Tag: religion

RAM bans praying

While feeling a little bad about it, I am secretly pleased about Royal Air Maroc’s decision — as reported by the BBC — to ban its employees from praying on company time. On the one hand, it’s obviously rather insensitive to people’s religious beliefs and stigmatizes religion as something suspicious and preferable to avoid. It’s also very much at odds with the trend towards conservatism in the country, both socially and politically (the moderate Islamist PJD looks set to win next year’s parliamentary elections with a margin of about 30%). On the other hand, I am constantly irritated by people praying in offices, especially when they do it in public. I find ostentatious piety (of the kind that is grotesquely abundant in Egypt among both Muslims and Christians) distasteful, especially when it’s shoved in your face constantly and people suddenly start rolling out carpets in the middle of an office, interrupting their (and others’) work and contributing to the already very palpable social pressure to become more outwardly religious. I know many people who pray but do it in prayer rooms or mosques and avoid making a display of themselves while doing it — which seems to me to be the socially and religiously correct way to do things.

All this being said, this kind of action (rather than, say, imposing strict guidelines on when and where people can pray in public offices) will play straight into the hands of Moroccan’s populist Islamists who love to campaign on the secularist conspiracy that’s everywhere. And it creates this false dichotomy between Islamists, who want to wear their religion on their sleeves and think invasive forms of public piety are a type of dawa, and perhaps equally religious Muslims who think that their faith is a private thing and have the good taste not be ostentatious about it.

This episode reminds me a bit of Tunisia’s recent statement that it would ban the niqab. In principle, I find the niqab abhorrent. But do you really want to have a state that legislates what people can and can’t wear, or for that matter endorse the Tunisian regime, one of the vilest in the region?

Seminar: The Coptic QuestionÙ�

The Center for Socialist Studies will hold a seminar on Discrimination against Copts in Egypt, Friday 3 November.

The First Session, 1pm to 2:30 pm: The Roots of the Problem

The session will try to situate the historical roles of the parties involved, the Egyptian state, Coptic Church, and the Coptic masses, within the socio-economic and political contexts. The session will try to answer questions including: Did the rise of political Islam trigger a sectarian polarization? Is the state a neutral arbitrator or part of the problem? Is the Coptic Church confronting the current status quo, or reinforcing it?

The Second Session, 3pm to 4:30pm, The Stand towards the Coptic Question:

This session will shed light on the class factors and stands of different political tendencies towards the Coptic Question and the alternatives for emancipation. The role of the Diaspora Copts will be discussed, together with questions regarding: Is the Secular State a solution? How do the Muslim Brothers deal with the concept of “citizenship”?

The Third Session, 5pm to 6:30pm, Developing a Leftist View of the Coptic Question

The Seminar will be attended by representatives of different political tendencies. The Center is located 7 Mourad Street, Giza.

Security agents breaking the leg of coptic protestor in Alexandria, April 2006

(Above: Security agents breaking the leg of a Coptic protestor, during Alexandria’s sectarian rioting last April. Photo by Nasser Nouri)

شـــــــــارك معنا… إن توحيد الصÙ�ÙˆÙ� Ù�ÙŠ مواجهة الإمبريالية والاستبداد يتطلب مواجهة قضايا محورية وشائكة، منها قضية التمييز ضد المسيحيين المصريين. وتأكيدا منا على ضرورة إدراك القوى الوطنية لأهمية القضية وأهمية بلورة موقÙ� مشترك تجاهها.يقيم مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية سيمينار بعنوان المسألة القبطية: بين الإنكار والتبعية للإستعماروذلك بوم الجمعة 3/11/2006برنامج اليوم:

1-2:30 ظهرا

الجلسة الأولى : جذور المشكلة

تتناول هذه الجلسة بحث وتحليل لجذور مشكلة التمييز الديني �ي مصر مشتملا على الدور الذي لعبته، وما زالت تمارسه الدولة �ي مقابل دور الكنيسة وجماهير الأقباط وذلك �ي إطار التطورات الاقتصادية، والاجتماعية والسياسية التي شهدتها الساحة المصرية.

