Religious tribalism

By Sameh Fawzi

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Robert Putnam is a famous sociologist. His ideas are usually controversial, but always stimulate discussion and debate. When he discussed civic participation, he renewed old ideas about the importance of connecting people in networks. However, he was clever not to get trapped in utopian ideas about the importance of networking and civil work. He introduced an important concept, "dark social capital". In his view, not every network is good. People sometimes do awful deeds when they come together.

In Egypt, we have now so-called "religious tribalism", in which Muslims and Christians become two confronting homogenous tribes. Over recent weeks, two different sectarian clashes in Upper Egypt are still reverberating: one in Dayroud and the second in Farshout. The incidents are similar: a young Christian man involved in an "illegal sexual relationship" with a young Muslim woman in the first case, and a young Christian man raping a Muslim girl in the second case. Definitely they are wrongdoers and should be punished legally and socially. But the question is: Why do people treat the matters as issues of religious strife rather than normal -- though reprehensible -- misdemeanours?

In our society, sexual relationships are often causes of crime, especially in what is called "honour crimes". But we never conceive the perpetrator of the crime as a representative of a religious community. Today, if a Muslim male raped a Muslim woman it would be treated socially as a crime, but if the crime happened between a male and female different in religion it would be treated from a religious perspective, leading to clashes between the two communities.

How have we so deviated from the concept of citizenship?

This week's Soapbox speaker is a political analyst.