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Salmawy: I am talking about more of a French laicité, which refers to secularism. When I said civil, what I had in mind was more or less laicité. The position I’m describing is the ideal and probably most representative position for Egypt. Egypt is not composed only of Muslims. About 20 percent of our population, if not more, is Coptic Christians. The Copts are not simply a minority like minorities in other countries; they are actually part of the social fabric of the country. We must not forget that before the Arab and Muslim conquest of Egypt they were the only Egyptians, the real Egyptians. So a society composed as such can only be “civil”, not religious. Maybe that is the real reason Egypt has never had a religious government. The idea of religious rule for us is more along the lines of the European model of the Middle Ages when the Church ruled. Egypt has Al-Azhar, which is the seat of Islamic learning and the seat of Islam, a kind of Islamic Vatican. However, Al-Azhar has never ruled Egypt. The rule has always been civil, secular as you like to say. Egypt has never been a religious state, because it can not be ruled by a religious government. Even under the Ottoman Empire, when all the Arab and Islamic countries were under the Caliphate, one would have thought that the seat of this religious Caliphate would have been in Egypt, the temple and leader of the Arab world. But it never was.
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