Parochial identities

It's pathetic, I feel, what is being done in the Arab world; this incessant fuelling of parochial identities. No, it wasn't always that way.

There is of course a grain of truth in the idea that secularism hasn't dug deep roots in the Arab world, that people's sectarian identities were lurking beneath the national surface.

But I beg to differ with the scenarios of doom. Just because people have multiple, including sectarian identities, does not by default make these identities combustible, waiting to explode at any whiff of fire.

Perhaps it is my own "secular" inclinations or upbringing. We didn't study anything about Shi'ism in school. And when I did come around to it in college I was in fact surprised (still am to tell you the truth) that Egyptians aren't Shi'is. It would have made more sense. It's one of the grand mistakes of history. But then, even the Iranians, only became majority Shi'is in the 17th century and under the heavy influence of the Safavids. Al-nasu 'ala dini mulukihim, really. Had we had a different set of rulers in the 12th century, had Salah al-Din not been such a pain, perhaps things would've been different. Which also begs the question of how far religion is a personal, individual matter, rather than part of the meta-culture of the time and place one is living in....

As is, there is an underlying bias, among the learned Muslims, against Shi'ism. In Egypt this co-exists with an overwhelming love of Ali and Aal al-bayt. How many Egyptians you know would call their sons Usman? And how many call their sons Ali? You get the idea... But despite the bias, that only the learned Sunni ulama are conscious of, for most ordinary Egyptians, a mosque is a mosque is a holy space. Can it be that much different in Iraq?

Do I see myself as a Sunni? I mean if we're speaking identities, I would include "Muslim" somewhere on my list. But Sunni? not particularly, I'd say. Is this a reflection of another, deeper bias; to be Muslim is to be a Sunni? Perhaps. But somehow, I doubt it.

In any case, this particular manifestation of parochial identities isn't the one to be feared in Egypt, the Shi'is having been successfully wiped out for the most part centuries ago. In Egypt it is rather the Muslim-Coptic divide that I fear. That added, unsolicited, phrase at the end of an introduction: "he's a Copt, you see..." And increasingly this has come to matter in Egypt. Official discourse, thankfully, still pounds the "two elements of the nation" which are entwined in its "national fabric" etc etc. At least the ideal of secular equality is still there. But it is being expressed, increasingly, in more sectarian terms. So, for example: official discourse has to be protective (hence, condescending) of "our Christian brethren."

And on both sides of the brotherhood divide, extremists are winning. I find it increasingly difficult to convince anyone that all those religious figures and clerics on both sides of the metaphorical fence are f****** b******* who are not only myopic and bigoted but also consciously trying to manipulate the masses into their own line of thinking. Why should we revere them so? Why should we respect the men in black dresses, simply because they are wearing those costumes? And they are costumes, uniforms, dresses ladden with symbolic meaning and constructed to awe us all. Granted, there are many learned men among the religious establishment. But they're not the ones in the dresses; usually they are tucked away in some community and in their libraries. They are not dancing for the powers that be or puppetting on national television. And the clown in the suit, you ask? He's just another clown who's more attuned to the times, equally myopic, and equally nasal and bigoted as his pedigree.

I miss private religiosity. I miss the religion of women and of the home that someone like Leila Ahmed describes in her memoirs. And in fact, growing up, religion was something I associated with my grandmother and my mother. Not with a mosque or a man in a dress. It was my grandmother who, despite her matriarchal authority (suffocating at times), taught us about kindness and about putting ourselves in other people's shoes. Think what it would be like to be cold in the winter, and then do something to spread the warmth... It wasn't the religiosity of heaven and hell.

Teta recalled with chuckles her days at the missionary school. She wasn't into the Catholics and had an "argument" when one of her grand-daughters was asked to kiss the mother superior's hands after committing some crime as talking in the classroom. Teta was summoned after hours and backed the little girl who had resisted and disobeyed. She told her youngest grand-daughter the story, years later, not without a hint of pride. "We don't bow except to God, in prayer," she explained. But she didn't make any comments on Christianity or Catholicism... Her girls were in fact sent to another missionary school, a Protestant one.

Religion wasn't "an issue" or a "a cause." It was part of our lives but we didn't carry it around like a badge because it didn't grant us membership to any exclusive clique. I can't even remember when it was that I realized that my mother's best friends were both Christians. (Her third best friend is a Shi'i, incidentally! I only discovered that recently.)

But now I look and I see that suddenly words like Shi'i and Sunni have new meaning. I watch the news of Iraq in the West and I see Sunnis being portrayed as power hungry villains of the ancien regime armed with their own militia and Shi'is as the fanatic bloodthirsty terrorists with militia and gangs. And everything is perceived through those sectarian-tinted lenses. The same in Lebanon: things are being explained and analysed through one axis only, as if all are other factors have been neutralized. And all Arab politics is being reconstructed through the sectarian prism; power is being reapportioned according to sect.

The same thing is happening in the way Europe is dealing with Muslims. If a Briton is also Muslim, it is assumed that "Muslim leaders" should be speaking on his behalf and representing him, hence "faith" this and "faith" that. And it is in fact states who are consciously creating new institutions and establishments between them and their citizens, another layer of identity and representation, this time unelected and unchosen, and imposed on the individual citizen, whether he or she likes it or not.

It's insane. The majority of sane Arabs and sane Muslims should adamantly refuse to carry those sectarian banners. Not in our name! Just because such compartmentalization and slicing makes things easier for powers seeking to control the masses, doesn't mean we should happily concede and play this game. There are hints that the Iraqis are trying: let us pray they succeed.