Al-Ahram: A Diwan of contemporary life (525)
Nothing new
Abul-Uyun was an arch-conservative intellectual whose influence was felt during the three decades preceding the Egyptian revolution of 1952. A regular contributor to Al-Ahram whenever the newspaper broached a sensitive social or moral issue, Abul-Uyun would speak out against all that was new and innovative, especially as regards women's rights. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* explains
Sheikh Mahmoud Abul-Uyun
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It may appear curious that a newspaper like Al-Ahram, known to be so firmly in favour of modernisation, should have solicited the contributions of someone like Sheikh Mahmoud Abul-Uyun whose opinions were so at odds with its own. However, it was also the Al-Ahram tradition to remain as objective and impartial as possible, which is why it felt it necessary to present the opposing view, which, it invariably found in the diehard Abul-Uyun.
Although Al-Ahram readers would have been aware of the paper's policy, what must have come as a surprise to them in the winter of 1933-1934 was that the occasional podium it offered to the sheikh expanded to a full-fledged series. In "Expectorations from an Ailing Chest: The loss of morals in the age of freedom", Abul-Uyun, who died in 1951, argues the conservative position on the status of women and the problems of youth. The 10-part series was featured on the newspaper's front page, with the first instalment appearing on 5 December 1933 and the last on 27 February 1934.
One cannot help but note that the intervals between instalments ranged from three to as much as 19 days. One can only conjecture as to the cause of this irregularity. Perhaps the newspaper management wavered over publication at times because it feared that the columnist was being excessively harsh in his judgement. For example, the lengthy period between instalments seven and eight may be because the latter, on "Youth and the marriage crisis", contained the following pronouncement: "Our social woes today can be attributed to the fact that the Egyptian family has disintegrated and fallen into paralysis and decay and that our youth, who constitute the backbone and moral strength of society, have begun to shirk working life, instead preferring to obtain their desires through wishful thinking and sitting back until the wish comes true."
On the other hand, perhaps the sheikh had not realised he had been recruited into a series, which may explain why the first instalment bore no number, whereas the second was numbered "One" and the third "two" while the remaining instalments were left unnumbered again. In addition, come the ninth instalment, there is nothing to indicate that his series was about to end. Thus, much to readers' surprise, the final article featured letters he had received from readers which he followed up with a brief concluding paragraph:
"And now, my pen grinds to a halt, unable to continue the discussion, as personal circumstances have arisen to prevent me from fulfilling this wish and from sustaining that link that had bound me to Al-Ahram readers for a short period of time. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to this venerable newspaper that has opened its arms to me, as has always been its custom. I also would like to thank those who have done me the honour of responding to my articles. Whether in favour of my opinions or against, the efforts of all are to be commended. May God guide us in the service of truth and distance us from error."
The popular saying has it, "We know the letter from its address." This certainly applies to "Expectorations from an ailing chest", in which Sheikh Abul-Uyun attacks recent changes in Egyptian society. But just in case readers had any doubts about his conservative platform, he opens his first article:
"Yes, we understand that Egypt's revolution of 1919 has had a profound impact on the morals and ethics of the Egyptian people. But we fail to understand what is meant by that so-called noble awakening which we have commemorated with plaques and statues while its fuller meaning decays and vanishes in all aspects.
"Yes, the revolution of 1919, to which history has bowed its head in reverence and to which great and noble nations have paid homage, was, for Egypt, a false dawn, which lit but glimmered briefly like a candle flame on the horizon before expiring and leaving us lost and confused in the darkness."
Following that bleak introduction, he begins to "navigate the seas of darkness", as he puts it. The first shoals he steers through are that pet peeve conservatives harp on inexhaustibly: women's rights. Egyptian women, he grieves, have fallen prey to depravity and vice. However, he would take it upon himself to "explain the pernicious nature of these maladies and identify their symptoms and their repercussions in the hopes that this will enable us to cleanse that wound and prepare the ground for the seed of virtue to take root, grow and bear fruit".
