Memo From Cairo Hints of Pluralism in Egyptian Religious Debates Published: August 30, 2009 CAIRO — Writing in his weekly newspaper column, Gamal al-Banna said recently that God had created humans as fallible and therefore destined to sin. So even a scantily clad belly dancer, or for that matter a nude dancer, should not automatically be condemned as immoral, but should be judged by weighing that person's sins against her good deeds. Skip to next paragraph This view is provocative in Egypt's conservative society, where many argue that such thinking goes against the hard and fast rules of divine law. Within two hours of the article's posting last week on the Web site of Al Masry al Youm, readers had left more than 30 comments — none supporting his position. "So a woman can dance at night and pray in the morning; this is duplicity and ignorance," wrote a reader who identified himself as Hany. "Fear God and do not preach impiety." Still, Mr. Banna was pleased because at least his ideas were being circulated. Mr. Banna, who is 88 years old and is the brother of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been preaching liberal Islamic views for decades. But only now, he said, does he have the chance to be heard widely. It is not that a majority agrees with him; it is not that the tide is shifting to a more moderate interpretative view of religion; it is just that the rise of relatively independent media — like privately owned newspapers, satellite television channels and the Internet — has given him access to a broader audience. And there is another reason: The most radical and least flexible thinkers no longer intimidate everyone with differing views into silence. "Everything has its time," Mr. Banna said, seated in his dusty office crammed with bookshelves that stretch from floor to ceiling. It is a testament to how little public debate there has been over the value of pluralism, or more specifically of the role of religion in society, that so many see the mere chance to provoke as progress. But now, more than any time in many years, there are people willing to risk challenging conventional thinking, said writers, academics and religious thinkers like Mr. Banna. "There is a relative development, enough to at least be able to present a different opinion that confronts the oppressive religious current which prevails in politics and on the street, and which has made the state try to outbid the religious groups," said Gamal Asaad, a former member of Parliament and a Coptic intellectual. It is difficult to say exactly why this is happening. Some of those who have begun to speak up say they are acting in spite of — and not with the encouragement of — the Egyptian government. Political analysts said that the government still tried to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated Islamic movement, to present itself as the guardian of conservative Muslim values. Several factors have changed the public debate and erased some of the fear associated with challenging conventional orthodoxy, political analysts, academics and social activists said. These include a disillusionment and growing rejection of the more radical Islamic ideology associated with Al Qaeda, they said. At the same time, President Obama's outreach to the Muslim world has quieted the accusation that the United States is at war with Islam, making it easier for liberal Muslims to promote more Western secular ideas, Egyptian political analysts said. "It is not a strategic or transformational change, but it is a relative change," said Mr. Asaad, who emphasized that the dynamic was for Christians as well as Muslims in Egypt. "And the civil forces can unite to capitalize on this atmosphere and invest in it to raise it to become a more general atmosphere." Two events this summer highlighted the new willingness of a minority to confront the majority — and the overwhelming response by a still conservative community. In June, a writers' committee affiliated with the Ministry of Culture gave a prestigious award to Sayyid al-Qimni, a sharp critic of Islamic fundamentalism who in 2005 stopped writing, disavowed his own work and moved after receiving death threats for his writing. Muhammad Salmawy, a committee member and president of the Egyptian Writers' Union, said he thought Mr. Qimni had been honored in part because "he represents the secular direction and discusses religion on an objective basis and is against the religious current." What happened next followed a predictable path, but then veered. Islamic fundamentalists like Sheik Youssef al-Badri asked the government to revoke the award and moved to file a lawsuit against Mr. Qimni and the government. "Salman Rushdie was less of a disaster than Sayyid al-Qimni," said Mr. Badri in a television appearance on O TV, an independent Egyptian satellite channel. "Salman Rushdie, everyone attacked him because he destroyed Islam overtly. But Sayyid al-Qimni is attacking Islam and destroying it tactfully, tastefully and politely." But this time Mr. Qimni did not go into hiding. He appeared on the television show, sitting beside Sheik Badri as he defended himself. A second development involved a religious minority, Bahais, who face discrimination in Egypt, where the only legally recognized faiths are Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Nine years ago the state stopped issuing identification records to Bahais unless they agreed to characterize themselves as members of one of the three recognized faiths. The documents are essential for access to all government services. An independent group, The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, won a court order on behalf of the Bahais that forced the government to issue records leaving the religious identification blank. The first cards were issued this month. While the decision was aimed specifically at solving the problem faced by the Bahai community, the case tapped into the evolving debate, said the group's executive director, Hossam Bahgat. "It is an unprecedented move to recognize that one can be Egyptian and not adhere to one of these three religions," Mr. Bahgat said. Still, he remains less than optimistic; most of the public reaction to the Bahais' legal victory was negative, Mr. Bahgat said. "It is known that you are apostates," read one of many comments posted on Al Youm Al Sabei, an online newspaper. But there has been at least a hint of diversity and debate in response to Mr. Banna's remarks on belly dancers. Hours after they were posted, some readers began, however tentatively, to come to his defense. "Take it easy on the man," an anonymous post said. "He did not issue a religious edict saying belly dancing is condoned. But he is saying that a person's deeds will be weighed out because God is just. Is anything wrong with that?" Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting. A voice for 'new understanding' of Islam - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune By Michael Slackman · Print · Top of Form Bottom of Form oDigg oMixx o CAIRO — Gamal al-Banna is 85, and for much of his life he has been overshadowed by his famous brother, Sheik Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political party. That seems to have suited him just fine, though. He liked to write, read and think. His sister left him a lot of money, and so, for decades, that is exactly how he spent his days. His bedroom is at one end of a dusty old apartment on a chaotic street in the center of the city. At the other end is his office, his desk piled high with papers. In between are books - 30,000 of them, arranged neatly on floor-to-ceiling shelves. One section is devoted to the 100 or so books he has written and translated. Banna is no longer living in his brother's shadow. And, like the organization his brother founded, the younger Banna is no friend of the establishment, but for quite a different reason. He is a liberal thinker, a man who would like to see Islamic values and practices interpreted in the context of modern times. Egypt's gatekeepers of religious values, the government-appointed and self-appointed arbiters of God's word, condemn, dismiss and dispute what he says. They have also banned at least one of his books. "Gamal al-Banna has opinions that fall outside the scope of religion," said Sheik Omar el Deeb, deputy in charge of Al Azhar, the centuries-old seat of Islamic learning in Cairo. "The people, of course, oppose anybody who talks about things that violate religion." Banna does not press his ideas, does not try to wage a contest with the institution of Azhar, but instead takes the long-term view, hoping to plant a few seeds that will, in time, take root and spread. He recognizes that, at the moment, the other side is winning the contest of ideas in Egypt, and the region. "If religion was correctly understood, it would be a power of liberation," Banna said. "But it is misunderstood, and so it is driving us backwards." What are his views, the ones officialdom have said fall "outside religion"? He has a lot to say about women: They are not required to wear a veil, as most do in Egypt; they should not be forced to undergo a practice referred to as "female circumcision," as most do now in Egypt; and they should be allowed to lead men in prayer, which is forbidden in Egypt. "My idea is that man is the aim of religion, and religion only a means," Banna said. "What is prevalent today is the opposite." Egypt, often looked to as a center of moderate Islam, is like the rest of the Arab world becoming more conservative and less tolerant of opposing religious views, according to thinkers like Banna. Since August there have been at least three high-profile cases here in which religious officials condemned, or sought to have criminally charged, people or publications promoting religious ideas they deemed offensive. "When the Muslims used to disagree, they had different schools of thought," said Sayed el-Qemni, another writer favoring changes, who lives in a small city outside of Cairo. "No one would point to the other and say, 'This is not Islam.' But when one school of thought says, 'I am the correct school of thought and everyone else deserves death,' then you are starting a new religion." Qemni has received death threats for some of his writings, and sleeps with two police officers guarding his house. By contrast, Banna exudes a sense of impunity. That, he says, is not a result of his name - though that is a powerful force in a society where family ties are deeply respected - but because "I am free." He is free because he has been careful not to become involved in political movements and because of his sister, Fawziyya, who left him the equivalent of about $100,000. That is a huge sum in Egypt, especially considering Banna has no family and lives and works in the same apartment at a nominal rent. "I am a completely independent man," he says with a smile. "I am not an employee, I am not in any party, and I am not affiliated with anything - completely independent." Banna was born Dec. 15, 1920, in El Mahmoudia, a village in Egypt's northern Nile Delta, northwest of the capital. The youngest of five children, he moved with his family to Cairo when he was 4 years old. His oldest sibling, Hassan, went on to form the Muslim Brotherhood, which today is the largest organized opposition in Egypt, even though it is officially banned. Their father, Ahmad Banna, a self- taught prayer leader and religious teacher, supported the family by repairing watches (his small wooden work table sits in the hall of Gamal's apartment). The elder Banna spent years of his life indexing the many thousands of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, assembling them in a multivolume set that sits on his youngest son's shelves and inspires him to this day. As a young man, Banna was kicked out of high school after a dispute with an English teacher. He finished his studies at a technical school and did not pursue college because, he said, he knew he wanted to pursue writing. So he went out and began to write. In 1946, he published a book called "A New Democracy," and included a chapter titled "Toward a New Understanding of Islam." Banna says one of the fundamental problems with religious leaders in Egypt is that they look to the interpretations of their ancestors and not to the Koran itself. To look directly at the book, and not at the words as interpreted by men living in a different time, would have a liberating effect, he says. Many of his ideas challenge the core beliefs of the radical Muslims who have been driving the religious agenda in the region. The most radical Islamists say, for example, that elected governments are un-Islamic because people must follow God's law, or Sharia, and not that of a Parliament. But Banna says the radicals are guilty of pursuing the very logic they say is un-Islamic. They would impose what amounts to their interpretation of the Koran onto other Muslims. That, he says, is no different than relying on a Parliament to pass laws, as both are a result of man's intervention, not divine revelation. Islam, he says, needs to be seen in a modern context. "Because Islam is the last of religions, if it was rigid and closed, it could not stand the changes of the ages," he said. Banna does not deliver his message as a lecture. He speaks casually, slipping between English and Arabic, smiling, waving his hands. He has his own name now, and a philosophy quite different from the Islamist organization his brother founded. Banna has stayed far from politics, but that does not mean he is apolitical. On the contrary, he believes that the reason his ideas have not gained momentum is that political freedom in Egypt is stifled by the nation's rulers. "They want only power," he said. "They don't want freedom of thought. Free thought - that will condemn them."
Allah, Farid, juhdi hamesha Au Shaikh Farid, juhdi Allah Allah. Acquiring Allah's grace is the aim of my jihad, 0 Farid! Come Shaikh Farid! Allah, Allah's grace alone is ever the aim of my jihad (Baba Guru Nanak Sahib to Baba Shaikh Farid Sahib) PLEASE VISIT MY BLOGS: |
__._,_.___