Citizenship and Religious Freedoms in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

Mohamed Fahmy Menza

doi:10.3390/rel12070516

Abstract

The majority of the social and political forces that spearheaded and actively participated in the 2011 and 2013 waves of uprisings catapulted the demands to reestablish ‘citizenship’ as one of the main foundations of a new social contract aiming at redefining state–society relations in a new Egypt. Meanwhile, the concept of citizenship has been increasingly featured in the discourse and practice of a wide variety of state actors and institutions. In fact, Egypt’s experiences with the modern nation-state project concerning the conceptualization of citizenship, and the subsequent implications on religious freedoms and the role of religion in the polity at large, has gone through various ebbs and flows since the beginning of the 20th century. The concept of citizenship as such has faced a plethora of challenges and has been affected by the socioeconomic and political trajectories of state–society relations during the Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and, most recently, Sissi regimes. Dilemmas of geographical disparities and uneven access to resources and services, in addition to issues of discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians, Shiites, Nubians, Bedouins, or on the basis of gender, are among the main accompanying features of the neoliberal order that was introduced and then consolidated first by Sadat’s Open Door and then Mubarak’s state-withdrawal policies, respectively. To what extent did the conception and practice of citizenship rights and religious freedoms—as defined by state and non-state actors—change after the demise of the Mubarak regime? In addition, what is the role of the Egyptian civil society vis-a-vis the state in this process of conceptualizing and/or practicing citizenship rights and religious freedoms in the new Egypt? Focusing on the aforementioned questions, this paper aims at shedding some light on the changing role of religion in the Egyptian polity post 2011, while also highlighting the impact of the sociopolitical and economic ramifications witnessed within the society on the scope of religious liberties and citizenship rights as a whole.

Highlights

Social and political activists and intellectuals from the Arab region have often used the concept of ‘citizenship’ to denote a set of features pertaining to the foundational identity of the inhabitants of modern nation-states in Arab countries
There is still a need to revisit the concept of ‘citizenship’ from a holistic angle that incorporates primary resources and reflects the fieldwork realities experienced by the activists and practitioners on the ground. This endeavor is pivotal if we are to contextualize this subject in relation to the socioeconomic and the political underpinnings of the transformations witnessed in state–society relations in the Arab region
In addition to the overview of historical developments relating to the evolution, or, at times, devolution of the notion of citizenship and the rights associated with it, which could be portrayed via desktop research and analysis of a variety of writings dealing with the topic, the research will delve into questioning the application and awareness of ‘citizenship rights’ within the relevant social and political groups, including those that were involved in the January

Summary

Introduction

Social and political activists and intellectuals from the Arab region have often used the concept of ‘citizenship’ to denote a set of features pertaining to the foundational identity of the inhabitants of modern nation-states in Arab countries. There is still a need to revisit the concept of ‘citizenship’ from a holistic angle that incorporates primary resources and reflects the fieldwork realities experienced by the activists and practitioners on the ground This endeavor is pivotal if we are to contextualize this subject in relation to the socioeconomic and the political underpinnings of the transformations witnessed in state–society relations in the Arab region. The actions and demands of some of the social and political forces that participated in the January 2011 Uprising concerning the spectrum of ‘citizenship rights’ were still present in the post-2013 phase These entities and forces shared different conceptions relating to the notion of ‘citizenship’ as a set of rights that should be acquired by members of the society on the basis of them belonging to the Egyptian nation. Despite the fact that the call for consolidating such rights gained a sizable momentum among the sociopolitical forces that participated in the 18-day sit-in that led to Mubarak’s removal in

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