Abul-Uyun does confess that Egyptian women in the past had suffered "humiliation, degradation and hardship". However, they also had their purity and chastity which constituted their source of contentment and were formidable defences against the enticements of temptation. "And thus women remained until the Great War began and there appeared in the world a curious movement," by which, of course, he was referring to the women's emancipation movement. Of course, it is difficult to perceive how such "contentment" can compensate for abuse and abasement but such have been, and remain, the arguments of conservatives.
At the same time, the author of "Expectorations from an ailing chest" maintains that Egyptian women have never been deprived of the opportunity to express their opinion. "Suddenly, when dawn broke on the revolution of 1919, the Egyptian woman took to the battlefield. As one desperate for the proper life, thirsting for the wholesome font of the pure waters of freedom, she had emerged from the confines of the home, head held high, chest thrust forward, strong in stride, heart pounding, hands raised aloft to defy the world to respect her will. Then, she pushed into the throngs of Egypt's rising youth, chanting in the streets for precious freedom and casting herself into the fray against the oncoming army, beneath the scorching rays of the sun and amidst the clatter of swords and the clash of iron, her frightened breast direct before the soldier's bayonet, as the world looked on astounded. Thus, she had risen to the heaven of glory and fame, and recorded her name in the register of eternity."
That all seems very magnanimous -- until between chests "thrust forward", hearts "pounding" and Egypt's "rising youth", one begins to sense, if not a tongue in cheek, at least the stirrings of an impending onslaught. And, indeed, Abul- Uyun proceeds to denounce women for continuing in their revolution even after the Declaration of 28 February 1922 and the promulgation of the national constitution that guaranteed rights for all citizens. This "rash and impetuous" revolution was "a revolution against established morals and ethics, waged under the impulse of the rush to freedom which they have entirely misunderstood... They believe that freedom means that they can do anything their heart desires. They believe that to surrender to the drives of lust and pleasure is to break free of the fetters and pains of life."
The result of this erroneous perception is depravity. Abul-Uyun writes, "In the name of this false freedom, the Egyptian woman has rebelled against ethics and morals which she feels are bonds meant to be broken and she has thus come to brazenly defy all sense of virtue and honour. In the name of this false freedom, the Egyptian woman has trampled underfoot her most sacred duties as a wife, mother and mistress of the home, thereby destroying the three cornerstones upon which rest the foundations of family life and social happiness. Where is female meekness, virgin modesty and the moral aesthetic of the Oriental woman? They have all vanished, sacrificed to the theatres and clubs of play and pleasure."
One imagines that a good many Al-Ahram readers at the time would still have been clinging to the aspirations of Qasem Amin, the early 20th century champion of women's liberation, and greatly resented Abul-Uyun's attack against women and subtle denigration of the role they played in the 1919 Revolution. However, if they had imagined that this would be the first and last they would hear on the subject from the noted arch-conservative they were in for a surprise. A few days later, he wrote again, under the headline, "The woman in society", and, if anything, he was more vituperative.
The Egyptian woman, in his opinion, no longer honoured her husband. To make matters worse, the law prevented husbands and male relatives from taking the necessary action "to shelter and discipline" her. As a result, "the family bond has disintegrated, the home is no longer a place of tranquillity, comfort and solace, and youth has come to prefer bachelorhood, shunning marriage and sufficing instead with licentiousness and illicit love."
To drive home this grim point, Abul-Uyun cited statistics indicating that in the preceding few months the number of divorces in some parts of the country were almost equal to the number of marriages. This situation was so grave as to threaten the life of the nation and could not, therefore, be greeted with silence. Indeed, it was a "tragedy", the roots of which resided in that "false freedom to which Egyptian women cling in their attempt to imitate Western women".
What follows, however, may well have taken readers by surprise, for Abul-Uyun goes on to argue that Egyptian women held a poor candle to their Western counterparts. The Western woman, he maintains, "knows how to honour her husband and she understands how to raise her children, manage the affairs of the home, safeguard the life of the family, nurture among its members the seeds of affection and develop the noblest bonds of mutual support and cooperation. As a result, life in the [Western] family is calm, stable and secure from the natural vicissitudes borne of selfishness and conceit."
