A new weekly series about Egypt (Saturdays)

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (17 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (17): al-Islam huwa al-Hall.

Sixteen frescoes ago, a question had been raised during our visit in Cairo last November, as to what chances of electoral success the Muslim Brotherhood could have during the elections that would be held after President Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s Arab Spring. It was then estimated the Ikhwan would reap 20% of the ballots. The Brotherhood campaigned under a slogan that it had been using since the end of Nasserism, in 1970. It proclaimed that only Islam could solve all of the country’s ills. Whenever they were asked what, for instance, they would do with population explosion, the problems of transportation, the rise in the cost of living, or the salinity of the soil in the Nile Delta, to mention but a few of the country’s ailments, they answered with confidence: al-Islam huwa al-Hall. Seventeen frescoes later, we know that the Ikhwan, in Egypt, along with a more radical brand of Islamists, the Salafis, today hold the majority of seats in the newly elected parliament. Their next objective is to wrest the presidency from traditional parties. Then, they promise, will they give the country and its people their true Islamic direction.

Westerners and Westernized Muslim Arabs have been distraught by the recentmost democratic elections which brought about Islamists to power, startin

Hassan El-Banna

g with Hamas, in Gaza, Palestine. Western powers who recently advocated the end of authoritarian regimes, which they supported for decades, have been caught totally unprepared with such results at the polls. The actual successes of the Islamists in freely held elections represents the beginning of a trend that shall follow the course of social and intellectual changes which never stopped since Islam was born in Arabia in the seventh century. That is bluntly to state that, although the term Salaf is often utilized today to mean a return to the time of the Prophet, in fact, throughout Islamic History, the Salafis appeared in times of crisis in Muslim societies in order to correct what they saw as deviations and departures from what ought to be and ought to remain. As we write today, the Muslim World is in serious jeopardy. In the case of Egypt, dislocations in social mores and relations had become unbearable at the eve of the Second World War as a result of economic development, British imperialism and the World War of 1914-1918. One Hasan al-Banna founded, in 1928, a Muslim Brotherhood to bring his compatriots back to the path of the Salaf. The Egyptian Ikhwan embarked in social work to alleviate the suffering of a proletariat which the money economy in Modern Egypt had brought about. British occupation and the presence of a foreign element, the Khawagat, warranted that the citizenry be reminded of its true identity and its creed. The Second World War and the creation of the State of Israel had, furthermore, made the Brotherhood expand its influence. Its leadership became convinced, at some point, that power should be usurped by force. al-Banna was assassinated as a result and the membership of the Ikhwan interned in detention camps in the oasis of the Western Desert. It must be noted that, during the earliest internments, facilities lacked to accommodate all the challengers of the Regime. Communists, Liberalists and Muslim Brothers were put together and much intellectual ferment resulted from this coexistence of opposing points of view. The Ikhwan came out of their incarcerations much more seasoned, ideologically, and their resolve was strengthened.

Egypt, I wish to emphasize, is comparable to no other Muslim country. When it opened its gates to Islam, early in 641 AD, the imposing capital which the Fatimids built, in 969 AD, the Victorious, al-Qahira, grew to become the heart of Islam. The city was erected along the trade routes between East and West. 

Al-Azhar

Al-Azhar Mosque and its Madrasah became important centres of Islamic learning. Unlike Baghdad and Damascus, al-Qahira was spared from destruction during the Mongol invasions around the 1300’s. The city emerged, along with the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, as a clearing house for ideas and news which transiting pilgrims, on their way to the Hajj, carried to and fro at the speed of caravans. At the Battle of Marj Dabiq, in 1516, when the rising Ottomans Turks defeated the Mameluks of Egypt and incorporated al-Qahira into their Empire, al-Azhar’s ‘Ulama’ competed in science, knowledge, culture and influence with those of Istambul, Makkah and the great centres of trade and learning in Syria, Mesopotamia, the Indian Sub-Continent and Central Asia. And, when one attempts to ponder over the role of Change in Islamic History, once again, Egyptian Islam rose to the call. It shall be interesting to consider what will be meant by al-Islam huwa al-Hall for the Egyptians and for the Muslims at large in the first half of the twenty first century. One just has to remember the impact which Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abduh, an Egyptian, had on the reconciliation of Islam and Western Sciences in the nineteenth century. The same exercise had occurred during ‘Abbasi times, in Baghdad and Umawi times, in Spain, earlier in Medieval times. ‘Abduh’s teachings and writings reached the madrasahs of al-Zaytuna, in Tunis, of al-Qayrawan, in Morocco, of Timbuctu, in Mali, and of Deoband, in Northern India. He influenced Shaykh Musa Jarullah in Kazakstan. And, in Egypt itself, his impact on the thoughts of Shaykh Rashid Rida, his disciple and the editor of the widely circulated al-Manar periodical, reached in time Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Ikhwan, himself.

