A “Different” World

EAST PEORIA — We have it pretty good in America. While we deal with an often inoperative government and recovery from a recession, we remain a basically free nation with freedoms and privileges some of the world does not have. Inevitably, we likely take these things for granted every day of our lives.

On Oct. 25, Illinois Central College’s Lecture Arts Series hosted a lecture in the Performing Arts Center describing sociopolitical issues in Egypt, a nation without the aforementioned freedoms and privileges.

The lecture featured discussions from Nick Busch, a political science instructor at ICC, and Inaam Amin, a Fulbright Scholar from Cairo, Egypt and instructor of Arabic at ICC. Busch described Egypt’s current political landscape, citing the causes and effects of what is known as the Arab Spring, while Amin mainly spoke of Egypt’s current social issues.

Busch spoke first, concisely giving the background on Egypt’s current state of politics. He reported that Egypt is currently in a state of emergency, where police powers are extended, constitutional rights are suspended and government legally censors its people. With varying degree, this has been Egypt’s political and social landscape since their Six Day War of 1967 with Israel, Jordan and Syria. Recently, Egypt announced the state of emergency should come to an end in November 2013, but, as Busch described, this is likely not to happen. What has recently threatened the state of emergency, Busch continued, is something called the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring is an ongoing wave of revolutionary political uprisings in the Middle East and Northern Africa that began on Jan. 25, 2011. Egypt and many other nations held demonstrations, protests, riots and even civil wars in response to political oppression, economic issues and social injustice. In Egypt specifically, the people demanded the end of the state of emergency laws and the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s acting president at the time. Mubarak did resign and transferred power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Busch reported. This made Egypt a military state, which soon caused the dissolving of Egyptian parliament and suspension of their constitution. Busch reported Egypt’s acting president Adly Mansour is technically in power, though he has essentially given all power to the military.

The Arab Spring had few positive effects on Egypt. It left 846 Egyptians dead and at least 6000 injured. Military control is causing violence in most of the country. However, the Arab Spring caused many groups of people to unite against their government, eventually causing an overthrow. The fact still remains that most of the work is yet to be done; Egyptian society has not seen a substantial and effective change in everyday life, a fact which Amin elaborated on.

Amin is an only child from Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, she lived a comfortable middle class life with her mother and father. Growing up, though, she saw Egypt‘s social issues increase in severity and scope. More specifically, Egypt is still dealing with problems in human rights, economics and education. Today, 40 percent of Egypt’s entire population is under the poverty line, she reported, 30 percent of those being completely illiterate. Most of these people are fairly young, as most of Egypt is; Amin reported that 50 percent of Egypt is under the age of 30. This does not, however, equate to a younger government, even after its overthrowing. Members in Egypt’s parliament have an age requirement of 40 years, Amin reported. A lot of these social issues, she submitted, are due to government’s conservative and dated policies that “affect Egypt’s young and old negatively.”

As a woman from Cairo, Amin primarily spoke of life for today’s Egyptian women. Just behind Afghanistan, Egypt has the second highest level of sexual harassment in the world, with 99.3 percent of their women reporting being harassed on a daily basis.

Further, the government has put laws in place to ensure purity of unmarried Egyptian women. These include Female Genital Mutilation, a genital modification process which is practiced throughout Northeast Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and “virginity tests” to check sexual activity in young women. As celibacy is the social norm, Egyptian women face extreme punishments if they choose to go against it.

Most severely, it is not uncommon for unmarried women to be killed for committing a sex act, a punishment Egyptians insanely refer to as “honor killings.” One could see the absolute horror on the faces of Amin’s listeners while she described this, though nobody could truly feel the horror that Amin has had being a victim of Egypt’s exploitation of women.

Busch’s reporting and Amin’s first hand accounts of these travesties were certainly eye-opening. If not inspiring people to act, share or contribute, the lecture definitely may have helped anybody in the audience look at their lives from a different perspective, to see all the freedoms and privileges we have and keep in this country. It’s incredibly important that, at the very least, we do our best to remember these in our everyday lives, as many people don’t have the privilege to.