Tag: religion

Squabbling over religion

Before Jan 25, mosques had been hunting grounds for the MB. In the post-Jan 25 days, mosques evolved to become a place where they can meet, organize, mobilize, campaign, and more recently, treat fallen followers, count bodies and hide leaders. They also become the scene of political squabbles. At the time of the controversial Islamist-backed constitution, there were dueling campaigns to 1) challenge imams who used their sermons to support Morsi/the constitution (نزله من المنبار, “Get him down off the minbar”) or 2) physically restrain worshippers who challenged the imam (ربته في العمود, “Tie him to a column”). 

The last thing the Brothers needed, after the eventful summer they’ve had, was to have their comfort zone fall back under government control and, now, the perked ears of pro-military residents, who would report an imam faster than he could compare what soldiers did to Muslims protesters in Raba’a al-Adaweya to what they haven’t done to the Jewish soldiers in Israel.

With the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) resolved to tighten its grip on mosques by passing a number of laws to substitute the much-criticized MB monopoly over religion with its own, many lips had been chewed and prayers for patience muttered.

Now there is a noticeable change in the khutbah (friday sermon). For the most part, it is  shorter, just like the minister wanted (because the men have other things to tend to) and no longer connected to politics, not even by way of metaphors or anecdotes. A considerable number of imams have been contacted by the ministry and told specifically to stay off politics or else they might be considered a national security threat, inciting violence and possessing illegal weapons. Many imams sense danger and have begun self-censoring in case a  housewife cooking in a nearby building hears the khutbah and doubts their patriotism, or in the not-unlikely-event that one of the new faces in the crowd turns out to be an informant.

Even though the great majority of MB imams have kept fiery sermons to a minimum and seem to have contented themselves with neighborhood night marches against the military in the meantime, some allow themselves a fit of rage and lead a protest out of mosques, three times a week, in areas too densely populated for police officers to be coaxed into visiting, like Ain Shams.

“You can tell (the MB supporters) are unhappy when they hear me preach about patience and generosity rather than comment about the situation,” said licensed Sheikh Emad, who is not Amr Moussa or something and should not be expected to talk politics. In the past month, Sheikh Emad was heckled out of his Ain Shams mosque when he tried to close it between prayers (another ministry rule).

But the fact remains that there are well over a 100 thousand mosques in Egypt and about half of them are manned by state-approved Azhar graduates. The rest are freelancers. The feared anti-military extremists can be either one of them. The new Awqaf minister has suspended the license-to-preach of all freelancers,  said the must re-apply, and that only Azharis — as representatives of middle-of-the-road, official sanctioned Islam — will get one. 

The ministry is also trying to limit the activities of zawiyas (unofficial very small neighborhood mosques). This may be why its list of four “conditions”  regarding zawiya operation are closer to requests than rules. Laughable requests, according to Sheikh Gamal, a zawiya imam, shopkeeper, and occasional gas cylinder seller.

The conditions are that there be no (big) nearby mosque, or if there is one that it be full full; one can pray in a zawiya so long as it has a written permission to hold prayers or a licensed imam, as if people are going to walk in and ask for ID and licenses like a traffic cop. Anyway, what happens if people don’t abide by these conditions? What kind of legal consequences, if any, could one face for praying in zawiya?

For all its worth, most people under 45 like to skip the khutbah, if not physically, then mentally, and just wait for the iqaamah (the beginning of the prayer), Sheikh Gamal said with a knowing smile. Youngsters like to loiter by a kiosk and appear the moment the prayer starts in the back rows and the old sit inside and ponder life and prices.

The only people really listening to the khutbah now, Sheikh Gamal suspects, are those who wish they could deliver it and those who are there to make sure they don’t.

Attacks on Ba’hais in Egypt

I wanted to mention it yesterday when the story broke, but there has been a nasty attack against a Ba’hai community near Sohag in Upper Egypt. The incident appears to have been sparked by the appearance of a local community leader on TV, where he was attacked by a hack for the state newspaper al-Gomhouriya, who called for him to be killed. The same pathetic hack later praised the attacks on the Ba’hais in an article, showing how deeply xenophobic, sectarian, ultra-Salafist thinking has permeated state institutions. This man should be fired and put on trial for inciting violence (Egypt has no law against religious incitation, something I’ve long thought they should implement and use against any intolerance and particularly Islamists who advocated takfir). More details in a press release from Egyptian human rights groups below.