Al-Ikhwan

At the eve of the Second World War, the Ikhwan were waging their fight against the presence of foreigners in their country. They also were alerted to the extent to which Egyptian Muslims were adopting Western ways and drifting away from their religious practices. One should simply be reminded of a quote attributed to Khedive Isma’il (1830-1895), the grandson of Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, that best illustrates such fears. The Khedive proclaimed, clear and loud, at the opening of the Suez Canal: ‘’My country is no longer in Africa. We are now part of Europe’’.

Or else, the Ikhwan fought Sufi rituals which they considered a departure from Pristine Islam. Theirs was a battle on two fronts, the external one and the internal. al-Banna founded a brotherhood that would spread his message. The membership was drawn from educated and semi-educated individuals, professionals and artisans, all the products of the Modern sector of Egyptian society. As the years passed during which the Ikhwan were jailed for what appeared as their subversive activities, both under the Monarchy and the Military Regime that ensued, the replacement of the old guard was coming about with men and women, doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, university professors and entrepreneurs, all graduates of secular universities, many of them well traveled, an array of the Egyptian middle class, all more sophisticated that their elders: none are graduates from al-Azhar and none are ‘Ulama’ although they know their religion well. Their piety has been coupled with their knowledge in matters pertaining to matters of faith and to the fate of the Muslim Nation. These new elites are the product of their times. They today question, as no others have before, the West’s definition of Egypt’s modernity ever since Muhammad ‘Ali Basha opted for a transformation of his realm in accordance with the definition given by Westerners.

Cairo

Westerners do not seem to have, so far, gauged the extent to which, amongst Arabs and Muslims, a feeling of anger runs in their minds as they watch, day after day, their lands, their rights, their dignity being trampled by non-Muslims from the United States and Europe. Already after 1830, merchants and pilgrims, travellers from North Africa, told of stories of French brutal occupation in Algeria. Such news continued to reach Egypt from the entire North and West African continent, the Sudan, the Caucasus and Crimea, from India and Central Asia and beyond, from all the confines of Dar ul-Islam, the Muslim realm. In 1917, Cairenes were made aware of the Sykes-Picot Agreement which would divide the Near East between the British and the French in spite of commitments to the contrary and, that same year, of a Balfour Declaration which eventually created a Jewish State in Palestine. And, in this day and age, the so-called War on Terrorism justifies Western aggression against Muslims. Modernists and secularists, in the East, are mentally a party to Western values yet, emotionally, they feel that the Other, who ceaselessly baffles them by his insensitivity, his immorality and his double standards, well deserves that political Islam rise to oppose Western unchecked appetites.

Dialecticians, amongst historians, invariably try to seek and understand the thesis which caused an antithesis to emerge. The reverse process is far from easy to achieve as each thesis was once its own antithesis. The question becomes, therefore, how far in the process does one have to revert to in order to understand the animosities between East and West, between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. One could start with the rise of the Arab religion within the contexts of an essentially Byzantine Christian and a Sassanian Zoroastrian world in the eighth century. The Arabs from Madinah sent raiders west, as far as Spain, in 711, until they were stopped at Poitiers, in 732, when they crossed the Pyrenees. In the east, they reached the Indus River, in 674. The Ottoman Muslims, also, occupied the Balkans and knocked at the doors of Vienna twice, in 1529 and in 1683. Then the tide was reverted and has been so ever since. Some scholars suggest that the raids of Muslims against neighbours were responses to the threat to Arabia by the dominant religions of the times. Be that as it may, our frescoes, seventeen of them, so far, have attempted to trace the manner in which responsible Egyptians, reacting to centuries of decadence and obscurantism, envisaged their future, from the time of Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, in the early nineteenth century, when a choice was consciously made to borrow heavily from the West, till today when, as a result of elections which brought to parliament Islamic Parties, the solutions to Egypt’s problems are being sought in Islam, no longer in the West. Ever since colonized peoples embarked upon the arduous task of ridding themselves of the shackles of European and, later, American imperialisms, one witnesses efforts to revert to one’s original identity while retaining the benefits of science and technology which the West continues to nurture. Muslims are no different than others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The slogan al-Islam huwa al-Hall must be perceived in this perspective. Remains for the critical mind to figure out how this shall be translated.

