Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

 

 

The balance between reward and punishment constitutes a driving-force in our daily life. Every action and word can be judged in light of what is said to be right or wrong, according to formal or informal codifications. Law appears the most systematic form of regulating social behavior, by banning particular actions considered as threats to the development of society as a whole. Formal legislation is thus created to lead citizens in the right direction, by encouraging them to learn specific behavior which is in line with general social development. The flip-side of this social teaching is the process of punishment, which, by penalizing inappropriate social behavior, reinforces accepted behavior.
 

Informal codifications also play a role in social regulation. They could, for instance, depend on language, dress or even sex, all of which can constitute a kind of social mainstream, and therefore a set of main social norms. The violation of these norms, and the resulting gap which exists between the behavior of the subaltern group and the main social norm, can thus be analyzed in terms of reward and punishment. Those who respect the dominant informal regulations through a process of behavioral assimilation will benefit from a social integration into the mainstream group. On the contrary, those who follow alternative attitudes could suffer from the social gap created between them and the rest of the social group, because they violated the dominant norms. The subsequent process of exclusion can, in this way, be considered as a form of punishment directed by the dominant group at the subaltern group in order to compel him to return to the mainstream.
 

Both formal and informal social codifications aim at the regulation of society - defined as a coherent body bringing together individual human beings who all have their personal desires and interests - according to the two categories of regulation to follow a direction which leads to the society's overall development. Thus, the use of reward and punishment is a way to reinforce social coherence and stability. The dominant norms can be defined and upheld by official institutions, which can play this role because they benefit from a certain form of legitimacy. Socialization, the process of establishing social barriers and inheriting norms, appears in this way as a process of reward and punishment.

 

 

Every kind of social reward can be seen as a rise in socialization. With regard to informal rewards, the feeling of social acceptance and integration will reinforce the belief of the rewarded person in the social system. The recipient of the reward will also be encouraged to preserve the main social norms by internalizing and spreading them because they appear as beneficial for him. At the same time, informal sanctions also aim at initiating this process of socialization for people moving away from the social normality. By emphasizing the social subaltern these people embody, informal sanctions are supposed to bring them back to the social hegemony.

Along the same lines, formal sanctions and rewards can be considered as means of reinforcing the process of socialization. In this way, those who benefit from the legal system, either passively in daily life, by enjoying social stability and security, or actively, for instance when the legal apparatus gives a ruling in his favor, gain a certain kind of confidence in their relationship as a citizens with the social system. At the same time, the penalty for those who do not respect the formal regulations can also reinforce this confidence, by exemplifying that the social system and its legal facet are efficient.
 

This is particularly obvious in legal conflicts between two opposing groups. While one group will be punished for its behavior, adjudged to have broken the social framework, the other will be rewarded because it is seen to embody a good example. In this case the purpose of the punishment will be to emphasize the illegality, or abnormality, of the particular behavior. Any compensation given for the damages undergone by a person or a group because of the punished behavior will emphasize the normality of the rewarded behavior and prove that the legal system is efficient in ensuring the social perpetuation. In both cases the archetypal good citizen is being defined.

 

 

In the aftermath of the recent strife in Naj^c Hammādī, much discourse emphasized the need for the punishment of the culprits rather than any process of reconciliation, as if punishment and reconciliation were two completely separate processes. On the contrary, I strongly believe, based on the reading and study of numerous articles dealing with this incident in Egyptian and foreign newspapers and discussions with some of my colleagues at the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation, that the punishment of the culprits constitutes a necessary preliminary step in any process of reconciliation.
 

An important distinction needs to be made here: claming that no reconciliation is possible without punishment does not mean that the reconciliation process can be based only on a judicial treatment. On the contrary, a huge part of the process should target a wide range of topics such as the symbolic nature of community relations, shared cultural bonds, and the struggle against dangerous misunderstandings by insisting on the development in schools of an education of reconciliation. Civil society has a crucial role to play in this process.

In my opinion, however, any process of reconciliation has to include a judicial component which punishes the culprits and compensates the victims and their relatives for the violence to which they have been exposed. This certainly cannot be the whole reconciliation process, but it is at least a necessary feature.

 

 

Many Christians in Egypt think that their Muslim aggressors benefit from a kind of impunity in such sectarian incidents, because the legal system usually fails to punish them. Concerning the violence in Naj^c Hammādī, numerous Christians thus seem to expect that the three suspects will not be punished for the Christmas killings.
 

 This point is crucial in the analysis of the link between the Egyptian Christian population and the notion of citizenship. In fact, the failure to punish the culprits for their acts, which broke the social norms, can be understood as an expression of the underlying and tacit governmental acceptance of violence targeting Christians. In this way, the failure of the legal process can be seen as the concrete expression of the incomplete citizenship granted to Egyptian Christians, who often feel like second-class citizens. Furthermore, the arrest of Christians during the incidents which followed the killings in Naj^c Hammādīcould, according to them, confirm their suspicions of an Egyptian legal system strongly based on Islam, from which Muslims benefit from a certain impunity in the legal treatment of religious affairs.
 

