Ancient Egypt: Travels Beyond the Grave - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 185

Figure 13.1. Cairo
WHAT DEFINES EGYPT TODAY?
Contemporary Egypt struggles with its modernity. More than eighty-one million people
live in a country with little by way of industrialization and with only 2.85 percent of its
countryside arable land. Infant mortality is an index of its third-world status: 18.6 per 1,000
births (Italy has 3.1 deaths). Half the population is illiterate. One-third of the population is
under age fourteen, while two-thirds are under thirty-five, which means that the population
will continue to surge upward. As its population grows dramatically, political unrest rises
as well. Egypt is a country with a lopsided division of wealth: a small strata of the very rich
and layer upon layer of poor. This income gap is yet another cause of the political unrest
that was finally unleashed in early 2011.
As unrest rises, political leadership concentrates its power inward. Egypt styles itself a
republic, but a republic is not the same as a democracy. In true republics, voters elect their
representatives, but in flawed republics like Egypt, the voters are manipulated and deceived
by their rulers. Political unrest is controlled by the army, the secret police, and a compliant
legal system. These three arms of the government are important in the government's con-
stant struggle to contain the demands of Islamic fundamentalists who seek to expunge from
their country western ways and western ideas. Even beyond widespread poverty and the
presence of Islamic fundamentalists is still another threat to Egypt's social and political sta-
bility. It is the “intellectual proletariat,” young men for whom no employment is possible.
Egypt awards some 800,000 university degrees each year. Most are in the social sciences