Youth-led pathways to social and political change: Faith and service in contemporary Egypt

Abstract

Arab Muslim youth are presumed to be at risk of exposure to religious extremism via participation in faith-based organizations. This field study conducted within a large youth-run social service association in Egypt challenges that trajectory. Instead, it explores the role of religion in creating contemporary ethical subjects who seek meaning-production through volunteering to help the disadvantaged. The same dispositions which lead young Muslim youth to volunteer also propelled them to Tahrir and participation in the mass political uprising of 2011. The relationship among politics, faith, and public participation is elaborated through qualitative interviews conducted over a 7-year period in Cairo.

Introduction

The massive youth-led movements for change that emerged in 2010–2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere were remarkable for many reasons, not least of which was the failure of observers to predict their timing or numeric strength. Instead, most observers of Arab youth in recent years emphasized the absence of public participation and seeming passivity of this generation, coupled with what was seen as a retreat into growing religiosity. In the light of a dramatic Arab popular awakening, this article sets out to reconsider the nature of youth public participation in recent years.

Our findings are based on field interviews in a prominent youth-led social service organization in Egypt, both before and after the uprising of 25 January 2011. ¹ We found that within the authoritarian climate existing during the late Mubarak era, large numbers of youth had devised alternative spaces in which to practice citizenship and public service, often in arenas not typically considered relevant to political change. Their activities were dismissed as unimportant by most analysts, who equated social services with “charity work.” ² Most saw youthful volunteerism as an outgrowth of the revival of religious discourse and practice, a space assumed to be antithetical to democratic politics or practice. Instead, we posit this as a significant arena which prepared young participants for rapid mobilization in 2011 as part of an unprecedented youth-led national dissent movement.

The importance of this phenomenon was underestimated, we believe, because of its localized character in communities and its association with the religious values of Islam. This illuminates a set of assumptions we wish to problematize about what constitutes political activity. Community-based charity work, particularly in Islamic societies, has been considered as a recruitment tool to lure young people into groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Alternatively it is viewed by some local political activists as a substitute for political engagement ³ —a safe outlet for youthful idealism that dilutes the chances for activism. Writers like Charles Hirschkind view these practices as part of the contemporary Islamic Revival, considered “safe” by the state only so long as they remain mostly privatized religious expressions that do not challenge the ruling order. ⁴

The interviews with young volunteers presented here suggest another reading altogether; our findings demonstrate a close relationship between youth-led social service and recent political transformation. In spite of the wide range of political and religious orientations among volunteers, we found an overarching sense of unity of purpose within Resala, the organization selected for study, as well as solidarity with the January 25 movement and the values that it represented. We heard from a significant number of volunteers who participated actively in the events that made Tahrir Square a unique and powerful political force-field. Based on these findings, we develop a reformulation of the meaning of youth social service in contemporary Egypt.

Volunteer social service is defined as it is practiced by young Egyptians—a range of activities directed toward relieving poverty and other forms of marginalization, such as distributing foodstuffs, clothing and medicine, marriage assistance, and tutoring in underprivileged urban neighborhoods. More recently, volunteers have offered civic and professional development programs for other youth like themselves, including initiatives to increase employment chances in the nonprofit and business sectors.

We began the study by characterizing the expected relationship between youth social service and the broader social-political dynamics of Egypt in terms of a “spill-over effect”—we posited that experiences as volunteers prepared young Egyptians to more easily enter another public sphere and take part in the determined popular uprising of early 2011. In that we were partially correct. Our research suggests that Resala’s collective social action at the community level, described by participants as “building the umma (community of Muslims), brick by brick,” contributed to the formation of attitudes and dispositions that resemble those of their youthful counterparts who were practicing overt street politics in the period leading up to early 2011. It was those orientations—toward social justice, civic consciousness, and inclusive decision-making—that contributed to the mass mobilizations that began on 25 January 2011 and gave them a unique character, uniting compassion and acts of service with the struggle for political change.

This thesis builds on recent conversations in the literature about religion, ethical subject formation, and politics. There is a growing conversation among contemporary theorists about the complex relationship between religious practices and political community in Egypt. Figures including Saba Mahmood, Charles Hirschkind, Asef Bayat, and Hussein Agrama point to the need to rethink inherited conceptions of the role of religion within public life. We build on their expanded definitions of the very nature of politics as comprising, indeed built upon, everyday gestures and practices that go largely unnoticed by elites. Collective volunteering seemed unremarkable when it began proliferating in Cairo, among young people who are often dismissed as having yielded to the authoritarian nature of dominant political forces, whether secular or Islamist. This article contributes to analysis of how those relationships have been playing out in Egypt since 2008. We also speculate in a preliminary way as to whether the experience of participation in a massive popular uprising in Egypt led volunteers to increase their subsequent political engagement during the post-uprising period.

Religion and civic culture

Youth have been in the vanguard of a trend toward more religious piety and practice in Egypt since at least the 1970s. They have introduced novel forms of dress, discourse, and social interaction based on adaptive expressions of what it means to be young and Muslim in the contemporary world. Popular discourse as reflected in the state-controlled media has reacted to these trends with pessimism if not alarm, viewing them as evidence of the deepening influence of conservative religious ideologies originating in the Gulf region or from the home-grown Muslim Brotherhood. The creative role of youth in forming new and expansive forms of Muslim public space hardly featured in mainstream popular discourse prior to 2011. Likewise in the West, popular assumptions are widespread that the revival of religious piety and adherence to Islamic practice is antithetical to the creation of democratic citizens. Little effort is made to distinguish moderate religious behavior from that of extremist political actors. In the academic and development literature about Middle Eastern youth, they are frequently characterized as disaffected from society by unemployment and other forms of social and economic exclusion. ⁵ Under circumstances of reduced opportunity, the implication is that youth are driven to take solace in religion and the mosque.

