Introduction

The recent cause célèbre known as “the Abu Zayd affair”—the philosophy professor pronounced an apostate by a state court—has been described as the epitome of a culture war in today’s Egypt. This struggle over the country’s soul has been going on for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity. Observers have never been, nor are they now, in agreement over the essence and outcome of its earlier phases. And today, as it continues to rage with passion, the range of assessments is as broad as ever. Future historians will be better equipped to appraise the historical significance of the most recent developments. But it is already quite clear that the Abu Zayd affair and several other cases of a similar nature are major milestones in this battle. In the present study I propose to explore these developments as a reflection of cultural tensions in Egypt and place them in a historical context. This may yield a preliminary perspective on the country’s search for orientation as it approaches the end of the twentieth century.

A society’s “cultural orientation” is an elusive notion. Ideas aired by the articulate members of a community, if readily accessible to the observer, do not necessarily express views of its other segments. Probing the thinking, sentiments and beliefs of an entire society requires a broad variety of research methods, taken from a host of scholarly disciplines, and these are rarely integrated in a single study.[1]It would thus be somewhat pretentious for a historian to try and capture an exhaustive picture of a community’s cultural reality, the more so when that society is as large and diverse as Egypt, still more when the period in question is one of accelerated change. The present study aims at a more modest goal. Its chief heroes are the society’s leading exponents of political and cultural ideas, its main focus the tension between the different courses they have sought to chart for the country. The impact of this debate on the largely passive majority of that society thus remains outside the scope of this exploration.
 

Although it was the content of Abu Zayd’s writings, not their quantity, that had hindered his appointment, it is not really necessary to examine them closely. Our concern is not the minute details of the arguments but rather the public furor aroused by the attempt to read religious texts in accordance with a modern scholarly approach. We can make do with noting that Abu Zayd laid out a fresh interpretation of religious texts, presented, as one scholar observed, in a “most respectable—and academically unimpeachable—manner.”[4] But in the battle that followed, his respectful style and meticulous scholarship were immaterial, nor did it really matter that he himself was a believer, who repeatedly reaffirmed his adherence to the faith.[5] What did matter was that Abu Zayd, a product of modern education and rational thought, dared apply the standard academic yardstick to the Holy Scriptures, thereby intruding into a territory others regarded as theirs. Once the issue hit the headlines, the religious circles behind Shahin could not afford to acquiesce in defeat. They pursued the legal case further, and in mid-June 1995—some six weeks after Abu Zayd was awarded his university promotion—they won their victory. Reversing the lower court’s decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that Abu Zayd was indeed a murtadd and should therefore be separated from his wife. 

The new ruling stirred a wave of angry protests by Egyptian liberal intellectuals, as well as calls for the execution of Abu Zayd by radical Islamists. Abu Zayd received threats to his life, which in Egypt of the mid-1990s could not be taken lightly. In the summer 1995 he and his wife decided to leave the country. Abu Zayd accepted a job offer at Leiden University, the couple settled in Holland, and from there they appealed the ruling at a higher judicial instance. A year later, in August 1996, the Egyptian Court of Cassations rejected the appeal and confirmed the previous decision of apostasy and separation. This court represented the supreme judicial authority, yet more legal procedures were possible even after its decision.[6] The following month, a Cairo Court of Urgent Cases ordered the suspension of the separation ruling.

The Abu Zayd affair pitted two camps in Egypt—for the time being we may refer to them as “traditional” and “liberal-rationalist”—against each other in an angry encounter. The former camp, including Shahin and his students, viewed the final court’s ruling as a great achievement in their drive to consolidate the role of religion in Egypt. The court’s position, Shahin stated, was “a message to society, that the call of secularists and Marxists is in reality apostasy from Islam…. It means that the era of secularists and Marxists in over in Egypt.” This victory, he asserted, was “only the beginning. We will do this to everyone who thinks they are bigger than Islam.”[7] Secular-minded intellectuals were shocked and alarmed by the legal developments. Political parties, the lawyers’ and journalists’ unions, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and other public and academic bodies held rallies and issued statements expressing their profound dismay with what had happened. Abu Zayd was described as “one of the most important thinkers of enlightenment in Egypt’s history and a distinguished beacon in the annals of Arab culture as a whole.”[8] The Center for Human Rights—Legal Aid issued a statement saying that the court’s ruling “would lead the society far from civilization and return the country to the Dark Ages, where Inquisition Courts inspected the conscience of intellectuals, researchers and innovators, and where the values of prejudice and rigidity prevailed.”[9] A public “Committee for the Support of Abu Zayd” was set up in Egypt; and a woman-lecturer at the University of Zaqaziq announced her readiness to become Abu Zayd’s second wife, which, she said, was a “Jihad for God.”[10] The liberals expressed their outrage with the Islamist lawyers, who sought to sow discord in the community, and with the courts that ruled along such “benighted lines.” They also voiced deep concern regarding the trial’s impact on the fate of freedom in Egypt and on its cultural future. The court’s decision, one of Abu Zayd’s lawyers stated, articulating a gloom shared by many, “extinguished the last hope of living in a society where free speech is guaranteed. The Egyptian people has been sentenced to life in darkness.”[11] There was another striking aspect to the fiery debate. While many of the participants, on both sides, felt that the case represented a major milestone in the country’s historic cultural evolution, the government chose to remain silent. The state authorities voiced no official opinion nor, so it seemed, did they try to influence the judiciary in any manner. Instead, they allowed the court to have its say and the public debate to run its natural course. 

We shall return to this affair and its implications, as well as to the government’s silence. At his point, however, it would be more useful to expand the scope of exploration and include precedents from the past, thus placing the story in its appropriate historical perspective.

Abu Zayd, 1930
An earlier “Abu Zayd affair” took place in Egypt in the early 1930s. It is little known to scholars and has almost no trace in Egyptian historiography.[12] While it did attract some public attention at the time, the affair was largely overshadowed by two other, more dramatic cases of a similar nature—those of ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq and Taha Husayn. Still, it deserves attention, both because of the striking resemblance to the more recent case and because of the meaningful differences between them. 

