Introduction
The digital era has connected all living humans together. Nowadays, a person in Antarctica is able to follow up with the American presidential elections effortlessly and cheaply from where he or she is. He immediately can access the internet and start sharing his view on each candidate’s campaign, which candidate he supports, and which he opposes. The impact of this Antarctica resident could have, with millions of other non-Americans who also shared their views on the topic, is unmeasurable. Foreign opinions could influence the American voters and sway their opinions towards the more internationally favored candidate even if that candidate might not be the most appropriate one for their country. Foreign News headlines and social media posts can, to some extent, affect decision making in any part of the world. Similarly, The Middle East was and is faced with similar conditions: events and decisions of the Arab states are a major interest of the western news that constantly criticize them and prompts Arabs to adapt to a more westernized, open-minded lifestyle as means of development and achieving political and social progress. This westernization has resulted in fundamental institutional changes and new laws, that 50 years ago would be considered a cultural crisis. Similarly, losing cultural diversity because of globalization would result in a unified limited view of the world, as all people would behave in a similar manner thus indirectly restricting an individual’s freedom of choice and uniqueness. Modern Egyptian youth are constantly being subjected to western political and social intervention through easy access to social media and globalized multi-media; but this negatively impacts their sense of cultural identity and national pride. This urgent situation raises concerns over what are the most effective measures and actions that the modern young Egyptians can undertake to limit western political and social intervention and to save their cultural identity from disappearance and criticism, while actively participating in the modernization and development of the human race.
Through providing detailed analysis of data obtained from primary methods of research in the forms of surveys, face to face and zoom interviews, this research provides guidelines to help better understand the nature of the Egyptian culture; how it can interact and coexist with other cultures without losing its individuality. The importance of this research is reflected in its broad level of application, for the methods evaluated in the paper could be used as framework for other cultures with similar contexts. Additionally, the paper takes into account the significant role of the digitalized modes of communication, However, with the current accelerating rate of global change, more research would be required to further investigate the topic in future times, and to verify if the currently proposed methods would still be viable within the span of the next three decades.
Literature Review
The fundamentality of cultural diversity in Egypt
Cultural diversity or multiculturalism refers to acknowledging the existence and importance of the diverse ethnicity in any one culture (Oxford Dictionary). The Egyptian culture, like many others, is not a block of prefigured set of behaviors that anyone who identifies an Egyptian simply follows. On the contrary, the Egyptian culture is a melting pot of various ethnic and indigenous cultures that exist simultaneously. Such groups include the Nubians who live in the furthest south along the Nile, the Bedouins who live in the remote Oasis and the Sinai peninsula, the farmers who live in the delta and along the Nile valley, and the urban citizens of major cities like Cairo and Alexandria. It is crucial to point out that the Egyptian culture was greatly influenced by other cultures that were present in the society as a result of trade or colonization, yet the Egyptian culture was able to maintain its core unchanged. It was able to protect the fundamental cultural principles that constructed the Ancient Pharaonic civilization( Saad, 2017). Meaning that while Egypt’s national language is Arabic, Egypt’s culture is not closely related to the culture of other Arabic speaking countries such as those of the Gulf region, for it was greatly influenced by Mediterranean cultures of Greek and Roman aspects, and European ones when Egypt was conquered by France then Britain. That’s why, it should be identified as a unique culture that stands on its own, and not be categorized as only an Arab or Mediterranean culture.
Cultural diversity is an essential factor for the general progress of the human species, as it promotes creativity and individuality and allows the existence of diverse perspectives. It is a platform that accepts all different viewpoints; each of which adds a particular information otherwise unnoticed by others. Gavin(2014) explains that each culture has a set of ideas and feelings that are uniquely associated with it and are extremely difficult to translate to another culture. For example, Chinese cultural usage of herbal treatment was the inspiration for the finding of Artemisinin compound used now to treat Malaria(Gavin, 2014). Providing a culturally diverse work environment improves the productivity of the employees if well managed to ensure sufficient communication( Saxena, 2014). However, many cultures now face the danger of extinction, as the world moves towards a more generally unified cultural sense, mainly based on western ideas and behaviors. Unfortunately, among those cultures is The Egyptian one. The Egyptian culture is drastically prone to this phenomenon as a result of factors that were prompted by mainstream changes in the economic, political, and social life of Egyptians.
