Global Imam vs Al-Azhar. The Iron Wall in Gaza

No clerics in islam !as it is often said but the reality may be slightly different since the modern times and the professionnalisation of the various religious careers. Since the last decades, the muslim clergymen are not anymore the ones they used to be, because of a set of changes in the social realm (education, urbanization…) and in the media : radio imams have been followed by tape imams, then came the time of the TV imams who became today internet imams delivering online fatwas. And it is no surprise that such a quick and violent and deep transformation of the religious institution leads to some eccentricities as it has been the case more than once.

Modern states have also played an important role, creating a religious bureaucracy submitted to stick-and-carrot incentives as illustrated by the last controversy about the building of an "iron wall" on the southern border of Gaza with Egypt.

As very few people seem to be convinced that it is a good idea to reinforce an already cruel siege on the population of Gaza, the Egyptian government called to the rescue leading clerics in order to legitimate what they were doing. One more time, shaykh Tantawi, rector of Al-Azhar, has demonstrated that he was an obedient servant of the state. He explained that opposing the wall was illegitimate and, thus, against against the islamic law.

Of course, such a statement has been followed by countless critics from all sorts of religious authorities, and notably enough from the « Global Imam », shaykh Qardawi, one – if not – the leading cleric for the Sunni Muslims.

But the worst thing is that the only voice to be heard for shaykh Tantawi’s defense was that of the Palestinian minister of religious affairs (Waqfs). He explained that Egypt was perfectly right in building on his border a wall (which will add to the suffering of the population of Gaza !)

Unsurprisingly, clerics in Egypt have opposed their reputed boss at Al-Azhar. Members of "Al-Azhar scholars front" have made a demonstration and various imams have refused to read the speech prepared for the Friday prayer in the Egyptian mosques. Their employer, the minister, has cut their wages in retaliation and it is possible that things get worst.

In the West Bank too, the local imams have been asked to read a prepared speech which was very critic of shaykh Qardawi. Those who have obeyed the official instructins have not been able to finish and the police had to come sometimes to calm the vociferous worshiping. Obviously, it is not necessary to be a sophisticated cleric to understand where does justice stand in Gaza case !

On the cultural side, famous Tunisian director Al-Majiri is preparing a moovie about the tunnelers of Gaza. Khalid Taja, a very respected Syrian actor, will play the leading role. Al-Qardawi’s life is represented on stage in a theater in Qatar. The illustration of this post is taken from the cover of a book edited by Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen about Al-Qardawi well depicted in this interesting article.

As usual, the link to the original post in French.

No (Coranic) Logo!

Is there any connection with the agreement to be passed with Robert Murdoch’s very conservative and pro-zionist News Corps? To be sure, the pious commercials broadcasted by Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation on the various Rotana channels between racy videos clips have fuelled many discussions.

It is not the first time that such campaigns have been launched in the Arab media. There has been previously the Mercy campaign during Ramadan 08, or the Al-baraka bil-shabab (Youth is a blessing and/or The blessing youth) broadcasted by the MBC channel.

An interesting questions raised by such advertising campaigns, tackling “virtuous issues,” is the use of statements (ahâdith) of the Prophet Muhammad. Obviously, there is no problem at all with the message itself but the context might seem too profane and thus unsuitable to the dissemination of the sacred words.

At least it is the point of view of various Saudi religious scholars who have forbidden, some time ago, the use of Coranic inscriptions on players shirts during soccer competitions (they still remain legitimate for charity matches!) Similarly, Al-Azhar has recently condemned the use of Coranic verses for politics of business! According to a previous official national mufti, the sacred words must remain a guide for life and not a logo!

In short, No Coranic Logo! to use Naomi Klein’s motto. But such a claim might become a dead letter considering the countless stickers printed with sacred words posted everywhere in the Arab world… The religious message is everywhere but his meaning is vanishing.

With the usual link to the original post in French, one of the videos of the Al-baraka bil-shabab campaign...

Images of War and War of Images in the Shiite Crescent

Since King Abdallah II’s famous declaration about the threat of the Shiite crescent, tensions become more obvious day after day. After Morocco broke its diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran last March, it is Egypt’s turn to denounce Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah.

The coming fights and the secrets thoughts of the political scene could easily find in the “war of images” a very fertile ground as the two main branches of Islam do not have exactly the same doctrine about the question of the representation of human faces.

In modern times, sunnism usually proscribes it when shiism shows a more flexible position. Since the XIXth century at least, Shiite artists commonly represent Muhammad’s cousin, Ali, and his two sons, Husayn and Hasan.

Because of this divergence about the question of representation, the making of Asbat, a kuwaiti financed TV serial about the first Shiites “martyrs”, has created a lot of opposition from various local authorities, especially in Syria where the work is due to be filmed.

Al-Buti, a well-known local imam, has said for instance that such a project was a very first step toward the representation of the prophet Muhammad himself. Something which is not totally unlikely regarding the making of various Iranian movies like the last Jesus, the spirit of God, a film directed by Nader Talebzadeh.