The notion that Muslim religious motivation could lead to greater social awareness and collective action has been propounded mainly by those studying fundamentalism or extremist violence. A literature on Islamism or “political Islam” has proliferated in recent years. However, the bulk of this work is motivated by concerns about the negative impacts of Islamization on global political order, and focuses on examination of Islamist conceptions of jihad or the state. ⁶ Much of this work is in the tradition of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis or Middle Eastern derivatives such as Bernard Lewis. ⁷ Scholars who have advanced the study of political Islam beyond this dichotomous framing examine similarities between critical and revolutionary theory in the Western intellectual tradition and the concerns, visions, and arguments of Islamist ideologues. ⁸ Authors like Benthall recognize that Islam is inherently identified with collective practices other than worship, so that public space includes not just the mosque but also spaces where charity and religious teaching take place (Benthall and Bellion-Jordan, 2003). Saba Mahmood identifies a gendered dimension to this, finding that study groups and other mosque-based activities provide avenues to empowerment and community influence for women who are normally perceived as powerless.

Yet few studies have focused on the youth dimension of Muslim public space. Those which have largely examine the presence of youth on-line or their interaction with consumerism and global youth culture. Youth-led community service and its potential role in transforming the political consciousness of volunteers have been neglected in Muslim societies until recently. ⁹ The insights of several recent projects, however, provide us with an avenue for rethinking the politics of religiously motivated youth volunteerism in terms of civic consciousness and the formation of virtuous citizens. Asef Bayat directs us to the ways in which localized, everyday actions—far from the centers of power and obscured by overt displays of protest—serve to alter the civic and political landscape of contemporary Egypt (Bayat, 2010). Bayat argues that much of this transformative action has a “post-Islamist” character missed by Western writers. ¹⁰ Saba Mahmood’s (2005) seminal study of the women’s mosque movement in Egypt, Politics of Piety, put a crack in the scholarly lens that fails to see political subjectivity in anything other than the work of institutions, parties, and protest movements. Her work, as well as Bayat’s, is heavily indebted to Talal Asad, whose writing (following Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue and other works) has shed new light on the ways in which the truly defining moral and political virtues and sensibilities of a culture are cultivated through often unassuming practices and talk. ¹¹

At the level of the nation, debates over the conditions required for transformation to participatory societies often rely on the notion that a democratic society is necessarily one in which religious identities are circumscribed. ¹² Citizen access to public participation and regular circulation of power, it is argued, can only exist where no one religion plays a dominant role in organizing societal life. Respect for religious freedom is indeed foundational to democracy. However, this does not require religion to be relegated to the private sphere, as contemporary debates around the meaning of laicism in France illustrate. One aspect of organized religion that could in theory contribute to democratic culture is the encouragement of social cohesion, where people feel bound to one another by mutual responsibility, shared values, and a sense of a good that is greater than the self.

The idea that religion is necessarily contrary to or counter-productive for a flourishing and open political community is of quite recent origin. Certainly, religion is a complex social force that has contributed to authoritarianism and conflict between communities. But there are many historical examples where religious groups and faith-based activity were pivotal forces in shaping cultures open to democratic practice. Alexis de Tocqueville, as he toured the United States in the early 1800s, noted that Americans had an exceptional sense of personal responsibility for the good of the whole, and posited that this was due to the strength of civic and religious communities. Churches and religious communities forged disparate immigrant groups into a polity with common purpose and trained their members into the behaviors and habits that underlie effective citizenship: “In America, religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.” ¹³ Far from requiring the exclusion of religion from the public sphere, communities built around faith were integral to the creation of an emergent democratic culture.

Our findings in contemporary Egypt compel us to push these observations further, to suggest that young Muslim volunteers cultivate recognizably democratic political virtues—but understood in a sense that does not preclude their being at the same time definitively Islamic. For a variety of historical reasons, Muslim societies remain subject to stereotypes and assumptions that cast Islamic norms and practices as obstacles to democracy. ¹⁴ It is illuminating to recall that similar accusations were made against Catholicism in Europe as late as the 1970s when Spain and Portugal entered their own democratic transitions. ¹⁵ Such ideas about Islam do not stand up to the reality of a growing body of work on religiously inspired movements and organizations across the Muslim world and the dispositions they encourage among their members. ¹⁶ The field research presented here thus argues for a more complex view of “the political,” one that enables us to see recent youth-led volunteering as both the expression of religious piety and conviction and a space for the formation of democratic dispositions. Those lines converged in 2011 in the mass uprisings against an entrenched regime. The mass protests were catalyzed by young Egyptians, both secular and religious, but seeking the same goal—a more open, participatory society in Egypt.

Youth and participation in Egypt

During the time that we began conducting field research in 2008, Egypt was a self-proclaimed democracy with almost none of the practices or institutions that give citizens a voice or effective political participation. Dissent was punished harshly, one party dominated political life, elections were universally viewed as manipulated, and the ruling regime had been in place for almost 30 years. In this environment, there was little space or encouragement for civic involvement. Nonetheless, over 40,000 civil society organizations were registered officially and a small human rights movement was growing despite active government intervention. Sullivan and Abed-Kotob characterize the climate during this time concisely, “civil society exists in Egypt, but it is severely restricted and ever under siege by a government concerned first and foremost with its own survival.” ¹⁷ Added pressures against civic engagement came from economic stagnation, a squeeze felt sharply by young Egyptians, as inflation and unemployment grew, while a tiny minority close to the ruling regime accumulated vast wealth and influence. Youth in all but the most advantaged social groups were deflected from public participation by the day-to-day challenges of finding housing and work or accumulating sufficient savings to marry. ¹⁸

