As young Egyptian Copts protested the Alexandria church bombing in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, young Tunisians had been taking to the streets for two weeks, protesting against unemployment from Sidi Bou Zeid to other cities in Tunisia.
There’s a great difference between the angry demonstrations in both countries. In Tunisia, young people have led an uprising that will go down in history as an important struggle for improved social, economic and political conditions. In Egypt, the anger of Coptic youth has sparked a wave of protests that reflects rising sectarian tensions that are gripping the country. Coptic youth are not revolting against joblessness, even though unemployment rates in the two north African countries are comparable.
In Tunisia, the protests are social and belong to modern times, while in Egypt the protests are largely sectarian and belong to a bygone era.
The difference between the two cases raises a fundamental question: Why does religious anger in Egypt lead to massive protests while poverty, unemployment and corruption fail to mobilize as many people?
Over the past five years, social protests in Egypt have failed to gather as many people as those who protested the Alexandria church blast. Coptic youth did not protest the widening gap between social classes even though many of those who took part in the recent protests are out of work. This is a problem of social and political awareness that has been stifled as religious identities have gained prominence since the 1970s, feeding sectarian tensions.
Perhaps the answer to the question lies in the chaotic process of social change in Egypt that has taken place over the past two decades and the simultaneous salience of religious identities emphasized by organized religious institutions.
When the Egyptian bread riots broke out in 1977, the country’s population was around 40 million, half of what it is today. In the present context, an uprising of a similarly large scale is unlikely, absent a popular political leadership, due to the massive fragmentation of Egyptian society.
One of the main patterns that has transformed Egyptian society since the 1970s has been the splintering of interests not only among the different social groups, but also among members of the same group. As a result, protesting groups in Egypt are like isolated islands that do not communicate. Tunisia, on the other hand, more closely resembles Egypt in 1977.
Sectarian tendencies in Egypt have exacerbated this social chaos; religion now seems to be the only thing holding together what are otherwise incoherent fragments of Egyptian society.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