For his defence, Al-Anzi, the Kuwaiti producer, explained that the TV serial describes a period when Islam was united. He also said that distinguished religious authorities do not condemn the use of figurative images, including those of the prophets.

He could have said that even in Saudi Arabia, land of the Wahhabis who profess the more restrictive doctrine on the subject of representation, children books use such pictures, for pedagogical purposes, and that it has been a long time that royal features grace the country bank notes.

But, certainly, all Saudi kings are not holy people.

As usual, here is the link to the more developed post in French.

Fatwas as a Ramadan Ritual

After the TV soap operas of Ramadan, a new ritual seems to be adopted in the Arab countries: the Ramadan fatwa. It is inevitable that the habits of the Holy month, like traditional Christian celebrations, reveal the contradiction between pre-modern religious rituals and the practices of the post-modern consumer society.

Saudi Arabia, a country with a large and rich population and a strict religious oriented regime, is probably the place where such contradictions are to be felt causing a real clash, not between civilizations but between extremely different ways of living a same religion--Islam.

After many calls by religious authorities against the too successful Turkish soap opera “Noor”, Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan, the most senior juge in the kingdom, has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes.

Such a condemnation is a real provocation as most of the major Arab TV channels are own by people very close to the ruling family. So, it is no surprise that Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan toned down his fatwa a few days later.

In spite of all the comments about such a strange fatwa, this new battle gives the impression that the traditional components of the Saudi society are doomed to lose ground at the advantage of the liberal ones.

As usual, the link to the more developed post in French.

Charms for a Suffering Society

For many Muslim believers, the Coran, the divine word, is supposed to have curative effects. In the Arab world, people may go to a shaykh “specialized” in Coranic medicine. Most of the times, he will “cure” psychological diseases.

If correctly used and as a way to recognize the power of God, the ruqy, the “magical incantation” of God’s words is a well known and rather accepted – if discussed – tradition in many Arab countries, especially among popular and uneducated segments of the population.

When people can’t see any solution to their difficulties, they are incline to turn to charms which can “magically” solve their problems. It is the case in Gaza where traditional “doctors” are mushrooming.

Same thing in Algeria, a country where people had to cope with dramatical events and where 10% of the population is said to suffer from psychological difficulties.

The revival of magical traditions is obviously an evidence of the suffering of many people in the Arab world.

Follow that link to read the original and more detailed post in French. Photo: www.tattar.com

Soccer, religion and rituals: the Egyptians Pharaons win the Africa Cup of Nations

Obviously linked to political issues (see this previous post), soccer has always been associated with demonstration of national but also regional, ethnical and local identities.

Since the last decade, Arab soccer fields have also been a place for the affirmation of religious identity through the new habit among many (muslim) players of doing the sujûd (to prostrate oneself) whenever they score a goal.

According to muslim authorities, to do the sujûd whenever you want to thank God is perfectly OK. Others add that it may even be useful to show that soccer fields are places where God rewards those who He loves…

Sami Sabri, from the Egyptian national selection, explains that the sujûd also is a way for the muslim player to express his happiness according to the rites and values of the Arab and muslim societies, and without imitating the sometimes “grostesque gesticulations” of players coming from other cultures.

Nonetheless, there could be another explanation behind the endless demonstrations of piety showed by the Egyptian team during the competition : playing in Africa, and especially in Kumasi, capital of the Ashinti kings, they had to protect themselves against witchcrafts by the reading of Coranic verses!...

Follow that link to read the original and more detailed post in French.

Islam and Videos: Sami Yusuf (2/2)

First of all: we should not speak of Sami Yusuf in this blog dedicated to Arab modern culture. Born in Iran in an Azeri family, Sami Yusuf is marketed by the firm Awakening, based in the UK and specialised in Islamic commodities.

But Sami Yusuf, the man who "invented" the Islamic videoclip, regularly tours Arab capitals where he has many fans, two of them running an impressive site dedicated to their favourite singer.

The singer appears regularly on major Arab satellite TV screens, even if he does not speak Arabic. Like many other non-Arab muslims, he performs his religious duties in a foreign and “dead” language, like Catholics used to do with Latin not so long ago.

Sami Yusuf’s fame in the Arab world started in 2003, with his CD “al-mu‘allim” (the Master, for the Prophete). The recipe for success was already there: Arab and English lyrics in the tradition of the nasheed songs which glorify God; a kind of halal music which only uses percussions and voice (a piano appears on more recent works); a very Western mood whose pictures remind us of Hollywood Chewing gum advertisements!

In the Arab world at least, someone was behind this success story as Sami Yusuf met the Egyptian TV preacher ‘Amr Khaled (already mentioned in the previous post), when the latter was living there more or less in exile. They started collaborating, during 2005 "Muslim World Star" tour for instance.

