Category Archives: Egypt

Tabsir Redux: God’s Equal Curse

Egypt, Orientalism, Travel


English poet and traveller Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840 – 1922), circa 1880.

Webshaykh’s Note: Given the ongoing crises in the Middle East, it is useful to return to earlier commentaries. In the excerpt below the voice of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt echoes with resonance for events currently in the news about Syria, Egypt, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us all hope that the new year brings tolerance and peaceful intentions for us all.

Wealthy and well connected Wilfrid retired from the foreign service in 1869 and soon the traveling Blunts went east. As Wilfrid noted about his first visit to Egypt in 1879, he was still “a believer in the common English creed that England had a providential mission in the East.” After learning about Bedouin customs firsthand in Syria Lady Anne spoke for both travelers about their interest in no longer looking at the people “with the half contemptuous ignorance” of Europeans. Not only were the Blunts aware and appalled at Eurocentric attitudes, but Wilfrid wrote of Islam as a “true religion,” which certainly had far more to offer African converts than Christianity. In 1881 Blunt bought an estate in Cairo, where he became a neighbor and friend of the Islamic reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. On a visit to England Blunt arranged a visit between ‘Abduh and the reigning social philosopher, Herbert Spencer; the Egyptian reportedly told Spencer that the East was learning the evil rather than the good from the West, but the best of both was the same.

Blunt was perhaps the most famous aristo-critic of British imperialism in Egypt. With the impunity his elite upbringing bequeathed at the time, he admonished Lord Cromer, whose “wrong-headed administration” only served to Anglicize Egypt. He used his impeccable social connections to lobby British politicians, including Prime Minister Gladstone, whose “Oriental” policies he deplored. Blunt’s radical critique of the colonial transgressions committed by the burdensome white race is second to none, including Fanon and Césaire. Consider his prescient diary note at the close of the nineteenth century:

The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty pass, and the British Empire is playing the devil in it as never an empire before on so large a scale. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: God’s Equal Curse →

Brotherhood, Brotherly Hate, Brotherly Love

"Arab Spring", Arab-Israeli Conflict, Egypt, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue


Egyptian drink seller near al-Azhar in 1983; photography by Daniel Martin Varisco

Egypt faces an ethical dilemma, one that affects anyone who has ever visited or carried out research in the country. My first experience in Egypt was in early 1981 when I conducted research in Asyut on rural sanitation for a USAID project, my first development assignment. This was still Sadat’s Egypt, open to American aid and seeking to end the bitter taste of unwinnable war with Israel. I felt safe no matter where I traveled. The only time I winced was when I visited the Pharaonic ruins in Luxor and stayed in one of the lesser hotels. Striking up a conversation with the young man at the hotel desk, he asked me if I could tell the nationality of another guest’s passport. The passport was in Hebrew and the guest was the Israeli consul. I calmly explained this to the clerk, who took it in stride – another paying customer. In 1983 I was able to spend a year in Cairo studying Islamic manuscripts at Dar al-Kutub, the Egyptian National Library. I could walk from my apartment in Zamalek on Ahmet Hishmet Street across the kubri to the library with my only fear being how to dodge the insane traffic crossing the corniche. I literally walked everywhere, enjoying the kebab, falafel and Groppi sweets. And everywhere I was welcomed with a hospitality and humor that anyone who has lived in Egypt can attest. This is the Egypt I have fond memories of, but this is now the Egypt that is exploding from within.

Egypt’s problems have always been forced upon the people by conquest after conquest from the Hyksos to the Greeks to the Arabs to the French to the British. The Arab Spring that seemed to bring the modern era of pseudo-Mamluk dictators to a close was heralded as a new beginning. The election, despite doubts of its validity, of Ibrahim Morsy as president with the obvious blessing at the time of the military was seen by many pundits as a hopeful sign. Would the Muslim Brotherhood, long in opposition but with a wide following, manage to meld their Islamic fervor with a stable and tolerant democracy? Whether this experiment might eventually have worked is now a moot point. The military coup that deposed Morsy last summer has now declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Continue reading Brotherhood, Brotherly Hate, Brotherly Love →

Let it Snow, dear Sphinx

Archaeology and Antiquities, Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Orientalism, Poetry


Snow at the Sphinx

As the above photograph shows, even the treasured sands of Egypt are not immune to Mother Nature’s cold warnings. Snow is rare in Egypt and when it falls there is certain to be much interest in what such a climatic omen portends, especially given the mystery that surrounds the Sphinx. After Napoleon’s invasion, unsuccessful as it was from a military standpoint, Egyptomania raged in Europe. There are many poems, as well as paintings, that draw an Orientalist view of the region. Even Mark Twain set down Tom Sawyer over the pyramids. On this Christmas Eve, when the birth of Christ is celebrated throughout the world, including Egypt, it is well to remember that mystery is in the air. Given that General Sisi has admitted that his climb to power was foreordained in a dream, the mysteries coming out of Egypt are as alive as ever.

Oscar Wilde is probably not a name anyone would associate with the night before Christmas. But he did write a semi-humorous and rather long poem in 1894 entitled “the Sphinx.” The whole version can be found here, but I excerpt a few lines to assist in the holiday spirit:

A thousand weary centuries
Are thine, while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green
For Autumn’s gaudy liveries.

But you can read the Hieroglyphs
On the great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks
And you have looked on Hippogriffs. Continue reading Let it Snow, dear Sphinx →

In Egypt, your empathy alone is enough

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Ethics, Humor and Satire


Egyptian satirist and television host Bassem Youssef is surrounded by his supporters upon he arrival at the public prosecutor’s office in the high court in Cairo
(AFP Photo)

by Bassem Youseef, al-Arabiya, December 13, 2013

In some sort of excessive selfishness, Egyptians are tending to see as victims only those with whom they sympathize. For example, if you voice your anger over the verdict to imprison the Alexandria Girls (they were later acquitted), a friend will send you a photo of the Kardasa soldiers who were unjustly killed and tell you: “If you’re sad over this verdict, then remember those soldiers.”

If you express your grief over the killing of soldiers in Sinai, Muslim Brotherhood pages on social networking websites will publish photos of the dispersal of the Rabia sit-in and tell you: “If you’re sad over those soldiers, remember the protestors who were killed first.”

National security officer Mohammed Mabrouk gets killed in a terrorist ambush, and instead of praying for mercy over his soul – since he is a human being – some rush to publish photos and names of those killed by Interior Ministry gunfire. It is as if Mabrouk is responsible for all those martyrs. Continue reading In Egypt, your empathy alone is enough →

Sensational Sisi

"Arab Spring", Arabic Cartoons, Egypt, Humor and Satire, Terrorism Issue

The new not-a-coup leader of Egypt, General Abdel Fattah Sisi, has created a sensation. Not all of the response is serious, however. A dancer named Sophia attempts a belly dance while holding a picture of the general and blowing kisses to the camera.

And as for the new direction of security in the post-Muslim-Brotherhood state, you need look no further than a woman’s underwear. Now that the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed, chic underwear is in again.

Catoonists have also had a field day with the lionizing of the general. Continue reading Sensational Sisi →

When I wore the hijab: Power and the headscarf

Egypt, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Orientalism


I put on my daughter’s abaya, took a picture of myself, and used it as my profile picture on Twitter and Facebook. (Photo supplied: Abdullah Hamidaddin)

by Abdullah Hamidaddin, Al-Arabiya, November 30, 2013

The ‘hijab’ is a very complicated piece of cloth. Since its inception a few millennia ago it had carried with it many meanings. It was an expression of male dominance, an act of religious piety, a manifestation of female oppression, a limitation to a female’s power of seduction, an icon of cultural pride, a slogan of resistance to colonialism imperialism and globalization, an indicator of a worthy wife, an evasion of feminine competition, a marker of otherness and a discouragement to harassers. Different meanings constructed in different epochs for different social and political reasons by different actors with different motivations.

If anything, this makes it quite difficult to speak of the ‘hijab’ rather one ought to speak of ‘hijabs’ each using a ‘cloth’ but each assigning to it so many meanings that renders it impossible to make any generalization no matter how mild it may be. And every generalization I make here has multiple exceptions. Yet despite all those many differences there seems to be one constant about the hijab: it is about women and for women; only women. Men do not put on a hijab. They may cover their heads even their faces, but that is another thing. The hijab is not the cloth that covers a head, or hair, or even the face. The hijab is something else altogether. Continue reading When I wore the hijab: Power and the headscarf →

Picturing Syria

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Photography, Syria

The photographer Narcisso Contreras has an extraordinary gallery of photographs taken in Syria and Egypt on his website.

His biography, as taken from his website, is as follows:

Narciso Contreras is a photographer born in Mexico City, fond of exploring each encounter to precisely capture its most poignant moments. His work focuses in feature stories, reportage and documentary based on religious communities, human nature and conflicts, the later being his main focus for the past years. Contreras has studied Philosophy and Photography, conducting research for many years and dedicating himself to photography professionally for three. Contreras is currently covering the ongoing civil war in Syria. His work has been published in newspapers and magazines all over the world, among others in TIME, the Guardian, the Times, the New York Times, der Spiegel, National Geographic, the Telegraph, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, L’ Espresso among others.

Chilling Prospects for the Arab Spring

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Anthropology/Sociology, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia, Yemen

by Daniel Martin Varisco, Middle East Muddle, Anthropology News, November, 2013

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt prophesied, December 7th, 1941 is a day that lives in infamy, even some seven decades after the event that triggered United States entry into the Second World War. Another date of more recent infamy is December 17, 2010, when a harassed Tunisian vegetable hawker named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the municipal building in the picturesque town of Sidi Bouzid. Although badly burned, he survived until January 4, just ten days before Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator for some 23 years, boarded a plane for exile in Saudi Arabia. The first kind of infamy was the beginning of a devastating war, the second became the stimulus for what was hoped to be a sweeping political revolution across the Middle East. Three years later it seems to be politics as usual, a chilly seasonal change from the jasmine scent of the Arab Spring that blew across Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and now swirls through the political maelstrom enveloping a surviving dictator in Syria, ongoing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan and a new regime outlook in Iran.

Seasoned pundits know that in many parts of the world spring’s prospects yield to the heat of summer, the cooling autumn and eventually the chilly reality of winter in a never-ending cycle. The Arab Spring is not one season fits all, but the overall effects have been more chilling than thrilling this year. In Tunisia the Islamic party leading the country is in a state of national paralysis following the July killing of opposition MP Mohamed Brahmi. In Egypt the elected president, Muhammad Morsi, remains in military custody and his major party of support, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been banned. The military, under General Sisi, has reinstated martial law in a move that most Egyptians, it seems, support. In both Tunisia and Egypt, the transition to power by Islamic groups who promised not to dismantle the civil state structure has angered a wide range of groups, especially secularists and more moderate Muslims. Continue reading Chilling Prospects for the Arab Spring →