Muhammad Abu Zayd was an obscure shaykh from Damanhur who had received religious education in local schools and in al-Azhar, then found employment as a mosque preacher in his hometown. He also occupied himself as a popular lecturer on Islamic issues, and apparently published several books on Islamic matters in the 1920s, written strictly in the orthodox tradition.[13] In December 1930 he published a commentary on the Qur’an, that exposed him to the wrath of the religious establishment. The book, entitled Al-hidaya wal-‘irfan fi tafsir al-Qur’an bil-Qur’an (roughly: Guidance and Illumination in Proper Qur’an Interpretation) was suppressed soon after publication and no copies seem to have survived. But a detailed discussion of its text by a contemporary scholar, who had access to it, casts much light on the author’s approach and the reasons for the uproar it engendered.[14] Abu Zayd employed rationalist criteria in interpreting the miracles described in the Qur’an, rejecting any explanation that was incompatible with human reason. To quote an example, he dismissed the notion of the Prophet’s heavenly journey via Jerusalem, claiming that the Qur’anic rendition actually refers to his Hijra from Mecca to Madina; “the more remote mosque” (al-masjid al-aqsa) thus had nothing to do with Jerusalem, but was in fact the mosque in Madina.[15]

Shortly after the book appeared, Shaykh al-Azhar Muhammad al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri noticed certain young shaykhs from his institution distributing it among the students. He asked to examine the text, was shocked by its contents and immediately took steps to have it suppressed. The shaykhs who had distributed it were reassigned to positions as far away as Asyut, and the police confiscated every copy of the book. A committee of five senior al-Azhar ‘Ulama’ assessed the book and submitted a lengthy, 75-page report, which was also published in al-Azhar’s journal.[16] It discussed many of Abu Zayd’s misconceptions (dalalat) and falsities (abatil), the kind of which, it stated, “could not have issued from a mind with [even] a tiny spark of light in it.”[17] Such a distortion (tahrif) of the Qur’anic account proved that the author was misguided (ha’ir) and a liar (affak); still worse, his work was nothing short of heresy (ilhad fil-din) and an assault (huruj) on Islam. The committee did not seek to punish Abu Zayd for his “heresy”, stating that “the likes of him are commissioned [for judgement] before their God.”[18] But an injunction was issued forbidding him to preach in mosques and to hold religious meetings.

This did not end Muhammad Abu Zayd’s ordeal. Another champion of orthodoxy, Muhammad Rashid Rida, who was disappointed with the “mild” Azhar report, launched a public offensive against him. Rida, the eloquent spokesman of the Salafiyya, devoted four angry essays in his journal al-Manar (between June and October 1931) to refuting Abu Zayd’s commentary and accusing him of apostasy.[19] To increase the public effect of his assault, he also sent his articles to the popular daily al-Ahram. What Abu Zayd was after, Rida disclosed, was merely political gain: as a supporter of the Wafd he sought to de-legitimize the government, then headed by Isma‘il Sidqi.[20] To that end, he published a work abounding in unbelief (kufr) and heresy (ilhad)—the worst deviating exegeses ever written on the Qur’an. Whoever expressed such views, Rida charged, should be declared an apostate. He should not be allowed to remain married to his Muslim wife, to bequeath his property to Muslims or to inherit from them.[21] Nor was the attack on Abu Zayd just verbal. A group of orthodox shaykhs in Damanhur resounded the message of his apostasy, and took him to local court, which ruled that he should be separated from his wife. Abu Zayd then carried his case to a Cairo Court of Appeals, which decided in his favor.[22] After that no more was heard of Muhammad Abu Zayd. He and his story sank into oblivion. 

From the perspective of the 1990s, with a second Abu Zayd affair on record, the amazingly similar earlier story of a man by the same name is intriguing and perhaps symbolic. To the contemporaries of Muhammad Abu Zayd, however, his story was of little import. At least part of the explanation for this was the occurrence of two comparable affairs around the same time that were far more prominent and had more profound implications. A glance at these two famous cases—related to ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq and Taha Husayn—is instructive for the present discussion. Since they have been dealt with extensively in the literature it is possible, again, to do with but a brief reference to their main relevant aspects.

Shaykh ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq, a Shar‘i judge from Mansura, published his tract Al-islam wa-usul al-hukm (Islam and the Foundations of Government) in 1925. The immediate political context to its appearance was the public debate on the issue of the Caliphate, which had recently been abolished, and the aspirations of Egypt’s King Fu’ad in that regard. This, however, is of no concern to us here. ‘Abd al-Raziq approached the issue of government in Islam from a basically secular perspective, arguing that it was actually a political entity with no religious sanction. The guardians of traditional values were outraged, and he was brought before a Grand Council of ‘Ulama’. ‘Abd al-Raziq insisted on his right to his views under the constitution, but to no avail: he was dismissed from his post as a judge, lost the title ‘alim and was prohibited from serving in any religious position. The case stirred an outcry, with liberal thinkers passionately supporting ‘Abd al-Raziq in the name of civil rights enshrined in the constitution. It also sparked a political crisis that brought down the cabinet, which, in turn, further enhanced public involvement in the matter. The furor gradually subsided, and was consigned to historiography.[23]

Taha Husayn, a graduate of al-Azhar and professor of Arabic literature at Cairo University, was involved in a similar scandal the following year. In his book Fi al-shi‘r al-jahili (On Pre-Islamic Poetry), Husayn employed modern norms of literary criticism in analyzing ancient poetic pieces. In this there was an implicit call for a modern reappraisal of time-honored Qur’an and Sunna interpretation. Alarmed and enraged, the ‘Ulama’ denounced him as a heretic and demanded his expulsion from the university. Husayn was taken to court for insulting the religion of the state, and although acquitted he had to leave the country for a while. He then published a revised edition of the book, leaving out the more provocative sections (the main message, however, remained). This affair, too, had a political side that is beyond our concern here, which led to Husayn’s discharge from the university five years later on the pretext of having published the book.[24]

The three cases presented above, though distinct from each other in some important ways, had a significant common facet: they all served to highlight the historic struggle over Egypt’s cultural identity. Essentially, it was a battle between two world-views: a conservative view, that rested on religious belief, subscribed to traditional values and abhorred innovations; and a liberal-modernist view, which regarded intellectual openness as the only route leading to a proper place in the modern world. Within each of these two currents were, obviously, many sub-currents that advocated a variety of cultural recipes.