Those realities, however, shielded another trend. Over the previous decade, a rise in the number of youth-led social initiatives was signaling greater desire to engage on their own terms in the public sphere. Rather than accepting exclusion from politics, civic life, or the market, some young Egyptians were forging new forms of engagement. Overtly political action, often initiated by university students, coalesced around mass protests beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Young protestors under the banner of the Kefaya movement made a number of pushes for domestic political change in the lead up to the 2005 presidential election, and discontent swelled again in 2008. These efforts led to the emergence of activist groups such as Youth for Change and later the April 6 movement which were addressing critical domestic issues such as labor rights and police violence. Youthful bloggers and those using social networking sites proliferated, some risking arrest to broadcast their views and calls to action. Youthful self-employment and entrepreneurship were also growing, as young people in the formal labor market faced unemployment as high as 50% for new entrants. ¹⁹

A less well-studied but expanding arena of public participation is that of youth-founded and youth-led organizations providing local social services. Involving less risk than political participation, and more oriented toward public social benefit than most entrepreneurial initiatives, these organizations proliferated in urban Egypt in the decade beginning roughly in 2000. They are for the most part sustained by volunteer efforts of tens or hundreds or thousands of members of roughly university age, though many are not students. Participants identify and organize services to meet community needs such as after-school tutoring, food and medicines for the poor, or offering computer and language training to youth in need of marketable skills. They differ from more conventional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that the leadership is young—often less than 25 years old—and there is less reliance on external donor support, as members contribute monthly dues and solicit further contributions from the Egyptian public.

Previous research by Ibrahim examined the sources of motivation for this wave of youthful volunteering, as well as the social and economic factors that encourage it by excluding youth from the labor market or access to other avenues of participation. ²⁰ In that study, volunteers between the ages of 18 and 27 overwhelmingly cited religious belief as their primary motivator, with secondary mention of desires to build a fairer Egypt and to add meaning to otherwise boring, stalled lives. The present analysis builds on that observation and examines the relationship of religious piety, social solidarity, and volunteerism, and the evolving definition of the open political culture that young Egyptians would like to claim for their own. We argue that this arena of youth participation has contributed significantly to a broader political culture that gave birth to the January 25 uprising.

Resala: Exemplar of youth innovation

The research on which this article is based originally examined three youth-led organizations in the period of 2008–2009, through in-depth interviews with founding leaders, long-term and more recent volunteers. The analysis reported here focuses on the largest of these organizations, Resala, an organization which was established in 1999 at Cairo University and 14 years later had over 100,000 volunteers, mainly in urban centers. In exploring the discourse or “talk”—explanations for youth participation as expressed by volunteers—we found that the rationales and experiences that accompany involvement in social service activities provided insight into a way of thinking about identity and roles in society that defied many of the usual associations between faith and public life. The stories told by volunteers suggest reformulations of the nature and reach of citizenship and “the political” in Egypt. We begin with a description of the history and mission of the organization followed by the methodology for gathering volunteer narratives.

In 1999, a young engineering professor at Cairo University, Sherif Abdelazeem, started reflecting on civic responsibility in his course on Engineering Ethics. He had recently returned to Egypt after finishing a PhD in Canada, with what he calls a deep curiosity about how the societies of the West and East can learn from one another. In Canada, he had noticed the prominence of communal responsibility, often embodied in volunteerism and community service. He began to ask questions in his engineering class about the way in which Egyptian society was structured, the responsibilities of its members to one another, and the ways in which it could be improved. “Why do we throw garbage in the streets?” he asked, “Why do we deface the walls?” He encouraged his students to think about their own roles in society, but his goals were primarily focused on classroom learning. Thus, he was surprised when his students began to push things further. “I wasn’t planning to create Resala,” he explains. “Students came to me and said, ‘Ok, what are we going to do?’ I was shocked. What were we going to do? I didn’t know. So I asked them, and we decided to start a student club.”

That same year, his students initiated the group they named “Resala,” a term that means both mission and message. The mission was to contribute positively to the community and to spread the message that everyone who is able should give to support the poor and that young people can be effective participants in their society. The founding members ran community clean-up campaigns and blood drives, visited nursing homes, and spent time helping in orphanages. Resala had 60 volunteers in its first year; in its second year, a piece of land was donated by an admiring citizen and Resala evolved over time from a student club to a registered NGO (gamay’a). The organization has grown to encompass more than 60 branch chapters with over 100,000 young volunteers in its database, a large percentage of whom are female. ²¹

A visit to a typical branch site in the afternoon or evening finds it brimming with activity and purpose. Volunteers run a Big Brother/Big Sister program pairing volunteers with orphan children for regular visits, literacy programs in poor neighborhoods, and services for deaf and blind students, including Braille computer courses. Volunteers deliver medicines and food to indigent families in urban neighborhoods and villages on the outskirts of Cairo. One popular program collects unwanted household gift items from middle-class families to redistribute to poor couples readying their apartments for marriage; another program collects, cleans, and resells used clothing at low prices. A more recent and rapidly growing arm of the organization offers personal development courses in leadership, language, CV writing, and other skills, as part of an expanding curriculum addressing the obstacles to youth employment.

Dr Abdelazeem’s narrative emphasizes that he helped to catalyze what is essentially a youth-initiated and youth-run organization. University-aged youth were at the helm in naming Resala, selecting activities and promoting membership widely among their peers. They continue to pioneer new program areas; Abdelazeem jokingly laments the numerous phone messages he receives daily where he is “bombarded with ideas.” When asked to explain the rapid growth and popularity of Resala, Dr Abdelazeem posits that it fills a deep need for young people, who have few other outlets, to be engaged in meaningful activity. Egyptian Christians, he says, have paths open to them to volunteer through their churches, but Muslim youth have fewer institutional opportunities. ²² Abdelazeem attributes the rapid growth of Resala to the desires of youth to do something beneficial with their time, to be proactive and feel they can affect their surroundings positively. He makes clear that while having an impact on underserved groups in Egypt is a priority—and a large part of its popularity among the general public who contribute funds or in kind items—this is in his view more of a side-effect. ²³ Resala’s primary goal is to be a vehicle through which youth can learn and practice contributing to their society. ²⁴

Is this emphasis on personal development also reflected in the views and discourse of young volunteers? In order to answer that question and to explore the relationship between social service and more overtly political civic engagement, the authors visited five Resala branch centers in various districts of greater Cairo. In addition to observing the operations of the branches and engaging in informal group discussions, we conducted in-depth interviews with 26 young volunteers between the ages of 18 and 24 as well as 5 salaried staff members. The latter were only slightly older as they were drawn from the ranks of former volunteers, typically selected for their dedication to the goals of the organization.

