WATANI International
11 December 2011
Even before the first round of legislative elections drew to a close, it appeared the Islamists were set to gain a majority in Egypt’s new parliament. Declarations by several Islamist leading figures started to pour in, offering a taste of the path they intended to follow once in power. Seculars and liberals fear these declarations will soon materialise into draft laws that will find their way to Parliament. Then, they ask, what would Egypt look like?
Nobel laureate accused of apostasy
Once Abdel-Moniem al-Shahat, the spokesperson of the Salafi al-Nour Party, who ran for the elections and lost, declared that Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s novels stand to incite vice and promote immorality—as in prostitution, drug dealing and addiction. Shahat alleged Mahfouz was behind the ‘moral decay’ of Egypt which, he claimed, has been converted into a ‘large tavern’. “It is a disgrace that Egyptians are illustrated through Mahfouz’s novels.”
In the 1990s, an attempt was made on Mahfouz’s life by two Islamists following a declaration by the emir of their group that, on account of his novel Awlad Haretna (Children of Our Alley), the novelist was apostate. As such, Mahfouz warranted a death sentence since he had drawn a character that might have been taken to represent Allah. When one of the young men was asked in court whether he had read Awlad Haretna, his answer was “no”; he was simply executing his leader’s orders.
“Who can blame Shahat for airing Salafi [preposterous] views?” the poet and novelist Sobhy Moussa sardonically asks, “when it was Egyptian voters who in the first place voted them in.
Voted in
“The first round of the elections brought the Muslim Brothers (MB) on top, with the Salafis close behind. It brings to mind,” Mr Moussa said, “the 2010 parliamentary elections in which the now defunct NDP won a sweeping victory. When asked how can there be a parliament with no opposition, one high-ranking NDP official answered that there was sufficient opposition within the party itself, which could also work well enough for the parliament.” The sweeping victory was largely responsible for bringing about the downfall of the Mubarak regime. Mr Moussa sees the Salafi and MB victory very much like the 2010 NDP victory. “It appears our Parliament will have an Islamist MB majority and an Islamist Salafi opposition,” he laments.
“Egyptians who voted in the MBs and Salafis,” Mr Moussa insists, “believing that religious jurisdiction sharia is capable of putting an end to all the country’s economic and social woes, deserve no better than a sorcerer as Shahat who accuses Naguib Mahfouz of corrupting life in Egypt. But worse may yet follow; and we’d get those who say sculpture is a vile art of creating idols and graven images, interest rates are sinful usury, and all State institutions are invalid because the Prophet Mohamed never created any.
“If such figures of modern-day enlightenment as Naguib Mahfouz, Farag Fouda and Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid are today accused of apostasy, then who knows, maybe the historic figures of the 8th, 9th, and 10th century Islamic enlightenment will also be pronounced apostates.
“We can obviously kiss culture, art, and beauty goodbye once the likes of Shahat are in authority.”
Segregating men and women
On the social level, the Islamists did not fare much better than on the cultural level. For starters, the candidate for Egypt’s presidency Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail, an Islamist, vowed he would not allow any man and woman to be together in public. “In some countries,” he said, “a man and woman seen together in public are caught by the police.” Abu-Ismail said he would not allow any of his sons to marry a non-veiled woman, since she would make an “inadequate mother”.
Abu-Ismail said he supports only “honourable tourism” in Egypt, one that would not involve women in bikinis or serving alcohol. He harshly attacked those who call for non-religious electoral campaigning, accusing them of working to exclude Islam from all community-related issues. “The banning of the use of mosques in electoral campaigning is tantamount to insanity,” he said.
According to the poet Ma’moun al-Haggagi, the hardline Salafis forego moderate Islam which promote the values of goodness, truth and beauty in favour of an ultra-conservative, shallow version of Islam. “Poetry was very widespread in Arabia during the time of the Prophet Mohamed who himself is reported to have listened to it and enjoyed it. Shahat probably read none of Mahfouz’s works,” Mr Haggagi surmises. “It is no coincidence that they won him a prestigious world award.
“Shahat’s declarations are an attempt to turn the clock a few centuries back.”
Third wave of the revolution
The journalist Saad Hagras sees that the Salafi declarations have served to antagonise a large sector of the public. “What they said about gender segregation and tourism hurts enlightened Egyptians as well as 20 million whose work relates to tourism.
Mr Hagras wonders why the Islamists chose these issues to mark their debut in the political arena. Yet he told Watani that the results of the first round of the elections were no surprise, given that some 60 per cent of the electorate is illiterate and 70 per cent under the poverty line, which makes them easy prey for bribes.
“Elections only grant a relative not an absolute mandate,” Mr Hagras says, “meaning that the mandate is but for a fixed term, and cannot be exploited to change the identity of the community or to indefinitely stay in power. Instead of lamenting, the liberals, leftists and civic forces should identify the Islamists’ weak points and work with a conviction that the picture is not so bleak after all. I expect that some one-third of the Parliament seats will go to liberals, who will form a strong opposition, and this will preserve the State’s secular character.
“Egyptians,” Mr Hagras reminds, “were able to uproot a despotic regime, and they will also be able to uproot religious despotism. If the upcoming Parliament fails to achieve the 25 January Revolution’s demands of freedom, justice and social justice, this will open the door for a third wave of the revolution.”