The Historic Challenge to Traditional Values
The introduction of novel ideas into the region upset the ‘Ulama’ on two counts: it imperiled the belief system underlying the community’s social fabric; and threatened to undermine their own standing as the society’s revered leaders. The struggle to check these dangers began in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Earlier in that century, the Egyptian ‘Ulama’ had lost their economic power, and hence much of their political influence, as a result of the domestic policies of Muhammad ‘Ali and his successors. Still, they were not eliminated as a class. Rather—as Daniel Crecelius has observed—they were left in place and continued to hold some grounds, most significantly in the spheres of education, law and Waqf, which the state had chosen not to appropriate. The government under the Khedives advanced its projects, bypassing social and cultural systems that were run by the ‘Ulama’ and duplicating them with secular ones. Left with their spiritual authority basically intact, the guardians of tradition employed the tools at their disposal as best they could to hinder the government-led transformation. In Crecelius’s words, again, they “permit[ted] innovation at the level of the state, while trying to block its spread to society.”[25] In 1881, for example, al-Azhar Shaykh Husayn al-Marsafi strongly criticized the rapid spread of printing, a modern device that compromised traditional values (thereby reverberating the fears of earlier ‘Ulama’, whose opposition had delayed the introduction of printing into the region by several centuries). This and similar attacks had some effect in distancing people from the press.[26] Two decades later, the marriage of ‘Ali Yusuf, a leading journalist, to the daughter of a notable shaykh, was annulled by a Shar‘i court because he engaged in a “despicable” trade that was “prohibited by the Islamic faith.”[27] Both cases reflected the anxiety with which leaders of the old guard viewed the intrusion by modern-oriented thinkers into that territory long recognized as their own—the area of writing, commenting on and distributing texts. Such a venture, they dreaded, amounted to offering the public an alternative form of cultural guidance through ever more effective vehicles. But the modern trends proved powerful and the ‘Ulama’ were unable to prevent (though they surely hindered) the dissemination of printing, the press, and the ideas which these devices brought with them. By the onset of the twentieth century it was clear that the ‘Ulama’ were no longer the exclusive guides of the community. Another leadership with a very different world-view now challenged them vigorously.

By the time of the ‘Abd al-Raziq, Husayn and Muhammad Abu Zayd scandals, the religious authorities were on the defensive and retreating. To their dismay, the uncontrolled printing of books and newspapers prospered; and alien ideas were not only discussed, but also informed social and political norms. With the Ottoman collapse, Egypt’s political leadership and a considerable segment of its intellectual elite opted for a different course in response to the call of modernity. The struggle for independence, the building of new state institutions, defining communal identity—all were issues that could be tackled, so it seemed, with the exciting formula of liberal nationalism. Novel concepts, detached from old conventions, came to inspire the approach to such matters as the structure and prerogatives of the state, mechanisms for the transfer of power, party politics, social status and mobility, the nature of public discourse, and indeed most aspects of public life. Modern-thinking intellectuals, their ranks expanding, were encouraged by the political leaders’ acceptance of the new ethos and felt reassured about their new orientation. It also seemed that the public, or at least its politically aware sector, was prepared to give this new course a chance. The open debate in post-World War I Egypt, conducted in books and journals and reflected in literature and art, revolved largely around modern ideas and options (to the extent that Egypt, along with Lebanon, blazed the trail for other Arabic-speaking societies). Advocates of the old order were overwhelmed. With al-Azhar reluctant to enter the press arena until 1931 (the year of its first periodical publication), the most effective defenders of tradition remained Rashid Rida and his colleagues at al-Manar. It was they who conducted the most vociferous campaign against the “innovators,” including the three writers discussed above.[28] Their voice, however, was all but lost in the grand chorus of the time.

The writings of these three men marked a new sort of threat, graver than hitherto. They employed their modern tools to invade an area that so far had been left untouched: the discussion and interpretation of holy texts. By meddling with, and mishandling the community’s most sacred assets, they infringed upon the ‘Ulama’s last bastion, thus violating the latter’s uncontested authority in their own domain. If the previous challenges to tradition were aggravating and condemnable, this new affront was unbearable. That the three were al-Azhar graduates (‘Abd al-Raziq and Abu Zayd were also religious-establishment functionaries) made their attack all the more painful. This dangerous assault had to be confronted head-on. It called for the use of the ultimate weapon at the ‘Ulama’’s disposal: labeling whoever expounds such ideas as mulhid and murtadd, a measure tantamount to excommunication. Accusations of apostasy and the use of these damning titles appeared in all three cases. They would reappear decades later, in the case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.

The encounters of 1925, 1926 and 1931 were tests of strength between the two camps. Their results drew the lines of battle between them. Hitherto the liberals had been making impressive strides forward, while the traditionalists had been engaged in what seemed to be a rearguard battle of a retreating power. It was thus only logical to expect the liberal thinkers to advance their ideas one step further, on the very same trail they had followed until then. But the ferocious reaction of the conservatives to this attempt, and their success in stemming the tide, marked the limits of the liberal momentum. They underscored the nature of the course Egypt had chosen to pursue in its new era: modernization alongside—not in lieu of—the old value system. Important ingredients of the old order had been left in place, and continued to shape the country’s cultural identity. In this respect Egypt differed markedly from post-Ottoman Turkey. While the latter, under Atatürk, opted for an explicitly secular path, deliberately breaking with its Islamic past, Egypt stopped short of making a comparable move. The roots of this far-reaching variance go back to the distinct historical development of the two societies in the nineteenth century (and before)—an exciting comparison to engage in but one which is beyond the scope of this study. In following the course that they did, Egyptian leaders of the twentieth century were not making a new choice. Rather, they were pursuing a strategy devised, as already noted, by their nineteenth-century predecessors: bypassing, not attacking, the traditional belief-system as well as its recognized defenders. The result of this historic choice was the persistence of tension between the two trends examined here. The ‘Ulama’ retained considerable social influence, and in times of danger could use it to fend off the danger. The effect of this duality would be felt throughout the twentieth century.

