|
Constitution |
: |
دستور |
| Democracy |
: |
ديمقراطية |
| Freedom |
: |
حرية |
Above are words in both English and Arabic. They all technically mean the same, but in reality they aren’t. The meaning of concepts is greatly influenced by culture. What the English in Britain comprehends from the words constitution, democracy and freedom is significantly different from what the Egyptian in Egypt comprehends: the English understanding and dealing with these issues is different from the way the Egyptian understands and deals with them. This is because the Egyptian’s culture is dissimilar to that of the English: his history, religion and political environ determine their meaning for him whatever the western textbooks define them.
I have spoken about culture and civilisation, and defined them before (see here and here). These two are interlinked: culture (what influences the individual’s and society’s mind) is what produces civilisation; and civilisation, in its turn, becomes part of culture in turn. Culture is what makes the man and his civilisation. And this culture is embodied and encoded in man’s language. Language is permeated by cultural values, and is, therefore, the tool that propagates a certain culture and effects its specific civilisation. A person who speaks a certain language therefore gets influenced by the culture it encodes: the values that the culture inculcate in man’s, through the language that determines his way of thinking and beliefs, therefore, twists the technical meanings of concepts to creates a cultural meaning of these concepts such as constitution, democracy and freedom. An Egyptian who writes a “constitution” and inserts clauses on “democracy” and “freedom” in it does not necessarily believe in compliance with the constitution or abidance by its articles of democracy and freedom. The present Egyptian 2014 constitution (amended 2019) must be seen in this context: it is a toy and its provisions on democracy and freedom have been made a joke in practice. The slaves around President Sisi of Egypt who wrote the constitution of 2014 thought of the constitution and its provisions no more than a décore – a dress to clothe the Egyptian state with, so that it appears to outsiders as if it has a respected constitution; as if it is democratic; and as if it believes in the freedom of its citizens. But in reality, it looks at the constitution as a mere document to be changed whenever it is convenient, and practices dictatorship on the ground and restricts the freedoms of the citizens.
But why am I writing this? It is all already known and acknowledged. I am writing this because of the close link between language and culture. Until we revive Coptic and pull ourselves out of the influence of Arabic, with its encoded culture, we cannot raise beyond the average Egyptian in our understanding of the concepts of constitution, democracy and freedom. The simple development of equivalent Coptic words to these concepts will take us a great deal towards emancipation from the hold of Arabic and Islamic culture that distorts their true meaning.