Egypt
Men, Women and God(s)
Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Men, Women and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (California, 1995).
Youssef Chahine’s “Cairo”
An unemployed young man wanders into a mosque where an Islamist is calling for jihad against those who falsely claim to be Muslim. The “fundamentalist” quotes the Qur’an: “For he who lives not by my law is but an infidel.” Prayer. Voiceover: “Cut.” The fundamentalist and the unemployed man jump up and walk off of what we had forgotten is, after all, a mise-en-scene in Youssef Chahine’s film Cairo.
Sheikha in al-Warraq
Clouds of smoke fill the room. Young women sit talking about the events of the day, while Sana’ inhales smoke from the strongest water pipe tobacco available on the market. “Everything else is for innocent children,” she scoffs. Her smoking habit symbolizes her social status. Sana’ is the sheikhat al-hara, the wheeler-dealer of her neighborhood, a position normally reserved to well-liked and respected men. Sana’, however, is considered by the people in her neighborhood as sitt bi-mi’at ragil, a woman worth hundreds of men.
Community Participation and Environmental Change
Cairo — a city home to upwards of 14 million inhabitants — is known to be one of the most polluted cities in the world. Although measures of pollutants in some places in Cairo exceed internationally recognized standards, popular collective action organized around environmental issues is rare. The case of ‘Izbat Makkawi, an industrial area in northern Cairo, and the successful struggle of the residents there to close local lead smelting factories is a reference point regarding possible forms of popular organizing in response to environmental pollution and sheds light on the limits and merits of community participation as experienced within the wider political context in Egypt.
Environmental Conditions in Cairo
In a 1994 assesment of environmental health risks prepared for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), American and Egyptian experts identified three leading environmental health risks for residents of Cairo: particulate matter air pollution, lead and microbiological diseases from environmental causes. The report also identified a number of less serious threats to human health, grouping them as middle, middle/lower, lower and uncertain risks. Ozone air pollution was one of two health risks in the “middle” category. The material presented below is drawn almost exclusively from this report.
Relocation and the Use of Urban Space in Cairo
Sahar was only ten years old when her family, along with almost 5,000 Egyptian working-class families, was relocated from her neighborhood in the center of Cairo to a public housing project in al-Zawiya al-Hamra, in northern Cairo. The relocation project was part of Sadat’s open-door policy (infitah), which strived to “modernize” the country by accelerating economic growth, promoting private investment, attracting foreign and Arab capital, and enhancing social development. [1] Sadat’s new policy brought about many changes in the urban environment aimed at creating a “modern” city to meet the emerging demands of investors and tourists.
Pollution, Popular Perceptions and Grassroots Environmental Activism
An increase in media attention paid to environmental pollution, and a 1994 USAID report on environmental risk assessment in Cairo, [1] reflect and have engendered a growing concern for the environment in Cairo. While grassroots political action is rare, [2] there is an awareness among the general population of issues of environmental pollution. While responses to environmental pollution have ranged from the creation of ad hoc social movements and voluntary associations to individual actions in cooperation with neighbors or fellow workers, these techniques have yet to have much impact.
Giza Spaces
“Itfaddalu ma‘ana,” Umm Ibrahim shouts across the alley to the next roof, “please eat with us.” “Shukran, Allah yikhalliki,” promptly comes the answer from Abu Samia and his wife, “thank you, may God keep you.” It is a sunny Friday afternoon in December, and both families have decided to eat lunch on their rooftops where Umm Ibrahim and Umm Samia keep their chickens. [1] Behind Umm Ibrahim’s house, two palm trees sway in the breeze, many neighbors are napping and the children, who often fill the alley with their games, are quiet. As the afternoon progresses, the sun sets behind one of the upscale 25-story apartment blocks further down the street.
Urban Planning and Growth in Cairo
Descriptions of Cairo are dominated typically by the stark imagery of an extremely concentrated population mass near asphyxiation. From this perspective, one need look no further than its inhabited rooftops, its streets choked with traffic and pollution and its crowded cemeteries, where the living reside with the dead — all confirm the most obvious symbols of overpopulation. Indeed, Cairo has a population concentration that makes it, along with Bombay, one of the densest metropolitan areas in the world. Despite the rapid modernization of urban infrastructure (subway, elevated highways, sewer and telephone systems), Cairo appears to be stricken by disorder and incoherence. To many, Cairo evokes all the dangers of urban excess, inextricable chaos and spiraling poverty.
Al Miskin International/Tainted Love
What is up in Egypt? In Cairo, Mustafa Bakri, was deposed as editor-in-chief of al-Ahrar following the failure of the mutiny he led in the halls of the Liberal Party to depose of its leader, Mustafa Kamal Murad. Bakri stormed the party headquarters with 600 armed followers and had himself voted president. For a few days, two versions of al-Ahrar competed for space on the newsstands. Bakri’s paper made a vain stab at seeking Mubarak’s support by turning even more obsequious than the state-run press. Meanwhile, deposed party head Murad published his own loyalist edition attacking the Bakri cult of personality before the police finally moved in and ended Bakri’s short reign. What triggered the coup?
Nasrallah, On Boys, Girls and the Veil
Yousry Nasrallah’s new documentary film, On Boys, Girls and the Veil, touches on a paradoxical aspect of Egyptian filmmaking. Despite the ubiquitous hijab — the neo-Islamic “veil” — in Egyptian life, covered women are quite rare in the cinema. The reason for this is that both filmmakers and Islamists conflate the hijab with political discourse on the role of religion in politics and modern life in general. The topic of politicized religion — or religion in any manifestation that intersects with modernity — is not high on the agenda of the Egyptian film industry, and one therefore sees few covered women in Egyptian films.
Copts in the “Egyptian Fabric”
To talk about Egyptian Christians as a “minority” is to open a can of worms. The sensitivity of the relationship between Egyptian Muslims and Christians was evident in 1994 when a conference on minorities in the Middle East, supposed to be held in Cairo, included the Copts of Egypt on its agenda. [1] The uproar surrounding the conference was unprecedented. As Egyptian sociology professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim put it, “It was the biggest public debate in Egypt on a single issue since the Gulf crisis and Desert Storm.” Ibrahim’s Cairo-based Ibn Khaldoun Center organized the controversial conference together with the Minority Rights Group in London.
What Does the Gama’a Islamiyya Want?
Tal‘at Qasim got his start in al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya [1] (the Islamic Group) in the 1970s when it took control of many student organizations in the Egyptian universities. He led the student union in Minya, a hotbed of the Islamist movement, and later was a founding member of the majlis al-shura (governing council) of the organization at large. Sheikh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman later became head of the majlis.
Shari’a of Civil Code? Egypt’s Parallel Legal Systems
Egyptian courts have increasingly become a site of political struggle between Islamists and secularists. In a state that restricts political parties and open political debate, courts are now one of the main venues for political expression for groups such as the Muslim Brothers. In the last few years, their lawyers have filed dozens of cases against what they perceive as “un-Islamic” writings by secular intellectuals or “un-Islamic” government decisions. They use the ambiguity inherent in the Egyptian legal system, which seems torn between mainly secular codified positive laws and the rules and regulations of the shari‘a, as interpreted by Islamic law scholars.
