It may not be correct to separate identity from citizenship, because citizenship, in its deeper meaning, is not merely a legal relationship between the individual and the state; rather, it is an emotional, intellectual, and moral relationship between a person and the homeland to which they belong.
Positive citizenship is not limited to a citizen’s awareness of their rights and responsibilities. It extends to their commitment to exercising them through an independent personality capable of making choices and believing that the interests of the homeland cannot be separated from the dignity, freedom, and prosperity of its citizens.
Belonging to one’s homeland means attachment to land, history, and people; to memories shaped by the past and dreams promised by the future. It is a feeling that cannot be imposed by laws or created through slogans. Rather, it grows from lived experience, when citizens feel that their homeland protects them and provides fair opportunities for life, work, and participation.
Simply put, a homeland is not land without people.
A person may be expelled from their land and still retain their homeland in memory, as has happened to many peoples throughout history. A homeland is not lines drawn on a map; it is land inhabited by a nation, endowed with shared history, culture, and collective consciousness.
A human being is a soul inhabiting a body; when the soul leaves, the body dies. Likewise, a nation is a soul inhabiting land; if that soul departs, nothing remains but soil.
Identity, on the other hand, is a term used to describe a person’s self-concept and their expression of individuality and relationship with the surrounding community.
Identity consists of the totality of characteristics that distinguish one thing from another, one person from another, or one group from another. Each person carries multiple elements within their identity.
Preserving national identity, for example, does not conflict with the existence of different cultural and religious identities within the same homeland.
In Egypt, there are differences in the customs and ways of speaking among Nubians in the south, coastal communities in the north, oasis inhabitants, and even between various provinces. Yet all are united under a single Egyptian national identity.
Elements of identity are dynamic. Some may become more prominent at certain stages of life, while others emerge at different times.
Personal identity defines a person through appearance, name, characteristics, gender, nationality, age, date of birth, and place of origin. Collective identity refers to essential shared features among groups of people that distinguish them from others. Members of a group may share fundamental traits that define them while differing in other aspects that do not undermine their cohesion.
Many factors can shape a collective identity; what matters is harmony and the acceptance of varying degrees of difference without hostility.
Yet an essential question remains: if the homeland consists of people, land, and history, then what is the state?
The state is not the homeland.
It is not the authority.
It is not the ruler.
The state is the collection of institutions created by citizens to organize their lives, protect their borders, establish justice among them, and develop their capabilities.
It is a means, not an end.
The army, judiciary, police, universities, schools, public administration, and parliament are all tools society has created to serve itself. The ultimate purpose of the state is not to maximize abstract power or increase superficial prestige, but rather the well-being, happiness, and self-fulfillment of its citizens.
This gives rise to a paradox often seen around the world:
How can we describe a state as strong while its citizens live in fear?
How can we say a homeland is prosperous while its youth are losing hope?
And how can the whole be happy if its cells are suffering?
The citizen is not a means serving the state; the state is a means invented by citizens to serve human beings.
I once read an argument by a Sudanese writer who suggested that the homeland is merely a new idol, spoken for by politicians just as priests once spoke for ancient idols.
People sacrifice for the homeland, he argued, while the true beneficiaries are those who monopolize speaking in its name.
This argument, despite its exaggeration, raises an important question:
Can the state become an idol?
I believe the answer is yes.
But the problem does not lie in the homeland itself, nor in the concept of the state.
The problem begins when concepts become confused.
When authority becomes the state.
And the state becomes the homeland.
Then institutions created by people to serve them become entities demanding loyalty to themselves.
Citizens become means rather than ends.
People are asked to go hungry so the state may be fed, remain silent so it can preserve its prestige, and die so it can survive.
At that point, it is not the homeland asking for sacrifice; it is authority hiding behind its name.
A true homeland lives only through its people. Human beings are not merely cells within the body of the homeland; they are the homeland itself. If one part suffers, the whole cannot truly be happy. And if the dreams of citizens fade away, all that remains is beautiful land from which the soul has departed.
“How can the part be miserable while the whole is happy?” This is the central idea of this essay.
This is not merely a literary metaphor but the philosophical core of the article. The homeland is not an entity independent of its citizens. If the state becomes an end in itself, it contradicts its original purpose: to serve human beings, not use them.
We must also recognize that the cells of the body differ and its organs are diverse, and this diversity is what creates harmony and enables life itself.
The same applies to a homeland.
A young philosopher once said to me: “It puzzles me that we seek to create a global citizen on one hand while confining that person within national borders on the other. Isn’t that a contradiction?”
I replied: Human development itself contains no contradiction. Difference and diversity are expressions of creativity and richness. Humanity shares common origins and the transmission of genetic inheritance from one generation to the next. Nations also share many human values which, regardless of where we live—east or west, north or south—remain the same values we seek to instill in children.
The philosophical idea that humanity has not yet fully matured enough to realize is this: how can we all belong to one another and make the Earth our common homeland?
The challenge is that we have not yet succeeded in living peacefully even within our own countries and continents—so how much more difficult is it to achieve that across an entire planet?