Economic dependency
With the rise of the digital era and the gigantic mass production movement, Egyptian markets were flooded with imported goods, as in 2019 alone Egypt spent more than $24 Billion on goods imported from European and American companies only. This is about 50% of the total amount Egyptians spent on imports from all over the world(UN, 2019), which indicates how heavily Egypt is relying on western markets, but with reliance comes a form of not only economic dependency, but also a cultural one. When importing, countries don’t only welcome products for consumption, they, also, involuntarily welcome ideas and behaviors from that other country, which could be directly reflected on the way people use or consume that imported good. This experience is known as “Fabrication syndrome”(Chulu, 2015).The world economy has experienced an exponential increase in the number of multinational firms. Because Egypt has a huge workforce, it became among the top countries in attracting Foreign direct investment (FDI). In 2019, Egypt was the largest recipient of FDI in Africa with total of 126.6$ Billion as investments( Nordea, 2019). Although, FDI flows are economically beneficial, they hold a negative effect on the culture. FDI manager come with their own predefined work culture, mainly, again, based on western ideologies. Therefore, employees are required to be familiar with their employer’s culture and language to be able to communicate together. Although, as already mentioned, it is beneficial to have a culturally diverse working team of employees, Mathew and Thakkar (2012) concluded that one of any two international branches of a multinational firm needs to be familiar with the other branch’s culture and language, so that both branches would have successful communication, but over time this familiarization could become impeded inside the individuals so that it could, to some extent, replace their original culture. For example, many firms require their applicants to at least be fluent in one western language to communicate with the foreign management. Later on, Employees include words from that foreign language in their conversation, so they wouldn’t have to exhaustingly keep switching languages all the time.
Political turmoil and general instability of the region.
A major cause for the economic dependency and weakening was Egypt’s constant engagement in protecting its lands from invasions. The last of which was by the Israeli state. In over a decade, Egypt was immensely busy trying to regain the Sinai Peninsula from Israeli hold, but with little success, until the negotiations of the Camp David peace treaty. This has indeed had a deteriorating effect in the international engagement of Egypt, as many accused Egypt of intentionally avoiding making peace with Israel(Abadi, 2019 ). Abadi portrayed the Israeli officials as completely willing to establish Peace; while he falsely assumed that the Egyptians were not willing to. Assuming that Egypt was concerned about its position in the middle east if it were to normalize relations with Israel under overlooking the initial detrimental conditions for the proposed “peace”. Abadi failed to consider the fact that Sinai is an Egyptian territory and that Egypt has the absolute right by human rights and international law to regain its lands, yet Egypt agreed to end the war and normalize commercial economic relations with Israel in hope for political stability in the region. Again, overlooking the fact that other Middle Eastern countries had normalized relations with Israel such as Jordan and the UAE; therefore, Egypt had no intentions for ignoring peace calls under the reasons claimed by Abadi.
While some countries enjoyed a fair amount of political stability, Egypt on the other hand, fell in a loop of continuous distress and instability, partly as a result of terroristic war mainly in Sinai, revolutions against corrupted governments, uncontrolled population growth, military domination, and increasing rate of poverty as testified by Dunne (2020). Those political conflicts created a decline in major income sources in Egypt. The already underdeveloped agricultural and industrial sectors suffered greatly in the first half of 2010s as a result of the continuous changes in governments following the two revolutions of January 25th in 2010 and June 30th in 2013. While the touristic sector managed to survive those hard times, it completely crashed following disastrous terroristic attack on the Russian plane a while after it left Sharm El-Sheikh airport. The number of tourists in the county fell dramatically, and cities like Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh were practically ghosted after many families left in search for alternative income sources elsewhere. Tourism was especially important because it alone accounted for about 22% of the total GPD(The atlas of economic complexity, 2020).This gave European countries by large an advantage because while the Egyptians were busy demanding change, Europeans were able to go to work and accumulate wealth and power, so that they became international superpowers. Not surprisingly, majority of countries that have the “veto power” are western(UN security council,2020).
