Last weekend, the progressive society of the whole world was captivated by a show organized by the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in which the bodies of 22 pharaohs and queens were transported from one museum to another. This pleasure cost the country, with a population of 100 million living in poverty, 38 million US dollars. Why, despite the obvious irrationality of such a «feast in the time of plague», not to mention the despicable figure of its organizer, did it arouse such admiration among «civilized people»? Even in Russia and among its opposition? After all, they evaluate similar shows, parades, etc. of Putin much more skeptically. The answer is obvious — it is the deep Islamophobia of the «progressive society» and the «civilized world» that makes them forget their own standards and principles whenever it is necessary to fight against Islam.
In the case of Egypt, the same people who often speak out in favor of democracy and against dictatorships in their own countries supported the military’s ouster of the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2011 and the establishment of a bloody dictatorship — simply because it allowed them to remove «Islamists» from power. And now they are enjoying the fruits of this victory, because the overthrow of the democratically elected power and the destruction of its supporters were necessary to cultivate the non-Islamic character of Egypt, as Sisi is doing.
And here it is necessary to clarify something. Although any symbolism associated with the pharaohs is sensitive to Muslims and representatives of the Abrahamic tradition in general, one of the central plots of which is the confrontation between the pharaoh and Moses (Musa, peace be upon him) and his community of monotheists in the person of the then Children of Israel (Bani Israel), it is necessary to understand that we are talking about a specific pharaonic tyrant who considered himself a god and paid the price for it. The same thing happened in other states, it is one of the episodes of their long history, which does not necessarily require denying it completely and painting it with a black color. And the same goes for Egypt, which was a great civilization of its time, within which different forces and moods manifested themselves, including among the pharaohs, and today only Allah knows the position of each of them.
But the point is that this «historical heritage», which the complex dictator has undertaken to revive, has almost nothing to do with modern Egyptians. Neither culturally — because those Egyptians spoke a vanished language, either Afroasiatic or Chadic, while today’s Egyptians speak Arabic — nor genetically, because ancient Egyptians, especially in their upper classes, including the pharaohs, were much closer to modern Turks and Levantines than to modern Egyptians, and it is enough to compare Sisi’s physiognomy with the portraits of those pharaohs to see this. Whether someone likes it or not, but today’s Egyptians were formed specifically as an Arab, Muslim people who were part of the political and civilizational space of the Ottoman Empire for the last 4-5 centuries. By the way, it is this real cultural and historical heritage of the last four centuries of the history of the real Egyptians that is now being eradicated.
However, with the triumph of Western colonialism, Europeans in the form of Orientalists, Freemasons and popular esotericists began to create for themselves toys ranging from the «magic lamp of Aladdin» to Egyptian pyramids, excavations of Babylonian temples, treasure hunts, copies of King Solomon, mysterious mummies and other products of the fantasies of entertained colonizers. And the whole modern Egyptian cult of pyramids and pharaohs is precisely born out of this, including as part of the tourist industry, and is not a manifestation of a living national cultural and historical tradition with which it has nothing in common.
At the same time, as already mentioned, all this is indeed a feast in the time of plague. It is not the Islamists, but Western analysts one after the other who talk about how Egypt’s economy and social structure are stuck. This is mentioned, for example, in an article in Foreign Policy magazine for 2019, which describes how Egypt’s economy, despite being sold to foreign creditors, is still collapsing (https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/07/egypts-economy-isnt-booming-its-collapsing-imf-abdel-fattah-sisi-poverty/). The same is mentioned in a 2020 article in The Middle East Eye (https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/egypt-economic-crisis-profound-brink-teeters). Egypt’s systemic problems, exacerbated last year by the COVID-19 pandemic, are well known — not only the lack of prospects for development, employment and housing, but also the lack of basic drinking water in the quantities needed for a growing, young population. Add to this the political divisions within society and the involvement in foreign conflicts, from the Libyan conflict, where Sisi tried to help a coup plotter like himself, Haftar, to the Mediterranean dispute over territorial waters.
Modern Egypt is a country that needs urgent solutions to serious problems, not expensive shows for the entertainment of the «progressive society» and the «civilized world». This is unlikely to happen under the leadership of a Papuan PR dictatorship. To call things by their proper names, it is a huge powder keg, and when it explodes, it will not be pleasant for anyone — not even the admiring «progressive society» and the «civilized world».