Nations are not merely maps drawn on paper, borders guarded by weapons, or numbers announced in government reports.

At their core, nations are states of consciousness.

When a nation becomes ill, the illness does not first appear in its economy or politics. It appears in its relationship with itself, with time, and with the meaning for which it lives.

Egypt—that land which taught ancient humanity how to confront death through civilization, how to transform stone into meaning and time into eternity—seems today to be living through a painful paradox:

A glorious history it knows, a confusing present it lives, and a future it fears more than it anticipates.

Between these three dimensions of time stands the Egyptian citizen, exhausted—as though time within him no longer moves in a single direction.

It is a long autumn.

But in nature, autumn is not death.

It is life retreating into the roots in preparation for a new spring.

Perhaps Egypt’s real crisis is not that it has lost its ability to rise, but that it has temporarily forgotten where that ability resides.

First: The Inner Autumn

Egypt’s crisis is not a scarcity of resources.

The Nile still flows, the sun still rises, the land remains capable of giving, and youth continues to renew itself with every generation.

But nations do not decline only when they lose resources.

They decline when their people lose meaning.

When people lose the meaning of what they do, they do not stop moving—they simply move without direction.

They work without knowing why.

They strive without knowing where they are going.

They spend their days in a prolonged struggle for survival until they forget the most important question:

Where is my life actually heading?

And thus the leaves begin to fall—

Not because the wind is stronger than the tree, but because the tree itself has temporarily forgotten that it is a tree.

Today, many Egyptians carry a painful contradiction within themselves:

They take pride in a past they did not create, are burdened by a present they cannot change, and fear a future for which they do not yet possess the tools.

When these three dimensions of time become disconnected within a person’s consciousness, the inner autumn begins.

Autumn is not merely poverty, corruption, or bureaucracy.

These are symptoms that can affect any society.

The deeper wound is when people lose their authentic connection with themselves.

When they stop asking:

• Why do I work?
• Why do I learn?
• Why do I live?
• What will I leave behind?

At that moment, society becomes a vast movement without a compass.

People move because everyone else moves.

They remain silent because silence feels safer.

They adapt because adaptation appears less costly than change.

Generations accumulate upon generations—not while building the future, but while inheriting the same exhaustion, the same fears, and the same postponed questions.

Second: The Egyptian and Time

Perhaps Egypt’s troubled relationship with time is one of the deepest crises of consciousness in modern Egypt.

The Egyptian lives beneath the shadow of an immense history.

A history that cannot be forgotten, yet sometimes transforms—without us noticing—from a source of inspiration into a psychological burden.

Egyptians have grown accustomed to hearing that they are the descendants of a great civilization.

The descendants of the pyramids, the Nile, and the oldest state known to history.

Yet they rarely pause to ask the more difficult question:

How can I be great—today?

Here lies the challenge.

When the past becomes a place we inhabit instead of a source of energy for building the future, history becomes a sedative rather than a driving force.

Living societies do not dwell within ancient glories.

They use them as roots from which new branches grow.

Societies that stare too long into the old mirror gradually lose the ability to see the road ahead.

Deep within, the Egyptian experiences a sharp temporal division:

Emotionally attached to a past seen as greater than the present, living each day as a battle of exhaustion, and viewing the future with anxiety rather than hope.

Thus time itself becomes a burden on the soul.

Yet the deeper truth is that time alone does not heal nations.

Time builds nothing unless it becomes consciousness.

Years create no renaissance if people continue moving in the same circle.

The problem has never been the passage of time over Egypt, but how Egyptians have lived that time:

Have they lived it as makers of history—or merely spectators of it?

Third: The Deep Wound

Modern science tells us that we inherit not only genes, but also the ways in which those genes are expressed.

Environment, experience, fear, hope, and the meanings we live by all influence how our biological inheritance operates.

In other words:

Human beings are not entirely prisoners of their makeup.

They are partners in shaping themselves.

What applies to individuals applies to nations.

