Newsweek/Washington Post — PostGlobal Forum

by Vivian Salama

There is no right or wrong answer to whether the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan was a mistake. Were mistakes made? Sure. Are mistakes still being made? Absolutely.

The fact remains that for Pakistanis, it is far too dangerous to acknowledge such a question publicly because to question partition is to question the legitimacy of Pakistan (the same goes for Bangladesh). Certainly the younger generations may not have a proper sense of the losses and gains that were suffered by both sides and so any doubts may evaporate with time. It is natural that they feel closer nationalistic ties to modern day Pakistan and not to a greater subcontinent that was bitterly divided over half a century ago. The older generation that witnessed the bloodshed and migration, meanwhile, has good reason to second guess partition given the current political instability.

Like with so many conflicts in history, the partition of India and Pakistan was seen as a way to avoid civil war. Muslims in the now partitioned Punjab, for example, were the most impoverished residents which naturally created a sense of resentment. Many then recognized the opportunity to draw upon the more salient religious identifications as a means of building linkages and drawing distinctions. We mustn’t forget that in much of India prior to 1947, Muslims and Hindus for the most part lived harmoniously (as they do today in most of India) and partition by some was seen more as a precaution to avoid religious marginalization following the colonial exodus.

As for India, one of the headlines in the Times of India last week said it all: “60 and getting sexier.” Three factors contribute to India’s stability: political democracy, military security, and economic development. In fact, there is much that contributes to this ’sex’ appeal India proudly flaunted as it rang in 60 years of independence from British rule. For one thing, it is by and large one of the most successful secular democracies in the world. The country’s economy is growing at 9% (although poverty and malnutrition remain rampant). Meanwhile, India’s ambitious nuclear program (which has received thumbs up from the United States) is an understandable intimidation to Pakistan and so it is no surprise that its neighbor would look to secure its own borders via nuclear proliferation.

In many ways, partition may be viewed as a failure for Pakistan. The Islamic Republic has stumbled both politically and economically over the last 60 years. It lacks a functional democracy and remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It undertook a path that stunted democratic political development. The influential elite had to be incorporated into the political process, which they then manipulated to their benefit. As a result, Pakistan remains a dictatorship and its domestic situation is growing increasingly volatile.

Something worth considering is a comment made by Pakistan’s exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last week at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. She noted that Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah died “a year after Pakistan was founded,” and so Pakistan lacked “a national leader with the authority, the respect to help [it] develop democratic political institutions,” whereas India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who ruled for 17 years “provided the leadership that could help a new nation strengthen its democratic institutions,” Bhutto said.

It is far too difficult to look back on the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan as a mistake; just as it is equally difficult to look ahead and envision a partitioned Iraq, for example. There is too much damage control that needs to be done today and looking back will only further delay things. Pakistan must work to establish political and economic stability on the ground, and India should make a genuine effort to assist its neighbor in this time of turmoil. Otherwise, divided or united, the subcontinent will face even greater challenges to come.

An Egyptian court has ruled that universities can’t bar Islamic face-coverings. But that’s unlikely to stop the headdress attracting unwelcome attention on the streets of Cairo that universities can’t bar Islamic face-coverings. But that’s unlikely to stop the headdress attracting unwelcome attention on the streets of Cairo

Newsweek

June 19, 2007

By Vivian Salama

http://www.newsweek.com/id/33637 

June 19, 2007 – It was a risky—and frightening—experiment.  Taxis refused to stop for me, but male drivers kept pulling over to compliment my eyes (the only part of my body on show) and inviting me into their vehicles. Others just stared.  Why the unwelcome attention? Because I was wearing a niqab, the full face veil, on the streets of Cairo. Egypt may be a Muslim country, but its government places numerous restrictions on those who make this religious commitment. That, however, may be about to change in the wake of a decision earlier this month by Egypt’s High Administrative Court.

A special chamber of the court ruled on June 9 that the American University in Cairo (AUC) could not bar a female scholar who wears the niqab from using university facilities.  That decision upheld a 2001 ruling by a lower court, which cited personal and religious freedom as the reason that Iman al-Zainy could not be barred from campus for wearing the garment. (Zainy was pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Egypt’s prestigious Islamic institution Al-Azhar University, but had enjoyed library privileges at the AUC for over a decade.)  She has since completed her doctorate, but her lawyers say she continued her legal battle as a matter of principle.