Western perspective
I. Islamophobia and misrepresentation in western media
With the rise of terroristic groups and civil wars in the MENA region, Middle Eastern cultures fell as less favored and, to some extent, inferior to the developed western ones. European politicians regarded Arab and Islamic heritage as less sophisticated and developed, with recently the French president Emmanuel Macron accusing Islam of separation claiming that the religion creates a counter-society to that what France so called desires to be(Onishi and Breeden, 2020). Some European politicians go as far as to express total objection to the religion dominant in Egypt. For example, a member of the French parliament from the LREM party left the hall when a student union leader appeared for a parliamentary hearing wearing a hijab as reported by Onishi and Breeden(2020). These Islamophobic behaviors towards individuals and entire populations prompted the rise of destructive forms of socio-cultural domination such as stereotypes, discrimination, and misrepresentation on social media and news platforms and clearly violate natural rights and freedom of those people. Livingston (2015)reported that, prior to the 2010 revolution, Egyptian women were constantly misrepresented in news reports, as a large number of Los Angeles Times articles misreported the ideas and status of the Egyptian women in society. Before the revolution, Those articles portrayed Egyptian women as extremely oppressed individuals dominated by men; however, after the revolution, some articles started describing Egyptian ladies as active participants in the political situation, depicting them as modern and educated who weren’t wearing the Hijab , as if during the revolution women disregarded their culture for a more “civilized approach ”(Livingston, 2015). Not surprisingly, social media platforms dominated by western credos evoked a general sense of body dissatisfaction as a result of advertising and support for unrealistic body image and beauty standards to achieve monetary profits through selling European made cosmetics, and other beauty related products, so that many people desire to become thin, and eat junk food. However, following those ideologies and trends has created paramount psychological and health risks ( Sepúlveda and Calado, 2012). Those health problems include a rise in obesity and chronic diseases as observed with many adults in Delhi, India(Harrell et al., 2015). The effects of westernization on Egypt and the whole world are apparent when observing the pattern of change in clothes, as many countries ,such as Korea and Japan, moved away from tradition folkloric dresses and close towards western styles (Nakagawa and Rosovsky, 1963). Similarly, Egyptians replaced the traditional costumes and “Jellabiya” with a more city, edgy look of mainly denim and clothes provided by fast fashion industries that don’t last long.
II. Acceptance of the Egyptian identity.
The rise of Islamophobia has not only biased the international perception of Egyptians and Arabs in general, but it also created a conflict of identification among Egyptian immigrants in the U.S.(Hakim, Molina,& Branscombe, 2017). Those group faced a dilemma of ethnic and national identification. Correspondingly, Egyptians in their country experienced a similar problem between identifying with their heritage or global trends that forced them to adapt to the general movements at the expense of some cultural aspects.
III. Colonization of thought
Some perceived the western behavior as an instrument for remote colonization of the African lands since the region is of central geographic importance that gives access to central trade routes that still stand today, and considering the unsuccessful attempts to recolonize some African lands in the mid-1950s such as Egypt, the west is trying to regain control over those lands through manipulation and spreading its own ideologies to establish its dominance over those lands; thus, colonizing the minds of the residents rather than physically colonizing their lands (Mavrinac, 2019; Chulu, 2015).
Relation between westernization and modernization.