The contact with branch leaders and introduction to long-term volunteers was made by leaders of Resala who form a central outreach unit that supports branch activities, conducts training, and assists with problem solving as needed. Subsequent interviewees were selected via a snowball method and thus are not representative of the larger volunteer population. However, the authors made a concerted effort to interview both new and long-term volunteers, students and nonstudents, males and females, and to seek out some cases of lapsed volunteers who were no longer active in Resala.

Initial interviews at Resala branch centers took place between 2008 and 2010. Additional interviews and visits were made in the months after the tumultuous uprising of 25 January 2011 to explore how Resala volunteers had participated in those 18 days and the subsequent period through mid-2012. Thus, the data gathering spanned a critical 5-year period in the recent history of Egypt.

A generation apart

Previous studies of emerging nations have noted how each youth generation, to some degree, constructs an identity in dialectic with those who came before. ²⁵ After gaining independence in 1952, Egypt adopted a public discourse of building the modern nation. For the first youth generation, this translated into an Arab nationalist identity and pursuit of collective and technocratic notions of development. The generation that followed lost faith in those ideals and were more likely to pursue privatized family and professional goals. For both of these generations, religion had become a backgrounded component of identity and discourse. ²⁶ Fifty years later, a third generation is constructing their own identity in dialectic with this past, one that is more likely to embrace faith and virtuous adherence to Islamic values and practices.

When Resala volunteers are asked why they volunteer, most respondents root their answers firmly in their Muslim faith. A response typical of those who use the generational frame was given by a male volunteer at a Cairo branch center who said that his generation is learning how to cultivate more faithful lives compared with past generations. “The Muslim society is weak because our parents’ generation moved far away from religion. We have come back and now know more than they did at our age about the true path.” As this illustrates, volunteers’ explanations also convey a confidence that the activities of Resala are precisely what need to be done in society. In other words, with few exceptions, volunteers do not describe their activities at Resala as a second-choice that they have settled on in the absence of other options to work or pursue leisure.

The simple message of “the joy of giving” ²⁷ —that the practice of charitable giving benefits both the volunteer and those served—harmonizes what is otherwise a very diverse pool of persons and reasons for joining. Inclusiveness is another prominent theme, as volunteers emphasized—particularly in recent years—that anyone is welcome to join and at the same time that anyone in need should receive their services. This inclusiveness is represented outwardly by the diversity of forms of dress and patterns of speech among the participants. For example, one finds women wearing niqab and women with styled hair on full display; ²⁸ and though many participants cite Qur’an and prophetic teachings, others employ the language of rights and democracy, and on several occasions we heard the language of entrepreneurship and free enterprise to describe the aims of service. ²⁹

The only requirement according to most volunteers interviewed is that one be invested in the interests of others beyond the self. The aspect of social engagement for the good of others is the common thread running throughout the interviews. When we tried to press this matter of inclusiveness, one of our key informants explained only one limitation: “everyone [must] come to Resala with pure intention—if you come without this intention, you will not find a place here.” These qualities of service and flexible acceptance may provide a clue in anticipation of our question as to why Resala volunteers made a smooth transition from community service to meeting the needs of the revolutionary moment in January 2011—a moment that most likely succeeded precisely because of the many displays of solidarity across religious and class differences.

Politics or religion?

While service in Resala is broadly understood to embrace diverse volunteers and beneficiaries, the choice to join is predominantly framed in Muslim religious terms. Islamic doctrine enjoins believers to give attention to the needs of the poor, through compassion as well as required sharing of wealth through the institution of zakat. That disposition was muted over the second half of the 20th century when the Egyptian state project was identified largely with secular aims, monopolized the provision of welfare, and centralized the distribution of charitable contributions. Citizens were discouraged from participating autonomously in the solution of social problems. By the beginning of the 21st century, that experiment was widely perceived to have failed. While most Egyptians placed at least partial blame on bad governance and corruption, a parallel strand of thinking blames the secular neglect of Islamic norms and values. This was reinforced by well-funded religious preaching and programs aimed at Egypt from the Gulf countries. Thus, the religious framing Resala volunteers use to explain motivations to volunteer is a reflection of the view of a generation that has “lost faith” in secular development or state-led solutions to social problems.

Most volunteers stated their primary motivation in terms of specific Islamic teachings. Many explained that they chose to volunteer because of the notion of thawab, the idea that one receives rewards from God in this life and the next for good deeds. One young man explained, “I am accumulating good capital in this life and in the next.” Another volunteer explained that thawab is a large part of why new volunteers begin coming. Even for those who do not initially think in terms of thawab and come for other reasons, perhaps because they are unemployed and lacking meaningful activity, thawab becomes a powerful motivation to continue as they learn more about it from their co-volunteers. We heard repeatedly that through Resala, people learn the true practice of Islam.

Given this vocabulary, which largely avoids reference to matters of politics or the state, the significance of developments in youth volunteering can easily be overlooked or considered irrelevant to political change. As Saba Mahmood points out in the Politics of Piety, activities that do not fit conceptions of transgressive behavior when defined as explicit protest and opposition are often disregarded in political analysis. Mahmood looks at women’s mosque groups in Egypt to illuminate the subtle ways in which individuals can find agency and participate in transforming their environments. In contrast to positions that assume “secularism’s progressive formulations necessarily exhaust ways of living meaningfully and richly in this world,” ³⁰ Mahmood argues that women’s piety in contemporary mosque groups has a much more significant effect that might be initially apparent. She states, “It would be wrong to characterize the women’s mosque movement as an abandonment of politics. On the contrary, the form of piety the movement seeks to realize is predicated upon, and transformative of, many aspects of social life,” ³¹ and likewise, we suggest, with the growing but largely unexplored youth volunteer movement.