Egypt’s battle against the niqab has a long history. Authorities originally banned students from wearing it to school in 1994, saying that it violated security standards.  Dozens of pupils were suspended in the decade that followed.  In nearly all cases however, the court overturned the decision and allowed the girls to return to class. 

More recently, Cairo University, with the highest enrollment in Egypt, has allowed students to attend wearing the niqab. However, the American University stayed firm, refusing to permit even the niqab-wearing mothers of graduates to attend the commencement ceremony, according to some students. (A more lenient attitude is taken toward the hijab, which covers the hair but leaves the face visible.) The university says the decision is not a religious one, but was made “because all members of the AUC community have a basic right to know with whom they are dealing, whether in class, labs or anywhere else on campus.” 

Certainly, the concerns run the gamut from women using the face veil to cheat in exams—be it by stashing away crib sheets or trading places with other students—to young men using it as a disguise to sneak into the girls’ dormitory.  Then there are the political concerns; across the region, the increasing influence of Islamic parties poses a viable threat to the old, Western- friendly boys’ club of Arab rulers.  In Egypt’s last parliamentary election, the Muslim Brotherhood—which is officially banned—nonetheless earned 20 percent of the seats. Though party members are still subject to mass arrests and intense security protocol, bit by bit, its Islamic agenda is gaining ground, as is evident from decisions such as the niqab ruling.

Still, many activists caution, it is hasty to claim this particular ruling as an Islamist victory.  “The positive aspect of the decision is that the court refused to take a moral or religious position on the niqab and merely confined itself to upholding Muslim women’s right to personal liberty and nondiscrimination,” says Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. 

Certainly, the decision is a sign of the times.  Just 30 years ago, young women attended Cairo University wearing miniskirts and the latest Paris fashions.  They strolled along the beaches of Alexandria in skimpy swimsuits.  The hijab was often perceived as a social-status indicator; women of the upper and middle classes rarely veiled at a young age and those who did usually observed more fashionable interpretations of the religious head-covering. 

All of that changed along with the politics of the region.  The Iranian Islamic revolution caused a religious shakeup that leaked into the Arab countries to its west. Government crackdowns on Islamic parties grew fierce as the country’s poor turned more to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood for support.  Recently, the war in Iraq set off a tidal wave of anti-Western sentiment across the region, causing millions to embrace their own traditions and beliefs more proudly than ever before.

Ironically, despite the conservative trend that has engulfed the nation, the face veil is viewed by many Muslims as an “un-Egyptian” tradition and in many places, the practice is shunned.  In fact, one of the stereotypes that exist among some communities is an association between the niqab and prostitution.  “Prostitution is certainly one of the stereotypes for both hijab and niqab—as though these women hide behind it,” says Pakinam Amer, a Cairo-based journalist.  “However, many also associate it with extremism, as well as terrorism, even here in Egypt.”

That was certainly my experience. I had decided to experiment with wearing the niqab after an upscale Cairo restaurant tried to keep out a colleague wearing only the hijab. (We were eventually seated, though my party was cooped up in a dark corner where they hoped no one would see us.)  After just a single day, I discovered how unpleasant and terrifying it could be. Aside from all the unwelcome attention, I also had to take into account the fact that my action could have been interpreted as a mockery or blasphemy—and the repercussions could have been severe. 

Despite the obstacles and harassment, any casual observer on Egyptian streets can see that the number of women wear the niqab is growing. Nor does it seem to be confined to specific social classes or ages.  Some women insist that it is nothing more than an “outfit.”  One even suggested to me that if young women in the West can mimic the fashions of pop icons “like Britney Spears,” she too should be able to dress like her icon—the wife of the Prophet Mohammed.  “We are not coming from a repressed household or a repressed society,” says Sarah El-Meshad, a graduate of the American University in Cairo who took on the face veil after graduation.  “This is just a little something extra I am doing for my religion, but I am no different from any other girl.” For now, though, that’s not an argument the Egyptian government seems willing to accept.