Plight and Shattered Dreams

The Cumulative Effect of Disillusionment

As the twentieth century neared its close, Egypt had to contend with the shattered remains of several great promises from earlier decades. The first was national liberalism, an appealing notion propagated in the 1920s that had already lost much of its lure by the mid-1930s. The national-liberal formula failed to address such major problems as socioeconomic imbalances, chronic political instability and, above all, foreign domination. The failure gave rise to other ideological solutions and spurred a reawakening of public religious sentiments. These were in part channeled to non-formal, popular organizations—most prominently the Muslim Brotherhood—that offered their own set of total answers to harsh realities. But before too long, a very different form of messianic promise loomed bright and exciting, as Nasserism burst onto the center-stage of Egyptian politics. Nasser rekindled hope and pride. He presented a grand ideal of sociopolitical order, communal identity and international stature that promised a future far better and greater than the past. In this essentially secular vision, the traditional spiritual leadership became irrelevant. To ensure this irrelevancy, and appropriate whatever popular authority the ‘Ulama’ still possessed, Nasser abolished the religious court system in 1955 and ordered a reform in al-Azhar in 1961 that effectively subordinated the old institution to the state.[29] “The shaykhs,” one scholar noted, had “become completely isolated from the modernizing segment of society and their traditional views [were] almost totally rejected…. Even their interpretations of Islam [had] been rejected in favor of those offered by secular theorists.”[30]

The potency of the Nasserite dream and the popular aspirations it generated were far more impressive than those aroused by liberal-nationalism. From the perspective of Nasser’s heyday, in the late-1950s, Egypt’s shift from traditionalism to secularism appeared to be an irreversible historic process. The country seemed to be moving along a clear and linear course, begun back in the nineteenth century, in which the setbacks of the 1930s and 1940s now appeared as no more than ephemeral intervals. Outside observers subscribed to this view. The process of abandoning the Shari‘a and borrowing foreign codes—Albert Hourani assessed in 1961—was moving ahead “with astonishing speed,” and was now “almost complete.”[31] Manfred Halpern, in a highly acclaimed study, similarly spoke of “the triumph of secular leadership” and the “shattering of the glass” of the old order. “A system connecting man, God and society is falling apart,” he observed, and those parts of the traditional system that still existed had “lost their essential links, and thus their relevance and effectiveness.”[32]

But then again came a turn of the tide, several years later, as the Nasserist dream itself was in tatters. By the time Nasser left the stage in 1970, the country was in deep crisis—its army beaten, its economy in trouble, its regional standing at a low ebb, its soil still under enemy occupation. To add insult to injury, foreign presence, now in the form of an army of Soviet experts, technicians and military men had returned to the country. As Nasserism collapsed it left in its wake a community of disillusioned believers groping for a compass.

Another layer was added to this burden of unfulfilled hopes during Anwar al-Sadat’s presidency. Sadat, though a man of impressive creativity and vision, did not offer a new creed to replace that of his predecessor. Instead, he authored a set of hope-inspiring policies and ideas (some would say, illusions): war—with the thrill of “The Crossing”—and peace, economic openness and political liberalization, Egyptianness (to replace pan-Arabism) and international reorientation. These succeeded each other with dazzling speed, as if to compensate for their short-lived aura. But each of these policies came with a price tag, and the costs accumulated: social dislocation and alienation of the educated elite, increased economic disparities, embarrassing regional and global partnerships, the loss of international allies. While the promised rewards were slow to materialize, the price was immediately and plainly evident. There was another important aspect to Sadat’s policy. More orthodox than Nasser and politically suspicious of the Nasserite left, Sadat gave prominence to religion in the patchy scheme he sketched for his country. He made extensive use of the religious establishment to legitimize his policies; allowed the constitution to be modified so as to define the Shari‘a “the major source” of legislation; and reversed the trend of de-legitimizing popular Islamic organizations, permitting them to regain political influence instead. This last move proved fateful. By leaving serious problems unresolved, forging an eclectic ethos, and at the same time permitting the reemergence of the religious alternative, Sadat facilitated the revival of the struggle between the two historic trends. He effectively created the conditions that invited the new exponents of the religious option to challenge his own leadership. Some of them preached revolutionary ideas and violent means to attain the goal of a Shari‘a state. When the government firmly confronted them, this was taken as additional proof of its animosity toward popular religious sentiment, and no effort to refute this image was of any avail. Sadat fell victim to the jinni he had released from the bottle, but he was not the only one to pay the price. As he departed from the scene, he left an Egyptian society exhausted from the intense experience of his tenure and the violence that ended it, with its elite as disoriented as ever. Egypt now was “a jaded country that [had] known many false starts and faded dawns,” in the words of one observer.[33]

Mubarak inherited a relatively open political system, in which forces with conflicting outlooks enjoyed freedom of expression, and to a certain degree organizational freedom as well. These included the formerly discredited and now-tolerated trend of religious activism, whose role in shaping the public agenda was on the ascendancy. The more extreme and less tolerated wing of that trend was also becoming more assertive, a process that culminated in the assassination of Sadat. Political violence would become a permanent feature of Egyptian public life, wasting precious national resources and forcing the government to rearrange its priorities. In the background were more problems: material plight, social and inter-communal tensions, and a widespread lingering sense of frustration with Egypt’s marginal place in the modern world—that elusive motivation in the behavior of communities that is palpably so potent yet impossible to gauge. These troubles were bequeathed to Mubarak who had no clear program for addressing them, but only a vague set of ideas, some experimental, others quite controversial. Mubarak’s own public image at the time of his accession, following a few short years of exposure in a civilian post, was of a gifted but unpretentious administrator rather than a visionary leader. But the absence of a comprehensive ideology, or ideologue, was not regarded as a disadvantage at first. On the contrary, following many years of overly politicized public life, Egypt seemed to be yearning for some respite and welcomed the new president’s low-key style. 