Continue reading Attacks on Ba’hais in Egypt

Morocco’s Le Journal: “We are all Shia”

My friend Abou Bakr Jamai, publisher of Morocco’s Le Journal weekly now in forced into exile because of bogus lawsuits against his magazine, sent me this week’s cover highlighting Morocco’s new religious crusade for “the right Islam” that must be followed.

This campaign is aimed at asserting the “Sunni malekite nature” of “Moroccan Islam”; its aim is to buttress the pro-monarchy traditionalism of very Morocco-specific institutions such as the “Commandership of the Faithful” (specific in that it argues that the king has the same role as a Caliph, but only for Moroccans), Sherifism (high respect for descendants of the prophet, a very Shia tradition that has since Sultan Moulay Ismail in the 17th century been a key part of governance through a ethno-religious aristocracy) and the prominence of apolitical Sufi tariqat. The campaign to reimpose these traditionalist values is partly a not-so-badly thought out attempt to limit the spread of salafism (I applaud that) but has also spread into paranoia about Iran-funded Shia conversion and as a way to put pressure on Islamic parties, legal and unrecognized. But it’s the kind of thing that the Moroccan regime has long done – asserting a Moroccan Islam that is nice and fluffy vs. the Islam of its opponents – and, moreover, the foreigners usually lap it up.

"We are all Shia, Sunni, Jewish, Christian, atheist, agnostic..."

Londonstani on “The Islamist”

Londonstani, a former Cairo drinking buddy and journalist who blogs over at our counter-insurgency obsessed friends Abu Muqawama (they who speak of themselves in the third person – just teasing, guys), has a great review of Ed Husain’s The Islamist, a book about the radicalization of British Muslims. Londonstani makes a very good point about its superficial treatment of “traditional Islam” vs. modern Islamism (whether radical or not) and the importance of understanding the rigid traditionalist socio-cultural concepts that are perpetuated among migrant communities (sometimes even when these things evolve in the “home country”):

“This ‘traditional’ outlook is in general terms shared by most (if not all) immigrant Muslim communities. Husain comes from a Bengali family background, but the cultural outlook he describes is shared by Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Somalis and Nigerians. That’s not to say all these cultures are exactly the same, but in the main they exhibit large measures of racism (often against each other), sexism, tribalism and a quietist approach to dealing with the outside world that fail to meet the challenges their children experience in reconciling their backgrounds with their everyday lives.

In a depressingly high frequency of cases, these ‘traditional’ outlooks result in harmful and exploitative practices. Two years ago, I got to know several young men from Bengali backgrounds who lived in housing estates in Husain’s old stomping ground. One of the guys, Fasial, I knew from the local gym. He was bearded and religious, and an upstanding member of his community. Three times a week he helped organise a bus that took elderly residents of his housing estate to their local church. And could be found most afternoons teaching football to pre-teens in the estate’s playground.

After knowing Fasial for about six weeks, he started telling me how he had been a gang member until a visit to Bangladesh, where he found religion. A couple of weeks after that initial conversation, he told me how he had ended up in Bangladesh against his will because his father wanted him to marry his cousin. At his extended family’s village, Faisal had been poisoned by relatives angry that his intended bride had chosen him instead of another cousin who lived in the village. Faisal was sick for weeks and thought he might die. He found religion on what he thought would be his deathbed. When he got better, his newly acquired religious persona allowed him the gravitas to resist community pressure and reject his father’s plans.

The other friends I had made had equally horrific stories. And some were plain surreal involving severe beatings as part of what can only be described as a voodoo ritual to banish the evil eye.

Islamism addresses the questionable ‘traditional’ practices of the families its raw recruits come from. This is a large part of its appeal. If you find yourself in a lecture hall where young Muslims are told the way of life they struggled to follow is actually itself ‘un-Islamic’, you will be able to hear the collective intake of air and the surprised mumblings of the crowd.”

Go read the rest. Abu Muqawama recently became an official blog of the Center for a New American Security (the old security sucked should be their motto) and their comment counts have been going through the roof lately.

