Reflections Upon September 11, 2011 from Cairo

Yesterday was September 11. It was the ten year anniversary of that fateful day. I am sure many others are more eloquent on this topic than I am, so I will keep my remarks brief.

Ten years ago on September 11, I had just started my doctorate at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University. I was living in a very cute, if slightly remote beach house in a town called Nahant, outside of Boston. Some workers were doing remodeling repairs on the house. I was home for the day. We had the radio on. I heard the report on the radio. At first, we really thought it was a joke. It was just too difficult to believe that someone could have flown a plane into the twin towers.

We listened to the radio, and finally walked over to a friend's house, where we all sat glued to the television all day. I remember calling all my friends in New York, where I had gone to college, to see if they were safe.

I remember that we had economics class the next day, and the Professor, who was very good, was at a loss for words. I do not really know exactly how 9/11 affected me. However, it affected our family. My sister enlisted in the Army Reserve, and was sent to Guantanamo Bay. I opposed the Gulf War in 1990, and I opposed the one that took place after 9/11.  Although I did not support the war in Iraq, I thank our veterans for their loyal service to their country, and they deserve our respect and admiration.

Living in the Middle East now, I guess one thought that I have is that I wish the People of the Book and the Children of Abraham understood each other better. It goes without saying that my American students rarely know anything about Islam. However, now that I am teaching in Egypt, I realize that my Christian and Muslim students do not know much about each others' religion either.  I wish that Jews, Christians and Muslims could all educate themselves, and each other about their respective religions. Reading the Bible and the Quran carefully, and with an open mind, and a critical lens would be a great start.

Islam is not the problem. Extremism is the problem. There are as many denominations of Islam as there are of Christianity. The people who committed that atrocity were very far out of the mainstream of Islam, and were roundly condemned by religious leaders from their community.

I guess upon this anniversary, I would like to call for religious tolerance, and education. I also think the US should rethink its support for undemocratic regimes like those in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Bahrain. These governments incubate religious extremists, oppress women, suppress democracy, and encourage politically intolerant people, like the hijackers of 9/11. The US should carefully rethink its alliances with these authoritarian governments. 

The End of Eid

Dear readers

I hope you had a nice Eid. And, if you are Jewish, Rosh Hashanah is just around the corner. Christians will have to wait a while for our next religious holiday!

So, Ramadan is hard, really hard. Fasting from food is doable if difficult, but not drinking anything is nearly impossible, at least for me. However, millions of Muslims world wide do it successfully. I find it very difficult to get up before the first prayer to eat the Suhoor, so I usually sleep through it. I admire the discipline which lies behind Ramadan, and I like the idea of remembering the hungry, so relevant this year as the famine in the Horn of Africa wears on. It has been very very hot in Egypt lately, which makes it even more difficult to fast.

Ramadan ended this week. Eid Kareem! Where I live, in El Rehab City, the Mosque near me spread out persian rugs, and beautiful tapestries to create extra room for people to pray. Ramadan brings out unusually large crowds for prayer. In the evening, people break fast with dates and milk. Some neighborhoods share candy, or have food outside. Tragically, mine was not one of them.

In my neighborhood, people decorated their porches and trees with flashing lights of different colors. People shot of fireworks for eid, and many people had parties to celebrate the breaking of the fast. People stay up late at night, and kids play until midnight.  Last night, some boys were still busy with the firecrackers. I guess it is hard to let go of the fun.

I celebrated Eid ul fitr with my Sudanese colleague, Hamid Ali and his family. They are from Darfur. My children and my nanny,Feba, who is from South Sudan, went to Hamid's house on Tuesday. The end of Ramadan is determined astronomically and it ended on about August 30, 2011 this year. Apparently, there has been some controversy this year, as some say Saturn was seen, not the moon, and Eid did not really end on August 30th.

At my colleague's house, there were about 40 to 50 Darfuris present. I love the women's dress. I think I could wear it. They have colorful, very light cotton cloths which they tie around their shoulder and wrap around them, creating a built in, but very relaxed hijab. Some wear a separate piece of chiffon as hijab. I wore one to fit in, but my five year old daughter told me I looked weird. Then she tried one on herself.

We ate tripe carefully cleaned and chopped and mixed with onions. I think that they had soaked the tripe with salt to clean it, because it had no smell left. Of course, Mexicans love tripe. They call it Mondongo. My husband loves tripe. In Kenya, we call it Matumbo, which means stomach, in Swahili. The tripe is cleaned overnight, and then boiled. It is then chopped into small pieces. It was mixed with pieces of chopped stewed sheep meat, and some strange element of the sheep anatomy that I am not familiar with, and then the whole thing tossed with raw onions. I am not a fan, but this version was okay, and fairly neutral. We had a nice salad of tomatoes, cucumber and lemon juice. We also had some tasty stewed sheep which was served on a bed of torn pita, with stew poured over it, and red pepper on the side.