Egypt suffers not from a shortage of potential, but from an inherited pattern of consciousness—a pattern that sees the past as completed glory, the present as a heavy burden, and the future as an uncertain destiny rather than a project to be built.

Yet consciousness, unlike genes, can change.

And here true freedom begins.

Freedom is not merely the ability to speak.

It is the ability to think without fear, to question without anxiety, and to choose without guardianship.

A person who has never learned to ask questions cannot truly choose.

And a person who cannot choose cannot build.

Such a person always lives inside a life designed by others.

Thus the deepest wound in Egypt is not merely the absence of external freedom, but the erosion of internal freedom:

The freedom to think independently, dream in one’s own voice, disagree without fear, and see oneself as a responsible individual rather than merely a follower within a larger group.

Yet however long autumn lasts, it always carries within it the seeds of spring.

Hope and Dream

Hope is not an illusion embraced by the weak.

It is the first act through which the strong begin every renaissance.

And Egypt—in its depths, beyond what statistics can measure—still possesses every ingredient of spring:

Young people who ask questions and reject ready-made answers.

Women who carry more than their share of burdens.

Minds that think beyond borders and quietly create what has not yet become visible amid the noise.

Renewal does not arrive all at once like an earthquake.

It comes like dawn—gradual and faint at first, until, once complete, no one remembers exactly when it began.

The sign of the coming spring will not be found in a political speech or an economic indicator.

It will appear in the moment when an Egyptian—at home, in a classroom, at work, or on a small neighborhood street—decides to act as though what they do matters.

Because it truly does matter.

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There is a defining moment in every person’s life—a moment when they discover that knowledge is not a ladder leading to certainty, but an ocean whose unknown shores expand the farther one sails into it.

In the early stages of awareness, people often believe that truth is simple, that the world can be easily explained, and that possessing a few pieces of information is enough to understand life. But with every book read, every experience lived, and every scientific or human discovery made, a remarkable paradox begins to emerge:

The more we know, the more we realize how little we actually know.

This is an invitation to intellectual humility.

Socrates expressed this idea when he said that his only wisdom was knowing that he knew nothing. The same concept echoed through generations of philosophers and scientists until it became one of the deepest paradoxes of human consciousness.

True knowledge does not produce arrogance—it produces wonder.

A child may believe the sky ends where their vision ends, but an astronomer, with every newly discovered galaxy, realizes that the universe is far larger than humanity ever imagined.

A first-year medical student may think the human body is understandable, only to discover years later that every cell contains mysteries beyond imagination.

And the philosopher searching for the meaning of consciousness often concludes that the question itself is deeper than any answer.

Knowledge, therefore, does not reduce ignorance—it reveals its magnitude.

Imagine a circle representing what we know.

As the circle expands, so does its boundary touching the unknown.

In other words, expanding knowledge increases our contact with what we do not know.

That is why the most dangerous people are not the ignorant, but those who know a little and believe they know everything.

True scholars, by contrast, often possess a striking humility.

In the age of artificial intelligence and information explosion, this paradox is more evident than ever before.

We possess more information than all previous ages combined, yet we still do not know:

• What consciousness truly is.
• What time really is.
• How life began.
• What links mind and matter.

Indeed, every new discovery seems to generate dozens of new questions.

And here lies the greatness of humanity:

Not in claiming possession of truth, but in having the courage to continue searching for it.

True knowledge is not a state of arrival—it is a state of perpetual journey.

Any mind that believes it has arrived has already stopped thinking.

Perhaps the greatest gift knowledge gives us is not answers, but the ability to ask deeper questions.

And perhaps this is why, as people grow in wisdom and learning, they become calmer, less dogmatic, and more humane.

The true fruit of every great form of knowledge is humility before this astonishing universe.

And the realization that:

“The more we know, the more we discover how little we know.”

But this truth applies not only to science. It also extends to humanity’s understanding of religion and the symbols through which it first expressed its questions about the universe, life, and death.

Ancient people did not possess the language of physics, neuroscience, cosmology, or modern theories of consciousness.

