WATANI International
23 January 2011
Oh Alexandria of yore, your name has graced poetry ever since you came into being.
“listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.”.
The words, written by C.P.Cavafy, among the vibrant Alexandria poets of the 20th century, ring too true today.
Open arms
In its golden age under three centuries of Ptolemaic rule, the Egyptian capital of Alexandria was also the cultural capital of the world. It remained one of the most fertile centres of information and culture for the Hellenic and early Roman civilisations, with its Mouseion drawing the brilliant scholars of their day in science, literature and medicine to research and teach. Since its foundation in 332 BC Alexandria has withstood the challenges of time and circumstance, and even today, when it has 17 namesake scattered round the world, it is this city that springs to mind when one hears the name ‘Alexandria’.
In its very early days Alexandria welcomed men of different creeds, trends and intellectual schools with open arms, but sadly the beginning of 2011 was marked by blood. It cannot be denied that under Roman rule there were terrible events in the city, such as the martyrdom in AD68 of St Mark and the murder of the pagan mathemetician and philospher Hypatia in AD415.
There followed centuries of relative calm, but now history seems to be repeating itself, and Alexandria’s soil is again tainted with blood. In the first hours of 2011 the bombing of the Church of the Saints, this time perpetrated by terrorists, splattered blood and debris everywhere, and with them the patience and hope of thousands of Copts.
Why the change
Now the question that begs an answer is: whatever happened to the old Alexandria which was a stronghold of knowledge, enlightenment, and cosmopolitanism? Why and how did the pluralism of the past become the culture of intolerance and violence of today?
The answer is ‘in the mind’. The Egyptian intellect has moved away from the creative, refined religious address and culture to a culture that upholds ideology and, in the process, completely sidelines the mind. This blind, non-questioning attitude gives way to new trends of thought that oppose all the concepts of humanity and destroy enlightened, constructive, critical thought.
In 1938, the scion of the 20th century Egyptian enlightenment movement Taha Hussein published The Future of Culture in Egypt. Dr Hussein wrote: “Culture and knowledge are the essence of civilisation and independence, and both are what it takes to start building modern Egypt. Real progress cannot be reached by political independence and freedom alone.” He stressed that civilisation was a major component for building a nation. Civilisation, he said, was the product of the strength and wealth of culture and knowledge. “If Egypt had not compromised, out of or against its free will, its wealth of culture and knowledge, it would not have lost its independence.”
The Egyptian mind
It is unarguable that culture is a dual-sided cornerstone; if nations choose to rely on it to build and shape their civilisations, the outcome is good and strong, particularly if the culture that is backing it is refined and purposeful. At other times, however, if it slips under the power of other destructive cultures this same weapon called culture can crush values and ethics.
Here we are today, paying a very high price for marginalising the Egyptian mind. I believe the time is ripe, and the issue pressing, for Egyptian intellectuals to seriously look into how to rebuild the Egyptian intellect.