Reform and Development Syndrome in Egypt (1)..!

Dr Salah Hashem 

Since the first half of the twentieth century, Egypt has witnessed the emergence of media in moderate social, enlightenment, and reformist thought, whose ideas and opinions penetrated the minds and consciences of Egyptians, and even crossed borders to many countries of the world. We cannot forget the pioneers of human thought who founded many reformist schools in Egypt and many countries of the world, such as Sheikh Muhammad Abdo, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Saad Zaghloul, Professor Qassem Amin, and other pioneers of awareness in the modern era. I believe that during this particular period, Egypt was a leading change and awareness regionally and internationally. It had a clear and respectful political decision. It was economically supportive of various Arab countries and exported culture, art, creativity, reform and politics to the whole world.

the period from the beginning of the fifties until the end of the sixties Perhaps witnessed incomplete attempts and experiments in social reform, but most of them fell into a state of extinction and stagnation in the seventies, coinciding with the distorted economic reform processes, and the unplanned and ill-conceived experience of openness, its consequences and repercussions at the same time as the decline of the general characteristics of the Egyptian citizen and the transition of the general human thought from the depth to the superficial and moving it away from appreciating work and production and respecting everything that is Egyptian and authentic to a culture of insecure consumption, while sanctifying the foreign product!

theory of social reform and enlightenment

All this has led me for years to think about a theory in social reform and enlightenment that is based on analyzing human conditions in general and comes out with a set of indicators that may enable us to understand the social field and how to deal with the human mentality in general by researching the formation of human according to the philosophy of nature.

And we answer a general question: How can societies and peoples progress? How can the human product be increased and developed safely? And how can it be directed to serve the general goals of states, which are summed up according to “Socrates” and “Machiavelli” in hegemony, strength and stability in general .. The starting point in the theory was thought as the main pillar in enlightenment and reform in general .. And as “Emil Cioran” said in His book “Water is All the Color of Drowning” When we failed to create a person who thinks, we naturally failed to form a people. but we have a clapping and cursing audience, clapping once, cursing once.. but he doesn’t think!

Peoples and masses

Of course, there is a big difference between the peoples who participate with states and governments in building their civilization and whose ideas are characterized by depth, sobriety and innovation, and those that have a superficial mental and psychological structure and whose ideas and attitudes are characterized by instability, which prompted communication scholars to describe the masses as being like a dirty woman loving those who flirt with her, unlike the peoples who It is basically the source of wisdom and civilization and the source of inspiration and development.

Reform starts from the people

So, the start here in reform must be from the people who represent the vessel from which governments and leaders are elected, and the more clean and sophisticated the vessel, the more sophisticated its leaders will be, and the more corrupt it is, the more corrupt its governments will be. So, it is not logical for us to care about reforming governments, leaving the people without control.. Working to reform governments without the people is just a wasted effort that is useless but sliding to the bottom, retreat, backwardness, and corruption!

The question here is related to the reform of the peoples, how can it be, and what is the ideal image of the rising and urbanizing peoples?.. and what are the mechanisms of this reform? Can reform be reduced to economic or religious reform only?

I imagine that the concept of reform is deeper and greater, and that social reform should be the basis for the process of change and development, and this is what we will focus on in building our theory that will be formed through our next article.