ونحاول �ي هذه الجلسة الإجابة على عدة تساؤلات منها: هل أدى صعود الإسلام السياسي إلى عملية استقطاب على أساس ديني؟ أين الحقوق التي يك�لها الدستور المصري لأقباط من ممارسات الدولة؟ الدور الذب لعبته الكنيسة �ي تعزيز الوضع القائم أو مواجهته؟

3:00-4:30:مساء

الجلسة الثانية: الموق� من مسألة الأقباط

تحاول هذه الجلسة إلقاء الضوء على المواق� المختل�ة من المسألة القبطية والحلول المطروحة للتعامل معها. و�ي هذا الإطار نطرح عدد من القضايا مثل الدور الأمريكي وعلاقته بأقباط المهجر. وكذلك البعد الطبقي لهذه المسألة. وتطرح الجلسة أسئلة ملحة منها: هل الدولة العلمانية هي الحل؟ كي� بتعامل الأخوان المسلمين مع م�هوم المواطنة؟

5:00-6:30 مساء

الجلسة الثالثة تطوير رؤية يسارية من المسألة القبطية

تركز هذه الجلسة على إجابة السؤال التالي: هل هناك رؤية يسارية موحدة حول مسألة التمييز الديني؟

يشارك �ي الجلسات ممثلون من مختل� القوى السياسية، وذلك �ي مقر المركز : 7 شارع مراد- الجيزة

The 4:34 dance

An interesting article about Islam, the Quran, and wife-beating. The author tackles the kind of issue that is fundamentally difficult when talking about “liberal interpretation” of Islam: if it’s written pretty unambiguously in the Quran, it’s difficult to justify change. What these interpretations miss out however is that just because something is written in the Quran doesn’t mean it’s universally followed or even known about. Not to mention that certain patriarchal practices are probably more about traditional conservatism and misogyny (two traits certainly prevalent among both Arab Muslims and Arab Christians) than an understanding of religion.

religious art

Virgin-Mary-Ams.jpg

So here we are in Antwerp, where it seems that the friendly face of the diamond trade is now a Russian with watermelon forearms and eyes like a three-day-dead fish. Passed on the diamond-rimed .357 pendant and hit the Koninklijk Museum for a bit of high-culture in low-land light.

An hour of perusing paintings of martyrdom and judgment and I’d had my fill of the burning, hacking, drowning, beating and skewering (the kind of stuff New York Times pieces on Iraq report generically as “signs of torture�) that were, until relatively recently, the centerpiece of public diplomacy here.

Back on the street, there was a heavily made-up lady busking in the shadow of the Gothic cathedral. She was pretending—quite credibly—to be a statue of the Virgin Mary (she even had a little Baby Jesus on her lap), except, when you tossed a coin in her plate, she came alive and blew you a kiss.

This in the heartland of a vicious, protracted, sectarian conflict that took as a centerpiece Rome’s idolatry and venality. That smashed statues and people with equal abandon.

Nice to see they’ve learned to crack a smile, toss a coin, and move on. And it only took five-hundred years, a few dozen major wars and a mountain range of corpses.

There are a few more pics of my current European tour here.

The Quran as a supermarket

I’ve barely had time to follow the developments in the Hassan Hanafi controversy, which has just emerged in the English-language press (note to Daily Star Egypt: among many other things, you need to be much quicker in following Egyptian news than you currently are) but was quite the thing in the Arabic press over two weeks ago. So I’ll just provide the link to Egyptian academic wades into troubled waters in the DS (via AFP), about Hanafi’s seemingly offhand remark that the Quran is like a supermarket, you can find anything you want in there:

Sheikh Mustafa al-Shaka, from Al-Azhar’s Center on Islamic Research, accused Hanafi of being a “Marxist” for “uttering such nonsense totally divorced from Islam.

“If apostasy is proven, he who becomes an ex-Muslim should be executed,” Shaka said. In Hanafi’s case, however, “he deserves medical treatment, because he has a psychiatric problem.”

Hanafi, who received his doctorate from the Sorbonne and has taught in Europe and the United States, was close to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in his youth. After passing through a phase of leftist leanings, he became one of the leading thinkers in the contemporary movement that posits a revolutionary political activism rooted in study of the Muslim scriptures.

Rarely do other thinkers publicly side with him, but one of them is Gamal al-Banna, a Muslim reformist and, ironically, younger brother of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.

“I have to say it wasn’t very intelligent comparing the Koran with a supermarket but, in the end he’s not wrong,” said Banna, asserting that “one finds different opinions in the Koran.”

Some of the holy book’s verses are “very dense and confusing expressions” that require interpretation, he said, calling for a “return to the Koran,” interpreting it where necessary in the light of the whole corpus of Islamic theological writing.

