In Sidna Hussayn

After friday majlis

The Islamist thread

Efter ett studiebesök på Sun City mall i Kairo (nåja, jag var på bio, såg filmen sa'a we nuss som var väldigt bra) kan jag konstatera en sak. Idén att muslimerna står vid Wiens portar och är på väg att sluka världen är ohållbar.
Counter-jihadisterna borde göra random studiebesök i Arabvärlden för att kunna konstatera att den "arga muslimen" snarare är en överviktig McDonaldsmumsande konsument av västerländska livsstilprodukter.

en välmående medelklass, opponerar du? Förvisso, säger jag men det är också i medelklassen som mycket av den visuella "islamismen" finns. De s.k. "burkorna" är mer frekventa i shoppingcentret än på andra platser.

Under den livsfarliga burkan göms alltså en kvinna som besöker GAP store för att handla kläder till barnen inför eid. Bäva månde Robert Spencer...

Just if he brings work.

B is a driver working west bank Luxor. "What Egypt needs is work." he says.
"Be the president Christian or Muslim or brotherhood or liberal, we want work. We don't care about who he's with. Not if he can bring work. Do you understand me?" he asks.

So much for the Islamist threat...

Scorpion King

So I killed my first scorpion today. Well the second one really. The first one in our house is what I killed. One interesting observation about scorpions: Children don't take them seriously and my wife and I regress into traditional gender-roles when they appear. I kill them, she shrieks at me to kill it. Kill it. Kill it...

Night

A house of our own

So... As I have my morning tea, strong and sweet. This is what I look out upon. Bismillah ma sha Allah

Walking home

Outside al-Azhar just after friday prayer
©I F Brusi

Get your eat on!

Photo property of F. Brusi

Caravan

We travel in packs...

It's a family affair

There's a white man at the table, mother!

King Tut's revenge?

Jag var sjuk igår. Kramper i magen, feber och muskelvärk. Huvudvärk också. Sedan tillkommer det där med de frekventa toalettbesöken. Den enda frågan är egentligen: Bakterie eller Amöba?

It's a glass of Turkish coffee!

A book and its cover

Someone i'm acquainted with went to the mosque of sayyidina Hussain, arguably on of the most pivotal religious places in Cairo. There are several so-called saints buried in and around the city and many Muslims seize the opportunity to visit men and women of such supreme spiritual dignity. The three women sayyida Nafeesa, sayyida A'isha and sayyida Ruqayya are by many considered the patron saints of the city even. Female patron saints of a city so much dominated by machismo-culture is interesting itself and I might write about this at another point.

Sainthood plays a very important part in Islam in Egypt but it is not of course an uncontested part of popular practice. Asking for a saint’s intercession is regarded as an idolatry Sufi innovation by the puritanical post-modern Muslims that ascribe to the Salafi rite and there has been incidents of physical confrontation between the two over shrines that have been attacked by people that seemingly think that the shrines best serve the religion by being demolished.

Many of the saint's tombs are hidden away in the southern cemetery al-Qarafa and is therefore more of a matter for those already so inclined. Sayyidina Hussain however, is a huge mosque-mausoleum set in the middle of the city by the entrance to the famous bazaar-quarters of Khan el-Khalili just opposite of al-Azhar university and mosque. It is as it happens quite impossible to miss if one is touring Cairo.

The mausoleum is said to contain the head of sayyidina Hussain, the son of Ali ibn abi Talib, the fourth caliph and more so the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him. 


Veneration of the prophet's family is central in many aspects of Muslim practice and beliefs and though certainly not exclusive in Sufism, it is perhaps more easily observed in Sufi litany than in other expressions of Islam. Within this belief is also that the spiritual station of the prophet extends through his blood-line down in generations. Anyone related to him is either a sayyid or a sharif and has traditionally held a good social status. It is popularly believed that one may petition with the ashraf (pl. of sharif) in order to seek out the special spiritual blessing that they enjoy, whether alive or dead.

As mentioned earlier the act of visiting tombs, petitioning with the saints in their graves and other related practices are not universally accepted and some Muslims claim that the custom is outright heretical. I believe that my acquaintance is leaning towards this later position based on how he describes his visit to sayyidina Husain's mosque.

