Egypt’s Minister of Culture Saber Arab agrees to form a committee that will compile a list of books that shaped and helped assert Egyptian identity throughout the 20th century. The minister plans to republish those books at a low retail price.

The minister urged intellectuals to draw a new cultural strategy for Egypt and a new vision for the culture ministry in a meeting held on Thursday, 20 December. Egypt's current cultural situation and the challenges facing culture in the light of the outcomes of an unstable political process was the subject of discussions at the meeting.

The writers' committee is to include poet Ahmed Abdel Moati Hegazy, Hassan Teleb and writers Yousef AlQaeed, Salwa Bakr, Amany Fouad and Ahmed Bahaa Eddin Shaaban. Although these are already slated to form part of the committee, Tariq No’man, Head of the Central Committees at the Supreme Council for Culture, the highest official in the cultural institution, reveals that a meeting will be held next week to add more members and set the criteria for the books

Almost all committee members so far are known for their liberal tendencies and rejection of political Islam.

The decision to form such a committee sparked questions on the Minister's motives. Some writers that joined the committee expressed that they do feel Egyptian cultural identity is jeopardised by the political outcomes in the post-revolution transitional period. With Islamists in power, they saw it as important to form this committee to spread awareness on Egypt's diverse cultural identity.

The minister remained unreachable up until the publishing date of this article.

Writer Youssef AlQaeed said he personally feels that the Egyptian identity is threatened by the Islamic trends, which are trying to monopolise and banish culture.

"I don’t speak on behalf of the committee, but I personally feel we’re under cultural threat from Islamists," AlQaeed said.

Writer Helmi Namnam, who attended the meeting and refused to join the committee due to other preoccupations, thinks the books will be republished for the new generations to conserve Egypt's culture from distortion by the new Islamic trends that wielded power lately.

"Egyptian civilisation and culture has long been threatened - not just at this particular moment where the committee was formed. But now radical Islamists are trying to convince us that our history starts and stops at the Islamic era, which is very damaging to the Egyptian culture and history, which is rich and goes far beyond this narrow vision of Egypt," Namnam argued.