Banna himself has been at the receiving end of criticism by traditional Muslim scholars.

His book “The Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State in the Modern Age,” in which he suggests ways for Muslim communities in non-Islamic societies to merge better with their environment, was banned in Egypt. In his book, he said that if a woman feels uncomfortable wearing a traditional veil in Europe, then a hat would be permissible.

He recently came under fire for suggesting that smoking during the holy month of Ramadan is permissible.

Even if Hanafi’s argument could have been phrased in a more diplomatic way, I hope other Muslim thinkers will quickly rise to defend him. The concept of ijtihad is hardly something new in Islamic theology, as is the idea that there are different interpretations of the Holy Book (after all there are four official schools of Sunni theology) and it was basically the point Hanafi was making. It is also one that some ideologically radical Islamist groups, such as al-Adl wal Ihsan in Morocco, are making.

Jesus, the hidden imam

This, written and sent by a friend at AFP in Baghdad, is just bizarre:

Iraq-US-Shiites-Jesus-offbeat Iraq Sadr City residents insulted by ‘Buddy Jesus’

BAGHDAD, Oct 1, 2006 (AFP) – Iraqi Shiite residents of Sadr City expressed anger on Sunday over a picture of a grinning Jesus they mistook for a Shiite holy figure that appeared in their neighborhood following a joint US-Iraqi operation.

Residents found a picture of “Buddy Jesus” from the 1999 film “Dogma” posted in the streets, accompanied by a badly photocopied pamphlet bearing a crude approximation of a US military crest and outlining a US “plan” to subjugate the area.

“That picture abuses our Imam Mahdi and his holy character, and mocks our sacred figures,” said resident Abu Riyam, apparently mistaking the satirical movie still of Jesus for one Shiism’s historical imams, whose images adopt a Jesus-like iconography.

The grinning, winking model of Buddy Jesus giving a thumbs-up sign appeared in the comedic film as a fictional attempt by the Catholic Church to present a kinder, more accessible image of Christianity.

“If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny,” said a coalition spokesman Major Will Willhoite.

The pamphlets outlined a plan to discredit the militias in the sprawling two million person Baghdad slum, a stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

“Destabilize security in the militia areas with explosions and assassinations to create panic” and “killing, raping and kidnapping women” were all measures the pamphlet recommended for causing people to lose faith in the militias.

“Do not tell the suspect militias of these plans but keep them among friendly forces,” admonished the pamphlet.

The US military did not confirm that it had conducted a raid into Sadr City in the early hours of the morning, but said that an Iraq force with coalition advisors did conduct an operation in “northeast” Baghdad.

Much of Baghdad’s violence has been laid at the feet of Shiite militias, many of whom are based in Sadr City, but US forces have yet to enter the neighborhood in force.

And here’s the poster:

Buddyjesus

Coptic conscript tortured to death?

There had been emails circulating among the Egyptian leftist Yahoo! Groups demanding an investigation into the death of a Coptic army conscript. The emails had links to The Free Copts website, which alleges Private Hani Sarofim was tortured to death by his commander to force his conversion to Islam.

The article included a statement by the deceased family and contact numbers, which when I tried, I could not get through.

I am extremely troubled by this, and can not validate what happened. The Free Copts have previously reported on some serious abuses that did indeed happen, but there were other cases which they blew out of proportion. I don’t know if this case is true, but if so, then one can safely say we are still living in the Medieval Ages. Please if anyone has more information about this subject, or if you managed to get through to the family on the phone numbers, fill us in.

Debate among Lebanese Shia about Hizbullah

Interesting story in the Boston Globe about a Shia intellectual who has sparked a storm with an essay denouncing Hizbullah. If anyone has the link to her original essay, please share.

Meanwhile, here in Cairo, last night I walked past a car that had a poster of Hassan Nasrallah on its side window. I looked closer at the poster, which described Nasrallah as “the man who vanquished Israel,” I saw it was from the liberal-ish weekly Al Destour. Al Destour is edited by Ibrahim Eissa, one of the most vibrant voices against the Mubarak regime and a self-described liberal. Somehow all the paradox of why most Arabs cheered Hizbullah is there: even if people don’t like Hizbullah’s ideology, they’re always going to cheer for it when it is responding to attacks that tried to destroy an entire country.

Update: Praktike has photos.