Egypt's new minister of culture has embarked upon a campaign to end the domination of secular intellectuals over Egypt's cultural life. Coming from the outside of the circles of leftist and liberal-secular intellectuals, the appointment of Alaa Abdel-Aziz as minister of culture was negatively received by mainstream Egyptian intellectuals. The cold reception, however, is not deterring the minister from pursing his goals. To the contrary, threats to ostracise the new minister in a community in which he has never been a part, and does not look interested in winning acceptance into, help only in hardening the position of the new minister. The fact that the new minister of culture is an outcast in Egypt's cultural community allows him resilience and steadfastness in his fight against the stars of Egyptian cultural production, a battle in which he can use the support provided by the ruling Muslim Brothers and their Islamists allies. Since it was first established in 1958, the Ministry of Culture supported cultural production, but it also bureaucratised it. Intellectuals associated with the ministry became government employees subject to the uniform rules applied in bureaucratic organisations. Tension between rules of merit and talent, on the one hand, and bureaucratic rules of seniority and periodic promotion, on the other hand, are deeply rooted in the ministry. A particular constituency is associated with each set of rules, and from the constituency of bureaucratic rules comes the current minister of culture. The conflict in Egypt's cultural community is a political conflict par excellence. The Ministry of Culture was founded in the Nasserist era to serve political goals. The ministry was created to promote the regime's vision of modernity and secularism. Against a backdrop of ideological conflict with the Muslim Brothers, the newly created ministry served the regime's ideological ends. On the other hand, the ministry served as a means to control cultural production at a time in which the ruling regime exercised complete control of the means of mobilisation and freedom of expression. Nationalisation of the press and major publishing houses; bringing Sufi orders, civil society organisations, and labour unions under government control — replacing vibrant political pluralism with a single party system — all have been measures to tighten government control over the public sphere. Subsequent regimes maintained variants of the same strategy. Under Hosni Mubarak's rule, cultural production was employed as an instrument in the regime's ideological war against the rising Islamism. The failure of the ruling National Democratic Party to perform in the ideological struggle against Islamists made the regime dependent upon secular intellectuals in that regard. The irony was that while the Mubarak regime became more dependent on the support of secular intellectuals in the struggle against Islamists, secular intellectuals were getting disillusioned with the regime and more vocal in opposing the regime's corruption and authoritarianism. In particular, this dual relationship was consolidated during the 23-year tenure of Farouk Hosni, Mubarak's last minister of culture. The dilemma facing Egyptian intellectuals is that the ruling Muslim Brothers are not in need of the kind of service intellectuals used to provide the previous regime. Moreover, the Muslim Brothers and their Islamist allies perceive intellectuals as ideological rivals whose influence should be undermined. Consequently, maintaining the same dual relationship between secular intellectuals and the ruling regime is simply not viable, and attempts to reproduce this relationship are illusionary. Secular intellectuals served a certain function under the Mubarak regime. The Ministry of Culture was the organisational framework through which this function was served. Changes in parties to the unwritten deal make the original deal void. The Ministry of Culture will remain an organisational structure, but to serve different purposes. A great part of Egypt's cultural production could not have been possible without government support. While societal demand for movies and pop music allowed the private sector to be the main provider of these services, ballet dance, Arab and Western classical music, painting, and many types of literary production became strongly dependent on government support. These are the types of cultural production endangered the most under Muslim Brotherhood rule. It is no secret that Islamists, including the Muslim Brothers, consider most, if not all, forms of arts as anti-Islamic. In the fierce ideological struggle currently taking place in Egypt, religion and arts are competing for the soul and spiritual needs of the Egyptian public. While religion is well entrenched in societal culture and psyche, arts need the support of institutions currently controlled by the same religious forces who control mosques and religious institutions as well. Secular intellectuals have to face Egypt's new political reality. The ideological service intellectuals used to offer previous regimes is no longer needed. Consequently, the support previous governments used to offer for intellectuals should not longer be expected. The challenge currently facing Egyptian intellectuals is to generate sufficient independent resources and societal demands to sustain cultural production. This challenge is part and parcel of the greater challenge facing Egypt's secular opposition seeking to generate support at the grassroots level. Intellectuals in Egypt effectively contributed to the anti-Mubarak revolt. Ironically, the post-Mubarak regime is posing an existential threat to Egypt's intellectuals and their professions. The answer to the challenge raised by Islamic rule is only partly political. While all kinds of political activism should be mobilised in such a struggle, political activism need to be guided by a new vision, addressing the philosophical and sociological questions of modernity, identity and democracy in a society where the state is no longer interested in the modernisation of national culture. It is a struggle in which the contribution of intellectuals is more than needed, but this time within arrangements different from those prevailed not only in the last 60 years, but also in the past 200 years. And this is a struggle that is much more serious than facing the minister of culture.
The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies
