Author:
Mary Anne Weaver
Pages:
306
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Coming
a full two years before the apocalyptic events of September 11,
Mary Anne Weaver’s A Portrait of Egypt is one of the
few noteworthy books on militant Islam that cannot be accused of
attempting to cash in on the media frenzy generated after that
fateful day. Weaver, who covered the Middle East for the New
Yorker, clarifies at the outset that the book “is not meant to
be an academic or a definitive account,” but rather a
chronicle of her own personal experiences in
Egypt
. Such an honest caveat is greatly appreciated in light of the
insultingly sloppy works that are currently touted as being
“academic” works by a plethora of alleged “terrorism
experts.”
The
book focuses on the history of confrontation between the forces
of secularism and the waves of Islamic resurgence that have
gripped
Egypt
since the 1920s. The emphasis, however, rests firmly on events
beginning from the mid-1970s. The 1977 bread riots, the
assassination of Sadat, the Afghan Jihad, the attempted
assassination of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the brutal
crackdown on Islam and the siege of Imamba—all these events
are covered at length in Portrait of Egypt.
Mary
Anne Weaver lived in
Egypt
through some of the country’s most tumultuous times. She
describes the erratic semi-civil war that raged in
Egypt
during the ‘90s between the government and the Islamist forces
based primarily in
Upper Egypt
, from a uniquely personal perspective, having interviewed many
of the protagonists on both sides. This provides a fascinating
insight into the nature of the struggle that has been waged so
brutally for so long; an insight often either lacking or
pointedly avoided in a media obsessed with demonizing both
political and militant Islam.
Weaver’s
forays into the world of Islamic militancy are somewhat hampered
by her inability to speak Arabic, and one sympathizes with the
inevitable frustration she must have experienced in conducting
interviews through interpreters.
While
Weaver’s writing contains a palpably human streak, reflected
in her detailed chronicling of Islamist grievances and
government-perpetrated atrocities, she suffers from the
prevalent ignorance of Islamic jurisprudence that afflicts so
many Western writers and “experts” on militant Islam. This
is reflected in a number of errors she inadvertently makes (she
seems to believe that it is necessary to remove one’s shoes in
the presence of a Sheikh, expressing surprise when she is not
asked to). It also manifests, occasionally, in tacit
condemnations. This is most apparent in the chapter titled
“The Apostate,” dealing with the trial of Nasr Hamed Abu
Zeid and the attempts to separate him from his wife on heresy
charges, throughout which Abu Zeid was portrayed as the
long-suffering academic, falsely accused by Abdel-Sabour Shahin,
who in turn is made to sound a bit like a modern-day
reincarnation of Tomas de Torquemada.
The
book contains some fascinating interviews with a variety of
characters, including but not limited to the formidable scholar
Dr. Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual guide of the Egyptian
al-Jama’a al-Islammiya (currently jailed in the US under a
Civil War-era law), President Hosni Mubarak, Dr. Mustafa
Mashour, the deceased Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood,
as well as various diplomats, politicians, and militants.
Weaver
also delves into the Afghan quagmire, and provides the reader
with a number of valuable observations. She refers to the
concept of “blow back,” a term used to denote the fallout
and negative implications of a policy failure. Weaver, of
course, had no way of knowing that two years after the
publication of her book, the ultimate form of blow back from US
support to the Afghan Jihad would occur: the direct and
devastating attack on the American homeland that was September
11.
A
diplomat summed up the terrifying implications of the
United States
' Afghan policy to Weaver:
"Even
today, you can sit at the Khyber Pass and see every color, every
creed, every nationality pass," a Western diplomat told me
one afternoon on the veranda of his
Peshawar
home. "In their wildest imagination, these groups never
would have met if there had been no jihad. For a Moro to get a
Stinger missile! To make contacts with Islamists from
North Africa
! The
United States
created a Moscow Central in
Peshawar
for these groups, and the consequences for all of us are
astronomical."
Somehow,
with the benefit of hindsight, the warning seems all the more
foreboding and portentous.
No
discussion of Afghanistan would be complete with reference being
made to the primary movers and shakers of the Jihad, and Weaver
handless this extensively, profiling the prolific Sheikh
Abdullah Azzam, the enigmatic Abdurrab Sayyaf, and Gulbadin
Hekmatyar.
But
perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is that
detailing the bloody war between the Mubarak dictatorship and
the Egyptian Islamic militias. The book is rife with interviews
with the victims of Egyptian State Security forces, affording a
disturbing look at the Mubarak regime’s methods in combating
“terrorism,” methods of which the government boasted in the
aftermath of September 11. Weaver cites the example of Amal, a
28-year-old woman whose brother was convicted for the attempted
assassination of the Minister of Information (for which he is
currently serving a 25-year prison sentence). Amal was
apparently ordered to condemn her brother as a terrorist in
front of the television cameras for the government’s benefit.
Her refusal to do so was simply unacceptable, and so
"They
tore off her veil and blindfolded her," Um Mohammed [her
mother] said. "Then they stripped her down to her underwear
and hung her from a hook in the ceiling by her hands. They
taunted her; whipped her with cable wire; kicked her in the
stomach; and, with razors, they sliced open her back. There were
at least seven men in the room, Amal said, and some of them
chanted, as they beat her, how much they would enjoy raping
her…"
Weaver's
personal anecdotes are certainly enlightening. She relates how,
upon foolishly suggesting to President Mubarak that perhaps the
best way of dealing with the militant Islamic groups was by
legitimizing the moderates, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and
ending the crackdown which radicalizes mainstream Muslims,
Weaver was subjected to a paranoid tirade:
"Absolutely
not! I will not permit another
Algeria
here. Oh, yes, they say they have renounced violence, but in
reality they are responsible for all this violence, and the time
will come when they will be uncovered…"
But
Mubarak's most disturbing—and chilling—comment was his
response to a question about Abdel-Harith Madani’s autopsy
report. Madani, a lawyer for a number of accused Islamists, was
picked up from his office by State Security agents. His corpse
was returned to his wife a few days later. He was buried, under
guard (to avoid having his body examined), in an unmarked grave.
Mubarak’s response to Weaver's query?
He
leaned across the table toward me, and his face hardened
perceptibly.
"Why
is there such a fuss about Abdel-Harith Madani?" he asked,
and his voice began to rise. "What about the human rights
of the women and children that these people kill? Madani was a
criminal!"
One
takes issue, however, with Weaver’s paradigm of analysis. She
whole-heartedly adopts the perspective popularized by Egyptian
sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, that Islamic militancy is the
product of purely socio-economic factors. She buttresses this
argument by citing various sources that support this extremely
narrow interpretation of what has now been conclusively proven
to be a global phenomenon. This perspective maintains that
Islamic militants militancy is primarily fueled by unemployment,
economic stagnations, sexual frustration, etc. One hopes that
this theory has been sufficiently discredited by the attacks of
September 11.
Notwithstanding
the above, A Portrait of
Egypt
is a highly recommended read that captures the feel of
Egypt
during the years of violence that wracked the country. It is
also useful as a record of the atrocities and machinations that
spawned the current global war on terror, and as such is an
indispensable tool for placing the conflict in its proper
context.
**
Taqiyuddin Malik is an
Egyptian freelance writer based in
Cairo
.
