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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Towards a new nostalgia
By Youssef RakhaOn Sunday the Cairo Atelier saw the second meeting of "independent intellectuals" coordinated by writers Ibrahim Mansour and Radwa Ashour -- the first two members of a proposed "preparatory committee" for organising the activities of "a rally of intellectuals" that has achieved remarkable popularity though its exact form and objectives are as yet undefined. The meeting comprises the latest development in a saga that began ten days ago, with the first meeting taking place in Café Riche, once a stronghold of the politicised literary and artistic "generation of the 1960s", to which both Mansour and Ashour belong.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the most publicised uprising of the anti-establishment literati since the beginning of the last decade should take place there, attended by an impressive array of figures from oppositional poet and lyricist Ahmed Fouad Negm to the phenomenally popular soap-opera scriptwriter Ossama Anwar Okasha. Inevitable, too, perhaps, that it should involve as much empty rhetoric as genuine debate over the viability of such an anti-establishment organisation, the form it would take and what activities it will pursue. Yet all these points were deemed of secondary importance in relation to "the simple reality of all these people getting together because they believe there is something wrong and want to fix it," in Mansour's words, or to implicit nostalgia for the politically and intellectually active Riche of the 1960s-70s.
It was novelist Bahaa Taher's resignation from the Writers' Union, provoking a string of similar resignations and backlashes, that made obvious to many that the union is a petty organisation many of whose members -- who are not writers by profession -- simply use it as a facade to advance their personal gains while willing to compromise writers' integrity vis-à-vis their dealings with the establishment.
The consequent contention and dissent this caused among old-guard 1960s intellectuals and their protégés drove Mansour to announce his and other intellectuals' intention to establish what has been variously described as "an alternative writers' union", "a renaissance of the regular Riche seminar of the 1960-70s", "an open forum for all those to whom the term 'intellectual' might be applied", "a civil company/NGO to defend writers' and artists' rights", and most recently, perhaps also most indeterminately, "the independent intellectuals' tagomo'", an Arabic word that means "assembly" but has a strong connotation of political rallying, particularly the kind undertaken collaboratively by disparate groups of activists who join forces, usually temporarily, in an attempt to achieve some shared objective.
The Friday meeting ended with an even greater surprise, however, when the bi-weekly newspaper Al-Shaab appeared with front-page headlines condemning the republication of Syrian novelist Haydar Haydar's A Banquet for Seaweed by a division of Ministry of Culture, on the premise that the novel contains passages perceived as offensive to the Muslim community. The tone of the attack indicated to some that Al-Shaab was inciting Islamist militants to acts of violence against the intellectuals implicated in the book's republication, one of whom is a distinguished member of the generation of the 60s, novelist Ibrahim Aslan, editor of Afaaq Al-Kitaba (Horizons of Writing), the series in which the book was published. The inception of the first gathering of intellectuals thus coincided with the beginning of a sectarian press campaign that has since then gone beyond the issue of this particular novel, which has been available in Egyptian bookstores for over a decade, growing into a witch-hunt that threatens the writer's freedom of expression.
Barely re-opnened since it was shut down in 1992, Café Riche was the centre of an intellectual uprising yet again
(photo: Randa Shaath)
While Islamist parties have in one way or another backed up Al-Shaab's claims, last week's issue of Akhbar Al-Adab, Cairo's most popular literary publication, devoted many pages to countering Al-Shaab's campaign from a predominantly secular standpoint, publishing a statement by Haydar in which he described himself as an enlightened Muslim, quoting pro-Islamic passages from A Banquet for Seaweed and referring to Hadith (sayings of Prophet Mohamed). The head of the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces, Ali Abu-Shadi, who had issued a statement denying that the novel denigrates Islam, expressed trust in the committee set up by the ministry and backed Aslan's position. Novelist Gamal El-Ghitani, too, devoted his regular column to the issue, arguing virulently against the practice of inciting guileless religious zealots who have not read the novel to murder. Like many antisectarian intellectuals in this camp, El-Ghitani stated that it is Al-Shaab's campaign, not the novel, that ultimately denigrates Islam. Akhbar Al-Adab also republished critical essays that have dealt with the novel from an enlightened literary perspective.