Progress and modernization are generally associated with westernization. However, Nwinya(2019)argues that there is a clear difference between modernization and westernization, and that some countries were able to advance without losing their cultures, yet he argued that for the African continent to modernize, it’s countries must abandon some aspects of their culture that could include religions(Nwinya, 2019). Nwinya presents conflicting opinions, for he ,on one hand, claims that modernization could happen without adapting to western lifestyle, while on the other one, he advised Africa to abandon a fundamental part of its culture such as its religions, for it to become modern. With unclear demarcations between westernization and modernization, western languages spoken in the north Arab countries started to prevail over the Arabic language, as the usage of French and English languages in institutions of higher education and everyday life is considered as a sign of progression in those countries (Benkharafa, 2013). With the official language becoming endangered in north Africa, Arabization , the transfer of the foreign word and its meaning into Arabic according to rules and bases guaranteeing its clarity and eloquence, appeared to rebalance the situation(Al-Shbiel, 2017). It is important to note that there is a concurrent debate of whether the Arabization is the right cultural approach for those countries, as some argue that holding on to the classical Arabic language is hindering the development of Arab north African nations ; therefore, they should officialize their native dialects as their main languages, Claiming that those languages are better adapters than classical Arabic; hence, they would facilitate progression of those states. Those claims were based on analogies of what is currently happening to the Arabic language and the transfer of Latin language into other individual languages(Benkharafa, 2013).
Role of the military in the governing process
The role of the military is evident throughout the late 1900s following the fall of the kingdom and the rise of the Egyptian republic, and the various trials of conquests by foreign powers. The military later, however, stayed passive until the 2011 revolution where it ceased power to ensure the stability of its political and economic interests(Roll, 2015). Later it completely ceased power after the failure of the Muslim brotherhood in unifying the people, as the brotherhood outweighed their personal ideologies over the greater good of the public and went on to enforce strict rules that the people publicly opposed(El-Sherif, 2014). The military, then, regained control under the regime of the current president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, reviving the military’s active role in the governing process(Roll, 2015). The regime faced no explicit opposition by non-military bodies. It was somewhat justified for the military to take control during the 1950s considering the fatal dangers the country faced and knowing that political matters was not the priority in a time where the people’s lands were taken from them. However, the period following the revolution saw enormous economic and financial investments by the military that prompted its desire for power to ensure smooth business operations.
Aspects of European assistance to Egypt
It is important to consider that while adapting western cultural aspects is detriment to the Egyptian culture in some ways, it has helped some class of Egyptians obtain better jobs and be able to engage and communicate internationally through obtaining education from international schools in Egypt(Galegher, 2019). Furthermore, the EU particularly advocated and advised various policies to aid the country in its journey for stability through focusing on education and entrepreneurship and further supporting women and youth in the workforce, as the Europiean parliament acknowledged the important political and economic role Egypt plays in the regions and the long held economic benefits between the two(European parliament, 2018). It must be pointed out that not all Egyptians feel threatened by the western cultures, for some educated Egyptians reported no relation between the degree of their national pride and the number of western movies they were exposed to; on the contrary a study reported that the more educated an Egyptian is, the more he is likely to feel proud of his/her culture despite the western influence especially demonstrated in movies(El Shenawi, 2013).However the study fails in representing the whole populations, as the sample surveyed in that study was not large enough to generalize the results to all parts of Cairo and other Egyptian cities, since the majority of the interviewees were only chosen from few neighborhoods of Cairo, neglecting all other major Egyptian cities.
Conclusion
Egyptian people were able to fight physical colonization for so long and had never gave up their lands or rights of governing their country, yet the concurrent phenomenon of spread of western ideas seems to some extent be allowed by the governing bodies and decision makers, majority of which were or are still military officials or hold close relation to the military. This explains why it might seem as if the people somewhat welcome western ideas readily. While, they are actually manipulated by their own corrupt officials who only desire to protect their personal interests and seek western acceptance, judging from similar historical cues as already described when the military ceased power to protect its economical profits during the 2011 revolution. Within the last two decades, the matter has escalated. The Egyptian society is now more impacted by western cultures than ever, which is encouraged and prompted by the military who wishes to gain approval of the west through allowing the mental colonization of the people which could be misinterpreted as an impact of multi-media at first sight.