Counter Argument: Is That the Real Image?

Counter Argument: Is That The Real Image?

In his love of Egypt, Salah Gahin in his poem Under the Name of Egypt said: "Under the name of Egypt, history can say anything, Egypt to me is the most beautiful and beloved thing." The political leader Mustafa Kamel said in one of his speeches in the early 1900's: "If I hadn't been Egyptian, I would have wanted to be so." In my opinion, this seems fake because most people after hearing those quotes will have the idea that Egypt is the utopia. It will appear to them as the disappeared Atlantis or Plato's perfect republic which he sought all his life which is not true. Egypt is a normal developing country with massive problems, but it is also full of resources. It has a perfect site between two important seas; the Mediterranean and the Red Sea having the Nile River which is the longest river in the world and a huge landscape. Egyptians, nearly all of them, are kind, generous and loving. Kerry McIntosh, a Georgetown student who studied at the AUC for one semester in an exchange program, wrote in her article entitled "Curing Egyptian Idleness" published in The Hoya which is a newspaper for Georgetown University students about her negative opinion about Egypt and Egyptians. She summarized her short experience saying what she did not like and suggesting some solutions to these problems and comparing Egypt to her developed country the United States of America. I found it worthy to write to you as American students at Georgetown University, whom I appreciate, to show you the real image of my country: Egypt. I have to confess that Egypt really does effective defects like the wide differences between the poor and the rich; high unemployment. Also some youth suffer lack of motivation which she related to culture. The worse obsession in McIntosh's article is that she did not express any positive experiences. Although I agree with her on many points, there are other important positive things that are worth noting: the Egyptian cultural values, the economic development in the past three decades and the efforts exerted by the government to improve the country.

I agree with McIntosh that class mobility has always been a great problem in the Egyptian system since the time of the pharaohs; it became worse in the Middle Ages which had its obvious effect these days. "In Egypt there is an enormous gap between the very wealthy and the very poor."(Hopkins and Saad, 7). The widening gap between the poor and the rich has a lot of disadvantages as the number of crimes increase due to jealousness and because some poor children are obliged to drop out of school which makes them spend more time in the street and converts some of them into criminals. It also results in the hatred between social classes leading to a fracture in the society. But the positive point is that "the increasing prosperity of Egypt means that the middle class is increasing in relative size, while the gap between the top and the bottom is increasing. One-third of the population is below a poverty line established by the Egyptian government. The growing middle class aspires to a home, a car, and marriage and family life, and increasingly is able to achieve this."(Hopkins and Saad, 7). This increasing prosperity is logically due to the governmental efforts exerted in the past 30 years. They did not come to a perfect solution, but at least led to improvement. "Egyptian citizens are entitled to free education and health care, in addition to employment guarantees for graduates. Services are poor, however, and there are many hidden costs, such as time spent waiting... Part of the social policy includes efforts to restructure welfare, and to help unemployed youth set up their own businesses."(Hopkins and Saad, 7). In Ahmed Nazif's reign unemployment has noticeably decreased and is still decreasing which is in the country's development favour. This shows the effect of the exerted efforts by the government which she says that they did not have obvious effect. "Various government reforms over the past 30 years have yet to see a large improvement in the living conditions of Egypt's poor, and population increases have contributed to a rise in unemployment and underemployment that only further frustrates the situation." (McIntosh, 2).

I also agree with McIntosh that unemployment is a massive problem in the Egyptian society. I agree partially with the reasons she gives to this problem. She says that this is due to lack of motivation and laziness. "Yet many Egyptians' lack of motivation may be less of a cultural attribute than it is a foreseeable reaction to the socioeconomic conditions of the nation." (McIntosh,1). Maybe lack of motivation is a major reason to the problem but it is not the main reason. One of the reasons she gives for lack of motivation is what Egyptians call "Wasta" which is using connections to facilitate anything as having jobs even if someone lacks qualifications. "At the highest level of Egyptian society, high-paying jobs are often won more through nepotism and connections than from hard work alone". (McIntosh,1). This problem is widespread in the Egyptian society but it is not dominant that it kills motivation. If you work hard, you'll be rewarded. That's the base of human's life and God's rubric. Lack of motivation is not the only reason for unemployment. There are other reasons such as: The increasing population and the way of distributing university students through different majors which causes the higher demand on few types of jobs and lack in others. I don't agree with McIntosh when she relates laziness to culture. No culture encourages people to be lazy, especially the Egyptian culture which is based on hard work since the reign of the pharaohs who used to work most of the day.

If you compare things they must be similar in a way. In my opinion, it was not suitable from McIntosh to compare Egypt to the United States of America by any means. It is like comparing a banana to an apple. Egypt is a developing country while the USA is considered a developed country, if it wasn't the most developed in the world. Although being