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Donald Cole Nicholas S. Hopkins
Anthropology, AUC Anthropology, AUC
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Social Research Center, AUC Political Science, AUC
Mostafa K. Al-Sayyid Dan Tschirgi
Political Science, Cairo University Political Science, AUC
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Political Science, AUC
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CAIRO PAPERS
IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
Volume 22, Number 4, Winter 1999
DISCOURSES IN CONTEMPORARY
EGYPT:
POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Edited by
Enid Hill
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO PRESS
Copyright © 2000 by the American University in Cairo Press
113, Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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copyright owner.
Dar el Kutub No. 15552/99
ISBN 977 424 563 6
Printed in Egypt
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
AGRICULTURE AND POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY
EGYPT: THE 1997 TENANCY CRISIS
Reem Saad 22
PERCEPTIONS OF THE SOCIAL ROLE
OF THE STATE IN EGYPT
Noha El-Mikawy 36
EGYPTIAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS: REFLECTING
REGIONAL FLUIDITY
Iman A. Hamdy 65
TANWIR AND ISLAMIZATION: RETHINKING THE STRUGGLE
OVER INTELLECTUAL INCLUSION IN EGYPT
Mona Abaza. 85
A MIRROR OF POLITICAL CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY
EGYPT: DIVISIONS AND DEBATES AMONG
WOMEN ACTIVISTS
Nadje Sadig Al-Ali 118
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 144
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INTRODUCTION
ENID HILL
The discourses on the social problems and political issues featured in
the articles of this issue of Cairo Papers1 highlight aspects of Egypt's
present transformation from interventionist, paternalistic institutions to
policies designed to develop free market entrepreneurial capitalism.
We begin with the article of Reem Saad, who explores the effects on
tenant farmers of the 1997 cancellation of tenancy entitlements given by the
lauded Land Reform of the Revolution. The second article by Nona El
Mikawy presents variant views of the role of the state as social welfare
provider, which underpinned the social contract of the radical years and
which has been progressively diminished, together with policy implications.
The third article by Iman Hamdy considers the normalization of Egyptian-
Israeli relations—an issue of foreign relations that continues to be very
troubling for Egypt's 'political street1. The fourth article by Mona Abaza
discusses secularist and Islamist intellectual discourses that appropriate the
idea of 'enlightenment' (tanwir) in efforts to gain intellectual hegemony
over each other. The fifth article by Nadje Al-Ali presents the problems
confronted by Egypt's secular women activists as they struggle to articulate
agendas in the political culture of post colonialism where the West presents
human rights/women's rights as its moral monopoly and Egyptian
conservative and Islamist forces oppose western cultural intrusions.
To radically transform a political and social system with radical
populist socialistic institutions to one with free markets opened to global
capitalism is not done in a day. By contrast, the previous transformation in
Egypt was rapidly accomplished. Following the Revolution of 1952 the new
rulers of Egypt consolidated their political position with Land Reform and
1 Previous versions of the articles were presented at the Middle East Studies
Association (MESA) Annual Meeting of 1998 in Chicago as a panel on Egypt:
Contemporary Politics and Social Issues, which was sponsored by the American
University in Cairo.
1
retrieval of Egypt's national sovereignty from the remains of British control.
In 1961 Egypt was declared a socialist state and all remaining holdings of
any size were sequestrated. Although this transformation had not been in
place for very long when the Sadat regime of the early 1970s decided that
Egypt's development required opening to the West, the institutions
underpinning the regime at that time were not immediately challenged nor
essentially changed. Memories of the century-long struggle to extricate
Egypt from Western domination were still fresh as the wounds of
occupation and colonialism had been reopened in 1956 with the tripartite
invasion. Hence it was with great caution that the Opening (al-lnfitah) of
1974 was launched and the first laws were hedged with protections against
unwanted intrusions of new foreign influence.
The social transformation of the 1960s had been extensive. Egypt's
transformation was as extensive as any state, except those that were
avowedly Marxist with a public sector comprehending all production and
distribution except for the smallest and most insignificant. Not much
besides petty commodity production remained in private hands, and no
private wealth was left within Egypt. A new generation of technocrats and
of intellectuals had come on the scene together with a new political class as
masters of the greatly expanded bureaucracy and pubic sector.
At first the liberalization of the Opening meant lessening restrictions on
travel and some kinds of commerce and importation. While, there were still
plenty of well-positioned voices adamantly opposed to any inroads into the
'gains of the Revolution' little by little liberalization progressed.
Compensation was offered for properties sequestrated or nationalized, and
ultimately some restitution. But the Sadat state did not touch the public
sector companies except to reorganize parts of their structure.
Incursions into Land Reform were not on the agenda. Land Reform had
been the first major act of reform by the revolutionary government in 1952,
and it was still considered a major achievement of the Revolution.
Subsequent amendments in 1961 and 1969 progressively reduced the
amount of land allowed. Expropriation of the large landowners had had a
directly political purpose, reducing their economic power, but also freeing
land for distribution to small peasant farmers. The peasants selected paid for
the land by installments to the government over a period of time. The truly
radical provision of the Land Reform of 1952 was making the state
2
protector of tenant farmers by fixing their rents as a low percentage of the
land tax and giving not only life long tenancy rights but also the inheritance
of these rights.
Land Reform, it seemed, was a legacy of the Revolution that no
Egyptian political leadership would dare to touch openly. However, with
Structural Adjustment finally accepted on the development agenda of Egypt,
the unthinkable happened in 1992. Repercussions were expected to be
extensive in Egyptian rural society and the Egyptian parliament amended
the draft law so that implementation of the application of the provision that
would force tenants to vacate their tenancies if the landowners wanted to
take over the land was to be postponed for five years. Thus the law
amending Land Reform was fully implemented only in 1997. This is the
subject of Reem Saad's article, Agriculture and Politics in Contemporary
Egypt: The 1997 Tenancy Crisis.
Dr. Saad points to the far-reaching effects of this law and how
politicized the matter of Land Reform is in Egypt. She documents reactions
to the coming into effect of the law when landowners could take back their
land if they wished, or raise the rents. The government spoke of finding a
solution by distributing plots of new land in the reclaimed land areas to the
tenant farmers whose landlords took possession of the rented plots. As she
has shown in an earlier work (Saad 1988)2 some distributions of land to
peasant farmers pursuant to the later amendments to Land Reform had never
been completely processed by the government. Thus peasants who thought
they were paying monthly payments for ownership suddenly discovered that
they had been paying rent to the government. With desequestration of the
1970s and 80s, according to which former landowners were allowed to take
back some of their lands, these peasant farmers found themselves again
tenants of a landowner.
The potential disruption to peasant households and to the rural economy
is suggested by the official statistics where persons classified as rural have
hovered around 50 percent since the 1976 census. Of course not all these are
peasant farmers. Many now work in factories located in rural areas or for
outposts of the bureaucracy such as schools and offices for local
2 The full reference to all works cited in this Introduction are found in the Reference
sections at the end of each relevant article. Quotations in the Introduction are all
from the articles themselves printed here.
3