Sayed Qotb

Meet Sayyid Qutb. He was born in Upper Egypt in 1906. He was a man of varied interests and many achievements. In the forties, his written works became part of the curriculum in schools and universities. He was the author of a commentary on the Qur’an in 30 volumes. His two most read books were Ma’alim fil Tarikh, Milestones, which dealt with the bounds of Islamic history, and al-‘Adalah al-Ijtima’iyah fil Islam, Social Justice in Islam. Qutb had joined the Ikhwan upon his return from the United States, in 1950. He rapidly became the principal ideologue of the movement and edited its weekly review, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Qutb had hoped to play an important role in shaping the 1952 Revolution when Nasir visited him in his home, soon after the Coup in search of advice as to which direction his movement ought to take. Qutb believed for a long while that the Free Officers would install an Islamic State in Egypt. Little did he understand that the loyalty of the military was to itself, never to civilian powers. In fact, when the Ikhwan gave up on Nasir and engineered an assassination attempt on his life, Qutb was arrested, jailed, tortured along with all prominent members of the Brotherhood. And, on August 26, 1966, he was hanged for treason. Charges against Qutb were simply borrowed from Ma’alim al-Tarikh, his own Milestones.

Sayyid Qutb’s ideas had been maturing ever since his youth in his native Asiyut where he learnt to distrust the Madrasah trained teachers of Islam. When he moved to Cairo to become a teacher, he was disturbed by the degree of Westernization his fellow Muslims had fallen into. He had heard of Hasan al-Banna and admired him greatly. He disliked the British and the Khawagat and was committed to the struggle alongside the Palestinian people. He never grew, however, to be an Arab Nationalist; he was a Muslim first and foremost, not unlike Rashid Rida, early in his century, and Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani, the companion of Muhammad ‘Abduh, during the century before. And yet when, in 1949, he won a scholarship to study Education Administration in Colorado, he did not imitate al-Banna who had refused to further his studies in France: Qutb travelled to the United States. Qutb never married; he was a shy man. In America, he clung to his religion and identity and, the ideas he formed for himself about the West in general, were most unfavourable of it. He thought American materialism had corrupted the Americans whom he found kind but superficial, generous but pretentious and condescending. His readings on Marxism, also, indicated to him that Soviet materialism was as corrupt as Capitalism had been. Only in Islam could he find solace for the present and the future of mankind.

Qutb had been a witness to the brutality of military rule in Egypt. Before that, under the Monarchy, he also stared corruption and exploitation in the face. He had joined the Ikhwan because he felt Egyptians were confronted with moral decay. Only faith, Iman, could pull his compatriots from the abyss. Also, solely would the Law of God uplift and save the Community of Believers. Social justice, for instance, would not result from either Arab Socialism, as the Military rulers promised, or from Fabian Socialism and Social Darwinism, as the disciples of Salama Musa (1887-1958), the prominent British-trained university professor, preached. Believers became fair towards their fellow men because of their beliefs. The application of the Shari’a and the institution of the Islamic State would assist them in this endeavour. Qutb’s notion of justice was new amongst Muslims and al-‘Adalah al Ijtima’iyyah fil Islam was circulated widely throughout the Muslim World. It placed the onus on the person, a radical departure from the conventional wisdom which resulted from Medieval times in which the Caliph symbolized the entire politico-religious system and regulated the lives of men and women in the smallest details. Qutb was challenging the revered al-Mawardi (972-1058) and his Ordinances of Government, al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah.

After Sayyid Qutb’s execution, his brother Muhammad fled to Saudi Arabia. He was invited at King ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz University to teach his brother’s ideas.

Ayman El-Zawahri

Was it that the Su’udi Monarchy was sending a message to its own Wahhabi ‘Ulama’? Meanwhile, the fact that two prominent al-Qa’ida leaders, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Yamani Anwar al-Awlaki, were disciples of Qutb causes one to miss on the course which Islam and Muslims have been following in the past fifteen centuries. With a sense of perspective, the rise to prominence of Qutb and the political coming of age of the Ikhwan in Egypt, Tunisia and, eventually, elsewhere in the Muslims World, one could suggest that the Non-Western World is ripe for experimenting with systems of values and models of government which are other than those that were imposed by Europe and that are presently upheld by the United States. At the same time, the Ikhwan in the limelight are bound to confront the rich and vast compendium of trends in Islamic Thought, now that they have been taken seriously. The next frescoe will deal precisely with that new reality.