Rampant religious bigotry on all sides and a state preoccupied with political survival is the crucial context that allowed the Alexandria terrorist attack to happen, writes Khalil El-Anani* The collective spirit of our nation is in danger. This much is clear from the Alexandria tragedy and the absurdity that followed. As a nation, we stand divided, bereaved, our soul fragmented -- notwithstanding the fraternity, affected and sincere, that officialdom manages to pull off every time. What happened is a horrible indication of what the national character has become, of how divisive Christian-Muslim relations have grown. I don't care if the culprits are local -- which is most likely -- or foreigners. That's not the point. The point is that all "patching up" in the world is not enough. All the "insincere tears" are not going to mend the damage. The gatherings and the shows of goodwill are useless. This time a quick fix won't cut it. Unless we address the causes of our malaise, unless we examine its roots, more victims will fall. The Alexandria tragedy is the culmination of accumulated horrors, of illnesses that have been visited upon the national soul. It is the logical outcome of individual and collective attitudes, of official and unofficial discourses that have pushed the nation to the edge of the abyss. We have allowed multiple social, political and cultural diseases to fester, and these have turned into a malignant tumour that exploded in our faces in New Year's Eve. I can go on forever about everything that went wrong in this country. But let me just focus on what happened last year, for that alone is enough to show the scope of the sociological changes taking place. All around us, we see signs of social tensions escalating because of cultural-tribal reasons. The Naga Hammadi attack is a case in point. Seven people died in that attack and we don't have a court ruling yet. We have a suspect, a hardened felon with a known political record, but we don't see a sentence. This tardiness only reinforces the sectarian and religious dimension of the case. Likewise, look at the official handling of the disappearance of Camillia Shehata. It is official apathy that turned the case into a factional bone of contention. The sectarian rhetoric, or the "verbal venom" as Nabil Abdel-Fattah calls it, is getting worse all the time. On both sides of the sectarian divide we find Muslims and Christians who are disdainful of public interests and who appeal to the basest of human instincts in their respective communities. Their words carry far, into the recesses of society, into backstreets charged with resentment and anger, and the result is what we've seen in Alexandria. Each side believes that it is the sole guardian of true faith, and on each side there are champions who wish to see realised only the concerns of their own community, to assert only the separate identity of their people. The bickering is part of something bigger and no less ugly: it is part of a power struggle that ignores the nation as a whole, and that supersedes the common good. And the reason it is happening is that the state, the presumed guardian of collective authority, the inspiration of a common identity, has ceased to function as a rallying point. Loyalties that used to be inclusive have become divisive. Allegiances that were supposed to be all encompassing have become narrow, exclusive, and tainted with factional sentiments. A mosaic of sectarian and religious allegiances has emerged, localised, distrustful and disruptive. All around us, phoney religiosity has taken over. Rituals and obsessions have emerged to the surface to the exclusion of other concerns. Our government and corporate offices, our means of transportation have been caught in a religious vortex. Corruption hasn't gone away, but hypocrisy has given our public spaces a gloss of mind-boggling piety. In villages and urban neighbourhoods, religious authoritarianism is becoming the norm, as if society needs to be purged of its sins at every turn, at every moment of its tortured existence. Institutions known for their traditional religious discourse have taken hold of the public space, their social and moral authority growing by the day. Meanwhile, the state has faded from the scene, but not before suppressing every sectarian point of view, every sane attempt at tempered religiosity. It is as if the Bedouins have come to town, and become us. Instead of strengthening political institutions, instead of fortifying parties and empowering civil movements, the state has repelled them and dragged them in the mud. The only ones left standing were the traditional structures of church and mosque, whose power is now unprecedented. As a result, we've seen the most primitive forms of religious discourses thrive. We've seen the disdain of modernisation grow, and we've seen preachers thrive who are exclusivist in their views and intolerant in their attitudes. We've seen people grow in stature for espousing hatred, for thinking of the world as a zero-sum game, and for summoning the most contentious moments of history whenever they seek to enlighten our hearts. Hatred is masquerading as religion, taking up public space in a flurry of virtuous outrage, and banishing sanity, tolerance and coexistence from the scene. That's why it is so easy to start a conflagration in our midst. Just light a match and wait for the tidal wave to hit. You don't have to be a genius to do it, and there is no shortage of locals and foreigners who would love to oblige. At the core of the problem is the decay of the historical authority of the state and the metamorphosis of its institutional pillars: parliament and the government. Instead of embracing a collective identity, these institutions have pandered to power hungry sectarians and failed to stop bias and hatred in their tracks. The legislative elections were a sad reminder of it all. Instead of being a time for the nation to speak its mind, the elections saw justice, equality and fair play trampled underfoot. As a result, an accidental alliance has grown among the politically marginalised and the socially disadvantaged. With a bit of religious flair, fanaticism was within reach. The discontent soon assumed a sectarian flavour and as resentment of the state and people in power grew, anything was to be expected. Social and political violence, even sectarian violence, may only be an attempt to challenge the alliance of power in this country. The violence can be the way through which society's underdogs are trying to exact vengeance against the state that has abandoned them. What the elections make clear is that those in power have underestimated the social resentment and sectarian divisions in the country. Throughout last year, it became obvious that the politicians -- or let's say the people running the daily affairs of this country -- have lost their ability to keep religion in its place. For 50 years or so, a lot of religious manoeuvring has gone on, often to maintain some sort of political balance. At times Al-Azhar was used to undermine religious movements. At other times, religious movements were played off one against another, as when the Muslim Brotherhood was used to confront currents of violence and extremism. Occasionally, new trends were trained to challenge conventional ones, as when Muslim televangelists and neo-Salafis were pitted against the Brotherhood. Often enough, sectarian currents are being manipulated to stand up against conventional church leaders. And there were cases where clergymen were encouraged to defy bishops and archbishops. Interestingly enough, the largest two demonstrations of last year were religious or sectarian in character. One was led by Sheikh Hafez Salama in front of Al-Fath Mosque and the other was mounted by neo-Salafis in Alexandria. Both demonstrations were mounted in response to symbolic and cultural issues rather than political ones. Until recently, the dialectic of religious relations played out within the official framework. But with the leadership busy with survival and succession, various powers and currents felt free to fight their sectarian battles to the detriment of the entire country. A lot of sectarian blackmail has gone on of late. Usually, the blackmail is practiced by members of the Egyptian church or expatriate Copts intent on purely sectarian gains. Often enough, we've heard calls for Egypt to be placed under custodianship, and for the "Coptic question" to be internationalised. How far can some people stoop? The religious scene in Egypt -- Muslim and Christian -- is full to the brim with symbolic and emotive references that could only spawn discrimination, sectarian divisions, and identity crises. All around us, there is no shortage of religious songs, garments, and symbols in public areas, all taken to the point of obsession. It's no wonder that any political and social dispute could turn into a religious dispute, or worse. The mental images drawn by each community about the other mocks all values of freedom, equality and justice for all. And what made things worse was the state's inability to sort out thorny issues, such as the role of religion in the public space and the boundaries of individual freedoms. This is one of the worst things about the constitutional and political makeup of the 1952 revolution, which has failed so far to take a clear stand on religion. What many writers allude to as the domination of the "security option" is a result of this failure. The Alexandria tragedy wasn't just a terrorist act perpetrated by a self-hating terrorist. It was a sign of something much more malignant, and quite embedded in the national soul. It was an indication that something was seriously wrong with the "immune system" of our country, of our communal identity as a nation with a shared history. This is what everyone must understand, before another bombing shakes us to the roots. * The writer is a senior scholar at the Institute for Middle East and Islamic studies, Durham University, UK.