To read a similar story on the struggle of Muslim women in Europe, check out Fareena Alam’s Beyond the Veil

And click here to see my original story on niqab life in Cairo.

NEWSWEEK Japan

By Vivian Salama

http://nwj-web.jp/periscope/index.html

An Islamic scholar in Egypt is under investigation after proposing a religious edict saying that women should breastfeed their adult male colleagues.  The fatwa, issued by Ezzat Atiyaa, a professor at the prestigious Islamic al-Azhar University, suggested that such an action would create a familial bond between male and female colleagues, and therefore make it permissible in Islam for them to work in close proximity. 

 Atiyaa first made his comments several weeks ago during an appearance on a cultural program on Egyptian national television.  Almost instantly, it sparked what is an ongoing firestorm of criticism in the Arab media, with commentators lashing out at the audacity of such a suggestion.  Atiyaa, who few had heard of prior to his controversial remarks, has been suspended indefinitely by al-Azhar University. 

“A lot of jokes came out afterwards, like people asking their bosses to designate space for breastfeeding; or a sign on the secretary’s desk that says she is away because it is breastfeeding hour for the boss,” says Amr Darrag, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood.    

Despite the conservative trend that has engulfed the region in recent years, Egyptian society remains one of the more liberal in the Middle East.  Along the banks of the Nile River, for example, men and women – even those wearing the traditional Islamic hijab (head scarf) – can be seen holding hands and conservatively flaunting their affection.  Work places across the country are most certainly mixed, although women last year made up only 24 percent of the workforce, according to the UN.   

This is not the first time someone suggests a fatwa on collegial breastfeeding, nor one that is unusual in nature.  Six years ago, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Ali Gomaa issued a fatwa which said it was a blessing to drink the urine of the Prophet Mohammad.  Last year, following the issuance of a fatwa which forbids the display of statues, riot police encircled the Egyptian National Museum which is home to hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts (in 2001, a similar fatwa led to the destruction of ancient statues of the Buddha by Taliban rulers in Afghanistan). 

The word fatwa literally means “an answer to a question” – Egypt’s Grand Mufti emphasizing that they are merely opinions.  Religious scholars are blaming the media for the hype surrounding recent fatwas, saying they should be taken with a grain of salt.  “It is impossible for someone to say something without it getting exploited,” insists Sheikh Khaled Abdullah, a member of the Cairo-based Scientific Center for Quran and Sunna Research.  “This whole thing was just one big misunderstanding.”        

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***For those who understand Arabic, this is an interesting clip hosted by my dear friend Moataz El Demerdash on Mehwar TV on this issue: 

Who, or what, will replace Hosni Mubarak? Some say democracy, others chaos. It’s the question all Egyptians are now asking. No one has an answer. 

By Christopher Dickey

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13530553/site/newsweek/page/3/

July 3-10, 2006 issue – During his recent weeks in prison, one of Egypt’s best-known bloggers, Alaa Abdel Fateh, had a terrible fantasy. What would happen to him if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 78, the man he loves to hate, passed away while Abdel Fateh was in the slammer? “I’m sure millions are actively praying for his sudden death,” he wrote in one of several postings that were smuggled out. “Normally I’d be happy. But now that I’m in jail it’s a scary thought.”

His nightmare scenario? That it would take months for order to be established, with who knows what result. The 24-year-old blogger wrote from the four- by six-meter cell he shared with five other prisoners: “Most likely no one but our immediate family will remember us until it is over. In my mind most people will continue living their lives normally. The huge bureaucracy will chug along, but all security organs will be paralyzed. No officer will wake up the next day and head for his post. Which means [the] prison will be abandoned.” What might follow, he dared not imagine.

The irony of Egypt today is that many people, even those who detest Mubarak, share Abdel Fateh’s misgivings about a future without the man who has been their ruler, their protector and some would say their jailer for almost 25 years. No matter how much they want to be rid of him, they cannot imagine, quite, who will be in charge and how order will be maintained. Will they be liberated? Or locked down even tighter than they were before? Will power pass from the father to the son, the suave 42-year-old Gamal Mubarak, as many expect? Or to the military? Or to the Islamists? Or will the country descend into chaos as all the contenders compete? The stability of the region, and what’s left of the fragile U.S. policy there, depends on an orderly transition. But so much political dust has gathered in Egypt that, once it’s kicked up, years could pass before it settles.