The men sat in the living room. Most had on white galabeya and white round turbans on their heads. Some had more (to my eyes) African looking white long tunics with white long pants underneath. The women sat in a different room together and discussed jealousy and children. I did not understand that much due to my poor Arabic, but my nanny translated. The house was full of children, and they had a grand time running around and screaming. When we women were not discussing ladies matters, we were in the kitchen cooking. When the tripe was prepared, there was a moment of gender mixing, as some men came in to clean and cut the tripe and help prepare it.

Anyway, as today is the last day of Eid, we can expect politics in the region to really pick up. WMB

Reformer from Muslim Brotherhood: Talk by Dr. Abdel Moneim Abol Fottoh

Dear Readers, I attended a talk by Dr. Abol Fottoh today. There was no simultaneous translation. A student translated for me. So this is not verbatim, but gives you a good gist of what was said. It was a very long talk, so this is just an excerpt. Dr. Abol Fottoh is known as a reformist within the Muslim Brotherhood. He has resigned from that party, and is planning to start his own party, known as Egypt's Renaissance. For more about him, read here . WMB

"Islam provides general laws, not specific ones. Egypt needs freedom for everyone. We should not force people to obey Islam. We give them advice. We would not do like Gulf Countries when they force people to wear the veil. This is against freedom."

"Islam provides general rules. The government should represent the majority of the people and do what they want. They underestimated Al Azhar {editors note, Al Azhar is an educational institute in Egypt. It was founded in 970 A.D. It is the chief Centre for Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic Learning.  The University's mission includes the propagation of Islamic Culture and Religion} They did not give it its proper position. It could act as a ministry that shows whether someone is following Islam. Those who think people are religious extremists should try to balance them, bring them to reason, not judge them or punish them."

"El Azhar is also a place where they educate people. Someone wanted to study music. Dr. Fottoh says that is fine. It is nice and acceptable. Music is art. If it is classy, music is fine. {Some Muslims think Music is forbidden} Just do not abuse the music. Do not play innappropriate music. Do not play innappropriate songs that are meaningless." [Fottoh does not say he would ban this bad music, but he is against it] "The main purpose of art and literature is to enrich the human soul. But art these days is meaningless and useless."

[Fottoh would not order all women to wear the veil, but he would advise them to do so] "But, I will not ask all girls to wear the veil. France should not ban hijab. People have a right to wear hijab. But Iran should also not make people wear hijab, people have a right not to wear it."

"The Turkish model is secular, but it is not against religion. It does not prevent people from being religious. Being secular is about freedom. They [probably referring to recent SCAF ban on religious parties] cannot ban religion."

"Parliament originally comes from society. It represents society. We can argue in Parliament about a social issue like homosexuality. They would not agree on something against society. They would not accept it. It is not acceptable in society to have homosexuality, it is taboo. So, in the Parliament they cannot accept it."

"Will the Muslim Brotherhood be participating in politics? There are different groups, Salafists, sunnis. All Muslims have the same Muslim thought. Forcing people in the name or religion is not allowed. All of Egypt should represent itself, not a certain group or party. There are over 200 political parties right now {They are incredibly weak}. Eventually, there will be three or four who dominate. A certain party will be in charge until then. There are extreme religious people in Egypt. They want that Sharia laws will be applied. It is in human nature that people will be divided by religion, politics, gender. We should accept different points of view. This will make society stronger. Variety will make us stronger. We need competition in a good way.  Al-Ikhwān [Muslim Brotherhood] is not a political party. It is an Islamic Movement that demands improvements to the country. Any Islamic movement is not concerned about politics."

"We only had a few weeks to decide whether to change the Constitution. It is not the Army's job to rule the country. The change in the Constitution should have taken more time.  Perhpas two years, to choose what changes to make or not make. The previous system considered Al-Ikhwān a competitor. In the previous system, I wanted to compete with honest and fair people, not corrupted ones. We were only allowed to vote yes or no on the Constitution. Neither yes or no meant radical changes. This vote was not reasonable. We should have been allowed to ask for a totally new Constitution."

"Q: Why is there a crisis of trust between the people and Al-Ikhwān? A: Movements are from the people. A percentage does not agree with what the Brotherhood thinks. That does not mean that all of Egypt is against the movement. In 1984 the Brotherhood entered the parliamentary elections. Some of the Brotherhood saw corruption, and did not want to be part of a corrupt system."