In a country with such an old and revered legacy of centralized government, the policies and style of the ruler bear special importance. They are scrutinized closely by the people who, in turn, are influenced by his behavior. Highly sensitive to this truth, Mubarak did not purport to reshape the country’s values through a revolutionary process, nor foster undue optimism where circumstances did not warrant it. A pragmatic and straightforward man, he made it a point right from the start to discuss the difficult reality candidly. He preached sweat and patience. “If I were to listen to some nervous people,” he told an interviewer early on in his presidency, “Egypt would go to hell. They say: ‘change, change!’ and then what? You run and run and then the troubles begin.”[37] Instead he sought long-term treatment for the national problems, rejecting demands, domestic and international, for drastic measures. With this sensible approach Mubarak’s government registered significant achievements. The domestic front, which on the eve of his tenure had reached boiling point, was cooled down and recovered a measure of stability. Multi-party politics, previously a shaky experiment, was consolidated and expanded, new opposition parties were licensed and freedom of expression was increased. The government charted a systematic plan to tackle the economic malaise, which it applied in the 1980s, to be followed by more ambitious structural reform in the 1990s. The infrastructure of public services, responsible for the quality of daily life, was rehabilitated and improved considerably, as any visitor to the country could sense. On the foreign front, too, Mubarak’s compromising approach helped in bailing Egypt out of a difficult corner in the regional and global arenas and moving it to a more comfortable middle position. All of these accomplishments were not lost on the Egyptians, and it was clear that they were thankful to their president for them.

But—and this was a major distinction between Husni Mubarak and his two predecessors—Mubarak was careful not to talk of a “great promise”, or present his government’s achievements as part of a master-plan leading to Egyptian glory. Such a strategy would scarcely be consonant with his personal style. Where Sadat, somewhat wishfully, promised upcoming economic prosperity and an imminent “reaping [of] the fruits of the past period of suffering,”[38] Mubarak spoke soberly of the hardships lying ahead, despite the experts’ responsible planning. “I am not Samson,” he stated. “We do our best. As long as we are on the right track and working…that is the maximum we can do.”[39] As part of his down-to-earth economic outlook, he urged the people to eat less meat and make do with vegetables “as they do in Japan,”[40] and scolded them for eating tomatoes and cucumbers out of the summer season “like aristocrats.”[41] In the same vein, where Sadat boasted of having introduced “true democracy,” and festively announced that Egypt had “gone over and above 90—and even 99—percent in democracy,”[42] Mubarak chose to speak simply of “providing dosages of democracy in proportion to our ability to absorb them. We are forging ahead,” he stated, “but we need time for our democracy to develop fully.”[43] Similarly, in foreign policy Mubarak avoided dramatic initiatives that would fire the imagination of the public at home and spawn great hopes. Unlike Nasser and Sadat, he adhered instead to a temperate dialogue with Egypt’s interlocutors. In all of these areas he represented a model of a circumspect planner and pragmatic politician rather than a visionary. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel itself is long and crooked, was his message. The train, however, must move ahead while the driver does his best.

Back to the Fray

Religiosity Reasserted

To most observers of the Egyptian scene, a major item on the country’s public agenda during the last quarter of the twentieth century—some would argue, the major item—has been the state’s contention with the phenomenon known as the Islamist or fundamentalist challenge. Viewed against the backdrop of historic developments, this struggle may be more broadly considered as yet another round of the public battle over cultural orientation. In this recent, passionate phase, the tradition-oriented forces no longer seem to be on the retreat as they had appeared four or five decades ago. Rather, they are waging an audacious offensive against the state—which meets them with its own practical vision and with the awesome might of its repressive machinery; and against the secularized segments of society—which adhere to a somewhat lackluster rationalistic ideological alternative that is nonviolent by definition. The state of the battlefield is far from clear: both sides claim to be on the defensive and readily produce evidence to substantiate the claim. The traditionalists maintain they are fighting to fend off the decades-old secular onslaught that has already invaded much of their precious territory. Liberal-secularists, for their part, combat to check the alarming spread of ideas they view as a menace to modern order and progress, the “campaign to stifle freedom of thought and expression in the country.”[45]

Most dramatic of the many faces of this encounter has been the violent dimension. Beyond the spectacular assassination of a president, it has involved Egypt’s basically nonviolent society in a cycle of ferocious outbursts and brutal countermeasures. Bloody confrontations have taken place since the late 1970s, in recurrent waves that have gradually become costlier and more widespread. The wave that peaked from 1992–95 resulted in more than 1,000 dead and an even higher number of wounded, including Islamist radicals, members of the security forces, civilians and tourists. The devastation of property and loss of resources were likewise awesome. Among the victims were writer and journalist Faraj Fuda, an intrepid critic of religious extremism, who was assassinated in June 1992, and the liberal author and Nobel Prize laureate Najib Mahfuz, who was assaulted and injured in October 1994. There were also attempts on the lives of President Mubarak and several ministers and ex-ministers. The Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd affair, too, had its brutal aspect, as radical groups announced their intention to “execute” him for his apostasy.[46]

But the violent expression of the phenomenon, however dramatic, may not be its most important facet. Perhaps more significant in the long run is the political aspect, which has far-reaching ramifications for the cultural scene. In a political arena more active than ever, exponents of tradition—institutionalized ‘Ulama’, Muslim Brotherhood activists, Islamist thinkers, and other publicists with similar proclivities—lock horns with modern-secularists, statesmen and intellectuals, who reject conservative religiosity as the sole cultural basis for Egypt. Beyond the ideological debate it is a battle for positions of power. It takes different forms and is held on different fronts: a contest for party and parliamentary representation, a quest for control of civil society bodies (conspicuously the leading professional syndicates), a race for providing social and cultural services to the public to win popularity, and a propaganda war over popular legitimacy. The arenas of contest are equally diverse: the People’s Assembly (Egypt’s parliament), academic fora, printed and broadcast media, books and pamphlets, street posters and graffiti, and—since the early 1990s—the courts. The struggle has an impact on every sphere of public life, from dress codes to Muslim-Coptic relations, from freedom of art to choosing Egypt’s foreign allies. No class of society, no group or organization can escape its influence in one way or another.

