Berkley Center

Religion and politics have an interesting effect on society here in the Middle East. The people in Egypt seem to regard religion as key to their identity, whether they are actually devout or just keeping up appearances. Everywhere you go you see religious symbols. This could be anything from a copy of the Qur’an in a taxi cab, a hijab on a woman, or a sura written on a building or rear window of a car. In reality though, I would say that the number of very pious believers here is roughly similar to the number of pious believers of different faiths in the United States. The key difference between the two societies though, I would say, boils down to politics.

Firstly, Egypt lacks a great deal of legitimacy based on its inability to provide welfare and development for its people and based on the conduct of past government administrations. Because of this lack of legitimacy, I believe that more people are beginning to use their respective religions to define themselves, whereas in the United States, a state with a great amount of legitimacy, people primarily define themselves by nationality. Egyptians still refer to themselves as Egyptians, but it seems that more and more people are assigning more importance to religion than to nationality.

Secondly, the government controls everything in Egypt. It is pretty much a police state, but the government doesn't have enough control to quell all forms of dissent. Dissent among most people then takes the form of religious expression because political expression is suppressed. It is something the government can’t get ahold of completely (although they do close mosques at certain times and have a vice-like grip on religious classification). Religious expression, at least externally, is magnified as a form of free choice, one of the few choices Egyptians have. For example, some families do not require their daughters to wear hijabs, but many wear them anyway because they can. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Social norms often require wearing a hijab in order to find a decent marriage, but I know several people that do not wear the hijab but have sisters who do. The hijab is becoming more of a conscious, free choice and less of a social norm.

Contrast Egypt to Jordan, where my friends and I spent our Eid break. Jordan for some reason does not seem to have an undercurrent of political dissent. There is a feeling of calm that is not present in Egypt. In addition, there aren’t as many overt expressions of religion. Not nearly as many women wear the hijab, and aside from the occasional sura and mosque, there are few blatant religious symbols. There is no doubt that the Jordanians are largely Muslim. You can see it in cultural and social norms as well as every day interactions, but it is less overt than in Egypt. In political terms this could be either because the state has a much tighter grip on society (as evident in the occasional midnight military curfew) or because the population isn’t as unsettled as Egypt’s population. Although Jordan is an artificial state, its infrastructure is much more developed, and the government seems to hold up its end of the bargain in welfare and development more than Egypt. A cab driver I talked to on the way back to Amman from Petra proudly told me that Jordan was a special country in the Middle East. He said that the government was good and took care of the people. If it didn’t there might be a problem.

Religion and society interact in a very interesting way in Egypt and the Middle East as a whole. In a region where states are constantly facing a legitimacy crisis and the people do not identify wholly with the state, religion is playing an increasingly central role in societal identity. This in no way belittles religion. I’m sure religion is as important to many people in the United States as it is to many people in the Middle East, but the magnitude of its role in society seems contingent on the condition of the state ruling society. Jordan and Egypt are just two examples.