They saw lightning as anger, thunder as warning, the sun as a sacred being, and great natural phenomena as messages from the heavens.

Because the human mind always needs images through which it can imagine what it does not understand, symbols, myths, and metaphors emerged as tools for bringing meaning closer to the limited awareness of their age.

This was not a flaw in humanity—it was part of its natural evolution.

Every civilization did it.

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, and even the Abrahamic religions made extensive use of symbolic language because ultimate truth is greater than any direct words can contain.

The problem did not begin with the symbol itself.

It began when people forgot it was a symbol.

When mental images became literal certainties.

When metaphor hardened into unquestionable fact.

When asking questions became a crime.

A symbol is originally a bridge to meaning, but over time it can become a wall preventing access to that meaning.

Perhaps one of the greatest crises in religious thought throughout history has been the confusion between the essence of an idea and the form in which it was presented; between truth itself and the cultural vessel that carried it.

The great revelations came to awaken humanity morally and spiritually—not to shut down the mind.

Yet many people—out of fear, inheritance, or a psychological need for certainty—cling to old images as though they were final truths beyond reflection or development.

Over time, defending the symbol becomes a form of defending identity rather than truth itself.

This is where fanaticism emerges.

When people feel that their beliefs are their very selves, any question directed at those beliefs feels like a personal threat.

That is why some people become angry not because you disagree with them, but because you have disturbed the foundation upon which they built their sense of security.

Perhaps this is also why the deepest thinkers, mystics, and philosophers have often been the least dogmatic.

They understood that truth is wider than language, greater than rituals, and deeper than literal interpretation.

Ibn Arabi said:

“Every creed believes that Truth is confined within it, not realizing that God is greater.”

The Buddha did not ask his followers to worship him; he asked them to test truth for themselves.

Socrates saw doubt as the beginning of wisdom.

Einstein himself spoke of a “cosmic religious feeling” that transcends narrow conventional conceptions.

The real crisis is not religion.

The real crisis is when the mind stops moving.

When faith becomes fear rather than exploration.

When spiritual experience becomes a defensive psychological system.

When inner light becomes a struggle over ownership of truth.

At that point, people become willing to reject science, fight ideas, and hate those who differ from them—simply to preserve familiar mental images.

But truth does not fear questions.

And anything truly divine cannot collapse before a thinking mind.

Indeed, thinking itself may be a form of worship.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in history is that people often sanctified words while forgetting meanings.

They defended forms while losing the spirit.

Humanity now stands before a new stage of consciousness.

Science advances at extraordinary speed, artificial intelligence is redefining knowledge, and questions about consciousness and the universe have become more complex than ever before.

In this new world, the real challenge will not be defending religion against science, but liberating faith from stagnation and rescuing the spirit from the prisons of literal interpretation.

The future will belong not to the most dogmatic, but to those most capable of understanding, reflection, and growth.

And perhaps only then will humanity realize that God did not grant us reason so that we might abandon it—but so that we might use it.

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In the introduction, Badrawi offers a different perspective on what is happening in the world, rejecting the common interpretation that humanity is simply moving toward a “multipolar world.” Instead, he argues that what we are witnessing is not a smooth transition toward a new balance, but rather a state of fragmentation and instability, where power is dispersed while the real ability to control and dominate remains concentrated in the hands of those who possess the tools of continuity and influence.

He writes:

“The world is not rebalancing… it is unraveling.”

He further emphasizes that the existence of multiple powers does not necessarily mean equality among them. Rather, it may lead to the rise of disconnected actors operating outside any stable system, making the global landscape more fragile and uncertain.

The book does not claim to provide definitive answers. Instead, as the author explains, it seeks to raise the right questions once again:

How is power built?
Why does it endure?
And when does it transform from a source of stability into a source of anxiety?

A World Unraveling is an attempt to understand what lies beyond the daily political headlines and to offer a deeper reading of major international transformations, in a style that combines political thought with philosophical reflection — a hallmark of Dr. Hossam Badrawi’s recent writings.

