Anything but the Khalijis!

Matt is a goofball. He does goofy things, makes goofy comments, and asks goofy questions. So imagine my surprise when he asked what turned out, in retrospect, to be a very interesting question. Specifically he asked whether Egypt is in Africa or the Middle East. If you tweak that just a bit, it becomes what is a surprisingly controversial topic in Egypt.

Ask the question: “Who are the Egyptians? Are they Arabs? Pharonic descendants? North Africans?” You’re liable to get some interesting answers.  I spoke with a particularly well-versed poli sci student, a native Egyptian, and she gave me something to think on. “Yes,” she said “I believe I am an Arab.” Her response was simple enough until she went on to add “But that is not a common opinion among Egyptians my age.”

I was baffled. Ya’ani- Egypt is the most populous of the Arab States. It is the seat of the Arab League. It is (or until recently, has been, depending on who you ask and whether or not there is a tape recorder in the room) the political leader of the Arab World. So how is it that most students do not  consider themselves to be Arabs?

The sentiment of being an Arab, she explained, is a fairly new idea, mostly the product of one Gamal Abdel Nasser. Prior to the early 20^th century, or more specifically, the fall of the Ottoman Empire as of WWI, the Middle East had been a conglomeration of areas united by nothing more than a shared religion (which was not exclusive to the Middle East; take for example Turkey or Persia), a series of loosely related dialects, and a shared status as a former Ottoman territory. But there was, at that point, no real image of an ‘Arab,’ and even less so, an idea of Arab political solidarity. More than anything, what incited their unification was that they were the states that were not Ottoman and not Persian and not European. And so it was that Nasser found a receptive audience for his Pan-Arab politics. However, much as we would assume that ‘Arab’ is a Primordial identity, imbued with centuries of shared religious tradition and millennia of shared culture, it is (also) very much an intentionally engineered political identity to bring about solidarity, and thus political power, in the Middle East.

Understand that this is a single opinion, and one based on primarily anecdotal evidence from uncited sources, but still, it is a telling statement on the self-identification of the Egyptian youth. And it is a generational discussion, as I am told. Grandparents, those that remember Egypt as it was when it could exert regional power, when Nasser’s Pan-Arabism was in full swing, and Egypt was in the lead, are Arabs. My peers’ parents identified with the Westernizing influence of America, the wealthy, influential, successful benefactor that represented modernization and progress. Now this generation is in a position to make that determination. They know what they are not- they are still not in support of Israel. Nor are they particularly in support of America (“We love Americans, but the government? Blehh,” was how it was phrased, to be precise).  But they are also not aligned as Arabs, instead leaving that title for the Khalijiun (the Gulf-ies). 

So where does that leave them? “We are lost,” was her answer, “we are lost. “