political adversaries sometimes paralyzed
policymaking, debates did not prevent
far-reaching reform.
In her essay on the public education system,
for example, Misako Ikeda, an associate
professor of history at Koryo International
College in Japan, shows that the post-1919
era witnessed not only the advent of
tuition-free education but also the
standardization of primary school
curriculum. What is striking about these
reforms is that they arose not by dictat but
from parliamentary debate attuned to public
interest, a process all but extinct in Egypt
today. Ikeda adds that such reforms provided
Nasser with a template upon which to build
when, for example, he made university
opportunities more equitable. The theme of
continuity between Egypt's liberal and
Nasserist periods contrasts from previous
historiography, which paints the 1952 Free
Officers' movement as a revolutionary break.
Fred Lawson, a professor of government at
Mills College, expands upon this motif in
his essay on post-World War I foreign
policy. He counters the idea that Egyptian
policy was introverted prior to Nasser's
pan-Arab movement. While many historians
write that the Egyptian government at the
time eschewed regional engagement, Lawson
argues that Egyptian officials established
the parameters for Nasser's later external
activism. Though Lawson acknowledges that
Egyptian policy was inconsistent, he draws
upon archival material to show the interest
of Egyptian politicians in intra-Arab
affairs; in one case, Egyptian officials
even meddled in the Syrian monarchy's
internal politics. The most prominent case
of Egyptian intervention was in Palestine
during the 1930s and 1940s. While scholars
such as then-Princeton University professor
and current U.S. National Security Council
senior director Michael Doran say Egypt's
involvement stemmed more from anti-British
sentiment than incipient pan-Arabism,
Lawson, Ikeda, and other contributors
suggest that Egypt's vibrant inter-war
period dictated much of its later
trajectory.
Nasser and his Successors
Following the 1952 Free Officers' coup that
brought Egypt's colonial experience to an
end, Egyptian rule has been characterized by
a series of three authoritarian rulers.
While Gamal Abdel Nasser ingratiated himself
to the lower and middle classes, he
tolerated little opposition. Those who
crossed him faced arbitrary detention,
torture, or execution. His vice-president
and successor, Anwar Sadat (r. 1970-81) was
as heavy-handed with those who challenged
his foreign policy and top-down reform
initiatives. Disaffection has continued
under Sadat's successor and Egypt's current
ruler, Hosni Mubarak.
While Mubarak quelled social unrest in the
1980s and crushed an Islamist insurgency in
the 1990s, his emphasis upon stability over
development has contributed to stagnation.
Today, the Egyptian state is marked by high
unemployment and endemic corruption. A 2000
World Bank report estimated that more than
thirteen million Egyptians live under the
poverty line.
Politics are moribund.
Parliament rubber-stamps presidential
decrees, and the electoral system is rife
with fraud. Egyptian law constrains civil
society, and few outlets for legal dissent
exist. The Egyptian security forces harass
any who raise their voices.
In February 2005, after a few years of
sustained Bush administration pressure,
Mubarak amended the constitution to enable
contested presidential elections. However,
after independent candidates sympathetic to
the Muslim Brotherhood gained 88 out of 454
seats, followed the next month by the Hamas
victory in Palestinian elections, U.S.
officials reconsidered their policy. Absent
pressure, Mubarak reneged on reform. He
postponed municipal elections scheduled for
April 2006 and arrested his former election
opponent, Ayman Nour. Security forces again
cracked down on even peaceful dissent.
The tenacity with which Mubarak seeks to
monopolize power is apparent in the
literature. By suffocating Egypt's liberal
opposition and raising the specter of
Islamism, Mubarak portrays his regime as the
only bulwark against Islamist extremism.
The best introduction to Egypt and its
growing Islamist trend is Carrie Rosefsky
Wickham's Mobilizing Islam: Religion,
Activism, and Political Change in Egypt.
Wickham, an associate professor of political
science at Emory University, goes beyond
superficial, post-9-11 discussions of
Islamic fundamentalism to explain why
political Islam resonates with such force in
Egyptian society. While many in the West
identify this current with those such as
Mohamed Atta or Ayman al-Zawahiri—Egyptian
nationals who played prominent 9-11 roles—Rosefsky
says most Egyptian Islamists are
reform-minded and opposed to violence.
Still, she acknowledges that "Egypt's
moderate Islamic groups have yet to
reconcile their call for Islamic law with a
full commitment to democracy and political
pluralism."
Wickham's book is no potboiler. Fluent in
Arabic, her research is extensive. She taps
Egypt's quasi-independent professional
associations and provides balance by
interviewing taxi drivers, unemployed
college graduates, and Islamist activists,
including those from Cairo's sha'bi, common,
lower-class neighborhoods. These
conversations reveal the popular resentment
felt by those who believe the Nasserist
social contract remains unfulfilled.
Tracing the post-1952 ebb and flow of
Egypt's Islamist movement, Wickham refutes
the idea that state repression and
grievance-based alienation alone feed
Islamist activism. As the low voter turnout
in the 2005 presidential elections
illustrated—only 23 percent of the
electorate participated —most Egyptians
remain apathetic toward the political
process, even when Muslim Brotherhood
candidates run. Instead, she credits the
Muslim Brotherhood's proactive outreach with
galvanizing opposition. This da'wa (call [to
God]) network consists of Islamist
commercial institutions, voluntary
associations, and private mosques that
remain beyond government control. This
semiautonomous infrastructure not only
provides Islamists with space to mobilize,
but it also puts liberal opposition at an
organizational disadvantage.
