well, obviously, a helluva lot of them wanted mubarak out. they’ve got that, so now what?
taking a look @the world values survey, most of them prolly do NOT want another strong leader. they’ve had enough of that. in the 2008 survey, 84% thought having a strong leader was bad or very bad (click on charts for LARGER views):
they’d much rather have the military in charge (handy that since that’s what they’ve got for now) — 56.6% of them thought in ’08 that military rule was fairly or very good:
most of them — 89.3% — prefer democracy:
and that very much includes free elections (good luck with that, egyptians!):
but … just ’cause someone uses fb and twitter doesn’t mean that they think and feel just like you (we) do. nuh-uh!
no. most egyptians think that the cultural invasion of their country by the west is a serious or very serious problem — and that included 86.1% of people between the ages of 15-29 in 2000:
according to a more recent pew survey, 85% of muslims in egypt (ca. 90% of egyptians are muslim) think islam’s influence on politics is just swell:
and back in 2000, 80.2% of egyptians agreed or agreed strongly that shari’a law for egypt would be a good idea — and that included 50.6% of the christians!:
those sentiments don’t seem to have changed much over the last decade — from pew again:
and there’s more — 97.6% of the christians responding in 2000 said that they thought women ought to wear a veil! that beat out the muslims @94.9%:
the thing is, more egyptians prolly think and feel closer to how this egyptian lady thinks and feels…
…than they do to these egyptians folks…
see also: The Egyptian Thriller @gov.
previously: aígyptos
bonus: a couple of coptic women from the past in hijab –
_-_TIMEA.jpg "another coptic woman")
(note: comments do not require an email.)
hbd chick 
I think that the Islam in politics question is particularly interesting since Indonesia and Turkey, the two extremes of the countries shown on that particular measure, are also seen as models of functional democracy in majority Muslim countries. Of course, Turkey and Indonesia are closer together and further from Egypt in their attitudes towards Qur’anic draconian punishments.
Ultimately, I think that the military is the central institution in Egypt and regardless of what the new government looks like on the outside, the Egyptian military will remain the backbone of power and central in the economy for the short-to-medium-term.
@meng b – one big diff between indonesia & turkey versus egypt (and the other islamic countries that favor “qur’anic draconian punishments”) is that in egypt they practice fbd marriage on a grand scale while in indonesia & turkey they do not.
Heh, I went straight to consang.net to check the map and then went to read the link you posted only to find that it had the same map.
Anyway, if you look at the map, you’ll see that Egypt and Turkey are within 10% on their consanguinity rate (they share the same coloration) and that it doesn’t included data for Indonesia. And you can get an even better picture if you look at some tables:
http://consang.net/index.php/Global_prevalence_tables
I perused them and it’s a bit difficult to pin down a good apples-to-apples comparison. It looks like the most recent Egypt-wide data was taken in the 70s or early 80s. Between the late 60s and late 90s, in Alexandria at least, the rate has decreased. Turkey’s better covered. Perhaps not surprisingly, consanguinity rates go up as one moves eastward and down as one moves westward along Anatolia. Likewise, in Egypt, Nubia’s got very high rates, whereas Lower Egypt has lower rates and rates also go up as one moves away from urban areas.
There is also one data point in Indonesia from 1990 [West Timor and West Flores (Roman Catholic)] which is 17.8%. Not sure how representative that is…certainly the note on Catholicism isn’t encouraging on that front. Ultimately, I don’t think consanguinity is a big player in differentiating Egypt from Turkey and Indonesia
Now, according to The Economist’s Democracy Index:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_index
Indonesia is a “flawed democracy” and Turkey is a “hybrid regime”, so as far as models go, they’re the best of a mediocre lot. From what I understand (and I’m not an expert here), both countries historically had strong militaries like Egypt, which have been cajoled into giving up some of their power over time.
I also did a quick check on the GDP per capita in the three countries. Egypt and Indonesia look pretty similar on that indicator, with Turkey looking more like the global average (which is higher):
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:TUR:IDN:EGY&tdim=true&tstart=-315619200000&tunit=Y&tlen=49&hl=en&dl=en&uniSize=0.035&iconSize=0.5
I don’t think that what emerges in Egypt will rival Turkey and Indonesia in “democraticness”. It seems to me that Egypt has less of a tradition of democracy and fewer ties to western powers than the other two. In Turkey’s case, many of the democratic reforms have come as a result of pressure from the European Union, which set them as conditions for joining, and as can be seen from the GDP per capita data, Turks are better off than Egyptians.
My knowledge of Indonesian history is extremely fuzzy, but from what I understand, it’s a trading nation that has always had to deal with the influence of multiple religious and ethnic groups and it lies on the periphery of the “Muslim world” allowing it to stray a bit more from the hard line that seems to be more popular in Egypt.
I suppose that most of my pessimism (if you’d call it that) toward Egypt’s future rests on cultural reasons. Egypt’s cultural milieu is the Arab world (of which it’s sort of the center), in which Lebanon’s confessionally apportioned system is the closest to a real democracy and in which rule by a domestic ruler (as opposed to Ottoman clienthood) is only a recent occurrence.