The book is published in both Arabic and English and is available in bookstores everywhere.

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Secularism is commonly promoted as the separation of religion from the affairs of state governance.

The same secular concept and philosophy also applies to the understanding of the universe and celestial bodies. Secular thought calls for interpreting the cosmic order through a purely worldly and scientific lens, attempting to explain the existence of the universe and its components through interpretations that remain open to revision and adaptation as science advances, rather than accepting metaphorical explanations as fixed scientific truths.

Unfortunately, secularism is often portrayed by its opponents as atheism — a definition that never existed within the philosophy itself except among those opposing the separation of religion and state. Linking secularism to atheism is often used to mobilize citizens emotionally against a political idea by presenting it as an attack on their religion, even though it clearly is not.

This is manipulation of definitions in order to influence people’s emotions toward political orientations by framing them as anti-religious.

Historically, this has not been unique to one faith tradition. It occurred in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism alike. Those who use religion in politics — and religious extremists throughout history — are often similar in methodology, because they seek power and control over others under the claim that they alone are right and everyone else is wrong.

Secularism as a Political Philosophy

At its core, secularism belongs to the tradition of the social contract developed by philosophers such as John Locke, Jean‑Jacques Rousseau, and Montesquieu. It is based on the principle that political legitimacy derives not from divine or religious authority, but from the will of individuals who agree to live together according to rules they freely accept.

Accordingly, the secular state does not oppose religion; rather, it transcends religion as a source of political authority while preserving it within its own private sphere as a deeply human and spiritual matter.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant distinguished between two realms that should not be confused: the realm of morality, grounded in practical reason, and the realm of religion, grounded in faith.

This distinction itself forms a solid philosophical foundation for secularism, because it acknowledges that human beings are capable of building sound ethical and legal systems without requiring a religious authority in public affairs, while still respecting religion in personal life.

In contemporary political philosophy, another central issue concerns the idea of “public reason”: How can citizens with diverse religious and philosophical beliefs agree on fair principles to govern their shared lives?

The answer proposed is that this becomes possible only when every group abandons the claim of possessing absolute truth in the political sphere and accepts the principle of equal rational dialogue — which is, at its essence, the heart of secular practice.

In conclusion, secularism is not a closed or final ideology; it is an open, negotiative method based on accepting difference as a fundamental human reality and on viewing authority as a temporary trust subject to accountability, not as a sacred and unquestionable right. In this sense, secularism is closer to political wisdom than to doctrinal belief.

Comparative Models of Secularism: French, American, and Turkish

The French model represents one of the strictest and most assertive forms of secularism in the world.

The American model, by contrast, represents pluralistic secularism. Unlike the French approach, it is based on separating church and state without excluding religion from public life.

The Turkish model deserves special analytical attention because it is perhaps the most controversial and dramatically complex secular experiment in history. It represents the only major secular experiment that emerged within an Islamic context through a top-down, coercive process, making it an exceptional case in modern political thought and revealing the profound difference between secularism as a philosophy of freedom and secularism as an ideology of power.

When we examine secular experiences across history and geography — from Paris to Washington to Ankara — it becomes clear that secularism is not a ready-made formula that can simply be copied and pasted onto any society. Rather, it is an ongoing process of negotiation between human beings, authority, identity, and history.

Human beings are both spiritual and material creatures at the same time. They need faith in something beyond themselves, and they also need reason to organize their shared lives with others. A wise state is one that allows both without coercing people into either.

The deeper lesson revealed particularly by the Turkish experience — and confirmed by modern political history — is that secularism without democracy is an illusion, while democracy without secularism can become extremely dangerous.

There is also a deeply rooted misconception portraying secularism and religion as being in an existential war. The philosophical reality is far more nuanced. Secularism, at its core, does not ask: “Do you believe in God?” Rather, it asks: “Do you believe in the right of others to disagree with you?”

