Egypt is paradigmatic of what has gone wrong over the past half century in Muslim countries. From creeping secularisation across the Arab world led by none other than Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt, the bête noir of the West, the modernisation of many of these countries continued apace including such countries as Afghanistan.
What happened since that momentous epoch?
During the 1950s and 1960s even that icon of secularisation and modernity, the bikini, made its appearance in these countries. It is not that these countries were becoming less religious, it was merely the acceptance that there would be a separation between temporal and religious affairs. Was this not the journey that Western Europe embarked upon after the Enlightenment?
Main picture: Sunbathers near the Port of Alexandria, 1955
I always assumed that this trajectory was immutable and that after a few decades the secular and temporal would eclipse the religious and especially the fundamentalist beliefs and modern states, with Egypt at the forefront, would emerge.
On a beach in 1964
Instead I have been sorely disabused in this regard? Rather than the anticipated wave of modernity sweeping all before it, there has been a steady retraction and retreat into fundamentalism and theocracy.
I anticipated that Egypt together with other states along the Mediterranean littoral such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and possibly even Libya would trace a similar path as blazed by Egypt.
I envisaged that the guiding light would be Turkey, an Islamic but secular country. The history of modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the Republic in October 1923, with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as its first president. Ataturk derived his moral authority through being in charge of the Ottoman Empire forces which routed the Allied forces at Gallipoli during WW1 resulting in Churchill’s dismissal as Lord of the Admiralty.
Mustafa Kemel
For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atatürk’s Reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland’s and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women in December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded Turkish Language Association; replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new Turkish alphabet.
These Kemalist reforms which constituted a radical transformation of the ancien regime in Turkey were promulgated under single party autocratic rule. Perhaps that is the only manner in which such radical change can be effected but personally, being a pure-bred democrat at heart, they stick in the craw.
Skirts and schooling for women in 1966 Aswan
What has happened in the Arab lands, especially the Levant, Turkey and Egypt in particular in the intervening years?
In Turkey after a series of economic shocks led to elections in 2002 it brought into power the conservative and pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party, the AK Party under the former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. After 90 years, the AK Party has again permitted many of the outlawed practices such as the wearing of head scarfs by government employees.
How has the rest of the Arab world fared? Not much better. In fact if the truth be told, it has been disastrous with fundamentalist movements gaining the ascendancy in most countries. Fundamentalism of the most brutal and archaic kind is now clearly in control with the factions being most fundamentalist having the upper hand.
Gamal Abdel Nasser shaped the face of Egypt from 1956 to 1970. A critical time on national and international fronts, his social justice-oriented ambitions did not come entirely democratically. He won his second term by legally forbidding others to run against him
From Egypt, to Afghanistan and to Algeria the promise of reforms from oppressive regimes never materialised. Implementing enervating Socialist economic policies, their economies stagnated. Instead of the much heralded nirvana –if mixed religious metaphors are permissible – the daily hardships remained obdurate. The only opposition was the fundamentalists such as the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt.
Without the requisite economic growth to raise living standards, the first buds of modernity withered on the vines.
The long-awaited second attempt at modernity, the so-called Arab Spring has not borne the sweet succulent fruits of modernity but rather a fundamentalist sour inedible variety, one unattuned to the modern pallet.
Tahrir Square in the 1960s
The jury is still out but the portents are ominous. Everywhere the fundamentalists are in the ascendant with possibly another 50 years of religious & authoritarian strictures awaiting the denizen’s of the region.
What an appalling prospect?
Pictures of Egypt 50 years ago
Agami Beach, the Egyptian Saint-Tropez, in 1956
A woman arming herself in 1956. During the 1950s when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal and joined together in resistance against the Israeli-French-British attack, it wasn’t uncommon for women to volunteer to fight. Unless filling administrative spots, women today cannot assume such roles
Women engage in political rallies in Assiut: not a single one is wearing a veil or conservative dress
Friends gather at Alexandria’s Sidi Bishr beach in 1959
Egyptian star Magda appears in a 1952 Coca-Cola advert
Students in the quad at Cairo University, 1960. At this point in time Egyptian education was considered by many to be one of the best in the world
The Alexandria waterfront at Montaza Palace, 1956
A woman reading an Egyptian magazine in the 1950s
A 1960 ad for soap features a woman in her underwear
Taken in 1959, this photo captures Alexandria at its cosmopolitan height. Six languages were regularly spoken in Egypt’s second largest city, and Arabs, Sephardic Jews and Europeans would intermingle peacefully, sporting whatever clothing they pleased. Much of this influence changed upon the arrival of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who made it his presidential ambition to shirk Egypt of its colonial past and cultivate an “authentic” Arab identity–even if it meant repressing those whose understanding of “Arabness” included a very public display of one’s religion. Today, Alexandria is one of the most conservative cities in Egypt
Vespa uses Cairo–not Rome– as the scenic backdrop for a 1950 advertisement
A couple in front of the Sidi Bishr beach cabanas in 1959
An advertisement for a Jewish department store, Benzion, in Egyptian publications
A 1956 beauty competition