The remainder of this paper will focus on what appear to be some of the major characteristics of this struggle in its current phase.

The Growing Assertiveness of the Religious Establishment

The rise of non-institutionalized Islamic movements in the later years of Sadat’s tenure produced a change in this relationship. Under the new circumstances, the regime needed the ‘Ulama’’s backing not just as an ornament but, more practically now, as a weapon in the battle against the radicals. Establishment ‘Ulama’, too, felt threatened by the competing propagators of Islam who openly defied their authority. The militant challenge to both brought state and ‘Ulama’ closer together with a common interest. New tasks were assigned to the religious establishment: to counter the message of the extremists with a moderate message of their own; to de-legitimize the militants in the public’s eye; and to sanction measures endorsed by the state in its conflict with the radicals, including harsh suppression. Other developments required the endorsement of the ‘Ulama’, on issues over which the government faced domestic criticism, such as making peace with Israel. Much of this change took place during Mubarak’s presidency. With a general strategy that inspired little public enthusiasm, the government needed the effective tool of an authoritative religious cadre better equipped than itself to contend with the appeal of the radicals. Following Sadat’s assassination, leading religious scholars were called upon to conduct televised dialogues with spokesmen of radical Islamic groups, and to propound a moderate Islamic message in markedly expanded religious programs on the broadcast media. They were also expected—and often obliged—to provide Shar‘i license to government actions. Thus, for example, both Shaykh al-Azhar and the Grand Mufti responded to Mubarak’s request and issued fatwas affirming that family planning was compatible with Islamic values—a matter of utmost importance to Mubarak.[49] Such government reliance on the ‘Ulama’ was bound to lead, in turn, to the latter’s greater public prominence and, consequently, to their assertiveness. To be sure, assertiveness did not necessarily imply organizational and political autonomy: the formal status of the religious establishment in the state remained basically unchanged. But in the open debate on the society’s cultural future, its voice was now heard louder and clearer.

One area in which institutionalized ‘Ulama’ expanded their activity was censorship of publications and artwork. In 1990, al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Council found a book by ‘Ala’ Hamid, Masafa fi ‘aql rajul (A Tract in a Man’s Mind) to contain heretical ideas. The book was banned and Hamid was prosecuted for blasphemy and sentenced to eight years in prison.[50] The following year, during the annual book fair, the ‘Ulama’ banned several books by Muhammad Sa‘id al-‘Ashmawi, Chief Justice of the High Court of Appeals and a courageous protagonist of liberal values. It took the intercession of President Mubarak himself to restore them to the vendors. Increasingly the atmosphere was becoming more comfortable for interventions by al-Azhar. An incident in late 1993 highlighted the turning of the tide in favor of the religious establishment. During a session of the People’s Assembly, an Islamist member criticized Minister of Culture Faruq Husni for allowing the reproduction, in a recent ministry publication, of Gustave Klimt’s painting of a naked Adam and Eve. Dismissing the charge, Husni defended the artistic value of the piece; but in the same breath he explicitly acknowledged the right of al-Azhar, as the guardian of moral values, to review (and ban) ministry publications.[51] Before long, this statement by a government minister was given judicial sanction. On 10 February 1994, the State Council (majlis al-dawla)—the body overseeing the constitutionality of laws and their consonance with the Shari‘a—recognized al-Azhar’s exclusive authority to review and censor all written, audio or audiovisual works published in the country and dealing with Islamic subjects. What the category of “Islamic subjects” comprised was for al-Azhar to decide.[52] This was, no doubt, a decision of major import that signified a far-reaching concession by the state to the religious establishment. The government granted the ‘Ulama’ an authority they had long been demanding but had hitherto failed to obtain.

Al-Azhar was quick to capitalize on its new privilege. Within a couple of weeks after the Council’s ruling, it issued a ban on the dissemination of books by Justice ‘Ashmawi (whom an al-Azhar spokesman labeled “another Salman Rushdie”).[53] A spate of book suppressions followed. By the summer of 1997, the number of titles recommended by the religious authorities for purging had reportedly reached 196. One prominent case was that of Sayyid al-Qimani, a liberal author and vocal secularist, whose book Rabb al-Zaman (God of [Our] Time) was marked for banning by the ‘Ulama’, who also sued him for his views.[54] Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy (majma‘ al-buhuth al-islamiyya) became a screen for everything published. It now had the authority to examine manuscripts (as well as movie and TV scripts) and recommend their publication, or suppression—decisions of the latter type were implemented by the Artistic Production Censorship Police.[55] This mighty prerogative, and the prominence given the ‘Ulama’ in the media, lent them considerable power to hinder the circulation of ideas with which they disagreed. The government, for its part, obliged and cooperated. In one distinct case, Minister of Higher Education Mufid Shihab ordered that the French scholar Maxime Rodinson’s book Muhammad be removed from the curriculum of the American University in Cairo. Available in Egypt since its publication in the late 1960s, the book was now found to be “blasphemous” and insulting to Islam.[56] That the state recognized this prerogative further encouraged the ‘Ulama’ to air their views with growing boldness in the cultural debate. In an interview in the popular weekly al-Musawwar, when asked about the 196 books rejected by al-Azhar, the Research Academy’s secretary dismissed the question: “So what if it were 196,000—they do not follow our Islamic path…. We protect the earth from their contamination and the state from their terror.”[57]