In the Middle East, the opposition movements that attract most attention are typically Islamist challenges to the ruling regimes or secular challenges to the religious establishment. In an environment of limited space for political participation, however, individuals and groups create forms of resistance and self-expression that may not appear on the surface to be overtly political, and yet have important consequences. ³² Youth volunteering, and the institutional and communal structures it has created, should be understood as one of these forms.

In some ways, this is not surprising. Research in Western settings links the growth of volunteerism with vibrancy of civic society participation. In developing countries, volunteerism has been considered a positive predecessor of democratic change. ³³ However, the primacy of religious identity in Muslim societies has led some to conclude that volunteering of this kind leads to a strengthening of Islamic belief but not necessarily the strengthening of civic participation. Wiktorowicz and Taji-Farouki argue that charitable organizations in the Middle East are part of a struggle at the level of discourse, culture, and behavior to promote the values of Islam over “cultural imperialism” of which democracy is one manifestation of Western influence. ³⁴ In this view, an anti-democratic impulse may be driving participation.

Exploration into the views of volunteers at Resala, however, suggests that neither of these scenarios adequately described the youth engaged in organized social service in Egypt. Our interviews reveal a more subtle understanding of the relationship between religion, culture, and socio-political change. Most volunteers do not see or describe what they are doing as explicitly political. Neither do they believe their work represents a battle between the values of the East versus those of the West, as if this were a clear-cut dichotomy. Indeed, on a number of occasions during our conversations, volunteers pointed to European and North American countries as examples of how societies find ways to encourage participation among citizens. Rather, these youth-led charitable organizations should be understood as challenging a particular understanding of social service and cultural practice as separate from the realm of politics; challenging, that is, the very definition of politics. We observed youth working through the discourses of religion and culture to carve out and own new spaces for civic participation—for, as they put it, nurturing a new Egypt.

How, then, should we understand the role of religion and politics in these practices? For many youth in the period from 2007 to 2010, the dissatisfaction with their social condition ran deep. It was not hard to dive quickly into heated discussions with Resala volunteers about corruption, inequality, and nonresponsive government; they expressed a desire for change, but articulated a sense that almost all avenues appeared closed. One volunteer recalled that period bluntly, “before the revolution, all doors in Egypt were closed; the only door open was volunteering.” Adult-run NGOs did not include them, families were spaces in which elders dictated to the young, ³⁵ and political expression, even Internet use and blogging, could be dangerous.

When speaking publicly about Resala prior to 2011, the founder was always careful to deny political or macro-social goals. Leaders in Resala emphasize its character as “unapologetically charity”; it is about “the joy of giving and the goal is to practice giving.” Abdelazeem called it the Academy of Giving and he intends this to sound as far from oppositional organizing as possible. Furthermore, he and many volunteers insist that Resala is not inherently a Muslim organization—again, we were told that anyone who wanted to give time was welcome. At the same time, religious greetings are common inside the branches and Dr Sherif uses faith-based messages as part of his recruiting repertoire. Most likely, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, for it is also the case that some members who tried to utilize Resala as a preaching platform were marginalized and eventually left. ³⁶

Many volunteers express personal benefits for participation; they speak of feeling “less frustrated,” “close to Allah,” and “at peace” when they volunteer. Interviews suggest that volunteering with Resala provides a way of coping with difficulties in the lives of young Egyptians. When asked why they volunteer, a common pairing was to say that they come “to help people,” and “for Allah and my religion.” But these same volunteers added a litany of other reasons: that Resala provides a way to get out of the house where they were otherwise doing nothing; to meet other young people; and to build up some credentials as they pursue jobs. In some instances, we found that Resala has served as a kind of informal marriage market, and it is not unusual for young volunteers to meet there and become engaged. Volunteering therefore provides a way to manage the multiple frustrations youth face in their day-to-day lives. ³⁷ Within a climate that discouraged political participation and yet was receptive or neutral to religious activity, youth found it easier to gain approval for social service from their families, teachers, and other mentors. Once parents are assured that Resala is a legitimate service organization without political or extremist objectives, they tend to support volunteer service as productive and safe for their children.

However, while most participants did not explicitly identify their actions as political, some were eager to explain that aspects of social change are embedded in their work. One volunteer noted that they were not just giving charity to the poor but branching into more systemic development activities: job-training programs, providing work for the unemployed, literacy programs, and tutoring for students. This volunteer asserted that, though the work was not “politics,” it was changing people’s lives in ways that would be lasting and would change the fabric of society. Furthermore, she explained that it is the educated and elite who tend to have the power to change society; “… unless we spend time with those who are in greater need,” she noted, “how can we know what changes are necessary?” Resala provides opportunities for its volunteers to have cross-class exposure and learn about the situation and needs of different socio-economic brackets. Several volunteers explained Resala’s impact on them in just these terms: it was not until they traveled to the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Cairo that they really understood the poverty of many of their compatriots. ³⁸ This knowledge can be viewed as contributing to the growth of ideas of social justice, solidarity, and the need for greater equity in society. Moreover, volunteers note the powerful impact of actually seeing the response of those they serve—both volunteers and recipients feel empowered by observing that they need not rely on an impersonal government institution.

Beyond providing a context for self-expression and for developing a sense of responsibility and social justice, we believe the activities of these volunteers indicate an emerging reformulation of the relationship between religion, politics, and social change. In discussions with volunteers, we noted a sense of a strong link between ethics and social or political change: charity and virtue were part of a vision of creating a stronger society. These youth see what they are doing on a religious and cultural level as laying the foundation for a different kind of social and political culture. They were paving a new path away from what Mohammad Arkoun describes as

either the idealist, apologetic sermons of religious leaders, or official calls for a secularized civic conscience—both of which circumvent the need to reactivate ethical concern with building civil societies qua new historical platforms for the genesis of effective spaces for citizenship. ³⁹

Part of changing society involves attention to creating a culture of virtuous, responsible individuals. One practices good deeds in order to become a better person, and one attempts to become a better person in the belief that if people can change, society will change. Thus, one volunteer said that at Resala they are trying to “transform society from the bottom up.” Along these same lines, volunteers repeatedly presented the analogy of building up a new and better society “brick by brick.”

