Published: February 16, 2011

Egyptian protesters danced, prayed and set off fireworks in the streets of Tahrir Square. New Yorkers embraced, shouted and waved Egyptian flags outside of the U.N.  All over the world, Facebook statuses flashed the news in the moments after it happened: on Feb. 11, former president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak resigned from his position, ceding his authority to military leaders. For some Fordham students, faculty and alumni, Mubarak’s resignation and the Egyptian opposition movement’s future challenges are personal as well as political.

“It was scary, watching it all happen,” said Monica Hanna, FCLC ’12, who has family living in Cairo. “It was wonderful, but at the same time it meant talking to my family and not knowing what was going to happen next. My parents weren’t sleeping for a while. My dad wouldn’t talk about anything else; he would go to work, come home and then be either on the phone talking about it or looking at news online. But of course he was afraid because his parents were there, so we’re glad things have calmed down.”

Maryam Zoma, FCLC ’10, studied abroad at the American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2008 and was also relieved at the success of the protests. “I still have friends in Egypt, and I couldn’t get a hold of them and I was freaking out. I knew they were protesting and it was hard because a part of me wanted to be there, but the other part of me said, ‘I’m not Egyptian; this isn’t my fight; I don’t feel like it’s my place to be there.’ But now, I wish I could be there to party with them! It’s amazing.”

After 18 days of demonstrations, the youth-led revolt succeeded in its goal to end Mubarak’s 30-year term.  Although the former president’s resignation has been a cause for celebration among Egyptians and international advocates for democracy, there are still challenges facing Egypt’s transformation to a fully democratic society. So far, no clear leader has emerged from the opposition movement and the timeline for a free and fair election has yet to be determined.

“The biggest challenges will be economic development, creating jobs, ending corruption and promoting a balance in the public space so that no single group outweighs the others in influence and importance,” said Jean-Marc Oppenheim, adjunct assistant professor of history, who will be teaching a class called “Modern Egypt” in the Fall 2011 semester. “They want to have an election in six months but it’s clear that this is a task that the military will not accomplish in six months. The best we can hope for is that they set the tone for integrity, openness and balance out of which will emerge the longer-term efforts, groups and leadership that will try to implement reforms and give democracy a chance to flower.”

Fordham students have also seen these obstacles firsthand in their travels to Egypt, citing the country’s struggling economy and culture of corruption as motivating factors in the protests that must be addressed immediately if any new government is to succeed.

“Because military service is mandatory for men in Egypt, I’m hoping that the military will allow democratic, uncorrupt, unrigged elections to happen,” Zoma said. “[The military is] closer to the people than the police or Mubarak’s men. Right now they need to clean the city up; people need to get food. They need to make sure people can get jobs. When I lived in Egypt, I’d meet taxi drivers who had a bachelor’s of science in engineering and couldn’t find any other job.”

“Even visiting, I could tell that food was a necessity that wasn’t available to everyone,” Hanna said. “Really basic things like bread, eggs and milk had prices through the roof. My last visit was in 2009 and I noticed that there was no middle class—you’re either really wealthy or you’re really poor, so of course the government is at fault for that.”

“It’s no surprise that something like [the protests] could happen,” Shane Skowron, FCLC ’10 and an AUC student in 2009, said. “The country is very poor and it didn’t look to me as if the government was doing much to help.”

The possibility that an oppressive political group could gain dominance in the aftermath of Mubarak’s resignation has prompted international concern and comparisons to Iran’s 1979 Revolution, which resulted in the country’s institution of sharia (Islamic) law and disavowal of democracy in favor of a theocratic constitution. Although the controversial opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood has been involved in the recent Egyptian protests, Egyptians and protest supporters alike have emphasized the differences between the political climates of 1979 Iran and present-day Egypt.

“In Cairo, [the Muslim Brotherhood] wasn’t even really present,” Skowron said. “I did go to some of the cities in southern Egypt and from what I understand, they have more of a presence there because it’s poorer there, but I didn’t see any evidence of them as a viable political force.”

“Islam as a cultural group has always been part of Egyptian society, even at the height of secularization,” Oppenheim said, “mostly because the vast majority of the population is part of the underclass and is therefore traditional, so Islam is not far from the surface. But the Muslim Brotherhood does not seem to be at the forefront of the present movement. It may be that they did not want to give the protests an Islamic face because they have always been the bogeyman. It may be that they realize that if they put their face on camera, it would be seen as an Islamist-secularist fight.”

Zoma stressed the importance of Egyptian dependence on foreign aid as a deterrent to religiously driven change. “People associate the Muslim Brotherhood with Iran, and it’s totally different now. They’re quite small; under Mubarak they were illegal. If they did take over, it wouldn’t be on the scale of Iran. Egypt is incredibly dependent on the West with international investment, tourism and foreign aid. If they were to do what Iran did, they would lose all of that and I don’t think they want to,” she said.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the Egyptian government in the wake of Mubarak’s departure, both protesters and international supporters remain optimistic that a democratic society is achievable in Egypt. Though the transition period will likely be slow and difficult, the removal of the president was a step that many had considered unimaginable before the protests began.

“I didn’t see [Mubarak’s resignation] coming at all,” Hanna said. “I feel like people have just been O.K. with things the way they were because they’ve been that way for so long, but now there’s this whole revolution that started with the youth, people who are fresh out of college, which is so wonderful. You can see change come out of such young and educated people—that’s really important. They knew what they were doing. The whole world can learn from that.”

“To paraphrase John F. Kennedy,” Oppenheim said, “I am an optimist with no illusions. One hopes that the idea of progress, which is a Western idea, takes root in Egyptian society and has a chance to grow, giving the Egyptian people what they really are yearning for: a sense of hope for the future.”