Combative censorship was one sign of the ‘Ulama’’s emboldened stature. Another was their growing rigidity in the public debate with the critics of tradition. The diversion of part of the cultural struggle to the courts, where religious reasoning was often admissible, gave the recognized spiritual leaders a potent leverage. They willingly offered their opinion to judges who chose to rule in the spirit of the Shari‘a. This kind of opinion carried considerably more moral weight than any other kind of professional assessment the court may have elicited from secular experts; it had, one seasoned lawyer has observed, “a de facto legislation power.”[58] Non-establishment Islamist thinkers also influenced the courts by publicly discussing issues that were sub judice.[59] Not at all times did the judiciary accept the conservative opinion. When the veteran Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali, testifying in the trial of Faraj Fuda’s assassins, suggested that Fuda had been a murtadd and hence should have been killed, he was overruled by the court.[60] But even when the court rejected traditionalist legal opinions, this did not diminish their public impact. Aired with much authority, these views had the dangerous potential of inspiring the radical Islamist groups and providing justification for their violent actions. Again the Fuda case is an illustrative example. A group of prominent al-Azhar ‘Ulama’, who in early 1992 organized in order “to repel secularist attacks on Islam,” issued a statement depicting Fuda as “secularist to the bone,” a man who had “devoted all his efforts and his life to obstructing the application of the Shari‘a.”[61] The message and its style were familiar; they actually echoed a statement by none other than Shaykh al-Azhar, Jadd al-Haqq, who in a public letter in 1988 denounced secularist writers as enemies of Islam in the service of foreign interests and labeled them unbelievers.[62] The ‘Ulama’’s announcement of 1992, however, had a more lethal result. Fuda was murdered five days after its publication, and his killers testified that they had taken their cue from the authoritative exponents of Islamic values: “Yes, we killed him” al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya reportedly stated, “al-Azhar issued the sentence and we carried out the execution.”[63]

By the second half of the 1990s, institutionalized ‘Ulama’ had become involved in the hazardous practice of takfir and irtidad—declaring a person an apostate and exposing him to the applicable punishment. Such accusations, formerly voiced primarily by radical Islamic groups, have more recently been pronounced by individual religious thinkers such as Ghazali, as we have seen. The number of those resorting to such measures was steadily growing, and the court decision in the Abu Zayd case, in 1995 and 1996, further encouraged the phenomenon. Takfir became a subject of public debate, and while this did not make the idea any more popular it became a frequently-used weapon in the arsenal available to the traditionalists. In May 1997 it was again employed, this time against Cairo University philosophy professor Hasan Hanafi. The attack was launched by the Front of al-Azhar ‘Ulama’ (jabhat ‘ulama’ al-azhar), a non-official grouping of some 2,000 institution members, including several of its most eminent scholars. Front secretary Dr. Yahya Isma‘il Hablush condemned Hanafi for things he had written a decade earlier, which Hablush described as “a destructive assault” on Islam. Such words, he charged, exposed the author as an atheist, so “the entire community should mobilize against him.” Hablush appealed to the university to dismiss Hanafi and urged the judiciary to bring him to trial. Again, a public clamor followed, with Hablush censured not only by liberal writers but also by other al-Azhar members, including Shaykh Muhammad al-Sayyid Tantawi, Shaykh al-Azhar.[64] Such condemnation of the takfir practice notwithstanding, its recurrent use, especially by senior ‘Ulama’, had the cumulative effect of amplifying the Islamist assault on secularism. “When this ‘front’ issues a fatwa of takfir against a person, it does not seek to persuade the government or the judiciary,” Nasr Abu Zayd suggested from his place of exile following the attack on Hanafi. “Rather, it tries to convince the street. Moreover, the call is necessarily directed to those capable of killing.” Hence, the authorities were unable, in effect, to defend free thought from the charge of takfir.[65] In the late 1990s, at least some members of the religious establishment felt that the country’s cultural divergence warranted the use of this extreme device.

The assertive role of the ‘Ulama’ has had profound repercussions. Instead of serving as a force of moderation, their activities have actually exacerbated the tension between the secularist and traditionalist trends. Unable, or unwilling, to shoulder the task of confronting the radicals with an intelligible formula of modernized Islam, ‘Ulama’ have adhered to standard conservative interpretations of the faith. Having to compete with the radicals for Islamic leadership, they have tended to display a rigid stance by employing tough measures such as book banning and takfir. Whether intentionally or not, they have equated secularism with unbelief,[66] and have labeled both as apostasy. Their rigidity has provoked criticism from some of their more temperate colleagues, who have resented this offensive style; but the latter have been only partly successful in silencing their more contentious peers. For, as the spokesmen of hard-line religiosity know all too well, the main battlefield is the street—where a simplistic, black-and-white approach purportedly based on ancestral tradition is the most comprehensible and hence most effective. This, in turn, has inevitably led to growing antagonism among secularists, increasing mutual intolerance and undermining the quest for a consensual formula of cultural orientation.

The Problematic Counter-Attack of Liberal Secularists

Nor is the case any less intricate in the Egyptian context. Here, too, “liberal” is a title readily assumed by people representing different perspectives; and “secular”, as we have seen, is often confused with unbelief. In the present discussion, “secular” denotes those who aspire to a sociopolitical and cultural order based on human reason and freedom of thought, but without turning their backs on their religion, at least as a component of their culture. Those who regard the old spiritual-religious heritage as entirely irrelevant are few in Egypt. Most secularists do think of Islam, the faith and the tradition, as an important pillar of their society’s belief-system and moral code. They believe, however, that this heritage should play only a limited role in guiding the individual and society in the modern world, alongside other cultural products of human ingenuity. Those who air such views regard themselves as continuing the line of modern thinkers begun in the nineteenth century, most eminently Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, Taha Husayn, ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq, Muhammad Husayn Haykal and, more recently, Najib Mahfuz and Faraj Fuda. These were creative writers who contributed to their society’s enlightenment—tanwir – the corridor leading to the grand hall of modernity. 

