21 - 27 June 2001
Issue No.539
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 June 2001 Issue No.539 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Heat waves
The terms of cultural debate are changing, writes Amina Elbendary
It invariably starts with a story in one of the less widely circulated newspapers. Cultural trouble, that is.
Sweeping statements and clean cuts
Photo: Khaled El-Fiqi
It will have a sensational headline. It might have shocking photographs. It will invoke God's name. And it will shock.
That Egyptian -- and Arab -- society has undergone tremendous changes throughout the last quarter of the 20th century, becoming more conservative and religious, is a comment often made by analysts. Indeed, the rise of political Islam has left an indelible mark on all things social and cultural. What has emerged, however, is a marked Islamisation of popular discourse, which now defines the nature of any debate.
Any argument must now be framed in religious terms. Much criticism is framed in religious terms. And suddenly people -- intellectuals -- are forced into defensive positions in a holier- than-thou competition between them and whomever.
And so it goes. Secular versus religious controversies erupt; intellectual battles are fought; villains are made and heroes born.
Last summer the fury was spent over the Ministry of Culture's republication of Syrian novelist Haydar Haydar's A Banquet for Seaweed. It started on the pages of the now defunct Al-Shaab newspaper, mouthpiece of the Labour party. The tone was sufficiently incendiary to incite demonstrations by Azhar University students and the subsequent ban of the book. Earlier this year a similar uproar arose over three novels said to contain "pornographic" passages: Tawfiq Abdel- Rahman's Before and After, Yasser Shaaban's Sons of the Romantic Fault and Mahmoud Hamid's Forbidden Dreams published within the Ministry of Culture's Literary Voices series. An Islamist MP raised the issue in parliament and the three novels were subsequently banned.
Recently feminist writer and novelist Nawal El- Saadawi has been facing trouble, involving a law suit aiming to divorce her from her husband. That also started on the pages of a newspaper. Suddenly El-Saadawi was perceived as an atheist. Suddenly her views -- purportedly voiced in an interview with Al-Midan -- were blasphemous. Why was El-Saadawi, who has long been known as an ardent feminist and whose daring views are clear in her numerous writings, suddenly perceived as a threat? Why? Why now?
Early this week the daily newspaper Al-Wafd, mouthpiece of the Wafd opposition party, published a front page story claiming that the Islamic Research Academy has demanded the confiscation of the Arabic translation of Leila Ahmed's book Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, originally written in English. The book was the target of criticism over a year ago on the pages of Al-Shaab. According to the Wafd story, a report criticising, deriding and condemning the book and calling for its banning was presented to the Academy by Dr Abdel-Azim El-Mut'ni. The author was accused of deriding and insulting Islam and doubting and criticising some of its basic tenets.
That the Academy would take the initiative and subject the book to revision is in itself interesting. As a history book, Women and Gender did not require any authorisation from the Azhar in the first place. Only books on Islamic subjects (jurisprudence, hadith, tafsir, and so on) require such prior authorisation. This is essentially an academic work, intended for a specialised audience.
The timing is also interesting. First published in English in 1992 by Yale University Press, an Egyptian edition of Women and Gender was subsequently published by the American University in Cairo Press in 1993 with a reprint in 1998. In 1999 the Supreme Council for Culture translated the book into Arabic and published it on the margins of its conference on 100 Years of Women's Liberation. According to a statement issued by Gaber Asfour, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Culture, a limited number of copies were published alongside 14 other books in women's studies from across the spectrum. In fact, in choosing those 15 titles the Council was conscious of representing different schools of thought. And indeed, the Council's decision to translate and publish the book need not necessarily be read as a promotion of that work. According to Council officials, the copies long since sold out. So why this fury now?
Intellectuals and academics see this as part of an ongoing attempt by religious authorities to establish their control over cultural affairs. What is confusing, however, is the reaction of the Islamic Research Academy itself.
El-Sayed El-Iraqi Shamseddin, head of the department for research, authorship and translation at the Islamic Research Academy, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Academy has not issued any report and that the book is still being studied. Besides, "El-Mut'ni is not a member of the Academy to begin with," Shamseddin told the Weekly.
An Egyptian, Leila Ahmed is professor of women's studies at Harvard University. She is a well- established figure in her field. Women and Gender in Islam is one of the most widely read volumes in Western feminist scholarship on Islam. It was one of the earliest scholarly attempts to use gender as a tool of analysis in studying Arabo-Muslim history. If only for that reason, it is important for Egyptian and Arab scholars who are not fluent in English to be aware of the arguments and debates this book raises, regardless of whether they subscribe to this line of historiography. Ahmed attempted to study Islamic societies in their historical perspective and to tackle the controversial question of whether Islam is inherently oppressive to women. So what if it remains a product of a Western paradigm, influenced by the discourse of Orientalism even as it tries to refute some of its claims? And if at some points, it seems that in her attempt to counter colonialist discourse and historiography, Ahmed leans too far into the Egyptian (as opposed to Arab) nationalist camp, this shouldn't be religiously prohibited. As one Egyptian feminist historian noted: "Like many feminist scholars, [Ahmed] uses her evidence in such a way to present her preconceived ideas about women and Islam." But then, all scholars are influenced by their biases. Why is this, suddenly, a "religious" issue?
Thankfully, the reaction of the Islamic Research Academy seems to suggest a willingness by religious authorities not to dramatise or blow up the issues this time around.
Also sensationalist this week was a headline by the weekly magazine Rose El-Youssef announcing "A complaint from the sheikh of Al-Azhar to the prosecutor-general: The Ibn Khaldun Centre insulted Islam and the Sunna."
But isn't the Ibn Khaldun Centre out of business? A cursory reading of the article reveals that the subject is a proposal the Centre had presented to rewrite religious education curricula before its suspension. What the article does not mention is that this was part of a programme rewriting several other curricula, including those of history and civics, in an attempt to make them more politically correct and sensitive to Egypt's Coptic community. The article sharply criticised the proposed curricula on religious issues that it deemed either inappropriate for school children or not reflective of mainstream Sunni Muslim thought. But according to the article, Al-Azhar's Committee for the Dissemination of Islam urged either the sheikh of Al-Azhar or the Islamic Research Academy to file a complaint with the prosecutor-general. Suddenly the Ibn Khaldun Centre, whose founder and director sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim has recently been sentenced to seven years in prison, is being further accused of insulting Islam.
Once more, even though the Ibn Khaldun Centre has already been taken to court, and even though the court has issued its sentence, a case is being made in the press using religious terms. Al-Azhar and Academy officials asked to comment on this particular case were mostly evasive and kept referring the matter to each other. However, the article itself quoted the sheikh of Al-Azhar, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, as arguing that this was only a proposal to the Ministry of Education and Al-Azhar, which they have rejected, and that the matter need not be raised with the prosecutor. It remains to be seen whether this will continue to be Al-Azhar's official position.
The latest cases referred to may not evolve into the shrill cultural crises of recent times. Yet regardless of the outcome of particular instances, it remains that such outcries in themselves dramatically alter the terms of the debate. This is what remains after the fury subsides, ever greater desecularisation of popular discourse.
This promises to be another hot summer.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page