A year on: Egyptian society torn apart by coup

On January 25 2011, Egyptians protested by the millions in Tahrir Square calling for president Hosni Mubarak to step down. They were fed up with oppression, corruption and poverty.

What no one may have anticipated are the smaller revolutions the national uprising would stir among families, married couples and groups of friends.

From parents giving the silent treatment to children to divorces and friends torn apart, the revolution has taken as much a toll on Egyptian society as on the state itself.

The issue is so familiar, a pop song has even highlighted the divisions that have emerged in the country, a chasm namely between those who support the military and those who support the Muslim Brotherhood.

“We are a nation and you are another nation. Although the Lord is one, you have a God and we have another God,” sings Ali El-Haggar. 

Farah, 35, knows this story well.

Until last summer, Farah, a medical scientist was particularly close with her father, a doctor in Mansoura. Farah recalled how he supported her throughout the toughest years of her life while doing her PhD at the University of Oxford.

But a few days after the 3 July military coup, when 51 protesters, mostly members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were killed in clashes with state security forces outside the Republican Guard headquarters, their relationship took a turn.

“With the first drop of blood the story changed – [the question] became are you human or are you not?" Farah said.  "He kept swearing at the protestors calling them terrorists and traitors; he thought the people being killed deserved it."

During a phone call later that day, Farah told him she would be proud to stand with the pr-Morsi supporters that gathered following his overthrow in Rabaa Square.

"He replied,  'If you set foot there, you no longer have a father',” recounted Farah.

“I don’t recognise him or his words, he doesn’t sound like my dad - the well-read, religious man that I once knew. I don’t understand how someone like him could be so brainwashed," she said. "I’m dumbfounded."

The two have never spoken again.

Nahid Azzab, a 66-year-old Cairiene, whose son is a police officer, no longer speaks to her aunt who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Why all this terror, this slaughtering and treason?” said Azzab.

“All I want for my country is security and Islam – I am Muslim but these people [the Brotherhood] are not; they are terrorists who have sold our borders to foreigners.”

“My aunt said to me that the blood of the martyrs is all over my sons’ hands. How dare she,” added Azzab.

“It would have been an honour for me if he [her son] had evacuated these protestors – they are national enemies,” she said.

Hany Sabry, 33, says he lost what he valued most in life over his views.

A few months after the coup - and after several arguments with his wife as her took issue with Sabry's political positions - the diving instructor from Hurghada received a divorce order from court. His wife Mai packed her things, took their son and daughter and left home. 

"My mother-in-law convinced her [his wife] that I was a danger to the kids. It's a huge shock for me. I could have never imagined this," Sabry said. 

"I tried everything to get her back, but her family are keeping her away from me," he added. "They tell her I support terrorists." 

The silent treatment

To avoid the painful break ups and divisions they have seen split families and couples, many Egyptians have taken vows of silence when it comes to politics.

Sara al-Khatib and her husband, Ahmed Fawzi, no longer discuss politics – over dinner, on the weekend or at all.

While Khatib, a 34-year-old dental academic, boycotted the elections and refused to vote for Sisi, Fawzi, a 37-year-old accountant, celebrated Sisi’s inauguration.

“I hate the Brotherhood, they are the reason the country is so bad. The military is everything. It is the backbone of the state; it will protect us,” Fawzi said.

“Tell them you [Fawzi] made me stop sharing my views on social media,” shouted Khatib over her husband’s shoulder.

Brothers Moatassim, Amr and Mohamed El-Husseiny have also gone quiet on Egyptian politics.

Like many young, educated Egyptians, the three El-Husseinys – who are all engineers - find themselves on a Brotherhood- Sisi support dividing line.

Mohamed supported the sit-in at Rabaa in August 2013 , while Amr believes the Brotherhood leaders are to blame for Egypt’s social divide. Moatassim straddles the divide and believes both are equally at fault.

After the coup, two of their uncles – including one whose son was killed during a protest - stopped speaking to one another. Seeing their father’s family - once a strong and loving unit - now disintegrated, the three brothers decided not to discuss politics anymore - and also no longer take part in protests or the activism in which they once participated.

“It is really sad; my father and his siblings were one. Now our regular family gatherings just don’t exist anymore,” explained Moatasssim.

“I feel this country is not worth sacrificing for anymore,” said Amr, expressing the apathy of many young Egyptians after the 2011 uprisings.

If not sheer silence, more distanced contact has also become the norm for many families including sisters Salwa and Eman Mohamed.

