A poster with a picture of the head of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, is pictured in Cairo, Egypt. August 2013. Michael Kappeler/DPA/PA ImagesThe peculiar case of the Arab middle class came to the fore during a dinner with some friends and their parents in Germany. As I was sitting there enjoying my meal, the mother of a friend, aware of my opposition to the military regime in Egypt, started to attack me for my views.
What was clear to me in her verbal tirade is the inherent fear of social upheaval; the loss of what she perceived to be “Egypt”, which to me appeared to revolve around housing compounds, shopping malls and jobs in multinational companies.
The fear was palpable and real, which made me think once again about the inability of the Arab middle class to produce intellectuals capable of providing an ideological project that can envision and lead the process of social transformation.
