With the start of the new academic year about three weeks ago, student protests against the authorities have resumed and are now at the forefront of the political and the media scenes in Egypt. Protests and student demonstrations began on the first day of college classes, which started about one month later than usual – a delay that many interpreted as reflecting the authorities’ concern about the start of the new academic year.
In fact, last year, clashes between college students across the country and the police, sometimes backed by the armed forces, had reached fever pitch. At one point, members of the “Parachute Team,” an elite unit in the Egyptian army, descended in the vicinity of the women’s faculty of al-Azhar University. Last year was tough and both sides engaged in acts of violence, with the constant burning of police cars and al-Azhar administrative offices around campus all year long.
The Muslim Brotherhood (ED: BROTHERS OF AMERICA) has a strong presence among students at al-Azhar, where the “Generation of Desired Victory” was the Brotherhood’s extension in the student body, and one of its stronger arms with which it faced the government on many occasions in the past. This lead to what is known as “the Azhar Militias” in 2006, when Brotherhood student leaders were arrested and many of them sent to military court, the most prominent of whom was the Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Guide
Khayrat al-Shater before former President Hosni Mubarak decided to set the students free.
One of the most conspicuous conflicts took place after the publication of the novel, “A Feast for the Seaweeds” by Syrian author Haidar Haidar in 2000. Many Egyptians considered its events and details heretical, in addition to the fact that its printing fees were covered by the Ministry of Culture. Subsequently, large protests broke out at al-Azhar University. In the light of these events, the authorities decided to lower the student population living on campus to a minimum, and to apply restrictions on its residents.
According to some observers, the religious formation and knowledge al-Azhar students acquire create a gap between the true religion they learn in school and what they see in society, which strengthens their tendency to protest.
Furthermore, a rural upbringing in Upper Egypt (southern Egypt) embeds the values of solidarity and cohesion among students in the face of what they consider threats, as seen in the dozens of clashes that took place with the university’s security guards for non-political reasons. For example, an assault on one student by a security guard because of an altercation later turned into an expansive protest in the university and on campus.
Speaking to Al-Akhbar, Omar al-Sabakhi a faculty member at the University of Alexandria, explained that al-Azhar University is taking the lead in student protests because “students there have already received a high level of religious education at school even before reaching college. Their religious sentiment is provoked, which is an essential driving force of the protests.”
“Generally speaking, there is a deep rooted idea among Egyptians that individuals enrolling in religious studies come from a poor and marginalized background, further fueling those individuals’ feelings of oppression which emanates from being raised in a modest environment,” Sabakhi said, adding that “this feeling of oppression has intensified because they did not receive their well-deserved rights, three years after the revolution against Mubarak.”
Sabakhi, a researcher who focuses on student movements, said college students have more reasons to complain compared to regular citizens, adding
“Al-Azhar students have obviously the most reasons to [complain] because they have received a higher level of religious education, added to the fact that al-Azhar as an educational institution and as part of the ruling authority, fully separates its demands from those of the student movement.”
According to Sabakhi, the administration of al-Azhar
“seeks financial or executive privileges for its members, or aims to attain stability and impose and maintain regulations. This does not involve students because administrations always side with the ruler while students stand on the opposite side.”
However, Osama al-Hatimi, another specialist in student movements, does not believe that al-Azhar University is leading the student protests which started about a year ago.
He attributed the
“intensification of student movements there, especially after June 30, 2013 to the intellectual affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood, seen by them as a party which was ousted from power. Besides, giving their strict religious upbringing, al-Azhar students [normally] side with the Islamic project, and believe that what happened also targeted them because they belong to the same project.”
“Ever since the 1930s, student groups have been opposing the administration’s wishes,” Hatimi said, elaborating that the student movements “were the thermometer used to measure Egyptian society and its ambitions.”
He also explained that student movements usually challenge the authorities’ approaches.
“In cases of an economic downturn, student movements have always been the first to step up to demand economic rights and freedom because they do not have political considerations and behave according to their beliefs in absolute and abstract values, far from the political calculations of political forces and parties.”
Hatimi rejected what he described as “attempts to link political work to a certain social environment,” saying it is a false explanation because the residents of Cairo and cities in general constitute 90 percent of the Egyptian population, although he admitted that a rural upbringing is usually more influenced by religion.
Hatimi said that even if a large segment of al-Azhar students come from modest backgrounds, in the end they are still part of the Egyptian social structure and they deserve to demand their rights.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
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