Of course, this collaboration went on when the singer started his Arab career. Sami Yusuf was invited at various Amr Khaled’s TV shows and both are marketed, in the Arab world, by the same company, “Good News for Me”.

When some people expressed their reprobation of this kind of joint venture between two media stars, Sami Yusif replied that he did feel very “oriental” and that his only desire was to spread a spiritual message showing that one could be muslim and modern, nice looking and devoted to God.

Obviously, this is a point of view which touches many young people in the Arab world, especially within the raising middle classes which do not believe in political struggle in order to change society but see that moral action is more successful.

A turn toward a kind of “soft islam” (see this previous post), quite appealing to people who fear an islam somehow too political.

To read the original and more detailed post in french.
And think link leads you to al-mu'allem song.

Islam and Videos (1/2)

Moral videos are fashionable in the Arab world. For instance, a video, which is said to be the first clip produced by nationals, was recently filmed in Saudi Arabia by a young producer named Qaswara al-Khatib.

The pitch is rather simple: a young professional is living a “bad” life and getting into more and more troubles until he comes to understand, after an accident on his motorbike, that “only God will help” (ما لك غير الله).

As noticed in Amal’s “Arab Woman Progressive Voice” blog, it is not just a coincidence if the camera shows at different times the main character wearing a T-shirt with the world “progressive” written on large letters on it. As we have seen in a previous post about TV soap operas, “progressist” or “liberal” are indeed very “bad words” for those who hope to put the youth back on the right track.

Ramadan being a high season for devotion and business, many singers take this opportunity to sell CD’s records with pious songs. In the impressive list of them which was published in Al-Hayat, Tamer Husni deserves special attention as one of the most favourite and scandalous pop singers of the Egyptian and Arab youth has radically changed since he left jail some months ago.

Indeed, when he was in prison Tamer Husni has been visited by the very famous ‘Amr Khaled, one of the top preachers of the new generation. Since that meeting, Tamer has become a committed (ملتزم) singer, meaning a singer committed to the spread of the Good World and the Right Thinking.

It would be very nasty to see in that cooperation something like a smart marketing campaign between two icons of the Arab youth. Thus, when an Internet site like islamonline.net, close to the religious opposition, does allude to such a possibility, one may think that there is some kind of irritation, sincere or not, for this commercial use of religious feelings…

To read the original and more detailed post in french and to listen to Only God Will Help song, this link.

When a mufti speaks for women’s rights...

... nobody cares in the West! Nonetheless, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah’s fatwa, delivered on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, made its way in the Arab World.

For instance, Al-Quds al-‘arabi daily wrote that there were a lot of talks in Jordan mosques last Friday, after long debates on the Internet and during satellite TV religious programs.

Indeed, Fadlallah’s fatwa arguing that women have the right to defend themselves against men's violence made a lot of fuss.

Such a position, presented in many media as “the right for a woman to beat her husband and to desert his bed”, was very much welcome by local associations for women’s rights, but was refused by Islamic jurists in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.

How strange is it to see that Western media, so incline to castigate whatever “wrong” position expressed in the so-called “Arab street”, did no pay very much attention to that rather open-minded fatwa!

Sure, it is safer to keep on saying that Islam is fixed for ever, and obviously unable to deal seriously with controversial issues!

Indeed, they are many crazy and indulgent muftis but others are not frighten by audacious thinking and open discussion.

To read the original and more detailed post in french
Text in English of Fadlallah's fatwa.

Fatwas for Mr President

For decades, and even centuries, fatwas have been delivered by religious people in order to help ordinary people to find solutions for their day-to-day problems. Of course, fatwas also have been requested for more important matters, and then subjects of many disputed political debates.

In modern times, the muftis have to compete with new voices which appeared with the modernization of the Arab world, namely voices of the intellectuals (muthaqqafun) and thinkers (mufakkirun) and, today, the stunning voices of the media stars (anchors, actors and so on...) who speak more and more in the name of religion.

It could be an explanation for the extraordinary mess of crazy fatwas which make a wonderful target for western media in times of muslim bashing, even if other religions probably provide similar examples of isanity.

The fact is that the mushrooming of (often so-called) religious programs, all of them competing for fame, opens the flow to "scandalous" fatwas. Egypt has seen for example the revival of an "old" one, initialy given in Saudia, which forbides the shooting of weddings and divorces on screen, as they are thing "not to play with"...

Of course, issuing a fatwa also has something to do with politics. It is obviously the case when Egypt official mufti said that religion punishes the spread of “false information,” a clear allusion to the trial of various important journalists.

Worst, the same mufti, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, declared that he had nothing to say against the succession of Gamal Mubarak to his father Husni, should the son been correctly elected.

He did not mention the case of of president George W. Bush but he should have!

French readers are reminded that their own president, Mr Sarkozy, at a time he was "only" one of Chirac's ministers, paid a visit to Dr Tantawi in order to get a fatwa to legitimate the prohibition of the Islamic scarf in French (governmental) schools.

To read the original post in french