Ten years from now, I would like to live in a country that basically has a future– has the concerns of their own people in it, you know, at heart. That actually invests in education and invests in healthcare. That actually does not allow the money to be siphoned out by corrupt officials. Where corruption is not just the nature of, you know, how the country operates. I truly believe that in ten years, all those fights between the secularists and the Islamists will have died down. I don´t believe that the Islamists have it in them to continue this fight. I don´t think they have the mental capacity to continue doing it.
I don´t foresee any future in which they control the country. Or in which they still maintain a sizable influence. The more they are in the public sphere, the more they are forced to play ball, you know. And the more they are forced to play ball, the more politicized they get. And the more politicized they get, the more compromising they become. And the more compromising they become, their faithful will start losing faith in them or start seeing that their solutions not really solutions. So I don´t foresee that we´re going to live in a country that is completely secular, but I do believe that we are going to see lots of improvement when it comes to the country itself. I truly believe that it´s going to become a more accepting environment, more tolerant. And we´re actually going to start building.
We haven´t been building for about 60 years now, or at least 30 years. We haven´t had the institutions. We haven´t had the idea of how to be an active citizen, and I think that´s going to– I think that´s going to start happening. I think people are going to start caring more and more about stuff like that. And I think that time is on our side. I believe that we have enough young people and creativity and passion to actually get this country through the problem that it´s in. I don´t foresee the economic downturn to last more than three more years. As long as some sort of stability in government gets introduced, then I don´t think it´s going to be an issue at all for the country to move forward. I think if the– I think people are going to start paying more attention to things like the environment and what they eat and what they drink and the quality control over their lives. Because people are getting sick a lot in this country. Cancer is in every family now.
So in ten years, I believe we will have entire new generations, you know, just running around the streets of Egypt. Those are the– when people ask me why am I optimistic I think about where Egyptians took their kids and went and voted. And those kids had something that none of us had, which is the experience of going to a voting booth, you know? That´s in their psyche now. They´re going to expect this to be the case. You have 12-year-olds who are watching TV, which is not the stuff that we used to watch, which was nothing, basically. You had content of nothing. You know, they´re actually seeing all of the hot issues getting debated, concepts like socialism and liberalism and civilia– and, like, civil state versus Islamic state, and the role of the police, and the role of the army, and the role of the judiciary.
And, you know, and there is this awareness that´s getting formed in their heads, you know, that none of us had, an education that none of us did have, either. And I think that´s going to make a big difference when they hit 16 or 18 and go to university. And then Islamists try to recruit them or socialists start recruitment. It will be very hard for them to play that old game of getting someone who doesn´t know anything. Because if you don´t know anything by that time, it´s going to be over for you. And there are 16 year-olds who I envy heartily, because they took part in this revolution in their teens, you know? So I was very happy that the revolution happened when I was 29 years old, so I can claim to be a revolutionary in my 20s. I´m now 30. But they´re sitting back. They´re participating, and they´re watching. And they´re paying attention. They´re noting our mistakes. When it comes down to it, they´re not going to repeat our mistakes.
They´re trying to organize themselves from now. So I don´t think that this thing is over. I don´t think that if we don´t have people who are going to face the serious problems that we are having, I don´t think the problems are just going to go away, even if you throw us all in military prison. I think it´s a matter of having a country with a future, you know? And I believe this country has a future, because this country has nothing but young people. And those young people are becoming more savvy and smarter and stronger and, you know, more numerous than the other generations are. So in ten years, I expect a completely different country, you know, majorly, like exponentially different country than the one we have right now.
Mahmoud Salem is a blogger, activist, writer and a business development consultant. His blog is the most prominent English-language Egyptian blog, entitled: “Rantings of a Sandmonkey” it won the best Middle East and Africa blog awards in 2006 and 2007, and Best English Blog in the Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs award in 2011 and has over 6 million unique views and his Twitter account has over 87,000 followers. His human rights activism areas have been in freedom of speech, human rights, religious rights, and women’s’ rights.