The notion that one can change one’s society through the cultivation of socially bonded and ethical communities is part of a broad ethos that has precedents in ancient Mediterranean societies and stretches through classical Arabic and Islamic moral thought. In the republics of Greece and Rome, personal virtue formed a significant aspect of building a civic culture that would be politically responsible. In the West, however, that early notion was eventually abandoned in favor of a liberal Rawlsian framework in which institutions would establish justice regardless of the moral standards of the people. However, more recently, the debate has been revived with an acknowledgement that for a democracy to function adequately it needs a populace that is committed to civic good, holds the government accountable, and, ideally, fosters a sense of community built upon responsibility and compassion toward others. Indeed, Amyn Sajoo notes that while contemporary liberalism tends to separate civic and ethical norms (preferring to privatize the latter), a different trend may be emerging. He explains,

That pattern appears to be reversing itself in some contexts, notably of transitional states where the frailty of the rule of law leaves ethical norms to play a key part in sustaining public order … There is no substitute for the rule of law, of course; yet both strategic and moral purposes are served by anchoring civic life in the revival of ethical discourse … After all, appeals to religious tradition already colour political militancy; engaging and reshaping that discourse is a challenge that civic actors can ill afford to ignore. ⁴⁰

One can note a number of recent manifestations of this trend around the globe. It is likely one of the drivers for greater social responsibility within the corporate world, and the fact that Western youth in MBA programs are demanding of their universities courses on the role of business in contributing to more just societies. We have come to see youth-led organizations like Resala as a part of this movement to return ethics to public space. The reason that Resala was able to attract over 100,000 volunteers in a short span of years can be understood, at least in part, as contributing to the desire for communities that are oriented toward justice and social concern. As an “Academy of Giving,” Resala offers apprenticeship for future civic roles and gives young volunteers the experience of creating a positive impact on their social environment.

Cultivating this sense of responsibility, an empowerment turns out, regardless of the leaders’ intentions, to be an eminently political practice. When the authors returned to Resala branch centers following the mass uprisings of January 2011, they found both high levels of participation in those events, and a unique perspective on their meaning.

Resala youth in the January 25 movement

Shortly after street protests began in 2011, one of the authors spoke with the founder of Resala. He reported with some amazement that hundreds of members had contacted him from Midan Tahrir (Tahrir Square), slept there, and participated in the unique blend of political protest and civil solidarity that characterized the movement. Many were also involved in new youth groups that formed in the wake of the initial protests. He said that volunteers felt “well-prepared” by their Resala experience to convert community-service skills into street organizing with almost seamless rapidity. We wanted to understand this phenomenon and to know what had transpired once the initial 18-day protest ended with the fall of the Mubarak regime. We returned to the branch centers where initial interviews had taken place and held both group and individual discussions with long-term volunteers, some but not all of whom had participated in earlier interviews.

First, it was clear that few if any of the Resala volunteers were among the initial planners who catalyzed protests starting on 25 January. Those were largely activists with several years of street protest experience, including young leaders in the April 6 movement, various labor groups, and the coalition around Kefaya. We did speak to a couple of Resala volunteers who had also been involved with the April 6 movement. However, these members, like their nonactivist peers, were committed to maintaining a distinction between those “political” groups and Resala—a matter that we will return to below. Based on these cases of individuals who participated in both protest groups and volunteer organizations, we began to understand that what distinguished more political activists and those who participated in Resala previously had not been degrees of fear of the consequences of their actions or assessments of whether demonstrations would be effective. Resala volunteers saw pure political activity such as protests and calls for removal of the regime as insufficient to the kinds of transformations that they consider necessary. They view Resala as fulfilling a more comprehensive set of basic societal requisites.

Consistent with this view, many volunteers also characterized the January 25 movement as “different somehow” from previous efforts at revolutionary change. Some described how they had signed up on a Facebook group to attend protests on the 25th, which coincided with a forced national holiday, the hated “Police Day.” The crowds were larger and better organized than anyone, most particularly the government security forces, had expected. As sunset fell, some protesters decided spontaneously to stay in Tahrir. That brought forth brutal police attacks in the night and many injuries. As medics and other protesters responded with improvised field stations, this formed the beginning of a wave of other services in the Midan. By the following Friday, demonstrators had organized food, water, clean-up, and toilet facilities to serve the crowds that poured into Tahrir that day. Over subsequent days, other innovative services sprang up—cell phone charging stations rigged to lampposts, a lost and found, and security cordons in each of the feeder streets checking to make sure that weapons and government infiltrators were kept out. These were activities and spaces that Resala volunteers understood and where they could make a contribution.

Over time, early participants used their social networks to draw in others from Resala branches. The skills and discipline honed over months of managing volunteer activities enabled them to make a contribution to the nascent protest community, helping to form its character and distinct practices of service. Based on his communications with volunteers, Abdelazeem hypothesizes that Resala participants’ experience as seasoned volunteers also enabled them to stay the course when violence and hardship set in.

He noted that the Resala mission of building social responsibility, coupled with the discipline of regular commitment to a cause, was easily transformed into a desire to push for changes consistent with a democratic ethos—what Talal Asad has called an ethos that “involves the desire for mutual care, distress at the infliction of pain and indignity.” ⁴¹ We believe this is one of the avenues through which Resala volunteers’ largely religious understanding of the need for public action harmonized with what others in Tahrir recognized as more secular calls for change. What is significant here is that the dominant demands for change, while varied and creative, including much native humor, did not express overtly democratic themes. Instead, the young demonstrators chanted for “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice” as well as a key demand for Mubarak to leave power. Dignity was another potent and frequent theme. Those interrelated ideas, of course, had been central tenants of the Resala program for over a decade.

