Private Voluntary Organizations in Egypt Islamic Development, Private Initiative, and State Control Denis J. Sullivan. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1994.

Abstract

Over the past five years or so, the considerable western interest in
the role played by nongovernmental voluntary associations in Egypt has
been reflected in a growing English-language literature on the subject.
Researchers tackle the question from a range of perspectives.
One approach, relatively state-centered and legalistic, focuses on how
Cairo manages to control, co-opt, or "corporatize" autonomous organizations
including labor and professional syndicates, agricultural and other
cooperatives, and private not-for-profit groups. The principle tool for reining
in private voluntary and community associations is the notorious Law
32 of 1964. Under Law 32, the Ministry of Social Affairs can interfere
directly in all aspect of associational life-articulation of goals, election of
officers, pursuit of projects, allocation of funds, and so on. Among the wellknown
secular nonprofit groups with international linkages that have been
denied licenses from the Ministry are the Egyptian Organization of Human
Rights and the Arab Women's Solidarity Association. In this legal and policy
milieu, many scholars and human rights activists argue that no registered
association in Egypt can properly be deemed "nongovernmental."
Other analysts, however, accept Cairo's position that the threat of radical
Islam justifies authoritarian restrictions on independent organizations.
The second group of studies is inspired partly by these concerns over the
radicalization of Islamist associations. Scholars familiar with social, eco­
nomic, and political circumstances in the Nile Valley usually try to counteract
hysterical mass media portraits of "Muslim terrorists" with inquiries into
the structure, function, membership, activities, and ideologies of a range of
Islamist institutions including welfare and charitable associations. The particular
strength of politicized Islam in the 1990s, this research suggests, rests
on the capacity of Islamist charities to provide a crucial layer of social services
to a burgeoning, underemployed, increasingly impoverished population.
Opinion is divided, however, on the question of whether this circumstance
favors containment and stability or frustration and insurrection.
A third set of studies, sometimes overlooked by scholars, comes from
within the Cairo-based donor community, the "development practitioners" ...