Egypt is not at a crossroad or on a search for identity, Egypt is on quest to erase everything that reminds her of a past that is connected with tyranny. In doing so, Egypt is in chaos for now, it is in what could appear to some as complete self destruction as if they, the Egyptians , if they could, they would wipe out their seven thousand years of history in one stroke. The rulers now are the generals of the old system, the 1952 political system that ended the monarchy in that year,1952, and established a military dictatorship that expounded since 1952 and until now. Egypt has almost always had two classes of citizens, the elites, and the “commoners”, nothing in between. The elites included not only the old aristocrats and the wealthy, but also in what other societies known of as the middle class, the educated layer of small business owners, senior government employees,teachers, journalists, retired police and army officers, judges, and educators including higher education. The other layer is known arbitrarily as the “peasants” and they mostly are from the country or upper Egypt- millions of them migrated in the 1960s and the early 1970s to the big cities hoping of the better life the biggest deceiver, Gamal Abdul Nasser, the second president of Egypt, promised but never of course delivered. Actually, Abdul Nasser added to the conflict of the two classes, and fed the fire of hatred and envy against everything that was called class or family. They, the "second layer" mostly were uneducated, which in Egypt counts to over 80% of the population. Both classes always looked at each other with disrespect, leery eyes, with suspicion and distrust. Even after the generals, the so called revolutionaries of 1952 ended formally the aristocracy between 1960-1964- when Abdul Nasser nationalized everything that had life in Egypt, kicked out the class that was the engine of the economy, including multinationals that ran away from his hatred and tyranny- they, the revolutionaries, created a new class out of them that one *Egyptian writer called the “Super Pashas”. the Pasha was an old turkish title from the days of the Ottoman empire and continued until Egypt ended it in 1952, and referred to a class of politicians and business people that historically were landlords and ministers in the government of the deposed king, Farouk. The super Pashas referred to the elites that were created after 1952 from retired military officers, and judges, and top police officers, top university and ruling party officials that through connections to the 1952 military regime, created a wealth among themselves, manipulated export and import licenses, manipulated commodities and goods, and through their previous connections as retired generals or leaders in their field, worked for foreign entities and made it easier for investors to do business in Egypt where connections are everything and who you know or what you do or did, would bring wealth to your circle. In the midst of all these changes, a religious minority group maintained its life and business, the Copts, they lived well, and live well, economically and not politically. although many of them throughout history took high government positions or reached the top echelon in business; two names stand out, Boutros Ghali, and his family, the former UN Secretary and Naguib Sawiris now, the top Copt business leader, a billionaire who took a shot at the political life after toppling the last formal president from the 1952 system, Hosni Mubarak, in January 18th of last year, but quickly was put aside by the wave of extreme religious pretentious zealots from whom claim extreme or Salafi, original Islamic teachings. Of course religiously, they are zealots that the religion has nothing to do with them, but they politically are using it to penetrate through the unassumed, uneducated and the educated but most importantly the 80% of the people who are smart but oppression and suppression for generations and decades made them vote and belong to the extremists not out of ignorance as some of the elites in Egypt think, but out of revenge. They the majority of the Egyptian people are on a journey not to reform right now, maybe later, no rush, but on a journey to destroy everything that they believe belongs to the elites, and their vehicle of manipulation and destruction are in part the Muslim Brotherhood but also other opportunists in the media that are feeding into this massive resentment towards anything that reminds them of class or authority. They are attacking embassies, asking for insane things like revoking the peace treaty with the State of Israel, which they know is theirs and the Middle East lifeline and the sensible thing to do and have. They the Egyptians are doing so, not out of hatred or out of empty so called nationalistic ideologies, but out of revenge against their own, the elitist, those Egyptians, that the majority believe were the reason that for thousands of years made them live sometimes worse than the salves. And now and here, and based on the above, I introduce the Two Egypt of Egypt. The two are fighting, a minority, the elitests this time, that is trying to protect its privileges, a minority that has been,whether they admit it or not, part of the dictatorship of the military rule of the 1952 regime, and the Egyptians who think that that class has had enough. They are on an orgnized mission to discredit it and more importantly to humeliate it. It will take probably few years for the Egyptians to release all the anger that has been transferred from generations to generations. But while the 80% of the Egyptians are on their mission to humiliate the ruling class, they in the same time are claiming back their country, actually, for the first time in their history, the 80% are making the rules, and they are calling the shots, and the elites are scared, they are even scared to drive in some of Cairo streets in their fancy cars so they won’t provoke the hungry and the desperate and the new revolutionaries of 2011. But there is pride also for the first time among the majority of the Egyptians, that they managed to dispose the pharaoh, the last president of the military regime of 1952, even though his generals are in charge.
Egypt now is on a mission, and once its completed, I personally expect an Egypt that will pioneer democracy among the Arab countries as it did, through the old system, in pioneering the peace initiatives among the State of Israel and the Arab and the Islamic countries.
* Hussien Moenis, I believe is the name.
Jamil’s Notes: I attended Cairo University law school between 1986-1990,
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