Luxor Lately

Article first published as Luxor Lately on Blogcritics.

Luxor (the ancient city of Thebes) is a beautiful city of approximately 500,000 people. The streets are clean and broad. Horse drawn carriages and donkey drawn carts share the streets with slow moving vehicles. The Luxor Railway station is sparkling, decorated in the typical red granite of Egypt, with impressive bas reliefs drawn from the many temples in the area.

Words do not do justice to the grandiosity of the Luxor temple. The columns are several stories tall. The statues and hieroglyphics have lasted for over 3000 years. What building built today could last that long?  The near absence of rain certainly helped to preserve the temple and its statues, but one can only marvel at the ancient Egyptian mastery of engineering. In late April, the reformed Egyptian Antiquities Council announced that a 3400 year old statute of King Ahmenhotep III was unearthed in Luxor.

The main Luxor temple was unusual in that it first housed a temple for ancient Egyptian Gods. Then, a church was built on the Temple grounds. Later, a Mosque, which is still operational, was built on the ruins of part of the temple. For a period, both the Mosque and the Church operated simultaneously within the temple grounds. There is a lesson regarding peaceful coexistence of multiple faiths inside that temple.

In Upper Egypt, remnants of the old regime still cling to power. In late April. violence erupted between supporters of the old National Democratic Party, and the January 25 Revolution Youth Coalition during a rally for Amr Moussa , Secretary General of the Arab League and a potential presidential candidate for Egypt. Moussa has pledged to prioritize the region of Upper Egypt.

I asked my guide to tell me how the government of Luxor has been functioning since the Revolution. My guide Khaled lives in Luxor with his family. The Governor of Luxor, Samir Farag has been replaced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Allegedly, Farag is implicated in the corruption of the Mubarak era.  The SCAF has replaced 14 out of 26 regional governors since the revolution. In mid April, hundreds of thousands of protesters demanded the speedy trial of Mubarak and the replacement of governors he had appointed. The SCAF made the decision to replace these governors one day after the massive protest. As Khaled pointed out, the head of the snake has been removed, but the body is still there, and writhing, with enough venom in it to do damage. He said that in Luxor, electricity and water are functioning, but many government services are barely being attended to.

While in Luxor, I saw many many signs with the photo of a beautiful young girl about my daughter's age: five years old.Apparently, she has been abducted. According to Al Masry Al Youm, two children have dissapeared from their homes, and several child abductions have been attempted. Apparently, Luxor has been plagued by a state of lawlessness in the past few months. As I mentioned, one of Mubarak's moves to thwart the revolution was to pull the police from the streets. A small number of police are back on the streets, but according to my tour guide Khaled, they are not really doing their jobs lately.  The Local People's Council has warned of a continuing deterioration of security in the area, and has asked for more police to be deployed, to combat thuggery and thievery.

Changes are coming to Upper Egypt in this post-revolutionary period, and Luxor, as the nation's tourism capital, will be an important part of this change. In a good year, as many as 11 million tourists can pass through Egypt, and the vast majority of them will make a stop in Luxor. This is a city to watch in the coming months as Egypt moves tentatively toward democracy.

Edfu

I am in Luxor right now. I am on a boat, taking the obligatory Nile Cruise, so I have limited Internet access. while checking my email today, I was very pleased to see this article in the New York Times regarding a predominantly "liberal" protest that took place in Cairo.

The protesters called on the military council now ruling Egypt to end the practice of sending civilians to military trials, to expedite legal action against former President Hosni Mubarak and his associates, and to start governing with some civilian presidential council.

But now, I am in Upper Egypt, so it is a good chance to check in on the rest of Egypt. There are 80 million people in Egypt, and only 20 million of them live in Cairo.

Business is very low on the tourist areas in the Nile. The tour guides tell me that the coverage of the Imbaba Clashes, in which 12 people were killed, hurt tourism more than the Revolution, in which 800 people were killed. The temples on this trip seem full to me, but my guides tell me they are nearly empty. I went to the papyrus store today, and the salesman nearly begged me to buy things. I bought two small pieces, but I could smell his hunger for business, as he offered me three pieces priced at 550 LE for 350 LE. A moment of sorrow.

My daughter fell in love with a horse today. Her name is Aziza. She pulled our horsedrawn carriage to the temple of Edfu. Apparently, during the revolution, the citizens of Edfu demanded that the only way one can get to Edfu Temple is by horsedrawn carriage. This reduces the number of cars on the road, and guarantees nearly full employment for the citizens of Edfu. I like this tradition. It is scenic, and it slows the flow of tourists into the temples. We gave the driver a few extra pounds to buy Aziza some extra oats. A moment of joy.

Does Shariah Allow Women to Vote?

 Women voters stand in line to cast their ballot in Egypt's first major democratic vote, the Constitutional Referendum, 2011. Photo Credit: the author.

Sometimes I can see what people are interested in by what they type into search engines in order to get to my site. This morning, I saw the following question: Does Shariah allow women to vote? This is an interesting question. Again, we must make the distinction between Shariah, and fiqh, which is Islamic Jurisprudence as applied.