In 2005, he started the first anti-terrorism demonstration in Cairo, and participated in monitoring the Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections.
In 2006, he was the principal organizer of the first Egyptian anti-sexual harassment demonstration and marsh after the Eid sexual harassment incidents. Incensed by Police torturing Egyptian people on videos and sparing them, he and friends collected the videos, posted them online and pushed for a public persecution of the police officers who committed those acts, leading to the unprecedented convictions of two police officers.
In 2007, he was a stage speaker at the Atlas Foundation’s 25th anniversary conference, head of the new media panel in the Qatar Foundation democracy conference and started the Tafkir project, an Arabic language blogging website to facilitate and promote ideas and online dialogue.
In 2008, he was an organizer and a team leader of 8 Egyptian bloggers for the “Egypt blogs America” project, which monitored the US elections and created a documentary film about it.
In 2009, he was picked for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference and the US Islamic Forum conference, and started the IRIS social campaign company.
In 2011, he was one of the leading voices of the January 25 revolution that brought down Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ran for Egyptian Parliament, started the Tweetback initiative which developed two impoverished communities in Egypt with a population over 700,000 and raised millions of pounds for social entrepreneurship projects. He also initiated the “Egyptian Bill of Rights Project,” which was later on sponsored by Mohamed El Baradei.
He co-authored two books – “Tweets from Tahrir” and “18 Days” and founded “7etan,” the first Graffiti School in Egypt. His writings have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and various online websites.
With a history dating back to the 10th millennium B.C., Egypt has long played a central role in the Middle East. Egypt is the largest Arab nation and has an influential voice in Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. Egypt has a diverse economy, but has struggled to create sustained economic growth and opportunities for its population of 84 million people.
The country has little experience with representative democracy. From 1956 to 1970, President Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt with a strong hand, nationalizing the Suez Canal and taking the country into conflict with the new state of Israel. Upon his death, Anwar al-Sadat became president. Together with other Arab nations, Sadat launched the October War against Israel in 1973. In 1979, Sadat signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Israel.
From Sadat’s assassination in 1981 until the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Egypt was governed by President Hosni Mubarak. For all of Mubarak’s time in office, and for much of the time since his resignation, Egypt has been under “Emergency Law,” which allows the government to suspend constitutional rights, including limiting political activity and restricting free speech. Emergency Law also allows the government to use summary arrests against political opponents.
For four successive terms, Mubarak was reelected in referenda without an opponent. In 2005, under domestic and international pressure, Mubarak proposed a constitutional amendment to allow Egypt’s first multicandidate presidential elections. Because the amendment would have imposed severe restrictions on the eligibility of opposition candidates, opposition groups boycotted the vote. Mubarak claimed to have won the September 2005 presidential election with an official 88 percent of the vote, amid widespread allegations of fraud and vote rigging. The main opposition leader, Ayman Nour, was subsequently prosecuted by the government for forging signatures on petitions and was sentenced to five years in prison, provoking protests from the United States and other democratic countries.
Following the example of the Tunisian Revolution, large protests swept Egypt in early 2011. The military, led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), withdrew its support of Mubarak. On February 11, 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi then assumed power in Egypt. SCAF dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.
In November 2011, Egypt held parliamentary elections that were reportedly fair and democratic. In June 2012, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was elected President, in part because liberal and secular forces failed to coalesce around a single candidate. Morsi’s popularity declined as he declared his orders immune from challenge, removed judicial review processes, and was accused of taking steps towards the implementation of Islamist policies. Conflict arose between those supporting Islamist policies and those seeking a more liberal and secular government. Protests occurred throughout his presidency until Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013. Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested and their camps and offices raided. Until new elections are held, a SCAF-installed provisional government led by acting President Adly Mansour is in control.
In its most recent report, the independent watchdog group Freedom House classifies Egypt as “partly free.” On its scale where 1 is the most free and 7is the least free, Egypt earned scores of 5 in both the civil liberties and political rights categories.
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