On Hichem Djait

I read this Angry Arab post this morning and could not agree more:

Hichem Djait: Probably the most important and original scholar on Islam. I have been reading about the origins of the Great Fitnah in Islam. It is easy to discover that the best book there is on the subject is by the brilliant Tunisian scholar, Hichem Djait: La Grande Discorde, which appeared in an excellent Arabic translation but not in an English translation. Djait is largely unknwn in US academia although he is in my opinion one of the best contemporary scholars on Islam. This is a man who is equally fluent in German philosophy–in German–and in French historiography–in French–and in Arabic writings–in Arabic. Only one of his books is available in English, L’Europe et l’Islam. That book should be read along with Said’s Orientalism and Rodinson’s La Fascination de l’Islam as the essential readings on the subject (and Irwin’s latest Dangerous Knowledge, albeit as a critical counterpoint). In the introduction to his book on Fitnah, Djait points out (with surprise) that there are no studies about the subject, with the exception of a book by Taha Husayn which is literary in nature. Husayn (contrary to his reputation) was quite apologetic in his writings on Islam. Djait is great in being critical of Orientalist literature and critical of the early Islamic sources. Politically, Djait surprises me: this brilliant scholar has Saddamist Arab nationalist sympathies.

Hichem Djait’s Fitna is incredibly rich, detailed history and the best book on the subject I know of. Whatever you do, don’t get the book with the same main title by Kepel. Djait’s book is the real thing, and considering the creepy anti-Shiism rising in the Sunni Arab world it’s probably worth re-reading.

Market Islam

I was asked a while back to contribute a guest post to Washington Post reporter Jack Fairweather’s blog “Islam’s Advance” (about “Islam influencing and adapting to the modern world”).

I ended up writing on a phenomenon that has interested me for a while, every since I read Patrick Haenni’s great book “L’Islam de Marché” (“Market Islam”), which I think unfortunately has never been translated into English: Islamic “branding” and Islamic consumer lifestyles. I also got to use one of my own all-time favourite interview anecdotes: the time a young Islamic TV preacher quoted Brian Adams to be to explain the concept of submission to Allah.

The post just skims the surface of what is a complex and interesting subject. (And this should go without saying, but my discussion of the intersection of capitalism and Islam is not meant as a critique of the Muslim faith).

War of the CRAPs: Hirsi Ali contra Manji

This NYT piece on the relationship between Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities (CRAP) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji seizes the non-relevance of these people to the problems of the Islamic world yet, admitting that, continues to find them enthralling.

First there is this paragraph:

Yet though they are allies on one level, their approaches to Islam are strikingly different, with one working outside the religion and one within. Neither one can be considered a spokeswoman for a significant Muslim constituency in the Middle East. (Indeed, their most sympathetic audiences are probably Western.) But their differences have implications for all the big issues the West grapples with in considering the Muslim world. How much popular support do terrorists have? Is a secular Middle East possible, and what’s the best way to promote it? Is Islam itself an enemy of the West?

But then this conclusion:

Clearly, this is a debate of importance not only to Muslims but to non-Muslims as well, and for a Westerner listening in, the best way to understand it may be to translate it into the language of European history. Irshad Manji sees herself as moving Islam into the 16th century; Ayaan Hirsi Ali wants to move it into the 18th. It’s as if Luther and Voltaire were living at the same time.

Is there anything more puerile, more annoying, more navel-gazing, more incredibly stupid than comparisons between modern Islam and European Christianity? This is the New York Times: the best way to understand its approach to the Muslim world may be to translate it into the language of American television: a combination of the faux-earnestness of 1950s family comedy and the fixation on the travails of minor celebrities seen in contemporary reality shows. It’s as if “Leave it to Beaver” and “American Idol” were being watched at the same time.

[From Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other – New York Times]

Fawzy – “Copts: Citizens not Clients”

I like Sameh Fawzy, a smart Coptic activist and researcher who has written at length about Islamist groups, the concept of citizenship, and many other issues. In his latest article for the Daily News Egypt he talks about Coptic attitudes towards the municipal elections, the problem with the clergy intervening on behalf of the regime and claiming to speak for all Copts, and the important question that elections are “more negotiations than competition.” We’ve seen this in recent days as Zakariya Azmi, ruling party bigwig and President Mubarak’s chief of staff, entered into talks with the legal opposition to urge it to field more candidates. We see it even at the local level where the Muslim Brothers can occasionally negotiate with local NDP, although those cases are now few and far between. What you have is an election where the results are essentially pre-determined, particularly when the party that refuses to enter negotiations most of the time, or with whom the regime refuses to negotiate, is excluded altogether.