Other intellectuals, however, notably poet Farouq Goweida, have expressed sympathy with the campaign and argued against the book's publication. With the ripple effect of Al-Shaab's campaign taking its toll, Azhar University students took to the streets in Nasr City during the small hours of Monday, demanding the resignation of the minister of culture and denouncing anti-Islamic literature, while the Ministry of Culture set up a committee to investigate Al-Shaab's claims, changing its mind momentarily, then reverting back to its initial response.
By Sunday Mansour and Ashour had mounted a campaign mobilising a growing number of intellectuals in support of A Banquet for Seaweed. They issued a statement dismissing Al-Shaab's campaign as a "triviality whose excuse is defending religion," pointing out that Islam is not in need of protectors, and urging "Islamic writers" to pay attention to the nationalist cause and follow the example of Hizbullah who, the statement read, provide evidence "of the benefit of being concerned with what is essential to the life of the nation and what unifies, rather than disbands, its citizens." Consequently, aside from further discussing the viability of the gathering of intellectuals, its activities (apart from the frequent issuing of statements) and objectives, the bulk of Sunday's debate centred around the issue of to what degree the gathering will undertake expressly political endeavours (the individual artist's right to self-expression vs the artists' collective political role), and the gathering's position vis-à-vis the Ministry of Culture.
Though terms like "anti-establishment intellectual", "agent of normalisation with Israel" and "secular antisectarian" continue to beggar accurate definition within a general, neo-capitalist context, the intellectuals gathered in the Atelier on Sunday still insisted on viewing them as self-explanatory. They appeared intent on placing a final stake on their long-running wager that an ever-expanding kernel of the intelligentsia could actively alter society, though the political message is by now significantly watered down, the emphasis having shifted towards contravening governmental agendas for culture, society and the media, re-igniting Arab nationalism in these areas and encouraging effective opposition to the new world order and the way it is played out in the arena of Middle East politics.
The as-yet-ill-defined tagamo' , went the general tenor, was to set itself up against the Ministry of Culture, aiming to improve the performance of cultural institutions that have inherited a logic of acquiescence and silence rendering them ineffective in upholding intellectuals' rights. The tagamo' would achieve this, initially, through drawing in as many intellectuals as possible who would acquire enough weight as a unified voice to counterbalance the repressive forces at work in Egyptian and Arab cultural life, broadening the margin of democracy and protecting the individual artist's right to self expression within the framework of the work of art he or she has created. Yet in so doing, particularly in the light of the issue of A Banquet for Seaweed and its ever wider repercussions, the activist writers belonging to "the generation of the 1960s" find themselves unwittingly in alliance with the Ministry of Culture.
While Al-Shaab mobilises its supporters, intellectuals have announced a proposed meeting on the issue of freedom of expression, to take place in the Press Syndicate on Sunday. The "preparatory committee" of the tagamo', on the other hand, is drafting a second statement in response to the Nasr City demonstrations. "Al-Shaab's campaign," Mansour told the Weekly, "is a lesson in demagogy." Railing against misinformation, he recounts how one demonstrator, when asked about the reasons behind the protest, reportedly said that a Syrian Christian had published a newspaper whose purpose is to denigrate Islam. "Any blood shed in the course of this crisis," Mansour said, "they stand guilty for."
Ashour, saddened and disturbed by the demonstrations, described the protest as "a tyranny -- misled, misinformed young tyrants facing persecution, and possible death, for the wrong reasons." The crisis, she believes, forces the tagamo' to work too quickly and under pressure, though simply "reading the novel against Al-Shaab's articles should be enough to reveal which of the two is ignorant and obscene."
