What does it mean to be an intellectual in Egypt today? What is expected from an 'authentic scholar'? Hatsuki Aishima explores these questions byexamining educated, urban Egyptians and their perceptions of what it means to be 'cultured' and 'middle class' - something that, as a result of the neoliberal policies of Egyptian government, is widely thought to be a shrinking sector of society. Through an analysis of the media representations of 'Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910-78), the French-trained Sufi scholar and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar under president Anwar al-Sadat, Aishima discusses the connection of Islam to these middle-class considerations and makes an original contribution to the debate on the commodification of religious teaching and knowledge. Public Culture and Islam in Modern Egypt is thereby aunique addition to the fields of anthropology, Middle East and media studies.
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: very good, University of Vienna (Institute for Politcal Science), course: African Political Systems, language: English, abstract: In the vast field of political culture on the one hand and public participation, respectively democratisation, on the other hand I will start by limiting the field of my study by defining its aims. My first guiding thesis is that there is a cleavage between state and society in Egypt and I want to show some aspects and dimensions of its present status and its historical origins. The two central fields of my study will be firstly the actual secular state practice and its ideological origins and secondly Islam, its influence in Egyptian society, and its compatibility to liberal trends, the concept of civil society or democracy in general. To look at public participation in any state is an ambitious task, for the field of participation is broad and hard to measure. I will deal with political public participation. Public participation can be limited to social groups, like syndicates. By aims I am referring to the fact that different groups have different participatory intentions. This aspect becomes more interesting when looking at Islamist groups. Looking at public participation is at the same time looking at democratic processes and political culture of the society being analysed. This includes regarding in what way the preconditions for political participation are provided: Freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of press and last but not least education. Political culture includes as well many cultural aspects of the society analysed, here Islam comes in as a religion as well as a theoretical system for a society respectively a state. All those being components of political culture, the basic research questions are consequently: What is public participation, or rather what will be the definiti
For 130 years, tensions have raged over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modern Egypt. This history focuses on a pivotal yet understudied school, Dar al-Ulum, whose alumni became authoritative arbiters of how to be modern and authentic within a Muslim-majority community, including by founding the Muslim Brotherhood.
Popular culture serves as a fresh and revealing window on contemporary developments in the Muslim world because it is a site where many important and controversial issues are explored and debated. Aesthetic expression has become intertwined with politics and religion due to the uprisings of the “Arab Spring,” while, at the same time, Islamist authorities are showing increasingly accommodating and populist attitudes toward popular culture. Not simply a “westernizing” or “secularizing” force, as some have asserted, popular culture now plays a growing role in defining what it means to be Muslim. With well-structured chapters that explain key concepts clearly, Islam and Popular Culture addresses new trends and developments that merge popular arts and Islam. Its eighteen case studies by eminent scholars cover a wide range of topics, such as lifestyle, dress, revolutionary street theater, graffiti, popular music, poetry, television drama, visual culture, and dance throughout the Muslim world from Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East to Europe. The first comprehensive overview of this important subject, Islam and Popular Culture offers essential new ways of understanding the diverse religious discourses and pious ethics expressed in popular art productions, the cultural politics of states and movements, and the global flows of popular culture in the Muslim world.
Scholarship on the modern history of the Middle East has undergone profound revision in the previous three decades or so. Many earlier perceptions, largely based on modernization theory, have been either contested or modified. However, the perception of the Egyptian ulama (the traditionally-educated, religious Muslim scholars) in academic scholarship remains largely affected by the legacy of hypotheses of the modernization theory. Old assumptions that the Egyptian ulama were submissive to political power and passive players incapable of accommodating, let alone of fathoming, conditions of the modern world, and who chose or were forced to retreat from this world, losing much, if not all, of their relevance and significance, still infuse the scholarly literature. Making use of materials obtained from the Egyptian National Archives, this study offers an examination of modern legal reform in Egypt from the nineteenth century through the first part of the twentieth century with the ulama and their legal institutions in mind. As the findings of this study effectively illustrate, the Egyptian ulama were by no means submissive. Rather, they were patient. Far from being passive agents of the past, the Egyptian ulama were active participants who played a critical role in the building of modern Egypt. The ulama had at their disposal sustained social and moral influence, a long-standing position as community leaders, a reputation as defenders and representatives of Islam, the power to validate or invalidate the political establishment by means of public and doctrinal legitimization, and the final authority over laws of family and personal status. Through these strengths, the ulama were able to influence the direction of change and to impact its scope and nature during transitional period that witnessed the making and remaking of modern Egypt. Considering the nature of changes that they allowed to be introduced to the shari-based justice system and the ones they resisted, as well as their stance regarding social matters, the Egyptian ulama comprehended and recognized modernity as useful. Advanced techniques had to be embraced to strengthen state institutions. However, the ulama thwarted massive and sudden adoption of modernity's cultural elements, so that Egypt would not become a chaotic country and go astray. On the weight of their position as the ultimate authority over family law, the Egyptian ulama blocked rapid social change imposed from the top. Alterations to family law and the social structure were undertaken gradually and with a great deal of delicacy. Therefore, the long-standing social order was not suddenly destroyed and replaced with a new one. Instead, changes to the long-standing social structure were allowed to evolve slowly, while the core was largely preserved. The ulama's far-reaching plan, which was realized in the long run, was to maintain Islam's position in modern Egypt as a guide and as the main source of legitimacy. As will be shown in this study, the history of the Egyptian ulama reveals not passivity, detachment, or submission but careful, and deliberate action.
The development of mass education and the mass media have transformed the Islamic tradition in contemporary Egypt and the wider Muslim world. In Putting Islam to Work, Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced. During the twentieth century new styles of religious education, based not on the recitation of sacred texts but on moral indoctrination, have been harnessed for use in economic, political, and social development programs. More recently they have become part of the Egyptian government's strategy for combating Islamist political opposition. But in the course of this struggle, the western-style educational techniques that were adopted to generate political stability have instead resulted in a rapid Islamization of public space, the undermining of traditional religious authority structures, and a crisis of political legitimacy. Using historical, textual, and ethnographic evidence, Gregory Starrett demonstrates that today's Islamic resurgence is rooted in new ways of thinking about Islam that are based in the market, the media, and the school.
