Al-Azhar strikes back
Youssef Rakha keeps up with the latest in the controversy generated by poet Ahmed El-Shahawi's Al-Wasaya fi Ishq Al-Nisaa
On 3 November, Al-Azhar's Islamic Studies Academy -- headed by Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi -- met to announce a final verdict on poet Ahmed El-Shahawi's collection of poems, Al-Wasaya fi Ishq Al-Nisaa (Commandments for Loving Women). Contrary to the verdict of the Ministry of Culture "reading committee" that sanctioned the publication of the book, the academy's committee concluded that the book should be summarily banned, describing it as a text that "abuses religion and departs from morality".
A General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) Family Library publication, the book was the subject of a People's Assembly inquiry in September (since Parliament was not in session at the time, the MP submitted the inquiry to the concerned official in writing). According to the inquiry, since the book contains phrases that desecrate religion and abuse religious sentiments, an arm of the Ministry of Culture should not have published it. In response Al- Wasaya was promptly banned by GEBO Chairman Samir Sarhan, only to be brought back to the newsstands within 48 hours, following both the referral of a specialist reading committee that sanctioned it, and the intervention of established critics who denied all charges of blasphemy.
These events comprised the latest in a series of censorial crises that began three years ago with the publication by the General Organisation of Cultural Palaces of Syrian novelist Haydar Haydar's canonical Banquet for Seaweed. By the time El-Shahawi's "crisis" seemed to reach an anticlimactic end, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Mustafa Mohamed Mustafa, the MP who presented the question, belongs, had begun reading the book with a view to taking the issue further. Although many wondered about the views of the official religious establishment, no news of the book being referred to Al-Azhar was announced.
Weeks after Sarhan changed his mind, declaring the author "a respected poet and responsible journalist" and the book "a valuable addition to the Arabic literary canon", Al- Azhar's call for "the speedy collection of those copies of the book still available on the market before they reach people's hands" may be seen as a mortal blow to the ministry's credibility. At a deeper level, it is thought to highlight the often-downplayed rift separating religious from literary or "intellectual" orientations.
The ministry's reading committee had pointed out that, far from being blasphemous or disrespectful, El- Shahawi's text quoted the Qur'an and Hadith (Sayings of Prophet Mohamed) only to show the importance of woman to the duality of the universe, and as heir to divine love. Mustafa's reading, the committee went on to say, failed "to understand language correctly, since an understanding of individual words or phrases can only be achieved through an understanding of the context that gives them meaning". Yet notions of context or "literary text" played no part in Al-Azhar's reading, which is largely in agreement with Mustafa's.
Among the academy's reasons for censoring the book is "the author calling on women to love without reservation, and his use of verses of the Glorious Qur'an and the Prophet's sayings where they should not be used". The academy also took issue with the fact that "the book directs woman to dissolve in love... and to hand over her body and her soul without shame... and to be naked with her lover." The academy makes no allowances for the common Sufi conventions on which the author draws, which tend to employ the physical as a metaphor for the spiritual and speak of carnal love as a version of divine love.
In response to Al-Azhar's verdict, El-Shahawi, a self-professed believer who enjoins the support of a vast number of writers, critics and non- sectarians, declared that he would republish the book dozens of times within Egypt, not allowing Al-Azhar's "fatwa to terrorise" him. Such measures, he insisted, have no connection with religion and merely reflect the censors' reductive and simplistic perspectives. The Prophet himself, El-Shahawi said, often spoke of the magic and wisdom of poetry. If not for the purely Muslim heritage that inspired it, the author said, Al- Wasaya would never even have existed.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 13 - 19 November 2003 (Issue No. 664)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/664/eg5.htm