Experimenting with alternative futures in Cairo: young Muslim volunteers between god and the nation

ABSTRACT

This article investigates young middle-class Egyptians’ engagement with the religious and national visions of Resala, Egypt’s largest Muslim youth NGO, and how they come to rethink themselves existentially and politically through this commitment, in the context of the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. I show how their volunteering through Resala, shaped by specific sociopolitical circumstances, paved the way for personal hopes to develop into utopian aspirations. Demonstrating the dynamic relationship between the formation of political subjectivities and how utopias emerge, develop and are sometimes shattered, I argue that while utopic aspirations continue to characterise parts of Egypt’s 2011 youth generation, for others, such aspirations have to give way for other more personal concerns to establish a secure adult life. Therefore, activism and experiments with societal alternatives in contexts like the Egyptian continue to depend on inclusive and less risky spaces for civic engagement outside formal politics and institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Egypt
• Islam
• youth activism
• utopia
• political subjectivity
• nationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.

2. With the term ‘2011 uprising’, I refer to the mass demonstrations in January and February 2011, including the immediate period of popular political euphoria following the ousting of Mubarak. The ‘aftermath’ refers to the political instable period following this and until approximately August 2013. Due to widespread scholarly debate on analytical vagueness of the term ‘revolution’ in Egypt, I apply these concepts only emically.

3. Hadīth refers to an account of a saying of the prophet Muhammad.

4. In 2010, Egyptian families spent almost 800 million USD on charity donations (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/09/egypt-islamic-charity-spending-is-also-an-economic-pillar-figures-show.html, retrieved 18 November 2016).

5. From 12 February 2011 and until the inauguration of Mohamed Morsi on 30 June 2012, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, was the leading political authority of the country.

6. Such activities only lasted for a short while. After the removal of Mohamed Morsi in June 2013 and the increased public antagonism towards everything associated with Islamism, Resala returned to its previous strategy of only providing services for the poor.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Danida Fellowship Centre [09-010KU], Julie von Müllens Foundation, the Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation and the Oticon Fonden.