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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Censorship board
By Nadia Abou El-Magd
on a banning spreeThree months ago, the parents of a handful of students at the American University in Cairo (AUC) complained over the inclusion in a modern Arabic literature course of a book which they considered to be "destructive to the morals of our children." The book, Al-Khubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone), by Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri, was taught by Professor Samia Mehrez. The issue does not seem to have been resolved.
"The university will stop using the book because it contains indecency," Higher Education Minister Moufid Shehab told the People's Assembly.
But other intellectuals and some students considered the ban a violation of the university's policy of liberal education.
"Following complaints by students and parents, the Department of Arabic Studies decided against using it in the introductory Arabic course," said an AUC statement.
Mehrez described the statement as "inaccurate," declaring that she had refused to promise never to teach the book again. In a memo to the AUC faculty, Mehrez defended the novel, which was written in 1971, as an important classic of modern Arabic literature. "It is certainly not a work of pornography, but a very moving and candid tale of an illiterate Moroccan child of the underclass, who accedes to literacy at age 20, and is able to weave the appalling conditions of his life history into a mesmerising text," she said.
Mehrez believes that there should have been an institutional response -- a statement of facts -- in response to the campaign against the book and herself.
"The university should not have bowed because two or three students don't want to study the novel," Mehrez told Al-Ahram Weekly. Those students could have easily dropped the course, she said.
"The university should have defended this unique classic," Mehrez added.
AUC President John Gerhart declared in a memo that "neither the administration nor outsiders should be deciding which books are used." He added, however, that "AUC is watched more closely, because we are a private institution and we have 'American' in the name. But we're also an Egyptian university and cannot, and should not, ignore this fact."
Last May, the university had to drop another controversial book, Mohammed, by the French orientalist Maxime Rodinson, following complaints from a group of alumni and their parents. But matters did not stop there. Since then, said AUC officials, the censorship department has put AUC's books under scrutiny and has been banning books more than ever before.
"Since last May, censorship has requested more than 450 books for revision, which is more than they have requested in the past 10 years," AUC Press Director Mark Linz told the Weekly. "And they banned 70 of them."
Lutfi Abdel-Kader, director of the Press and Publications Department, which is in charge of censorship, retorted: "What 70 books? This is an incorrect figure. We banned only one per cent of their books. We only banned four or five books."
Abdel-Kader charged that the "university is deliberately ordering books that can't be allowed in the country because they violate our religion, culture and traditions. They are trying to infiltrate our identity and culture. But we'll never permit this infiltration. Their attack on us is natural because we are giving them a hard time."
Linz explained that the four books that were banned were textbooks that were to be taught as part of the curricula. They are: Islamic Political Thought by Montgomery Watt, Political Islam by Joel Beinin, Muslim Extremism in Egypt by Gilles Kepel and Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat. The rest of the 70 books that were banned during the past 10 months were selected from thousands of titles ordered by AUC for its bookstore and included books that had been in the library for years, Linz said.
Some titles mentioned by Linz were Cities of Salt by Abdel-Rahman Mounif, Lolita by Nabokov, Mohamed and Christians by Kenneth Cragg, Children of Gabalawi by Naguib Mahfouz, Women at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi and The Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran.
The banned books also include all the Penguin English-language editions of the Qur'an and some tourist guidebooks to Egypt.
"Censors ban books that they say are offensive, but what is offensive?" wonders Linz. "The books haven't changed. We are in discussion with the censorship office, trying to learn the reasons and policies behind all of this banning."
According to Abdel-Kader, the censorship taboos are religion, sex and national unity. "We don't just ban books haphazardly, but when they violate the law of printed material," he said. "And we don't have to give them details on the rules we go by."
