How my Cairo bookclub changed my view of Islamists | Rabab El-Mahdi | Comment is free | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/book-club-cairo-egyptians

How my Cairo bookclub changed my view of Islamists

Rabab El-Mahdi

When I set up a reading group, it brought young Egyptians labelled ‘leftist’, ‘secular’ and ‘Islamist’ together. Through our meetings we overcame these artificial divisions

‘I thought myself above labelling, presumptuous conclusions and artificial divisions, until I was forced to confront my own deeply rooted assumptions.’ Tahrir Square in Cairo. Photograph: Amr Dalsh/Reuters

Tuesday 8 September 2015 03.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 8 September 2015 10.37 EDT

In November 2011 during a protest on Mohamed Mahmoud street in downtown Cairo, a friend asked me if I would start a reading group for some politically engaged young people. I answered that I had read and disliked Reading Lolita in Tehran and so had no interest in imitating its protagonist, who had set up a book club in her home and encouraged the members to read and discuss western literature as the means to emancipation. My friend had not understood what I’d meant and so I conceded.

I had expected five people but 15 arrived instead, all in their 20s and early 30s; most of them were what the media and politicians labelled “Islamists”. My label? “Leftist academic and activist.”

We met weekly, reading together Vladimir Lenin, Frantz Fanon, Ali Shariati, Talal Asad, Edward Said and Lila Abu Lughod among others. We talked about Marxism, postcolonial studies, Islam, feminism, resistance and revolution and discussed contemporary politics at length, but as the weeks passed we also cooked together, watched movies, and spoke about their families and love lives.

As a student of postcolonial studies and an Arab woman in western circles, I have often had to confront other people’s assumptions about me, and most of my academic work has been about deconstructing such stereotypes. So I thought myself above labelling, presumptuous conclusions and artificial divisions – until Asmaa, Awatif and Mariam, three stay-at-home mothers, asked to join the group and I was forced to confront my own deeply rooted assumptions.

I suggested that we have a separate group for women so that they would be more at ease. They declined politely

When the women came to our first meeting, thinking I was being sensitive, I suggested that we have a separate group for women so that they would be more at ease. They declined politely and I later learned that they didn’t need to be made to feel comfortable in order to voice their opinions. Asmaa often dominated discussions; Awatif always had a witty remark; all three came with stories of lives fully lived: volunteering with youth camps, attending courses, leaving the children with their husbands. I had assumed their homes and lives would be organised along a strict division of gender roles but they were not.

Months after we started, some of my “secular” friends (there’s another easy yet artificial categorisation) started asking me if the women, moved by the texts they were reading and the discussions we were having, had begun to take off their veils or if the men were becoming less religious. But they were not. If anything, they were becoming more comfortable straddling multifaceted identities.

One winter evening Nahla, who had become my guide to Cairo’s alternative music and comedy shows in Egypt as well as to Sufism, walked in late to our gathering and said: “I dreamt that Marx was leading our prayer but he didn’t know which way the qibla [the direction of Mecca that Muslims use to position themselves during prayer] was.” Nahla and the others didn’t see a contradiction between being religious and being progressive.

Asmaa refused to take off her face veil despite her husband’s request for her to do so. Mohamed, the pharmacist from Badrasheen (a rural area on the outskirts of Cairo that like other small communities in Egypt is conservative), believed it was his daughters’ choice to pray or not, even though he personally would never miss a prayer. Tamer, the film director, thought that the Bernardo Bertolucci movie we watched would have served the same purpose with less nudity; some agreed and others didn’t. They also shared stories about their own indoctrination, their personal struggle with some religious and political convictions they held for a long time. There was nothing to be idealised here.

Over time things have changed, just as Egypt has. Our weekly meetings are now much smaller and less regular. Awatif and her family had to flee for fear of persecution. Mohamed, Tamer and Asmaa are still here, but have had to stop doing many of the things they love. With the clampdown on freedoms and attacks against activists, many members of my reading group have become disenchanted and at risk. Nahla spends most of her time running from one prison to the next visiting friends who have been imprisoned. Many of Mariam’s family are in jail, imprisoned alongside others attending protests against President Sisi.

The regime and the media (both local and international) conflate religious Muslims, Islamists, rightwing political projects like that of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even terrorism. My friends are portrayed as ticking bombs that need to be eliminated or at least contained – not because they pose a terrorist threat, as many would like to believe, but because their critical minds, their desire for change and their love of life threatens the status quo and the false binaries.

Are the young people who read with me representative of all Egyptians, all religious people, or all young people of their generation? Of course not, but they are equally not an anomaly. When I look at our group, or what is left of it, I see how difficult alienation can be. This country is where people chose to belong and where they are rejected. What is constant is that they defy the desire of many for easy categorisation.