Mubarak, whom I suspected might have been complicit in Sadat’s murder, is going, leaving an Egypt longing for democratic policies that don’t include secret police and the de facto rule of the army. I sometimes wonder if people really understand themselves.
A long time ago I heard a Buddhist monk say that anyone who converted from their religion didn’t understand their own. I have said elsewhere how perceptive this observation is in understanding the psychology of religion; but I also recall sociologists talking about converted nations possessing their own customs and their original religions osmotically appearing in different guises into their new faiths. Egypt is Islamic but underneath her Muslim skin lies the ancient religion of the Pharaohs. Just as, incidentally, under Iran’s Muslim faith lies Zoroastrianism.
The Russian Communists used secret police because they inherited them lock, stock and barrel from the Czars. Egypt uses secret police because it always has, it is not something Nasser invented. The army has ruled in Egypt since she became a nation and praying to Mecca hasn’t changed a thing. Ask the ten million Coptic Christians who are still second class citizens and will remain so in democratic Egypt. The Egyptian has always needed its slaves to maintain its own high opinion of itself, elections won’t change a thing.
They want democracy I am sure, but they have no idea how to share power equitably and that is the heart of the Democratic process.