Another phenomenon he deplored in Egypt was the many societies that had been founded in the name of women's rights. "Where are the women's societies that should be working for the benefit of the women of this country?" he proclaims. "What impact do the new societies have on the upbringing and moral edification of women? When have these societies called to order those brazen women who have tainted the honour of the nation with their impetuousness and folly." Evidently, women's societies, if they had to exist at all, should function solely to sustain entrenched customs and morals.
However, Abul-Uyun's most curious views were on the education of women, if only because they ran so contrary to the general tide of opinion. "The educated woman is no better for the home than the uneducated one. Indeed, I am ashamed to say that the unlettered wife is more knowledgeable of domestic affairs, more obedient to the master of the house and more tranquil in her personal life. I have heard many husbands complain bitterly of their educated wives' neglect, selfishness and vanity. Indeed, the disputes before the religious courts indicate that marital strife is more common in marriages with educated women than with uneducated women."
Abul-Uyun turns next to feminist demands, one of which was the right to work outside the home. He states his opposition on economic grounds. Rather than stimulating the economy, as some claim, he argues, women in public employment will aggravate the crisis of unemployment among men. "Unemployment, in and of itself, has become a social problem that is jeopardising the health of all nations. It is for this reason that some nations, such as Germany, have prohibited women from employment in positions that can be filled by male workers." Abul-Uyun does not reveal where he gleaned this curious tidbit of information.
In all events, he argued against female employment on sociological grounds. Women in the workplace present "the greatest peril to society", for by transcending her natural bounds she deprives the whole of society of security and comfort. He continues, "If a woman prepares herself for public employment rather than marriage, she forfeits here sexual function, betrays her femininity and destroys with her own hand the foundation of the life of her gender... How odd are women of this age. God created them women, with the traits and endowments of women. He created them to marry, get pregnant and give birth, matters of no small consequence. Yet women remain determined to fight life and fate in order to take on the attributes and responsibilities of men."
Another long held feminist demand that Abul-Uyun inevitably condemned was to abandon the veil. However, here he put an unusual construct on the issue. Abandoning the veil had long been understood to mean that women could appear in public with their faces uncovered, enter institutions of education and share with men the burdens of serving humanity. "This we tolerated and even found justification for it in scripture and practical life. However, the freedom of the present age has produced a new meaning to the notion of abandoning the veil. To the new woman, sufour means an end to all restrictions upon her person and behaviour, restrictions that she claims are rigid and reactionary, and thus to be eliminated. To her, sufour means unfettered licence to impropriety and flouting the order of life."
Starting in the sixth instalment of his series, the author of "Expectorations from an ailing chest" moved on to a second obsession of Egyptian conservatives: the problems of youth. His discussion of this issue opens on 7 January 1934 with an overview of "the circumstances of Egyptian youth, past and present".
Again, the 1919 Revolution marked the turning point. Like Egyptian women in that historic event, Egyptian youth, too, struck out for freedom in a manner that earned them the right to hold their heads high and boast a glorious page in national history. However, again, too, freedom was wrought. Instead of marching tall, they began to strut and swagger, after which they began to pamper themselves and grow soft, and it was only a small step from there to licentiousness and debauchery. "Thus, you find that no sooner do their beards and mustaches sprout than they have the hair on their cheeks plucked and their mustaches trimmed to the size of a beetle playing under their noses. Then they paint their faces and style their hair so that not a hair is out of place." Abul-Uyun could not resist adding: "Move aside ladies, the full moon has made his appearance!"
He goes on to enumerate the manifestations of what he terms the "madcap barbarity that has afflicted this poor nation".
"You have but to notice a young woman proceeding through the street or in a park in a carriage or on her feet, minding her own business, to espy moving up behind her one of those herds of mockers of chastity and honour. They block her path while she is caught bewildered between fear and modesty. Is there no vice squad, no government authority to nab those brutish ruffians and teach them the law?"