While Salwa, a 58-year-old general manager at a state-owned electric company, was happy the day protesters evacuated from Rabaa, Eman, a 51-year-old accountant believes her sister is blinded by the media.

“Even if my sister saw the dead bodies on the streets with her own eyes, she would have said they [the Brotherhood] deserve this,” Eman told MEE.

“We’ll speak on Eid and during occasions – we just keep our opinions to ourselves now,” she added.

Roots of the divide

The media played a key role in creating social partition within Egyptian communities, analysts have said.

“The media celebrated mass-repression, which is a huge recipe for social division - one of the most tragic consequences of last summer’s coup,” said Mohammad Elmasry, visiting scholar at the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

The media has fed social polarisation by building a narrative that suggests “some Egyptians [the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition members] are not truly Egyptian…[but are instead] traitors and enemies of the state”.

The polarisation of Egyptians did not start with the 3 July coup. Rather the divide has been an on-going process over the past three years, one that actually resulted in a coup, said Dalia Mogahed, former executive director of Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies and former advisor to US President Barack Obama.

“This polarisation… was fermented over the previous three years by an anti-revolution media whose owners have a vested interest in the old order,” Mogahed told MEE.

While the media may have been a key factor in sharpening this divide, it has not been the only cause.

“After 3 July, the divisions were severely deepened by the unprecedented state violence against protesters, as well as the vigilante violence targeting the Christian community and the police, the systematic attacks on Muslim Brotherhood property and the extreme rhetoric by both pro and anti Morsi pundits,” said Mogahed. 

Human-rights organisations estimate tens of thousands of Egyptian activists have been arbitrarily detained and imprisoned since the coup. There are currently more than 20,000 political prisoners.  

Generational, socio-economic explanations

Despite these explanations, it can still be baffling to see members of a single family who have shared so many other parts of their lives dogmatically split over politics.  

Sami Omar, an anthropology professor at an Egyptian university sees the current familial clashes as a reflection of a generational gap.

“The older generation is more conservative and accepting in its world view, while the younger generation is less likely to accept the traditional state,” explains Omar.

“The older generation also constitutes the majority of high paying jobs within the public sector. It is therefore more likely to support the state regardless,” Omar told MEE.

Economics, say others, as much as age has impacted whether Egyptians support Sisi or the opposition.

“The division [among others] clearly falls along socio-economic lines of elites versus those who are victims not patrons of the deep state,” said Mogahed.  

“Thirty percent of the Egyptian population is living under the poverty line; this group wants stability they see with Sisi,” said Omar.

“Within the middle class, a majority of public sector employees’ livelihoods depend on the state. Also, wealthy land owners and businessmen – at least 5 million - directly link their interests to the state,” Omar added.

While social class, income and education do influence people’s opinions, the divide cuts across every group, according to Mohamed Menza, assistant professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.

“There are extremist supporters of both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood in every social class,” said Menza.

According to Basheer Nafie, a historian and senior researcher at Aljazeera Centre for Studies, the division in Egyptian society can be seen as a two-block divide: Islamists, including liberals and democrats on one side, and non-Islamists including state-supporters like nationalists and fanatic seculars on the other.

“Egyptian society has always been divided this way. The revolution was only three weeks when people united briefly, but then everything went back to normal,” said Nafie.

Nafie sees the situation as a historically rooted divide since the 19^th century breakdown of traditional Islamic states. When the ulema (an educated class of Muslim legal scholars) lost their place as a revered reference for the public, the Muslim communities divided into the two camps, Nafie told MEE.

Mogahed disagrees: “It is easy to frame the divisions in Egypt as "secular" vs "Islamist" but this masks the real issue. The divisor is between hyper nationalism and those who oppose it. The opposition camp consists of young people dedicated to democracy and it also includes Morsi supporters,” she explained.

A bleak future?

Egyptians question whether the society at large could recover this shock, as Egypt enters a new year of its political trajectory with marriages collapsed and families splintered.

“The voice of moderation is very limited in Egypt; we have no tradition of pluralism,” Menza told MEE.

While experts encourage the formulation of a new social contract to heal the divide, Egyptians are not so hopeful. 

“If these divisions are not healed…[by] Egyptians negotiating a new social covenant, Egypt will have neither stability nor democracy,” said Mogahed.

“There are people who reject the extreme; they are Egypt’s only hope,” she added.

Nearly a year after she stopped talking with her father, Farah despairs.

“I don’t know how things could ever go back to being normal again after saying your own flesh and blood is a terrorist," she said. "I really don’t know."