Egypt has 93,119 mosques and prayer rooms, but it has only 393 cultural centers with some 7,000 workers (from the book "Egypt in Figures", issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics). The Egyptians are among the region's peoples who most build houses of worship and pray in them. Unfortunately, they are also among the peoples who least build cultural centers and frequent them.
We should be happy because the number of mosques and prayer rooms has set a record. At the same time, though, we should be sad because the number of cultural centers is low. In fact, the great number of mosques in Egypt enables this country to come first in terms of Islamic architecture rather than Islamic culture!
Egypt has only 393 cultural centers, namely 15 centers in each province. This also means that 7,000 villages have no cultural centers. However, we should thank God because we have a mosque and a prayer room in every street! The Egyptians believe in God and His angels, Books and Messengers, but they do not believe in culture! The Egyptians pray and recite Koran, but they do not read books although there is a close relationship between the Koran and reading and between religion on the one hand and culture and knowledge on the other. The first verses of the Koran say: "Proclaim! (or read!) in the name of the Lord and Cherisher, Who created man, out of a (mere) clot of congealed blood." Unfortunately, some Egyptians are illiterate.
Our God ordered us to go to mosques, but believers should also go to cultural centers because our great religion asked us to be educated. Muslims pray five times a day, but how many times do they go to cultural centers? We should know that knowledge is the basis of power. God says in the Koran: "Their Prophet said to them: "(Allah) hath appointed Talut as king over you." They said: "How can he exercise authority over us when we are better fitted than he to exercise authority, and he is not even gifted, with wealth in abundance?" He said: "(Allah) hath Chosen him above you, and hath gifted him abundantly with knowledge and bodily prowess." Therefore, Muslims should be educated. Over more than ten years, some people have been collecting donations to build mosques. You can see them in streets, hotels, highways and roads while they are calling people to donate. Haven't these mosques been built so far? Have the believers failed to build them? In fact, people should donate to build cultural centers and print books. It would not be a shame if encyclopedias were printed thanks to people's donations. God will also reward the people if they donated to have a book translated or printed. Such donations have become necessary because there is insufficient funding to establish cultural centers. We talk too much about education and health and forget to talk about culture.
Education and health should be a responsibility of the State, while culture should be a responsibility of the people. They should donate to spread culture, which is, in fact, a panacea for many societal diseases, mainly religious intolerance and sectarian sedition.