Then you had the type of youth who imagined himself a nightingale, "crooning the entire day to Leila". Simultaneously, this romancer would be searching for "a nest" for one of his friends, on whose behalf he would intercede with a female relative, "an innocent creature who does no more than flirt", while the friend thrills to her company.
In the summer, modern youth moved to the seaside, "where they erect their huts and beach houses in which they set up their bars and casinos and seize whatever illicit pleasures they can get".
A fourth phenomenon was the "evil innovation" of beauty contests, in which the young men on the judges' panels use the hand-span method to take the measurements of the contestants. "This is happening in Egypt, Egypt of the Orient, awakening Egypt, Egypt which is striving for full independence and freedom!" he cries, and then proclaims: "Nothing is more lethal to virtue, more destructive of valour, more degrading to the dignity of a people than this depraved licentiousness. If you take the most savage animal, the most ferocious lion, and treat it with honour and nobility and accustom it to goodness and virtue, then you will be able to tame it into submission. Oh freedom! How many victims you have claimed -- victims of ignorance and loss of honour!"
In his next article, Abul-Uyun resumes his grievances on the decadence that prevailed among present-day youth. "The moral aridity with which our youth is afflicted," he writes, "has weakened their social bonds and sapped their sense of duty. The addiction to vice which has sunk its teeth into many of them has rendered them savage beasts, indeed, more deserving of the word 'savage' than the beasts themselves."
One aspect of this new-found savagery was that if youth excelled in anything it was in flattery and hypocrisy. Perhaps one reason for this was that "rewards and promotions are contingent upon the extent to which an employee grovels to his boss or the amount he pays him in bribes, of which it is said that no sooner does it enter the door than honesty flies out the window". In other words, "Whereas once the value of workers was gauged by performance, now it is gauged in sycophancy, regardless of how base the method."
Moreover, in the positions of power they occupied following the revolution "youths have become a danger to morals and to the nation". He explains, "Because of their positions on the top of the world and the consequent pride that has gone to their head, they feel that they can escape the commitments of the past, the covenant of the present and the costs of the future. They imagine that freedom is to sever the bonds that tie the conscience and that of honour."
Among the other byproducts of their decadence was their lack of initiative, courage and resolve. "Rarely is at that the youth of today pursues a great endeavour or attempts to remedy grave problems. No sooner does he face adverse conditions or formidable difficulty than he loses heart, resigns in defeat and perhaps contemplates suicide."
Similarly, cooperation, solidarity and mutual support have become "mere names with no references in society. We have reached the worst condition that could possibly afflict a nation: fragmentation and decay. One person can only profit at the loss of another's, one power advances by trampling over the weak, the weak tramples that which is weaker yet, and everyone is set upon harming his brother." He then asks rhetorically: "Can decay be more odious than this? Can a fissure in the edifice of society be more gaping? Is this freedom that we have a blessing or a curse?"
The controversial "Expectorations from an ailing chest" elicited many letters, both for and against. Mahmoud Rizq Salim, a teacher in the Religious Institute in Alexandria, expressed his unreserved praise and support for the articles, while another letter was optimistic that it would not be long before the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. A third, Victoria Gabriel, agreed that contemporary women were defying morals but she laid the blame for this on men for abandoning the home. "Eyes dazed by the lure of pleasure, they have led women down the same path. The strictest laws must be brought to bear in order to cleanse the nation of corruption and dens of inequity."
However, there was no shortage of letters of protest. One was a six-page letter from Roh El-Hayat El-Saqqaf from Alexandria who, just in case Abul-Uyun ignored her, had her letter broadcast over a privately-owned radio station in her city. El-Saqqaf was opposed to the veil on the grounds that it drove men to unhealthy obsessions. Once men became familiar with the sight of women's faces they would become calmer and could learn the fuller meanings of beauty, the spiritual and intellectual and not merely the physical.
Certainly the letters in response to "Expectorations" revealed how sharply Egyptian society was divided over such issues as the veil and women's rights. Today, 70 years later, we are experiencing a resurgence in the intensity of this controversy. The rise of the arch-conservatives over the past few years tells us that Sheikh Abul-Uyun has not died yet.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