Just last summer, a contagious excitement about democratic change was sweeping the Middle East, encouraged and sometimes inspired by Bush administration policies and rhetoric. There had been a massive turnout for Iraq’s first elections, then huge protests that drove Syria’s troops out of Lebanon. In Egypt, Mubarak decided to allow opposition candidates to run against him for the first time in presidential elections.

But since then, the Iraqi quagmire has deepened. Lebanese politicians now live in terror after a long string of assassinations. Mubarak’s leading opponent in last year’s vote, Ayman Nour, languishes in prison with no further chance of appeal; Egyptian parliamentary elections were cut short and the results shamelessly rejiggered to limit the gains of the Muslim Brotherhood; new municipal elections have been postponed. Judges who rebelled at being forced to endorse the parliamentary fraud were prosecuted, reprimanded or reined in. The opposition has not been silenced, but fear hangs heavy in the air.

At the slightest hint of street protest, cohorts of riot police seal off whole sections of Cairo. Hired thugs with police protection are let loose on the dissidents. Mahmoud Hamza, a judge who tried to film one such crackdown in April, was left with internal bleeding and a broken arm. “I believe I am under surveillance and my phone is tapped,” he says, adding that his cell phone was taken and the calls on it traced. Hundreds have been arrested. Most are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed but also tolerated as a useful political enemy by a government that wants the threat of Islamism to be the only alternative. The Brothers are now the second largest party in Parliament, with 20 percent of the seats.

For many in egypt, lastyear’s dreams, this year’s bare-knuckled beatings, and the coming years’ growing uncertainties resemble the magical realism of Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, whose works are popular throughout the Middle East. In his “Autumn of the Patriarch,” a decaying dictator has an “irrepressible passion to endure,” but dies just the same.

So now for Cairenes. “You feel like you are walking in its pages,” says Ibrahim Issa, an outspoken columnist in the daily Al Dustour. “There is a political culture of uncertainty.” Ghada Shahbender, an English teacher who cofounded the dissident Web site Shayfeen.com last year, worries about who, or what, might replace Mubarak. “If there is ‘divine intervention’,” she asks, employing a euphemism for the dictator’s death, “what can we fall back on? Will it be the military? The judicial system? Or chaos?”

Searching for a road map to the post-Hosni Mubarak future, intellectuals and businessmen in Cairo are talking about models that might guide Egypt’s course. As they mull over the China model, the Turkey model, the Algeria model, the Mexico model and so on, they sometimes sound like blind men trying to describe an elephant, each touching some separate part and coming up with a wildly different picture of the beast as a whole. Yet, from each description one learns something significant about the elephant—about Egypt and about the whole notion of democratic experiments in the Middle East.

“The Chinese model,” for example, is shorthand for a system in which the government remains strongly authoritarian while opening up its economy and profiting from free markets. With a little well-polished discourse about a “process” of political reform, this is essentially the design put forward by Gamal Mubarak, who now heads up the politburo of his father’s National Democratic Party. The reformist cabinet he helped install two years ago has won praise from the international financial community, and the numbers look good. The economy is growing at almost 6 percent a year. Foreign investment has tripled to $6 billion in three years. Tourist facilities have improved. A recent conference of the World Economic Forum in Sharm el-Sheikh was a showcase for Egyptian modernity and efficiency.

But there’s a major problem with the Chinese analogy: Egypt is not China. On the one hand—and this is good—even with the crackdowns in Cairo, the Egyptians allow more freedom of speech than Beijing. On the other hand, while Egypt may be a big market in the Arab world, it’s puny compared with the powerhouses of the East. The United States and Europe are not going to excuse Egypt’s political repression, as they basically do China’s, because of the potential to make enormous riches in the world’s biggest market. In fact, there’s a joke, repeated often in Cairo’s financial circles, about Mubarak chatting with Chinese President Hu Jintao before a state visit to Beijing. Hu asks him how many people he has. Mubarak replies: “70 million.” “Ah, well, then,” says Hu. “Bring them along!” The bitter truth for Egyptians is that the world economy has not discovered any pressing need for what they have to offer. “In America there are Chinese goods everywhere you look,” says Issa. “Do you see any Egyptian goods?”