When framed this way, it becomes clear that secularism is not against religion; in fact, it protects religion by preventing the faith of the majority from dominating minorities and by preventing political authority from using religion to sanctify itself and shield its decisions from criticism and accountability.

Ultimately, history reveals that the real problem has never been religion or secularism in themselves, but rather the will to dominate that can disguise itself in any ideological clothing that serves its interests. Therefore, the true safeguard lies not in choosing the “correct” ideology, but in building institutions that limit power and hold it accountable regardless of the ideology it wears.

My own view is that no one possesses the complete truth, and therefore everyone must have the right to express themselves freely without imposing their will on others.

That sentence represents secularism in its purest form, democracy in its deepest sense, and at the same time the spirit of every genuine religious message before politics seized it and transformed it into an instrument of power.

If the state attempts — and I believe there are signs of this emerging — to suppress or prevent secular civil dialogue, then it is effectively siding with the domination of religion over political life, ultimately leading toward a religious rather than civil state. This would contradict the nature of Egyptian society, which is inherently pluralistic and whose citizens have long lived within a framework of citizenship rights as affirmed by the constitution.

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The meeting included:

• Dr. Hossam Badrawi, Chairman of the Nile Badrawi Foundation for Education and Development and Head of the Advisory Committee of Education First Foundation
• Dr. Salma Bakry, President of Education First Foundation
• Dr. Nadia Badrawi, Honorary President of the Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE)
• Prof. Alaa Ashmawy, Chairman of the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education
• Prof. Asmaa Mostafa, Vice Chairman of the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education
• Dr. Mona Ayoub, Director of the Skills and Training Center at the German-Arab Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) and Advisor to the Minister of Education for the Egyptian-German Schools Initiative
• Dr. Hossam Ezz El-Din, CEO of the American Academy and strategic partner of Prometric and ACT
• Ms. Naglaa Salem, Director of the French Institute in Heliopolis and New Cairo
• Dr. Karim Saeed, French Attaché for University Affairs at the French Embassy
• Mr. Nabil Michel, representative of M.S.A for American Diploma accreditation
• Ms. Azza El-Sherbiny, educational expert
• Mr. Anwar El-Bayni, Regional Administrative Director at Choueifat International Schools
• Dr. Maysaa Barakat, Professor of Educational Leadership at Florida Atlantic University
• Prof. Mahmoud Hamza, CEO of Education First Foundation

A delegation from the American nonprofit organization Sankofa Scholarship Collective also attended, including:

• Dr. Carmen McCallum, Associate Dean of the College of Education at Eastern Michigan University and board member of Sankofa Scholarship Collective
• Rekira Reynolds, Development Director at Sankofa Scholarship Collective
• Dr. Rima, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at Wayne State University and founding board member of Sankofa Scholarship Collective
• Imani Foster, Youth Coordinator at Sankofa Scholarship Collective
• Jordan Peebuck, Youth Coordinator at Sankofa Scholarship Collective

The organization focuses on supporting students and youth of African descent, developing education based on equity and cultural empowerment, and building more inclusive and humane educational environments.

At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Salma Bakry presented the vision and activities of Education First Foundation in supporting and developing education in Egypt through academic and strategic partnerships with local and international institutions. She also reviewed the foundation’s programs for teacher and leadership development, support for gifted students, organization of educational forums and competitions, support for educational quality and technical education, and strengthening cooperation between civil society and government institutions to build a more efficient and sustainable educational system.

On the other hand, Sankofa Scholarship Collective presented its philosophy of empowering youth and building new community leadership through education and cultural and economic awareness. The organization highlighted its support programs for youth, especially the “Financial Freedom Lab,” aimed at developing financial literacy, leadership, community engagement, and self-confidence among participants.

The presentation also explained that the organization’s leadership model is based on five main pillars: cultural identity, critical awareness, financial literacy, teamwork, and psychological and social support, all with the aim of preparing young people capable of creating positive impact within their communities.

The presentation further emphasized the importance of giving youth a genuine role in decision-making within educational institutions and encouraging schools to build more humane and inclusive learning environments based on listening to students and nurturing their intellectual and social capacities.

