Some people believed
that what was called Islamic Sahwa was a phase in the course of the
nation; whether Egyptian, Arab or Islamic, to complete its independence.
I remember that
one of those, whom we used to honor and almost sought to be with him or listen
to his lectures, kept explaining to me and to others how we have been through
the era of political independence followed by the era of economic independence…
but both of them were incomplete because cultural independence came late and so
the nation had no identity to use as a criterion to determine deep essences of
both the political and economic independences… and that Islamic Sahwa
was the true interpretation of cultural independence… and it is the essential essence
of identity… and so we; Egyptians or Arabs, are Muslim in culture,
civilization, history… and consequently in identity.
That was when the
wave of political Islam discourse went high prior to the mid-seventies of the
twentieth century… atop of this wave, we saw captains steering boats of
so-called Islamic modernization and enlightenment… they called themselves or
some called them enlightened Islamic writers and thinkers.
“Enlightened
Islamic” writings started to flow in every field until it went so far to
include fields of social human sciences, law and economics and reached to
medicine, chemistry, agriculture, pharmacy and others… we saw every night and
morning people wearing turbans, Tarbush, Ghutra and others not wearing any of
these who occupied the screens, radio waves and podiums with every one of them
having the title of enlightened Islamic preacher or thinker.
At that time and
what followed next until the end of the first decade of the twenty-first
century, many, that may reach the maximum majority of Arab nationals, Marxists and
liberals, took it absolutely seriously… and attempts to couple those ideologies
with the Islamic orientation in its “enlightened version” started… I can almost
assure that there were people and figures of those orientations that believed
the nation has no way out but with submitting to thinkers and figures of
enlightened political Islam as leaders possessing the prescription to go out
from the pit of under-development, fragmentation and dependency.
On the other
side, there was an opposing reaction to such orientation that went in the
direction calling that the whole Islamic orientation does not know
enlightenment and that countries – and not nation this time – are suffering
from a Bedouin desert settling colonization attack that preceded the Zionist
settling occupation… and that such attack came to us from the Arab desert to
destroy all civilization and culture foundations that accumulated throughout
tens of centuries when the Egyptian, Syrian or Iraqi interacted with old
civilizations like the Greek, Persian, Hindu and Roman ones to come up with a
distinguished character in all aspects until those bare-footed shepherds came
to destroy everything!
There were more said
in the same theme… the thing that provoked someone like me who felt jealous
over his Arab affiliation and Islamic roots and so my mind went on researching
the whole thing to contribute to such hot debate.
Due to my scholar
composition, I sought refuge in history… I searched hard and found that the “old
world” witnessed waves of big ethnic movements throughout different eras… some
of those movements took the form of wide attack waves that set off from
pasturing areas or steppes to urban places; meaning empires and fertile river
valleys… for example, Rome fell two times in the fifth and sixth Gregorian
centuries… moreover, waves of Tsunami – if one can use this term in such
context – of Germans including Franks, Magyars, Vandals, Goths and Huns invaded
Europe…
It is almost the
same time when steppes’ people in the Arab peninsula in the broad geographic
meaning of the word set off to their nearby fertile urban places where water and
food were abundant and where profound cultural and civilization heritage
existed.
While I was
reading about this time era, I knew that “Gaul country” was not named France…
and that western Goths had invaded it and spread Christianity according to the
Egyptian Arianism doctrine that is regarded as heresy by the Christians after
the Council of Nicaea… then the Franks’ tribes, led by Clovis I, invaded the Gaul
countries and changed its name to bear the name of the Germanic tribe “Frank”…
they also changed the religious doctrine and language…
I used the events
of that time period as an entry to debate those who refused the cultural and
political Arab nationality for their opposition to the tyrant control of
Islamic orientation which they believe contains no enlightenment.
Days passed and conferences
gathering Arab nationals, Marxists and liberals convened… and Islamists – as per
the oriental description, specially the Lebanese one – were the precious pearl
on top of all those conferences and with full consent from the others until the
big movements of public masses since 2011 took place and which we all lived…
such recent movements revealed many things…
First regarding
the outlook which is inseparable of the core, as those Islamists started to
play the role of victorious great leaders… their smiles turned into grimaces
and frowns… their phone numbers changed… their harsh heartedness started to
appear…
Those so-called
enlightened thinkers and writers took off that mask they used to wear and put
it aside just like that Umayyad Caliph who kept in retreat reading Quran and
having prayers between the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina until they told
him he became the Caliph, then he looked at the Quran and said: “now, I’m done
with you”… then he moved out to Damascus and the first dinner he had as Caliph
was a sumptuous feast with the dead bodies of his opponents extending beneath whom
some of them was still not yet dead.
When muslim
brotherhood were in power, we did not witness any effort aimed at achieving
cultural independence as what we saw and lived was the start of a fierce enmity
by the Islamist muslim brotherhood rule towards anything that has to do with
culture, whether in the broad meaning of the word or the technical definition
related to arts and literature.
We did not
witness a “cultural declaration” like the “constitutional declaration” we had…
also the then-president; Morsi, did not think for a moment of appearing at
least in a concert for Arab folkloric music, not even for taking pictures… we received
no signs of any kind or degree from Muhammed Badi’e, Khairat ash-Shater, Essam
el-Haddad, Sa’ad el-Katatni, Essam al-Arian, Hassan Malek, Assem Abdel-Maged
and Sobhi Saleh that they have the slightest interest in culture except maybe
for the culture of alienation, tyranny and mis-deployment of religion and its
values.
My question now
is: could this thing of cultural independence be one of the motives some young
generations have believing that what they do is nothing but resistance
defending identity and that independence?
If that was
expected… and I do believe it is present and even confirmed… then the national
cultural duty requires all those interested in public affairs and engaging in
this conflict to pay attention to this issue by discussing and laying the
foundation for such thing first by checking the validity of the term “cultural
independence” in form and context and the meaning of cultural accumulation for
nations throughout its historical evolution eras.
I had to search
in the context of interaction between “Berbers” and places of Roman Empire and
what happened… I knew that those peoples regarded the matter as historical
evolutions that had both positive and negative effects. I also knew that “Berbers”
of Goths, Vandals, Huns, Magyars, Germans including the Franks contributed to
very important historical evolutions… it is enough to say that the one who did
the biggest coup in the history of rule in Europe was Charlemagne who crowned
himself and did not let the Pope grant him this honor of placing the crown over
his head… Charlemagne was the descendant of those Berbers as people of Rome
described them in the fifth Gregorian century.
Normal people
there talk about accumulated layers of cultural and civilization heritage; Hellenic,
Roman, Christian… etc… and normal people here talk about old, middle, modern and
contemporary accumulations where one can find ancient Egypt, Greek Egypt, Roman…
Christian… and Islamic Egypt that started with the era of Arab entering Egypt…
then ruling era of the first four Caliphs in Islam and reflections of Al-Fitna
Al-Kubra until we reach the Mamluk and Ottoman eras… after this we had the
modern era with Muhammed Ali Pasha.
As to those who
reflected what is said about Islam; that it cancels what preceded it on the
levels of faith and doctrines, they reflected this on history, civilization and
culture and so the history of our country started with Amr Ibn al-‘As and our
culture started with him as well… as to them, they need a cultural therapy in the
first place.
Translated into
English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was
published in Al Ahram newspaper on June 19, 2014.
To see the
original article, go to:
#alahram
#ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Islam #history #identity
