Growing up as a Muslim in Shubra in northern Cairo, a district with one of the largest concentrations of Egyptian Copts, and going to a convent school where the majority of students were Christians meant that I grew up in a diverse environment. However, diversity, then, was not the key word. Rather, it was inclusion, which nobody questioned or even gave a lot of thought to. Having Christian neighbours, Muslim best friends and Muslim and Christian gatherings of friends was the norm. Going to Alexandria for a summer break many years ago meant the thrill of going to a cosmopolitan city where people looked different from each other yet proved almost identical in their acceptance, tolerance and appreciation of living next to each other. Religion was for God, and the state was there for all. This wasn't just a slogan printed on the back of school textbooks. Instead, it was a way of life. We were not taught to believe it. We instinctively believed it by practice rather than as a result of preaching. However, preaching crept in during the 1970s. Only Muslims can go to Heaven, some of this preaching said. Everyone else will burn in Hell. This and other forms of nonsense almost became part of mainstream religious discourse. Hate speech and speech intended to express disdain for non-Muslims became almost part of mainstream speech. Al-Azhar remained, and yet its influence was less than it had been. Al-Azhar scholar sheikh Kishk, a graduate of the Usul Al-Din College, became a star for millions of Egyptians. You could sometimes hear him wailing, screaming, threatening and promising torture to non-Muslims and those who were not “good” Muslims in his sermons. He became a star of Islamist preaching under the very eyes of the state. In his book The Prophet and the Pharaoh, a study of Islamist extremism in Egypt in the 1970s, French scholar Gilles Kepel explored the extraordinary capabilities of sheikh Kishk, who I believe was one of the main pillars of this popular intolerance and feeling of religious superiority. “In the last years of [Anwar] Al-Sadat's presidency, it was not possible to walk in the streets of Cairo without hearing his stentorian voice. Climb into a collective-service taxi, and the driver is listening to one of sheikh Kishk's recorded sermons on his cassette player. Stop for a fruit juice at a street-corner stand, and while the palate savours mango or cane sugar, the ear is bombarded by a sermon delivered by sheikh Kishk… Go back to your flat, and you hear a voice rising from the streets hammering out phrases in Koranic Arabic,” Kepel wrote, all the while referring to sheikh Kishk. What happened was that much religious discourse in Egypt was transformed into one inciting hatred and intolerance and drawing a clear line between Egyptian Muslims and Egyptian Christians. Starting in the late 1970s, millions of children in Egypt were no longer brought up to be tolerant and to respect others' religions and cultures, but instead efforts were made to make them believe that such differences were the work of the devil and differences of faith were something to be condemned rather than celebrated and respected. The respect for others and the celebration of difference that is being restored today has been met in some quarters by rejection and an effort to cling to extremism. Intolerance has turned into a culture that has been competing against the thousands of years of inclusion, tolerance and acceptance in Egypt. A few days ago, something happened in Minya in Upper Egypt that showed the extent of the damage that has been done. Minya, which has a large concentration of Egypt's Copts, is suffering from the ailment of extremism that has been left to grow since the late 1970s. According to a study by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, an NGO, entitled “Closed on Security Grounds: Sectarian Tensions and Attacks Resulting from the Construction and Renovation of Churches,” in Minya today “in many cases when a number of Copts gather in a home to celebrate a religious occasion, worship together, or meet a Christian cleric, they are attacked and crowds gather around the residence. The security forces later intervene by arresting a number of Copts in order to contain the communal strife, on the ready-made grounds that the property was unlawfully converted into a church.” Such incidents have unfortunately become a fact of life in some parts of Upper Egypt, where extremism was left to flourish over previous decades. The fact that resolving conflicts between Muslims and Christians heavily relied on customary reconciliation procedures under the eyes of the authorities meant that the state was in one way or another willing to give up its role and allow extremists to flourish. This might have been done as part of a political game, or to guarantee some internal or external gains, or as a sign that part of the state had itself been subjected to religious brainwashing. Fortunately, the situation has changed today, and while the effects of the past few decades of allowing extremists to gain ground in schools, mosques, parts of the media and some work places are still felt, the head of state himself is supporting the return to an all-inclusive and tolerant Egypt. When US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hailed President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi's commitment to promoting religious freedom in the region during his visit to Cairo a few days ago, he surely did not do so out of courtesy or because he felt he had to. Instead, Al-Sisi's commitment is something that the US administration can see and sense. Pompeo said during his visit that the US stood firmly behind Egypt's commitment to protecting religious freedom and fighting terrorism. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom also stated in its 2018 report that “President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi continued his overtures to promote religious tolerance, including attending Coptic Christmas Eve Mass for the fourth consecutive year. The government also continued its education curriculum reform process and planned to revamp the entire education system.” The report made a number of comments in this regard, but overall it recognised the state's efforts towards guaranteeing more religious freedom in Egypt. Egypt's real challenge in this respect has to do with the after-effects of earlier fanaticism. This has been allowed to flourish over recent decades, and generations have been born in an environment that has nothing to do with the real Egyptian culture or norms. Regaining that original Egypt through the reform of education, the flourishing of the arts and culture, the promotion of critical thinking and the opening of the doors to celebrating differences is Egypt's biggest challenge in the year to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The writer is a journalist with the newspaper Al-Hayat.
