The Voice of Russia

Interview with Dr. Tarek Heggy, outstanding Egyptian liberal thinker, writer and political analyst.

What’s your point of view on the last events in Europe? I mean do you believe in multiculturalism politics in Europe? Do you have any other alternative to them?

This is a very, very critical subject. You’re talking about the Muslim communities in Europe? As for the Muslim communities in Europe and especially in places like France, like Italy and Sweden, these societies have a problem on their hands. The responsibility is not only on one side. It’s shared. When you see statistics you find that the more immigrants are educated, the more integrated into society they are, the less educated – the less integrated.

So, if you are France and you’ve got people from Algeria without any education to clean your streets and do work like collecting your garbage, don’t expect them to integrate. Work on this! It’s a challenge! And when you are loose with your regulations, when you have two million people without papers in France, it’s you to be blamed.

How can you have two million people without papers? But is that the case? Integration is a very tricky challenge, a challenge for both sides. The more educated an immigrant is, the easier it is. I’ve been to Sweden a great deal. I find Palestinians and Egyptians do very well when they have degrees and do work on TV and cinema. And the ones that are doing lower jobs go only to the mosque, because this is the shelter. They feel protected there. Do you expect somebody who is semi-educated to go to Comédie-Française to watch Molière? He wouldn’t do this. He would go to the mosque, because the cultural protection is there. They speak the language he understands, they protect the values that he likes and, over there, he is on an equal footing with others.

There’s a wonderful book by Amin Maalouf about identity in Europe. The ones who haven’t read it must read it. In English it’s called The Murdering Identities. He says once you identity in the 21st century has only one dimension you’ll be a fighter. But if you say “I’m a French of Lebanese origin, a Catholic and I love English literature” you will be more suitable for the 21st century. But if your identity is based on one thing – “I’m a Muslim”, which is a problem of Pakistan, because one day they went to sleep as Muslim Indians and the next day we chopped the word “Indian” and became Muslim; I mean everyone in Pakistan went to sleep on May 15, 1947 as a Muslim Indian and got up as a Muslim. The word “Indian” disappeared – then you have nothing to stick to, except your identity of a Muslim.

The same was with the Egyptians. If you went to Cairo University in 1935 and asked anybody “Tell me who you are in one word”, he would have laughed “I’m an Egyptian”. But today you may get “I’m an Arabi”, you might get “I’m Muslim”, you might get ‘I’m an Egyptian”. There’s a chance to get more than one answer. And you might also get “I’m an Arabi Muslim”, that’s “I’m a Muslim Muslim”. Lutfi el-Sayed is the one who said in 1930 “An Egyptian is the on who doesn’t have a definition of himself in one word, except for saying ‘I’m an Egyptian’.” He said “Tell me who you are in one word, don’t give me a sentence. If you tell me ‘I’m a Muslim’ – fine, ‘I’m an Arabi’ – fine. But Egyptians used to say ‘I’m an Egyptian’” Was this a decrease in Islamic or Coptic view? Never. They were also good Muslims and good Christians. I mean I cannot imagine that the Muslims of past generations were bad Muslims. But they didn’t have this dilemma of what we take from the West and what we through away. It’s a today’s dilemma. It was not a dilemma for them.

Hussein Faouzi was a very special Egyptian. He was born in 1900, he went to Paris in 1923. He was a physician, a doctor. He forgot about it and studied classical music and maritime life, and he came with three degrees in music and one in maritime life. And he wrote a lot about maritime life, and he was the first pianist in our Opera House. I met him in 1968, because he published a wonderful book called Symphonic Music in Arabic.

I went to see him to learn what I should do to understand what a concerto, a grosso concerto, a symphony, a serenade is. I’ve no idea but there was an opera house here, the old one and it was nearly a Russian opera house. In 1968, we had Russian orchestras, and Russian sopranos, and Russian tenors. When I met him I asked how long it took him when he went to France to enter the university. He said he did it the following day. I asked “Were you in French school?” He said, no. The quality of education in Egyptian schools was just as good as we could have.

The following day I was in Sorbonne, studying in French, coming from a government school. Today we send people to Sorbonne for 18 months, paying money for them to learn French or English. They stay in California for 18 months, learning English, learning German, because of quality education. My father went to an Egyptian school and to Cairo University. I was the head of chair in the Middle East when I sent him the word “swapping,” incorrectly written. I wrote it with one “p”. He made a circle and wrote in a very elegant handwriting “At my time ‘swapping’ used to have two ‘p’. Unless it is a change, correct it.” And this is from a government school, but they had an English teacher who taught them English, a French teacher for French.