Other slogans in the Midan called for free expression, tolerance between Muslims and Christians, and rejecting corruption and foreign hegemony. Resala’s dominant discourse prior to the uprising had largely kept away from these themes, while paving the way (somewhat inadvertently) for their embrace. This was accomplished, we believe, through creating a culture of respect, solidarity, personal virtue, and responsibility. Those ideals were consistent in the end with a desire for, and readiness to demand freedom, justice, and accountability. Furthermore, the skills acquired through participation in youth service organizations—assessing the needs of others, implementing solutions, accommodating plurality of opinion, planning collective action, and disciplining private preferences to meet a common goal—all became important tools for the effectiveness with which youth-driven action actually resulted in dramatic change in Egypt. ⁴²

Our recent interviews confirmed that Resala participants were often in the lead in providing medical supplies as well as blood donations during periods of violent confrontation in the initial 18-day uprising and the continuing protests that followed. The learning curve was steep. Volunteers who had not been actively involved in the January 25 events reported quickly mobilizing for later periods of conflict, for example, in November 2011, in downtown Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Moreover, a widespread volunteer initiative for street cleaning in the wake of Mubarak’s removal was based on skills acquired through the well-established Resala programs for neighborhood clean-up and beautification. This program expanded further to include the creation of small parks and green areas in city centers. These transformations signal a new appreciation for and sense of ownership of public space.

Unexpected findings

While findings from interviews conducted between June 2011 and March 2012 largely support our expectations about the relevance of youth volunteerism to the dramatic changes that have taken place in Egypt, we uncovered some interesting challenges to our original ideas as well. Large numbers of Resala volunteers did in fact participate actively in the 2011 movement to topple the Mubarak regime and set Egypt on a new course. But the picture that emerges is far more complex and nuanced. An organization of over 100,000 members is bound to be diverse, and our interviews were not uniform; we uncovered multiple viewpoints and responses to the January 25 events.

As mentioned previously, the majority of Resala volunteers are young women, possibly as high as 90%. ⁴³ They are mostly single and range in age between 18 and 25. Many female volunteers we spoke to said that, although they wanted to participate in the demonstrations, they were prevented from doing so by families concerned for their safety. In several such cases we heard, “I was supporting [the protestors] in my heart.” One young woman reported having tricked her family into going out by saying she would stay in the neighborhood and then sneaking to join in the Midan. A number of others recalled their searches for a suitable companion (a brother, cousin, aunt, or uncle) before finally being able to go. In most cases, the young women reported going to the square toward the end of the 18-day period.

Many of the young men who joined did so from the very beginning. All reported having gone with or been in close contact with other Resala volunteers during these days, so there was a solidarity aspect to their participation. Some described having participated in services such as providing medical supplies or street cleaning, while others said they spent their time simply being together and talking with other Egyptians. Such experiences and practices of being of service together are themselves important components of Resala’s philosophy. Many reflections from volunteers note that what has impacted them most in their time with Resala has been their opportunities to “talk to different kinds of people” and to “see how poor people really live.” This was an oft-repeated observation by nonvolunteers in Tahrir as well, who marveled at the diversity of Egyptians they were interacting with for the first time.

Several relevant patterns emerged in the conversations about the relationship between Resala’s work and the famed 18 days. First, the revolution signaled to volunteers we interviewed that people were changing from within. One young man described the relationship between Resala’s work and the revolutionary spirit as one of seamless alignment. He offered a theory that what happened in early 2011 was not one revolution, but three simultaneously: A revolution of politics (overthrowing the regime), a revolution of cleaning up the country, and a revolution of the self. Many others stated with pride that “during the revolution, people were good.” One proclaimed that the whole of Egypt was an altruistic parallel country in that time. These statements imply that for volunteers, true change and reform cannot be merely “political,” but must be accompanied by deeper changes internal to people—specifically the cultivation of virtue and piety. Indeed, one young woman remarked that what the country requires to stay on a course for positive change is “religion”—why? Because “it creates ethics, and that’s what we need most [right now].” ⁴⁴

Second, as a result of the 18 days, volunteers think of themselves as citizens (muwaṭaneen) in ways they never did before. One volunteer explicitly connected the Resala mission to the production of good, useful citizens. Faith was also in the equation: When asked what it means to be a good citizen he said, “using in the best way possible whatever gifts God has given you.” In another striking statement of the new commitment to country, one girl said, “Egypt is like our newborn baby—we all want to give it the best possible care.” Thus, for volunteers, being a good citizen is not simply about the secular duties of voting and tax-paying, but a richer repertoire of commitments and dispositions, similar to those that drive the Resala organization.

A third and related point, volunteers used the term unity (ittiḥād) to account for differences between this uprising and previous efforts to mobilize opposition. We were told that this time around, “demonstrations really were about something significant for all Egyptians—it was a project of unity and it was about justice and freedom.” This idea of unity—the sense that “we are all Egyptians” and we can work together to make a better life for ourselves—resonated deeply with Resala volunteers. Indeed, it is a large part of why they have traditionally dissociated themselves from the divisiveness of everyday “politics.”

We also found that volunteers have continued to contribute to efforts at the interface of charity work and street politics. In the year after the initial 18-day uprising, volunteers described forming a number of convoys to supply medical care, first aid materials, and organization know-how during periodic times of conflict and confrontation. For example, in November 2011 and again in December, downtown Cairo witnessed heavy fighting between protesters and army and police units in the blocks between Tahrir Square and the Interior Ministry. Volunteers reported having provided services to both protestors—and this time to uniformed police and military personnel as well. While this indiscriminate care in some ways reflects a reluctance to take sides, we propose an alternative interpretation: to be on the side of risk, care, and responsiveness to need is to be on the side of key democratic transformations which are in fact consistent with those showcased in the January 25 movement.