Many members of the Egyptian elite hope (indeed, some pray) that the military will be the great stabilizing force in Egyptian life if politics takes a sharp turn toward Islamism or chaos after Hosni Mubarak dies—especially if Gamal tries, and fails, to succeed him. “Gamal is weak, he has no credentials,” says Hisham Kassem, editor of the independent daily Al Masri al Yom. “A civilian cannot run Egypt right now.”

The military analogy many people talk about is Turkey, where the uniformed services form what’s been called “the deep state,” the bedrock of stability. But there are problems with this model, too. For starters, even if you accept such a role for the brass, Turkey’s generals are wedded to a secular ideology, while the Egyptian military has no central idea to hold it together. (There are also concerns that the ranks may have been penetrated by Islamists like the ones who killed Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, during a parade in October 1981.) Moreover, the jealous rule of Hosni Mubarak, an Air Force general, has badly weakened the officer corps. There is no known equivalent of Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf ready or able to step forward, and almost any Egyptian general who starts to look popular finds himself retired to a governorship, or worse. Field Marshal Abdul Halim Abu Ghazala, who saved the regime 20 years ago by rolling tanks into the streets to stop a mutiny by the riot police (yes, the riot police, who burned several hotels near the pyramids), has spent most of his time since then under what some of his friends describe as virtual (if comfortable) house arrest.

In the Algerian precedent, political liberalization was embraced by a would-be reformer at the top in the early 1990s, then crushed by the generals when Islamists scored massive victories at the polls. The civil war that followed cost hundreds of thousands of lives: not a very happy prospect for Egypt, but not a completely implausible one, either. As in Algeria, the military and security leadership might try to keep a low profile, pushing various civilians to the foreground. In Algeria during the worst fighting, people wouldn’t even name top generals. They referred to them collectively as “le pouvoir,” the power.

A few people make analogies between Egypt’s developing party dictatorship, based as it is less on ideology than on patronage, and the long-running rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico. From the 1930s to the 1990s, all Mexican political life, such as it was, took place within the party. Any external threat, like the far left in the 1960s, was quite literally slaughtered. But one saving grace of the Mexican system was the commitment to one and only one term for any given president. That kept the political dynamic inside the party, at least, from becoming fatally rigid. Egypt has no such provision. Far from it.

Ultimately, of course, Egypt is Egypt, where the model of the pharaohs’ dynastic rule goes back 5,000 years. The machine is getting ready to put Gamal in power if Hosni can ever be persuaded to give up his throne. Yet Gamal, like most young pharaohs, has been guarded by the palace priests for so long that he may have very little idea how the Egyptian people live or act or think. His entourage is a nomenklatura of consumerism, comfortable in and with the West, but deeply unpopular on the street. His National Democratic Party (NDP) is a tired machine bereft of ideas that bases its power on thuggish coercion and shameless patronage. A party ought to have structured cadres, training, discipline, loyalty and a good feel for the grass roots, says American researcher Joshua Stacher: “The NDP is as legal as it gets, and the Muslim Brotherhood is about as illegal as it gets, but the NDP has none of these things and the Muslim Brothers have all these things.”

While Gamal Mubarak continues to cultivate his image in the West as a business-friendly leader, the opposition forces are discovering and cultivating each other—in prison. Soon after the long-haired, leftist Alaa Abdel Fateh was released on June 22 he told NEWSWEEK that he’d developed a great rapport with his fellow inmates, the Muslim Brothers. “It was a really incredible thing for me—the solidarity we experienced,” he said. “We were all arrested together supporting the same cause.” No longer willing—or able—to depend on Hosni Mubarak’s irrepressible passion to endure, Egyptians are, by design and default, shaping their own model for the future. Whatever that may turn out to be.

An Egyptian activist discusses his incarceration and how the Internet can be used to unite anti-government protest.

