Egypt, Quo Vadis?

Egypt, Quo Vadis?

The entire world is presently deeply concerned about the future of Egypt’s direction, and how it will impact the fragile peace and equilibrium of the region

Let us discuss what are the deeper underpinnings of these world-changing events.

This latest tidal wave of anger and fury was about Arab unemployment, Arab poverty and Arab despair of a better future. The protesting throngs are demanding freedom, democracy, social justice, rule of law and economic equality.

Why the Egyptians are finding it so difficult to establish a free society can be answered by looking at the age-old problem: How to establish freedom and respect human rights in a world dominated by power, control and greed. If freedom is the basic birthright and the natural state of every human being – why is it a novelty just emerging in the last few centuries?  This is because once upon a time freedom was a privilege, not a right. As a result, the history of the world is one of single leaders: Pharaohs, monarchs, despots, fascists etc…who took control, without the slightest consideration for individual rights and personal freedoms. The common justification was that the people were inferior and not fit to make their own decisions. Thus the need, for the God-King to rule and set the guidelines that governed people’s lives.

Religion, interestingly, came to counter this approach to leadership. Arguing that humans are all flawed, our only hope is to place our confidence in the Lord above. Only a moral system of law and order based on the law of God can be absolute and endure, and protect us from the whims of any individual – layperson or leader. Sadly, but predictably, religion was also hijacked by some, who rendered it into another weapon to serve their own interests, or at least interests that did not respect the individuality of their subjects. Through the ages many “religious” leaders arose who abused religion, often with the same claim, ironically, of the despots they were trying to displace: People can’t be trusted. They need to be told – commanded – and even compelled to do what is right. Discipline is always necessary, but what happens when in the name of discipline and order one individual takes control and abusively imposes his will on others, claiming that this is God’s will.

Even if it is God’s will, 1) who says that you are the final authority on the matter? 2) and what if you are wrong?, 3) God’s will is also reflected in the fact that He created every human being in His Divine Image. So God’s laws cannot undermine or annihilate the fundamental rights and freedoms God gave to every person on earth.

Only in the last few hundred years did freedom become a right –a God given birthright inherent in every human being by virtue of being created. As the American Founding father so aptly described in their Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Hence, what emerges is: Give people power and they can’t be trusted. Give them absolute power, and they can absolutely not be trusted. Over the last few millennia societies have been controlled either by secular and/or religious monarchs and autocrats, some worse than others.

The other extreme option, that of secularism without faith has equally failed. The ideas espoused by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, that reason will trounce faith, has not held up, and cannot survive. Because, as the founding fathers so clearly understood: Without the absolute, inalienable rights guaranteed to us by our Creator, Who created us all equally, all freedoms will be arbitrary.

This, then, is the essence of freedom: No human need ever serve another human. Each of us, by merit of our birth, is a unique individual with inherent rights and freedoms, which no one can take from us because no one gave them to us. In the words of the Declaration of Independence cited above: “all men [which includes women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

It’s interesting and ironic how everything comes around. Egypt of old was the oppressor of the Jewish people; today the Egyptians are being oppressed by their own Pharaoh. Egypt – leading the way for the entire Middle East – is now having its day; its rendezvous with destiny.

All the forces of history are converging – and clashing – in this ancient land of the pharaohs: Old word vs. new world; poverty vs. wealth; power vs. the masses; faith vs. modernity; religion vs. secularism; freedom vs. oppression.

Christianity had its time for accounting: After centuries of oppressing and terrorizing the Western World with its religious beliefs, it finally came to a breaking point, which led to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, rebelling against the blind and absolute power of the Church. The long agonizing search for freedom and human rights finally took hold and was institutionalized in the US Constitution and in different variations in Europe, and then continued and continues to spread across the globe

Now is Islam’s time. For all its beautiful ideas and noble values, Islam is now facing the same challenges that all people and religions have faced – balancing the powerful forces of faith in a secular world. Not through autocracy or fundamentalism, but discovering how to be free, within the framework of faith and social justice.

Furthermore, bear in mind that people often confuse the idea of freedom, which rests on the principle of inalienable individual rights, with the idea of democracy, which rests on the principle of unlimited majority rule. But what if the Egyptian majority wanted a dictator or an absolute fundamentalist religious leader? Is something right and moral just because a majority wants it?

  Whatever its virtues, democracy is not freedom. As Toqueville warned in his classic Democracy In America, a democracy can be just as tyrannical as a dictatorship once the voters decide to vote themselves money from the treasury.

Democracy is a method of deciding who shall rule. It does not determine the morality of the resulting government. Democracy is not to be worshipped as an idol unto itself. Arguably, if there had been democracy in the middle ages or earlier, it would have destroyed the world. Wise and seasoned democracy – one that will support true freedoms and equal rights – requires an infrastructure than can handle it. It took centuries to build just such infrastructures, and they are still quite vulnerable.

So while we support freedom, it has to be balanced with humility before God. Especially when there are religious passions raging. The only way to balance freedom with religion is by making our peace with God.