I think that we should start this inquiry with reflections upon the words of Arzu Merali, the Director of Research for the Islamic Human Rights Commission. Writing in The Guardian, she notes that neither men nor women could vote under Mullah Omar's regime in Afghanistan. Mullah Omar was the spiritual leader of the Taliban, and was Afghanistan's "head of state," from 1996 to 2001. She makes the important point that the cruel excesses and limitations upon womens' rights in Taliban-led Afghanistan must be seen as an indictment of the Taliban's prejudices, and cultural views, not an indictment of Islam.

By the way, I myself am not a practicing Muslim. I am a practicing Presbyterian and sometimes Unitarian Universalist. However, I have a deep respect for many of the world's great religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism. Zakat, which is a pillar of Islam, is basically tithing. Ramadan, which is a pillar of Islam, is basically a more rigorous version of Lent. Accordingly, do not interpret my words as an attempt to convert you. Rather, interpret my words as an attempt to "get it right."

Saraji Umm Zaid, writing at modernmuslima, makes a very important point. She notes that we must respect Shariah, but that we should not fall into the trap of focusing on the "virtues of the Ideal Place of Women in Ideal Islam." Rather, we must confront the reality on the ground. It is not enough, she argues, to simply place all the negative aspects of how women are treated in predominantly Muslim societies, on "culture." She notes that among conservative Muslims,

[] there is a resounding silence when the issue being raised is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), honor killings, forced marriages, the unequal application of hadd punishments on women, or the denial of education to girls and women. 

Saraji Umm Zaid urges the average Muslim to petition governments, and urge for change against these practices. She states that Muslims can no longer afford to be silent about human rights abuses, especially those committed against women, in the name of Islam. I provide a long quote from her here, because her words are simply brilliant:

Prophet Mohammed, sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam, was mocked and assaulted because of his strong and courageous stance on the status of women.  He came with a message that lifted women up and gave them dignity.  Fourteen hundred years later, we have descended back into the dark pit of Jahiliya, and Muslim women around the world find themselves cast into the same slavery that the Prophet, sallalahu aleyhi wa salaam, was sent to liberate them from.

It does not make you a "radical feminist" to decry honor killings and volunteer for peaceful campaigns to educate and change laws.  Raising your voice against Female Genital Mutilation does not mean you want to "undermine Islam."  To the contrary, working against these injustices in the way of Allah is a manifestation of the desire to uplift Islam and the Muslim people.

When the Taliban decided to deny education to any girl over a certain age, it is the conservative Muslims, the ones who profess adherence to "Qur'an and Sunnah" that should have spoken the loudest against this.  The longer we stay silent, the more people, both Muslim and non Muslim, will begin to equate "Shar'ia" with the oppression of women.

Returning to the topic of voting, the teachings of Islam, according to Jamal A. Badawi, author of "The Status of Women in Islam," Al-lttihad, Vol. 8, No. 2, Sha'ban 1391/Sept 1971, informs us that Islam gives women the right of election, as well as of nomination to political offices. Women have the right to participate in political affairs and the Holy Quran gives examples of women who participated in political discussions and even argued with the Prophet Mohammed (See Qur'an 58: 14 and 60: 10-12).

Interestingly, Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country, has had a woman head of state, Benazir Bhutto, and several other prominent female politicians. According to Saimah Ashraf, women in Pakistan are allowed to drive, vote, attend co-educational universities, and hold paying jobs.That being said, life in Pakistan is not very pleasant for women, as there are honor killings and high rates of violence against women there, but that is another topic.

Certainly, women just voted in the last referendum here in Egypt, and the Egyptian legal system is based in part on Shariah. The Parliament in Egypt is currently suspended, so no women or men are serving in it. The country is being run by the SCAF, which appears to be composed entirely of men. There is certainly a lot of room to expand the role and influence of women in Egypt now that the country is in the process of forming new political parties.

The right to vote was established in Iran in 1963. Iran has a very high number of women in Parliament, and women form more than half the entering class in Iran's universities according to Simin Royanian as well as an article in the BBC by Roxana Saberi. According to that article Women in Iran's Parliament are very active, and women also serve in local government. However, in Iran, women cannot be judges, and have many social rights restricted. President Ahmadinejad is quite conservative on the role of women, and wants them home with their families.There is a lot of room for improvement on the political role of women in Iran. According to Raz Zimmt, writing about Iran's parliamentary elections, currently only eight women have been elected in the 8th Majlis (elected in March 2008), in comparison to four women in the first, second, and third Majlis; nine in the fourth Majlis; 14 in the fifth and sixth Majlis sessions; and 13 in the seventh.

I have not had time to review the situation of women and the vote in Saudi Arabia, but this quick survey indicates that under Shariah, women certainly have the right to vote, and in many countries that are governed by Islamic Jurisprudence, women have that right as well. 


I would like to leave you with some wise words from Dr. Christina Jones, a professor of Law from Germany with expertise in Islamic Law:

I would like to leave you with the following proposition: It is possible to use Islamic law in the interests of women's rights. It is possible to combine the very best for women from all of the interpretations of the Quranic text. The decision to do this is political.