Bewildered youth
Learning to be at home in a world of harsh realities is the key to maintaining balance, writes Hazem Zohny*
In a nation of uncertain ambitions and at times near- comical contradictions, Muslim youth in Egypt are perhaps a prime example. Here, professed Muslims barely beyond their teens may stumble awkwardly out of pubs late at night while their same aged counterparts, already full-bearded and with a hint of rug burn on their foreheads, prepare for their dawn prayers. And yet, while the vast majority of young Muslims will settle somewhere closer to the centre of the religious spectrum, these two extreme ends are, nonetheless, as apparent as they are disturbing. Where do they stem from and why? And is there a foreseeable middle ground?
At the risk of raising questions without addressing them, perhaps we can consider the popular psychological interpretation of this matter, which concludes that what we are observing are two very different responses to the same ailments. They are coping mechanisms that may be used to deal with the effects of alienating modernity and its technologies, family dysfunction, debilitating disease, poverty, or the mass suffering in the world which many are now all too aware of thanks to media ubiquity. And so, whether a raving libertine unable to come to grips with religion and life, or an overly pious adherent who does not shake hands with the opposite sex, one opinion holds that both stem from the same root cause -- an inability to cope with the at times all too stark severity of reality.
This interpretation leaves questions unanswered. While perhaps over-simplifying the matter, it also does not explain why someone might sway to one end of the pole rather than the other. Could it simply be a matter of circumstance? Possibly the entire matter just comes down to that one time when a youngster agrees to venture to that specific gathering of "deviant" friends, or that one place where he or she comes across a group of all too zealous adherents. What is clear is this: in the face of life's arduous challenges, the human being, young or old, may seek solace in the oblivion of undue hedonism, or in the unshakable certainty of any form of fundamentalism. What distinguishes the middle ground is that its members have either been protected from life's particularly harsh challenges by mere fortune, or they have come to learn to accept them by adopting healthier attitudes. Perhaps the key to the middle ground, then, is simply learning to accept.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/851/sc113.htm