Punishing an action expresses the idea that this action does not conform to the social norms, and is therefore reprehensible. On the contrary, a behavior or action officially or tacitly accepted by the authorities will be considered as lawful and legitimate. For this reason the non-punishment of the violence targeting the Christians in Egypt can be understood as an expression of a social norm, which would consecrate the superiority of Muslims, hence the impunity enjoyed by the culprits.

 

 

While the process of punishment seems to be a failure regarding the legal treatment of violent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, the process of reward also appears incomplete.
 

First, the idea of financial compensation suffers from a lack of legal structure and legislation which prevents it from being efficiently distributed, beyond the promises of financial donations.

Secondly, the significance of this process of financial compensation appears problematic, especially when you consider the haggling between the authorities and the different families which happens in the days following the incidents. Financial compensation is in fact often criticized as a means for the authorities to save face and claim that peace has returned, when in fact tensions remain high following this frustrating process of negotiation. The often-denounced and conveniently-timed link between the acceptance of financial compensation by the families and the liberation of Christians arrested during the incidents as a result also brings into question the legitimacy of the reconciliation processes, which obviously suffer from a lack of credibility.

Coupled to the absence of punishment for the culprits, this failure of the process of financial compensation in its roots and principles (i.e. giving the appearance of peace without dealing with the heart of the quarrel) as well as in its development (i.e. negotiation and haggling) and consequences (i.e. impunity for the culprits and frustration for the victims) could ultimately lead to an attitude of distrust expressed by Christians about the government’s policies and the way it manages such violent crisis, and even to a lack of confidence in society in general and its principles.

 

 

In the case of Naj^c Hammādī, not only has the government failed to preserve the social contract by ensuring social peace and the security of the entire national population, without religious distinction, both before the strife and in its aftermath, but there is a strong risk that it will also fail to ease the community tensions by failing to facilitate an effective process of reconciliation.

The consequence of this societal collapse, which is often said to target the Christian element of the Egyptian nation, could be the desocialization of the Christian group, precisely because the process of socialization based on the system of reward and punishment is no longer being fulfilled. Because Christians feel that they do not share the same kind of complete citizenship enjoyed by Egyptian Muslims, they could lose faith in the values advocated by the government, such as the notion of citizenship and nationality (which supposed to go beyond religious differences). This could lead them to reaffirming their own identity and values in a radical and drastic way.  

Such a reaction could lead to the rejection of any form of interreligious dialogue, because of the refusal of any reconciliation between two deep-rooted and immovable identities.

 

 

For this reason the reconciliation process cannot exclude punishment. The punishment of the culprits, coupled with a reward, which would need to be the development of systematic legal mechanisms, could balance the position of Christians and Muslims towards such affairs and reinforce the Christians' in a social system aiming at the integration and protection of its religious minorities.
 

At the same time, the legal punishment of the culprits could constitute on the one hand a kind of recognition of the violence suffered by Christians, and on the other hand a deterrent preventing further incidents. This could lead to a sort of institutionalized revenge, giving an official and legal form to a process of revenge which is said to be traditionally widespread in Upper Egypt. Legally punishing the culprits could appear as an ideal way to satisfy the victims’ families while preventing the escalation of violence, linked to the mechanism of revenge which characterizes a social model based on honor. Meanwhile legal punishment could also be used as a way to avoid frustrations and tensions usually fuelled by incomplete and inefficient processes of reconciliation.

 

 

The punishment, however, must fit the crime. There is a risk that the punishment could be exaggerated in order to constitute a strong deterrent for the future, based on the principle of fear bred by the severity of the chastisement. Such kinds of exaggeration, orchestrated by the authorities and broadcasted by the media could, by emphasizing punishment, further fuel resentment for the religious group linked to the punished culprits rather than inspiring a spirit of reconciliation.

This means that reconciliation cannot be achieved in a snap, requires repeated efforts to make this notion a reality. Local interlocutors are preferable for this role, insofar as they are well-known in the place where the incidents happened, and benefit from the confidence of the inhabitants because they share the same social and cultural background. By draining off the frustration and dealing with misunderstandings, a process of reconciliation could be achieved and a dialogue between the different religious groups could be established.

 

 

To conclude, I would like to insist on the idea that the distinction between the processes of reward and punishment and reconciliation does not exist, if we bear in mind that both are parts of the same process. Without preliminary punishment, the idea of reconciliation is nothing more than a pipe dream. At the same time, however, the process of punishment would be in vain if it is not followed by the establishment of a reconciliatory dialogue between the different actors involved in the incidents.
 

For this reason, the numerous calls for punishment in the aftermath of the Naj^c Hammādī incidents appear to be legitimate, and the Egyptian government must now to bear its responsibility in the development of the situation between the Christians and Muslims in the town and its surroundings. The government has been strongly criticized for its lack of involvement in Upper Egypt and its bad management of the Christmas crisis, its roots and repercussions. This crisis, however, is not yet finished, and the Egyptian government still has a huge role to play in order to organize an efficient reconciliation process which ultimately succeeds in reuniting the different religious groups involved in the quarrels.
 

Although the Naj^c Hammādī shooting ended with blood being spilled in January 2010, the killings could and should constitute a positive starting-point for the new year, by serving as an opportunity to create a real inter-religious dialogue in Egypt, where misunderstandings should no longer be ignored.