 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 May 2000 Issue No. 483
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A banquet for wolves
By Medhat El-Zahed *The temporary ban on the activities of the Labour Party and its mouthpiece, Al-Shaab, brought the crisis triggered by the Islamist party's newspaper over the controversial book by Haydar Haydar to a sad conclusion. Egyptian film fans have come to expect happy endings as a matter of course, but the incident disappointed all those who had expected that reason would prevail.
Who could have predicted that reprinting a novel by a Syrian writer, first published 18 years ago, could threaten a cabinet minister, a novelist, a political party and a newspaper? The Labour Party's behaviour shocked those who had banked on reason's eventual triumph, but the government's decision to handle the situation by taking administrative measures also aroused many fears regarding the freedom allowed political parties, not to mention the press.
It seems that the crisis has far greater chances of reaching a resolution through a bid for "reform from within" than through a decision to ban and liquidate the party. The crisis, however, is certainly more than a dispute over a book. The government would not have been overly stirred about having to ban a book that has been perceived, rightly or wrongly, as derisive of Islam. At stake, however, was the fact that the state itself, and not merely the book, was also being accused of heresy and atheism in a frantic public mobilisation of the forces of political Islam in what appeared as a modern-day crusade.
This is not wholly new, but seems to reflect a growing tendency on the part of the Labour Party's leadership. The latest crusade follows closely upon the heals of a similar campaign launched by Al-Shaab against the so-called "Khul' Law" -- the new Procedural Personal Status Law, which gives women the right to obtain a divorce if they relinquish their financial rights. Al-Shaab's response to the legislation targeted the state directly, with banner headlines that described it as "unbelieving" and "atheist." The campaign opposing the law focused mainly on Minister of Justice Farouk Seif El-Nasr, just as the outcry against the novel took Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni as its target.
From the government's perspective, the most recent campaign is even more dangerous, because the Labour Party's leadership linked its opposition with a call for prompt political action to rescue Islam. Demonstrations by Al-Azhar students followed, a turn of events which could have touched off a very sensitive fuse, sending the whole powder keg sky-high.
Regardless of the social implications -- the right to demonstrate and to express one's opinion freely should be guaranteed to all citizens, after all -- the Al-Azhar demonstrations were the first of their kind provoked not by an external attack on the Muslim community, but by allegations that an assault on Islam was being launched from within Egypt itself.
In the past, when students demonstrated on campus to protest attacks on Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo or Chechnya, the government was tolerant. But the situation is very different when students take to the streets to defend Islam against the danger posed by a novel few will ever read. The government's anger was fueled by the students' admission to the Public Prosecutor that they had never read the book, but had read Al-Shaab's articles.
Further escalating the crisis, Adel Hussein, secretary-general of the Labour Party, challenged the government to choose between Islam and atheism. Hussein and other Labour leaders seemed to underestimate the government's sensitivity to the mixing of politics with religion, and to the use of religion to win very earthly conflicts.
As for civil society, it fears the fascist trends emboldened by Al-Shaab's series of campaigns, yet does not condone government interference in party affairs. Still, it realises that accusations of atheism are little better than incitements to terrorist action. Describing the government as atheist and society as a battlefield is tantamount to inviting believers to punish "sinners." The country is thus transformed into an arena of war (Dar Harb, in Islamist parlance), and Jihad becomes the imperative of the hour. Naguib Mahfouz's attacker and Farag Foda's killer had never read their works, but saw it as their responsibility to cleanse society of these perceived scourges.
All this, however, begs the question of the Labour leadership's readiness to openly flaunt the "red lines" of the country's constrained political pluralism, testing the extreme limits of the state's forbearance. The party's effective leader, Adel Hussein, seems to have estimated that the controversy over the book would serve to rally the forces of political Islam and enhance their popularity ahead of the November 2000 parliamentary elections. The Labour Party blamed its dismal performance in 1995, when it won only one seat, on government foul play. Hussein himself, running against Abdel-Moneim Emara, the then chairman of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, lost, as did the Muslim Brotherhood, which had allied itself to Labour.
The latest campaign underlines, moreover, a tactic which Labour's leaders have shown an increasing fondness for. This lies in joining campaigns on issues, such as normalisation, the Personal Status Law and, more recently, the novel, to fierce character assassination attacks targeting individual government ministers, Youssef Wali, Seif El-Nasr and Farouk Hosni respectively. It is an exercise in muscle flexing, in which the apparent objective is to force the resignation or firing of the particular minister, thus setting up Labour as a power to contend with, both before the state and the people.
The Labour Party's religious and political discourse indicates that it seeks to present itself as an Islamist alternative to the current regime. By insisting that religion and politics are one and the same, the leaders of the Labour Party have come to believe that they have a monopoly on Islam, and that the hour of victory is nigh.
As the Labour Party grew increasingly vocal and accusatory, the government apologised for publishing the infamous novel, swearing never again to allow the publication of a single word vilifying Islam. Its apparent repentance, however, only seemed to justify the allegations against both the novel and the state's own policies. Evidently, the Labour Party now sees the government as weak and is convinced that, under pressure, it will break down and surrender.
While the market is flooded with books, pamphlets and cassette tapes advertised as "Islamic," propagating ludicrous ideas about marriage between humans and jinn and exhorting Muslims not to answer the greeting of Christians and to behave despicably towards women, then, there is no reaction to such material, simply because it is written by advocates of political Islam. On the other hand, a single phrase taken out of context is a pretext to declare a holy war.
In the build-up to the crisis over A Banquet for Seaweed, Ahmed Omar Hashem, the president of Al-Azhar University, issued a statement denouncing the book. The government referred the novel to the Public Prosecutor's Office for investigation, yet the government issued a series of statements asserting that no "threat to Islam" was present. Then Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy issued a separate statement affirming that the book insulted Islam.
The minister of culture faced the storm alone; his colleagues opted for silence, or sought to ensure their personal safety by announcing that they would not tolerate any violation of Islam. The ministers' seeming indifference only encouraged Hussein to demand why the Labour Party was coming under fire, since there was a general consensus on the novel's unacceptable nature.
Little wonder then that Egyptian intellectuals are hearkening back to the first half of the last century as an age of reason and enlightenment whose traces seem hard to find in 21st century Egypt. When Mohamed Nour, then public prosecutor, was reviewing allegations that Taha Hussein's On Pre-Islamic Poetry was insulting to Islam, he postponed the investigation until the author returned from abroad. The case was dismissed on grounds that evidence of criminal intent was insufficient. Today dozens of inquisition courts are held all the time -- at Al-Azhar, in sidewalk cafés, on public buses... The self-appointed judges have neither read the book in question, nor have any notion of the principles of literary criticism.
The problem with this confrontation, and others that have preceded it, is the government's tendency to back down in intellectual disputes. Whenever someone calls upon all believers to "rescue Islam", the government puts on a religious show and grows a beard. When it is short of responses in a political situation, it censors or confiscates. It cannot conduct a logical argument, but denies civil society the right to creativity while leaving hundreds of books on the market that are detrimental to Islam and corrupt the mind. More seriously, educators, intellectuals and the media remain passive as university students are brainwashed wholesale then recruited into militias ready to fight for any cause labelled Islamic.
When freedom of expression is stifled, new and explosive forms of expression are generated. The government is to blame, but intellectuals are not innocent either. They rejected the imposition of constraints on the freedom of political parties and the press, yet failed to stand firm in specific situations for fear of being accused of apostasy.
*The writer is a journalist with the weekly Al-Ahali.