The organization also shared testimonials and real-life experiences from participating youth, who confirmed that the programs helped them discover themselves, develop their skills, and feel empowered to shape their futures with greater awareness and confidence.

Dr. Badrawi then delivered a speech reviewing the efforts he made during his time in parliament and his long struggle to establish the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Egypt. This stemmed from his conviction that Egypt’s educational crisis was not merely a matter of curricula or funding, but rather the absence of genuine standards for quality, accountability, and objective evaluation. Educational institutions, he explained, had operated for many years without independent mechanisms capable of measuring performance efficiency or educational outcomes. He therefore believed in the necessity of an institutional body capable of guaranteeing quality and accrediting educational institutions independently from the service providers themselves.

Dr. Badrawi further explained that quality in education is not an administrative luxury, but a comprehensive culture aimed at building individuals capable of thinking, creativity, and competitiveness. Therefore, he viewed the existence of an independent quality assurance authority as a safeguard protecting the educational process from randomness and from policy shifts caused by changing ministers or administrations.

He also linked quality with independence, arguing that the financial independence of the Quality Assurance and Accreditation Authority is essential for expanding its activities and accelerating accreditation for educational institutions at all levels. He explained that this requires allocating part of the state budget to the authority instead of continuing to treat it as a self-financing economic body. He warned that many educational institutions are unable to bear accreditation costs, which could discourage them from seeking accreditation and significantly slow down the authority’s mission of accrediting all educational institutions.

Dr. Badrawi also emphasized that granting universities and schools greater autonomy, while maintaining clear systems of evaluation and accountability, is the real path toward improving performance and efficiency.

He noted that educational quality should not be measured merely by pass rates or memorization, but by the educational system’s ability to graduate individuals who possess:

• Critical thinking skills
• The ability for lifelong learning
• Respect for diversity
• The ability to work collaboratively
• A strong connection to labor market needs and the demands of the modern era

From this perspective, Dr. Badrawi viewed the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation not merely as a regulatory institution, but as part of a broader national project aimed at rebuilding the Egyptian individual and linking education to development, the economy, and social awareness in a way that guarantees sustainable educational reform beyond temporary or seasonal solutions.

At the conclusion of the meeting, extensive discussions took place among academics, experts, and stakeholders regarding the major challenges facing institutional accreditation and educational reform in Egypt, as well as mechanisms for strengthening educational quality and linking it to institutional evaluation and accreditation standards.

The meeting concluded with several important recommendations, most notably the necessity of linking the renewal of licenses for national schools to obtaining accreditation from the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education. This was viewed as a real incentive to accelerate the accreditation of more than 8,000 schools within a relatively short timeframe, thereby improving educational quality in a sustainable and institutional manner.

Participants also stressed the importance of coordinating a meeting with the Minister of Education and Technical Education to present the proposals discussed during the seminar and explore ways of bringing different stakeholders closer together in support of a practical and implementable vision for developing Egyptian education and improving the quality of its outcomes.

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The seminar was moderated by Dr. Samir Radwan, former Minister of Finance, and Ambassador Raouf Saad, former Egyptian Ambassador to Russia.

Among the attendees were former Minister Moushira Khattab, former President of the National Council for Human Rights; Dr. Laila El-Khawaga; Dr. Heba Nassar, former President of Cairo University; Dr. Alia El Mahdy, Professor of Economics and former Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University; Dr. Nagwa Khashaba, academic, writer, and Egyptian intellectual interested in educational and cultural affairs; Dr. Heba El-Leithy, Professor of Statistics and Economics and expert in poverty and human development; Dr. Mostafa Kamel El-Sayed, Professor of Political Science at Cairo University and one of Egypt’s leading political thinkers; and Mr. Abdel Azim Hammad, journalist and former Editor-in-Chief of both Al-Ahram and Al-Shorouk newspapers.