Whether or not they joined the initial protests, volunteers’ understanding of their work has remained remarkably constant. In response to the authors’ attempts to discuss the dramatic transformations and new opportunities in Egypt, most volunteers maintained their focus on the task of service—they have not rushed to new opportunities for more explicit political engagement, but rather view their work as of ongoing importance in the “new Egypt.” Two seasoned volunteers said almost in unison, “there’s no need for Resala to change; we always have been and always will be about helping those in need.” With a failing economy and increased social instability, they see their service role as more important than ever. That unwavering commitment to volunteerism signals a particular space that these youth have carved out: a space devoted to building a better society, but one that is buffered from the dramatic fluctuations, gains, and losses in the battles for state power, what they mean when using the term “politics.”

Conclusion

The satisfaction, optimism, and sense of unity that characterized the spirit of the initial January 25 movement have diminished significantly among Egyptians in more recent years—particularly as the country has settled into a third post-Mubarak presidency and with the crystallization of fresh divisions and partisan alliances. The optimism and sense of purpose have not, however, diminished among our volunteer informants. Rather, new divisiveness reaffirms their sense that what they call politics—contentious, partisan politics, and even what they call “activism” or street protest—is not the best medium through which to carry out the country’s most important work in the aftermath of the uprising.

Perhaps the main contribution of this study is to provide context to the question about how religion and politics are related in the experiences of contemporary youth. For those whose faith initially led to a commitment to social service volunteering, we can see a clear pathway from faith to ethically motivated social behavior and thence to heightened motivation for participation in a political change movement. The ethical values that volunteering reinforces—empathy and compassion for the excluded, desires for fairness and aversion to corruption—were not dissimilar from the values motivating oppositional political organizing among Egyptian youth. And while our sample was overwhelmingly Muslim, there is no reason to think that a similar group of young volunteers motivated by their Christian faith would be substantially different. It also appears that religious faith is mediated by a set of values that predispose support for social movements more readily than partisan politics-as-usual. (Think of the US civil rights movement and various Latin American liberation movements, and the ways in which religiously motivated actors emerged as leaders and organizers.)

These understandings are important correctives to the journalistic tropes that Islam somehow predisposes youth to violent or extreme politics. While hundreds of thousands of Egyptian young people are motivated by faith to volunteer or to support the peaceful ouster of a dictator, only a handful are attracted to extreme politics. Early studies of the profiles of young Egyptians attracted to Islamic extremism in Egypt ⁴⁵ found that most recruits were above-average academically and ambitious youth from rural or marginalized backgrounds. Most felt thwarted in their personal ambitions by a rigid system of class privilege. They were easy prey for radical groups in search of angry youth who would not question the orders they received. It is probably more fruitful to examine both those recruitment strategies and the personal trajectories of vulnerable youth than to place emphasis on religious doctrine.

In an interesting way, the Resala volunteers have turned our initial hypothesis on its head. We had asked the question, “Did participation in Resala prepare you to join in the January 25 movement for social change?” Their responses eclipse our inquiry and demand a reversal of its terms. To paraphrase these views,

We have been working for social change all along and are happy that others in our generation joined us in demonstrating the transformative power of collaborative efforts to build a just and virtuous society. That work must continue now at grassroots level for the realization of our generation’s dreams.

We close with illuminating reflections from the anthropologist Hussein Agrama (2012). He offers a perspective on the contemporary relationship between religious and political action that seems to fit our young volunteers’ own views. Agrama notes,

… one may not be obliged to ask and answer the question of where to draw the line between religion and politics [in order] to foster the mutual care, attunement to pain and distress, concern for truth, nonjudgmental disposition and tendency toward inclusion [associated with the democratic ethos] … Indeed, the only way to obtain [this ethos] might be to forge the capacity to be indifferent to the question of their distinction.

Our interactions with the volunteers of Resala suggest just such an “indifference.” It is an indifference which, when one witnesses their enthusiasm and the fruits of their efforts, appears not very indifferent at all.

Postscript

Two and a half years following the January 25 revolution referenced in this article, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians once again took to the streets in another convulsive uprising, this time against the first post-revolution elected President, Mohamed Morsy, who had not yet completed his first year in office. As the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, he also had a large following who mobilized counter-protests in the streets of major cities on his behalf. The country went through a dangerous period of polarized and sometimes violent demonstrations on both sides until the Egyptian military stepped in to remove Morsy and announce a new political roadmap. This was seen either as an army coup by the Brotherhood supporters or as a popular mandate for removal by his detractors. After the pro-Morsy protests were removed in a bloody sweep by security forces that cost many hundreds of lives, a series of arrests and court orders to disband the Brotherhood and its political party wing ensued.

How did these events affect the large and ideologically diverse membership of Resala and impact its work? That is the subject of a forthcoming publication. Here, we simply note that in the early weeks of the 2013 uprising and its aftermath, politics was not completely “left outside the door” as was the organization’s operating creed. Disagreements arose among volunteers at branch centers and sometimes erupted into hot arguments and withdrawals from participation. The super-charged pro-military media began rumors that Resala delivery trucks had been seen at Brotherhood demonstrations, though evidence was never provided. This led to a precipitous decline in donations of both funds and in-kind materials and lasted for several months. Some volunteers dropped out, usually those who had not been regular participants for very long, or others responding to family pressures to do so.

The Resala leadership began a slow and methodical process of rebuilding confidence in its brand and apolitical philosophy of service. Prevailing popular opinion, which began to question everything remotely connected to faith-based or Muslim orientations, made the task all the more difficult. However, by late 2014, at the time of this writing, Resala had survived the politically fraught aftermath of yet another regime change in Egypt. It is once again expanding branches and programs and attracting new volunteers. A country weary of drama and political reversals seems ready to accept the status quo for the time being and to focus on a return to economic development and what they hope will become a measure of stability. The Resala story continues, as a unique site of youthful empowerment and meaning-production during a time of stressful national transition.