A Short History of the Egyptian Youth Movement

Special IssueRita Latif — Published March 6, 2015

Student movements have played a significant role in shaping the country’s political scene. The movement started in Egypt in the 1970s when Anwar El Sadat was president, mainly by regrouped students from different Egyptian universities. It kept getting stronger as students influenced wider public opinion and pressured the army in times of war with Israel, especially in 1979 when they opposed the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. However, under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, this movement started to slowly disappear and it was at its weakest in the 1990s. The president tried to eliminate anything that could threaten peace and order.

Over the past few years, political youth groups in Egypt have started to develop and reach out to people outside the boundaries of the university campuses. Now it is no longer known as the Student Movement, but as the Egyptian Youth Movement. Influenced by the politics of other countries, students started to communicate using technology and social media like Facebook and Twitter as their weapons.

In 2011, the educated youth of Egypt revolted. They decided to stand up to the corruption that has been going on for a long time and fight for their rights and the rights of the less fortunate. The Egyptian revolution—also known as the January 25 Revolution—shook the world, as no one expected it to have such an impact. For many years Egypt was ruled by governments that cared more about the money they have in their pockets than the benefit of the country and its people. It all started with the Arab Spring when many countries from the Middle East like Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Syria turned against their governments asking for change.

They wanted to achieve democracy, human rights, free and fair elections, more employment opportunities and, most importantly, social justice. Even though things didn’t work at first, the movement kept going for months until they reached their goal. The thing is, nobody really understood what was truly happening at that time. This revolution was peaceful and nonviolent, with the goal of “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice,” but things started to get more complicated as each political party wanted to control and impose their own agenda.

This division made way for violence that was mainly targeting the revolutionaries.People were hoping that things would get calmer after President Mubarak stepped down, but the political situation had become unstable and the revolution didn’t fully reach its goals. On top of all this, some local and international media added fuel to the fire by publishing facts and stories that were mostly fake or biased.

I am Egyptian and to be honest, none of this meant much to me at first as I never felt affected by it. That changed one day when, while sitting comfortably at home, I saw other Egyptians just like me get killed trying to reach a certain dream. I felt like helping my country. I wanted to participate in the demonstrations and to show the world the truth.

When I first came to Canada people started asking me questions about Egypt. Most of them were weird and I thought they were jokes or a way to break the ice, but I was surprised to find that people did mean what they were saying about Egypt. Not only do people think that we live in pyramids, ride camels to work and don’t know what music is, but they also think that we walk in the streets killing each other!

That’s not the case. Yes, the situation is still unstable and things are getting messier and more complicated with the presence of ISIS at our borders, but Egypt is still standing strong, ready to start a new era filled with peace and prosperity. The new president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is being faced with lots of challenges; he must maintain the peace within Egypt but, due to the Muslim Brotherhood, this isn’t an easy task.

What the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to do is to divide the population and cause lots of trouble in order to regain power again. But until now, el-Sisi has done a pretty good job of satisfying the democratic desires of the Egyptians.

He has created the best constitution Egypt has ever had. He’s been trying to reunite and reinforce the relations between the Christians and Muslims by becoming the first Egyptian president to actually celebrate Christmas with the Coptic Christians in January and he’s working on improving Egypt’s international relations and with the rest of the arab world.

Nothing is perfect or easy at first, but achieving social justice is well worth the effort. Egyptians are now more aware of this and are doing their best to forget about the past and build a better future for themselves and for future generations.