At the beginning of his speech, Dr. Hossam Badrawi expressed his great pleasure at being among such distinguished Egyptian figures, emphasizing that education is not merely a service or administrative file, but a civilizational future directly linked to the state’s ability to survive and progress in a world changing at an unprecedented pace.

Dr. Badrawi pointed out that educational reform is fundamentally a political decision before it is a technical one, explaining that countries which succeeded in building modern renaissances began first by rebuilding the human being and by giving education genuine priority beyond slogans and temporary plans.

He added that the problem lies not only in curricula or examinations, but in the philosophy upon which the entire educational system is built, stressing that the real goal of education should be to build minds capable of critical thinking and creativity — not merely graduates seeking jobs, but creators of civilization.

Dr. Badrawi particularly focused on the preschool stage.

He also stressed that any educational reform project that does not place teachers at the center of the educational process will fail to produce meaningful impact. He noted that respecting teachers, qualifying them, and improving their conditions represent the cornerstone of any genuine and sustainable reform. He added that Egypt has approximately 750,000 teachers educating 30 million children, and that upgrading the capabilities of this teaching workforce is not impossible, but achievable within no more than five years.

He further emphasized that technology and artificial intelligence alone cannot create an educational renaissance unless accompanied by a transformation in ways of thinking, freedom of expression, and the removal of barriers restricting creativity.

“The challenge,” he explained, “lies in redefining the relationship between the student and knowledge.”

Dr. Badrawi also addressed what he described as one of the greatest dangers facing societies: the killing of children’s curiosity and turning education into a mechanical process devoid of passion and discovery. Equally dangerous, he said, is creating contradiction within children — encouraging them at times to think critically and reject what lacks evidence, while at other times presenting them with unquestionable absolutes they are not allowed to discuss.

He affirmed that building the Egyptian individual must rely on an integrated system combining knowledge, values, coexistence, and openness to the world, while preserving national and cultural identity. He stressed that true investment lies not merely in buildings, but in the human mind capable of innovation and shaping the future.

At the conclusion of the seminar, an open dialogue took place between Dr. Badrawi and the audience, addressing several challenges facing Egyptian education and ways to develop it in a manner that achieves justice, efficiency, and sustainability. Participants highly praised the depth of the discussion and the future-oriented vision presented during the seminar.

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The conference opened with remarks by Dr. Salma Bakry, Chairwoman of Balanced Education Company, and Dr. Basma Ismail, Vice Chairwoman, who reviewed the institution’s six-year journey and highlighted its achievements and educational initiatives, supported by a documentary film showcasing its impact on the ground.

Ms. Tomoko Fujihira from Japan also delivered remarks expressing her appreciation for the fruitful cooperation with the foundation and her optimism about future collaboration in supporting educational development in Egypt. The conference additionally featured artistic performances presented by “Ibhar Masr,” along with a speech by Dr. Ahmed Daher, Deputy Minister of Education and Technical Education.

At the conclusion of the event, Dr. Badrawi received the BalancED Award 2026 in recognition of his longstanding contributions to education and human development, as well as his intellectual and advisory role in supporting educational reform in Egypt.

Dr. Badrawi’s speech was among the highlights of the conference. He emphasized that education is not merely a profession, but a mission for building human beings. He stressed that Egypt’s greatest wealth lies not in resources or buildings, but in the minds of its children and youth.

He called for the creation of an educational system capable of producing thinkers and innovators who can question, differ, and create freely, affirming that the future is shaped inside the classroom and within the mind of a child who is given an environment that encourages growth and independent thinking.

Dr. Badrawi also warned that one of the greatest dangers any nation may face is the loss of its youth’s belief in their own abilities. He affirmed that knowledge is not a cultural luxury, but the foundation of national dignity and human freedom, and that investing in human development will always remain the greatest investment societies can make.

He concluded his speech amid great appreciation and warmth from attendees, many of whom gathered to take commemorative photographs with him, reflecting the deep respect for his long journey in supporting education and intellectual development in Egypt.

To read Dr. Badrawi’s full speech, please refer to the following link:

Google Drive Link

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