While Wickham examines the relative success
of Islamist movements under Egypt's
authoritarian system, Maye Kassem, an
assistant professor of political science at
the American University in Cairo, analyzes
the success of the system itself in Egyptian
Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian
Rule. Kassem uses the 1952 revolution as a
point of departure to show the
institutionalization of authoritarian rule
over the past half century. While Kassem
spends the first half of the book
regurgitating a litany of Egypt's repressive
laws and practices well-documented
elsewhere, she intersperses her review with
anecdotes from a state prosecutor's attempt
to cook trial evidence against Islamists to
a plainclothes policeman's use of pepper
spray on opposition voters.
Her treatment of trade unions and organized
labor complements Wickham's emphasis on
professional syndicates. Kassem details how
the regime has either co-opted unions or
neutralized them through legislation and
coercion. She singles out the General
Foundation of Egyptian Trade Unions, an
umbrella organization established by Nasser
in 1957 to curb the proliferation of local
unions, as one means of control. The ruling
National Democratic Party often appoints the
foundation's senior officials. By the 1980s,
Kassem writes, "The deterioration of
relations between workers and trade unions
reached a level whereby it was no longer
uncommon for workers to challenge their own
union representatives." The situation has
improved little since.
Kassem devotes one chapter to Egypt's
Islamist movement with emphasis on violent
offshoots that emerged in the late 1960s and
1970s, such as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiya (The
Islamic Group) and Al-Jihad. Here, though,
she accepts conventional grievance-based
explanations. She argues, for example, that
the security apparatus's humiliation of
Egyptian males instigated violence in the
1980s and 1990s. Still, Egyptian
participation in such operations does not
explain recruitment mechanisms. How do some
Egyptians come to be trained in such terror
while others might just grouse or applaud
it?
Here, she mostly parrots the analysis of
Gilles Kepel's Muslim Extremism in Egypt:
The Prophet and the Pharaoh. Kepel, the
chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the
Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris,
studied Egyptian Islamism while living in
Cairo toward the last years of Anwar Sadat's
presidency. He traced the evolution of
radical Islam in Egypt from Sayyid Qutb's
writings condemning Nasserism as un-Islamic
through violent splinters such as Takfir
wal-Hijra (Excommunication and Exodus),
Jama'at al-Islamiya, and Al-Jihad. Kepel
depicts these groups, with the exception of
Al-Jihad, as benign social activists and
argues that they sought to Islamize the
Sadat regime, not overthrow it, and asserts
that until the time of Sadat's
assassination, Islamists disavowed violence.
Al-Jihad, though, did embrace violence and,
on October 6, 1981, assassinated Sadat. When
discussing recruitment, Kepel is at his most
interesting. Socioeconomic explanations
underpin his analysis but do not dominate
it. He writes that the most susceptible
Islamists were drawn from marginalized 20-25
year-olds on the outskirts of big cities.
The "vendetta complex," which permeates
these towns in middle and upper Egypt known
for their illicit arms trade, suggests some
young men were predisposed to violence;
Islamism gave them an excuse. Still, it is
unfortunate that, more than two decades
after Kepel penned his study, little remains
known about the inner-workings and precise
recruitment mechanisms of these Islamist
groups.
The Missing Piece
Few authors examine the Egyptian military,
perhaps the most powerful and opaque
institution in Egypt today. Nasser and the
Missile Age in the Middle East by Defense
Intelligence Agency analyst Owen L. Sirrs,
therefore, makes a welcome contribution. In
this published version of his doctoral
dissertation from the Joint Military
Intelligence College, Sirrs documents
Cairo's 50-year investment in a ballistic
missile program. While light on Arabic and
Hebrew-language sources, Sirrs makes ample
use of declassified U.S. intelligence.
Like other grandiose projects, Nasser's
indigenous rocket program—which evolved from
a desire to attain military parity with
Israel—yielded few returns. While Saad el-Shazly,
chief architect of Egypt's 1973 surprise
attack on Israel, was appalled with
mismanagement and the program's "wasted
millions," Nasser's successors have
continued to procure ballistic missile
capabilities. First the Soviet Union, and
then Iraq, North Korea, and Argentina
contributed to Cairo's program. Pyongyang's
cooperation may still continue to the
present. Although Washington has expressed
concern about Mubarak's missile programs,
neither the White House nor State Department
uses its leverage—Egypt is the second
largest recipient of annual U.S. military
aid—to stop Cairo.
Sirrs asks the right question—namely, why
would Mubarak jeopardize stability and a
valuable alliance for a handful of
missiles—but the problem goes deeper: Since
the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Egypt
has received nearly $60 billion in economic
and military aid from the United States in
current U.S. dollars. This support has
allowed Egypt to retool its armed forces
with Western weaponry in what amounts to a
bid for regional hegemony. Still, aid to
Egypt continues unabated. U.S. diplomats
fear that easing Egypt off the gravy train
might endanger intelligence-sharing and Suez
Canal access.
Recent scholarship on modern Egypt, even
after the shock of 9-11, is underwhelming.
Egypt, one of the United States's most
strategic allies and a country from which
many regional actors still take their cue,
receives scant attention. Perhaps authors
take Egypt's stability for granted. With
Mubarak aging and his succession uncertain,
this could be a devastating misjudgment.
Jeffrey Azarva is a research
assistant at the American Enterprise
Institute