The Egyptian military runs the country, as in reality, it’s been doing since independence. When its figurehead in the form of Mubarak left the country and the military asserted full control rather than continuing its rule from behind, Egyptians rejoiced. As an anecdote, one of my Egyptian facebook friends left the comment “We’re freeeeeeeeee!” But really, even though the military acquiesced to their main demand, are they free? Hardly.
I suspect that Egypt will settle for a government with a democratic face where the military still pulls most of the strings. It will probably be an improvement over what they had, but I doubt that Egypt will become Turkey or Indonesia.
Ok, I admit, that was a ridiculous comment.
@meng b – “Heh, I went straight to consang.net to check the map and then went to read the link you posted only to find that it had the same map.”
well, i posted the second link for the text on fbd marriage, not just the map. (^_^) ’cause it’s not just the level of consanguinity in a society that matters, but also the type, e.g. parallel cousin marriage (esp. patrilineal parallel cousin marriage or father’s brother’s daughter marriage) vs. cross cousin marriage. the relationships (and level of relationships, i think) are different.
i’m gonna do a post on fbd marriage to help shed some light on the issue. but i’m not 100% clear on the issue myself, yet, so i hope i don’t do more harm than good. (~_^)
@meng b – “I perused them and it’s a bit difficult to pin down a good apples-to-apples comparison. It looks like the most recent Egypt-wide data was taken in the 70s or early 80s.”
the consang.net site is great, but it’s not up-to-date on a lot of the data. i posted some more recent data on consanguineous marriages over on this post. the average national figure in 2000 was 38.9% of marriages were to 1st or 2nd cousins. the rate is higher in remote rural areas vs. urban areas like cairo. again, the type of marriage in egypt tends to be paternal parallel.
it is hard to come by consang data for indonesia which is frustrating. i do know that they, by and large, don’t practice paternal parallel cousin (fbd) marriage. fbd marriage is actually quite rare outside the middle east/south asia.
@meng b – “The Egyptian military runs the country, as in reality, it’s been doing since independence.”
well, it’s a good thing a majority of the people are ok with that then. (~_^)
well, i posted the second link for the text on fbd marriage, not just the map. (^_^) ’cause it’s not just the level of consanguinity in a society that matters, but also the type, e.g. parallel cousin marriage (esp. patrilineal parallel cousin marriage or father’s brother’s daughter marriage) vs. cross cousin marriage. the relationships (and level of relationships, i think) are different.
That’s fair. I admit I didn’t look carefully to ensure that Turkey was the same, though I don’t see any reason why the consanguinity practiced there (especially in the areas bordering on the Arab world) would be a fundamentally different sort.
the consang.net site is great, but it’s not up-to-date on a lot of the data. i posted some more recent data on consanguineous marriages over on this post. the average national figure in 2000 was 38.9% of marriages were to 1st or 2nd cousins. the rate is higher in remote rural areas vs. urban areas like cairo. again, the type of marriage in egypt tends to be paternal parallel.
Ah, I remember seeing that post, but didn’t bother to go back and search. Assuming all the data is relatively accurate, it looks like there’s been some reversion to “traditional values” in recent times, making for a wider gap with Turkey, closer to double the rate of consanguinity (though it’s roughly on par with southeastern Turkey).
Given that, I’d say that the differential certainly could be a contributing factor in differences between Egypt’s political trajectory and that of Turkey, though I’d suggest that there are a host of other differences that play a role.
@meng b – “…I don’t see any reason why the consanguinity practiced there (especially in the areas bordering on the Arab world) would be a fundamentally different sort.”
actually, turks tend to avoid father’s brother’s daughter marriage and go for mother’s brother’s daughter marriage instead.
this may be too much information, but just in case you’re interested, korotayev has found that the area where fbd marriage is found today most closely matches the areas that were a part of the umayyad caliphate. and we thought the long-standing influences outlined in “albion’s seed” were cool! (~_^)
@meng b – “…though I’d suggest that there are a host of other differences that play a role.”
absolutely! clearly turks are turks (and kurds) and egyptians are egyptians (and a few other peoples) and they each have their own biologies and histories. and clearly mating patterns don’t explain everything. they do, however, go a long way to explaining the degree of conflicts within and between ethnic groups, i think. the degrees of relatedness within a population affects feelings towards outsiders, etc., etc. — which certainly affects politics!
@meng b – “Between the late 60s and late 90s, in Alexandria at least, the rate has decreased.”
more “too-much-information” for ya:
note that the first data point (32.8%) for alexandria there (1966) includes all consanguineous marriages while the later one (15.9% from 1998/00) only includes first-cousin marriages. it may look as though the rate has gone down, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison like you say.
a study from the 90s found an overall consanguinity rate in alexandria of 22.8% with first-cousin marriages @15.8%. so i’d say the overall rate has definitely gone down in alexandria since the 60s, but not as much as it appears from the data on consang.net.
I seldom consider information to be too much. Thank you.