LynAlden on Nostr: GM. There are many different subcultures in Egypt, and waves of religious and ...

GM.

There are many different subcultures in Egypt, and waves of religious and cultural changes over time.

Most well-known is the fact that alongside the majority Sunni Muslim population, there is a significant Coptic Christian population in Egypt. Some of the oldest still-standing churches in the world, dating back to the third century, are located in Cairo.

But in addition, among the Muslim majority there are different types of Muslim conservatism vs modernism. There is a traditional conservatism that is rather ubiquitous in the Egyptian rural areas and stretches back very far, and there is a more recent religious fundamentalist conservatism (Wahhabism, and more broadly Salafism) that came from Saudi Arabia into Egypt over the past few decades that affects both the rural areas and the urban areas.

My Muslim grandparent inlaws, when you look at their pictures back in the 1950s, are not wearing any hijab head coverings, and neither were their adult children in the 1970s. It was less common to do so in the urbanite middle and wealthy classes back then. Rural traditionalists generally wore hijab head coverings back then and in the present, and have more conservative views. But as Wahhabism/Salafism spread through Egypt, even those wealthier and more cosmopolitan urbanites became more outwardly religious and conservative within the same generation. Many people who didn’t previously wear head coverings began to do so. Niqabs (full head and face coverings) also grew in popularity as well, alongside hijabs, but have always been a much smaller minority.

My in-laws came from the urbanite upper-middle class. So over time in the past, they went from no hijab head coverings to wearing hijab head coverings (grandparent and parent in laws) with the adoption of Wahhabism/Salafism in Egypt during that era. And then some of the younger ones (now in their 30s), who were raised with hijab head coverings from the start, began to take them off about a decade ago. They grew up being told it was wrong for women to dance or swim or show almost any skin or hair in public, but eventually shifted their views away from that, even as their parents still adhere to it. They are still Muslim, but interpret things more like their grandparents once did. Meanwhile among the traditional rural class there is no such retracement.

As a result of all this, there is a big spectrum of conservatism/modernism and religiosity across the country, and even within extended families.

In Greater Cairo’s 20+ million population, there is also a west vs east divide. Upper-middle classes in West Cairo are generally more cosmopolitan, whereas similar economic groups in East Cairo lean more conservative on average. Outside of Cairo, Alexandria, and coastal resorts, the rural areas and smaller cities all lean pretty conservative. And again, there are some differences between traditional blended cultural/religious conservatism which is generally correlated to socioeconomic class, and the separate wave of Wahhabism/Salafism religious conservatism that is more class-independent.

Among rural Egyptians, there are different subcultures north of Cairo (in the Nile delta farmland region) and south of Cairo (following the Nile down south to Sudan). A significant percentage of southern Egyptian families have a vendetta culture, similar in some regards to old-school Sicilians, which is not really present to any similar degree among rural northern Egyptians.

Nationwide Egyptian politics over the past 50 years have largely been defined by the conflict between secular military rule (who are usually in power) vs religious theocratic rule (who were only in power briefly). The secular military view is still Muslim and is conservative by western standards, but leaves most religious choices to individuals and families. They focus on economic matters, and want Egypt to be a place for global tourism and business. The religious theocratic view instead wants a more theocratic society, either through political means or in some cases through violent means and terrorism. The military secularists then become empowered by the broad public toward more authoritarian tendencies by being seen as the force that can stop the extremists and keep things safe and stable.