In present-day Egypt, this trend comprises mostly authors, journalists, academics and artists, who actively participate in the public debate. The recent religious-traditionalist offensive aroused their anxiety and prompted a liberal counteroffensive aimed at stemming what they regard as a regressive tide. New liberal forums and institutions have been set up, among them the Egyptian Society for Human Rights (al-munazzama al-misriyya li-huquq al-insan), founded in 1985 at the initiative of a group of intellectuals, among them Faraj Fuda; the Egyptian Enlightenment Society (al-jam‘iyya al-misriyya lil-tanwir), in whose foundation in 1987 Fuda also took part; the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies (markaz ibn khaldun lil-dirasat al-inma’iyya), founded the following year by the energetic sociology professor Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim and several colleagues; the Egyptian Committee for the Defense of National Unity (al-lajna al-misriyya lil-difa‘ ‘an al-wahda al-wataniyya), founded in 1990; the Modern Call Society (jam‘iyyat al-nida’ al-jadid), set up in 1992, with economics professor Sa‘id al-Najjar as president; and the Center for Human Rights— Legal Aid (markaz al-musa‘ada al-qanuniyya li-huquq al-insan), founded in 1994 by Hisham Mubarak.[67] These and other liberal NGOs issue publications and declarations, organize symposia and file legal suits, and their members participate vigorously in the verbal exchanges with the traditionalists. It has been a persistent, robust activity. The more sophisticated and daring—Faraj Fuda, Nasr Abu Zayd and Sayyid al-Qimani are obvious examples—have also ventured into reinterpretation of Islamic tradition, rejecting its conservative reading and offering a fresh one instead. Such creative intellectuals, Qimani has observed, have displayed unprecedented courage, for their work has been “written under the threat of excommunication and takfir, which shows that they approach their task with supreme sacrifice.” [68]

There is no need here to delve into the details of the liberal arguments.[69] Very generally, they see in the Islamist drive and its underlying dogmatic approach an obscurantist menace to Egypt’s culture, dissociating society from the rest of the world, from universal humanist values and from modernity. In a sense, they have an easier task today than did their nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century forebears: they need to break no new ground, and can rely on a solid constituency of followers who are accustomed to thinking in like terms, a constituency that has evolved over the years thanks to education and the modern media. In another sense, however, the liberals are at a disadvantage compared to earlier generations, as they suffer from some serious handicaps in their battle against the countercurrent. One such liability, already noted and worth reiterating, is the historical backdrop of repeated liberal failures against which they preach their case. The fact that past alternatives to tradition—especially national liberalism in the 1920s and Nasserism in the 1950s—had kindled so much hope, which had been so abysmally frustrated, considerably weakens the appeal of the liberal message. These earlier failures also serve as effective ammunition in the hands of the traditionalists who seek to fend off the secularist danger.

There are other drawbacks. The message of the liberals is not always clear-cut, nor is it easy to grasp. As against the straightforward call for obedience to a religious authority, and the might of simplistic religious slogans, the liberal call is complex and requires sophistication. Its complexity derives from this trend’s historic choice not to sever itself entirely from tradition but rather to adjust it to the needs of the time. The result is a premise based on a problematic hybrid of faith and reason. It takes some intellectual maneuvering to see that secularism is not quite the same as irreligion—that one may approach worldly matters in a rationalist way without abandoning one’s piety and faith in God—and to realize that such secularism does not deny the essence of Islam. Take, for instance, the statement by the liberal thinker and important poet ‘Abd al-Mu‘ti al-Hijazi, who has suggested that a Muslim may defend his secularist world-view “not merely by its indispensability for progress, democracy, freedom of thought and reason, and the assimilation of the culture of the age, but also by its compatibility with the essence of Islam, which glorifies human life, rejects priesthood, encourages ijtihad and makes the public interest the guiding principle of investigation and choice.”[70] A reasonable argument, no doubt, but hardly simple. Grasping it would require multi-layered thinking. Even some of its vocabulary is, as Bernard Lewis has observed, “recognizably alien. An Arabic loanword like dimuqratiyya lacks the resonance of shari‘a.”[71] Such and similar arguments may carry weight with the more cultivated segment of society; but they are difficult, and often less than intelligible for the less educated. To the latter, the uncomplicated ideas of the traditionalists readily make more sense. Moreover, liberals themselves sometimes find it difficult to define the nature of the relationship between the principles of modernity and tradition. One indicator of this difficulty, Nasr Abu Zayd has suggested, is the duality (izdiwajiyya) between the liberals’ thought on the one hand and their daily conduct on the other—for example, in matters concerning the family, or the status of women.[72] The uncertainty of the liberal message is accentuated by the contrasting simplicity of the conservative call, “Islam is the Solution!”—al-islam huwa al-hal—the solution to all the frustrations borne by the misdeeds of a modernizing leadership.

Yet another disadvantage to the liberal effort is a communication handicap. The main vehicles for disseminating their views are print media—periodical publications and books—and to a lesser extent the broadcast media, along with various art forms, primarily movies. Egypt’s print industry has been a field of unmatched productivity during the last quarter of the century, as well as a battlefield for encounters between different orientations. The traditionalists, like the liberals, issue an impressive range of publications (especially striking if we recall their leaders’ objection to printing until the twentieth century), and articulate their views in the non-religious press as well, although not in movies. Printed matter, however, is accessible only to those who can read (roughly half of the population, and most recently a bit more) and to those who care, or can afford to buy copies (a considerably smaller proportion). Movies, too, are confined to certain social strata, especially the urban middle class. In the broadcast media, it is debatable which of the two trends, liberal or traditionalist, exercises a greater measure of influence. Liberal writers have repeatedly complained that the conservatives have a double advantage here: direct—in the easy access offered to their spokesmen in interviews, talk shows and broadcast sermons; and indirect—in that the government succumbs to