Here obviously I speak of the Muslim Brothers, who still have a long, long way to go before most Copts come to trust them. Essam al-Erian has an op-ed in the Forward, which it seems is fast becoming the favorite Jewish-American magazine for Islamists. It’s pretty boiler plate but covers much of the ground of what has been happening in recent days.

Getting over fitna

I recently watched the new short film by the Dutch right-wing MP Geert Wilders, Fitna. It’s not like I was expecting anything but racist drivel, but I was particularly underwhelmed by this effort, which essentially consists of quotes of the Quran super-imposed with pictures of veiled women “taking over our streets” and much complaining of how many mosques are being built in Holland. In other words, it’s the usual pretty thin racist crap about how foreigners are coming to our country to steal our jobs and seduce our women, and how they look different, thus breaking the harmonious landscapes of the nation’s streets. For some reason, I was actually expecting something a bit more high-minded. I think Theo van Gogh would have delivered something better, this looks like the ad campaign for something like Vlaams Belang (the racist Flemish party in Belgium, which I am more familiar with having spent much time there — I remember as a kid in the 1980s seeing its predecessor, the Vlaams Blok, putting up stickers with the charming inscription “all Moroccan women are whores” on street lamps.)

I suppose the low artistic and intellectual merit of fitna largely explained why it has been ignored aside from the media’s desperate search for an angry reaction of the kind we had over the Danish cartoons (a reaction driven largely by governments for their own purposes, as in Syria). You could have had a film looking at some of the real problems with Islam as it has been practiced for centuries, or how many Islamists advocate it should be practiced now. The issue of uneven rights for women is a real problem, and just like there is atrocious racism in Western societies against non-whites, there is scandalous discrimination in many Islamic countries against non-Muslims. I don’t care how many hadiths you pull out of your hats to show the prophet ‘s best friend was a Christian or whatever else. The proof is in the practice, and particularly in Arab patriarchal societies, the practice hasn’t exactly been great and the moral leadership, with some notable exceptions, has been even poorer.

The word “fitna” is Arabic for “discord” and is usually the term used to refer to the fight over the succession of the caliphate that led to the split into Shia and Sunni Islam. It’s an odd title for the movie, which never quite explains what it means or why it was chosen, but perhaps an apt one to describe the media-driven hullabaloo over its coverage. Sure, Wilders may get threats from some idiots, and could even get killed. This is profoundly regrettable, as is the fact that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others are driven into hiding or have to live under constant guard. But beyond this you can’t quite shake the feeling that this story is part of a larger meme of civilizational conflict editors have decided to run with, no matter what the actual reaction on the street is, the quality of the debate, and the desire by the people writing these books and making these movies to get their 15 minutes of fame by being “courageous contrarians.”

I suspect that, mostly, we don’t really care about these movies, cartoons and books. I’d rather reserve my energy to defend the likes of Salman Rushdie, an author of considerable talent whose Satanic Verses had real artistic merit, or focus on the real problems with the way police handle urban Arab immigrant youths in Western Europe, than spend my time playing “clash of civilisations” over silly cartoons in provincial Danish newspapers or the crappy home movie of a Dutch politician with silly hair. This stuff is fitna for the sake of fitna, or really, fitna without a cause.

A Shiite Tikriti

Hannah has a great post about a very coquette (and courageous) Shia Tikriti woman:

How on earth, I asked her, does a Shiite Tikriti living under control of the Mahdi Army get away with dressing as she does when these days even Christian women have begun to cover their hair to deflect attention?

K replied that she is simply tired of the fundamentalists who now rule Iraq, both in the government and in the streets, both Shiite and Sunni. The Mahdi Army doesn’t mind if she drives, K said, but she has been warned by “concerned friends” about her exposed hair. Before the sectarian cleansing of her neighborhood, it was actually Sunni militants who were worse in their targeting of women, K said.

The threats got so numerous that one day she stopped caring. She went on about her daily routine, driving and dressing and praying as she wished, crediting only God with allowing her to survive each day.

“Remember when Zarqawi wrote that if you see a woman driving, kill her? Well, they might kill two or three to teach a lesson, but they can’t kill all the women,” K said casually, popping a pistachio candy in her mouth. She began to laugh triumphantly.

“And now what?” she asked. “Zarqawi is dead and I’m alive. I’m still here.”