By Vivian Salama

Newsweek International

June 25, 2006

By Vivian Salama

 June 25, 2006 -Leftist opposition blogger Alaa Abdel Fateh probably has—or had—the most striking appearance of all the 53 Egyptian political detainees released last week. The 24-year-old normally wears stylish glasses and his long, frizzy black hair is usually a mass of Einsteinian curls. Those are now gone, since the first order of business in prison was to shave the heads of those arrested—ostensibly to avoid lice and fleas.Abdel Fateh—one of among hundreds of left wing and Islamist protesters detained in recent months as part of the Egyptian government’s ongoing crackdown against dissidents—was not silent during his time in prison. He continued to write his blog, smuggling it out via his wife and featuring a “FREE ALAA” portrait on his site, www.manalaa.net, which recently became difficult to access. After his release, he spoke to Vivian Salama in Cairo about anti-government protests and how Egyptians are using blogs express their political views. Excerpts:

Vivian Salama: How are you feeling?
Alaa Abdel Fateh: I woke up today [June 23] to the news that four of my friends were arrested yesterday. I still don’t know why they were arrested.  Now I have a commitment to see that my colleagues get out and remain safe.  When I was released from prison they kept me at the police station. The night I spent in the police station was worse than the months before in the detention center. You are thrown with the petty criminals and the worst of the worst. I stayed eight hours getting punched around.

Who punched you?
It wasn’t the police. Treatment was bad from the other prisoners. They used to get hit a lot and so we got hit with them. It is so dangerous. There was a big crackdown in that neighborhood over the past few days so all the junkies were roaming around [in the station cells.]

Q: What now?
I plan to take part in protests immediately.

You’re not afraid?
We are always worried about our safety. Torture is not new here. This is their tactic against the most devoted nationalists who dream of democracy.  So much of the violence in prison is a reaction to the torture by police.  So many of the detainees take drugs so that they do not suffer so much when they are being beaten. The numbness eases the pain.

Your wife smuggled out some of your blogs. Wasn’t that dangerous?
It wasn’t dangerous sneaking it out.

But why do it?
First, I had to kill time especially in the first few days because they did not let us out [of the cell].  Second, I knew it would help the democracy campaigns.  Also I wanted to record what it is like to be in prison, I knew many people wanted to know.

Were they effective?
It definitely widened the movement.  So many of us were imprisoned.  A lot of people who weren’t with the movement before joined in.  The violence and clampdown against the protesters supporting the judges [who had rebelled after being forced to endorse last year’s fraudulent parliamentary elections] was a push for a lot of new supporters. Political talks really skyrocketed among intellectual communities that normally stay out of such matters. Of course the media attention helped as well. At the same time it also made people nervous to walk on the streets.  I don’t blame them but we need a period when the people regain confidence in the efforts being done by the various pro-democracy movements.

Did you have any idea how long you would be in prison?
We really had no idea who was deciding our fate when we were in there.  I learned a real lesson—half the people with me were [political] independents coming from places we never even heard of.  We’d see them at the protests but we never really knew them. We’d connect on the Internet but never really knew each other.  Not all of them are graduates, professional—the walks of life of those in the movement are so diverse that it was really moving to me. I want to establish a network through those people to reach even more people. I think the Internet is the best way.Do you think the expansive outreach of blogging is somehow a threat to the regime?
I cannot say that blogging is threatening the regime yet, but it definitely has the potential.  Students, for example, are starting to learn how to blog on the Internet because this is the only way they can voice their opinions—to lift the weight of repression off their shoulders. The funny thing is, when I was being held by National Security, one of the guys wouldn’t stop talking to me about how much he loves my blog. Imagine that! 

You’re a leftist; what was it like to be detained with hundreds of [Islamist] Muslim Brothers?
It was a really incredible thing for me—the solidarity we experienced with Muslim Brothers. This is on a personal level. It’s not just that it makes sense politically that we stand together. We were all arrested together supporting the same cause and this was an intense experience for me. I think it is essential that we build on this and we really work to get the parties and movements to join forces.

Also check out Christopher Dickey’s After Mubarak: Order or Chaos?

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.