What he describe is peoples at the mausoleum involved in the act of shirk (idolatry). Women in niqab (face veil) and men with beards to their bellies all involved in the most heinous act described in the holy Qur'an, putting something or someone at God's side. He concludes that it goes to tell how one can never judge a book by it's cover and that people (in general) need to be educated.

What I find interesting in his reaction is the reaction itself. Why does one assume that donning the niqab or growing the beard long is proof of any particular form of Islam? When a stunning majority of the Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafis, why was there an assumption that they necessarily agree with the religious beliefs of said groups? (Considering the relatively low voter turnout though makes the actual result somewhat more moderate) A more nuanced analysis would be that people agreed to the politics and promises thereof rather than buying the entire philosophy, lock, stock and barrel. Wearing a niqab does not make a salafi or a MB-supporter seems to be the immediate lesson to be learned.

Photograph © Max Dahlstrand

If my acquaintance, who is a European born Muslim, can be seen as a representative of an Islam prevalent with some of the more modernistic interpretations, it may help in understanding why they are so successful at an organizational level (for example in Sweden) yet why they seem to fail in attracting a real popular support amongst the bulk of the Muslim population. It may be that they lack understanding of the people they want to be the representatives of. A quick guess of how this comes to be maybe explained by utilizing a class perspective.

Many Middle East scholars, like Khaled Hroub, have stated that the different islamist movements, not less so in Egypt, have their roots in the (secularly) educated middle class. A cadre of engineers, doctors and lawyers with university background telling street vendors, waiters and bus drivers what the religion really says and that they are akin to unbelievers in practicing a form of Islam that not only their fathers did but that was also sanctioned by many of the religious scholars throughout Islamic history. Perhaps there is also a hint of class hate in the staunch rejection of popular practices of the working class by the middle class?  It is impossible to say at this point but the attempt of a class perspective in analyzing combatting Islamic interpretations would be an interesting study.

As I am writing these lines another whiff of ancient tradition passes by my window. The musahhar (the waker-upper) beating a small drum telling people to get up and have breakfast before dawn arrives. I have been told they too are a disappearing particularity of Cairo. I guess that's also something that I shall write about in the coming weeks.

Strangeville

This is a photo from google street view. It's a film waiting to be made...

Mistah Kurtz he dead

A teacher of mine once said that psychology students tend to be unsatisfied with themselves, political science students with their societies. Anthropology students on the other hand, with both themselves and their societies.

My academic move has gone from political science to middle eastern studies with a focus on religious history/sociology. What does that imply?

A dissatisfaction with my (Swedish) society and a loss of faith in secular Utopias which has lead to a search in eastern traditions instead. Perhaps. It's not that far fetched.

For the last two years I've been studying the middle east from books in every possible perspective: Geography, literature, religion, media, politics & economy, ethnology... In a month I touch down on Egyptian soil in order to try and convert all those books into real knowledge.

Two years in Qena will definitely have an impact on me and my family who are traveling with me but in what way, I have no idea. We're going up the river into the heart of what?

Why Qena?

I have more questions than answers at this stage, but I think Malinowski that old Triobrand anthropologist has the answer for my designated geographical area of research. The question as to why I choose to do an ethnographical study...well I guess this blog is how I figure that one out.

"Proper conditions for ethnographic work...consist mainly in cutting oneself off from the company of other white men..."
-Malinowski

Silent hope

In 1920 when the theatre on Birger Jarlsgatan opened it was called Olympia. It's not called so anymore. Someone changed it. Olympia is now just another name on the tombstones of yesteryear's cultural bastions of modernity. Palladium, Apollo, Arcadia, Roxy, Garbio, Rialto, Astoria, Riviera...

The foyer is perfectly tremendous. A giant ceiling, like that of a cathedral (and isn't that befitting of a theatre) with a huge staircase under which a little café is nested. The café haphazardly serves excellent Swedish coffee and a delightful little grilled sandwich with Brie, sardines and fresh rosemary. With all due respect to popcorn and fizzy drinks, why do we persist in having children's food in cinemas? It is symptomatic of our childish minds, I'm sure, and the range of select films in our movie complexes signifies this childishness too.

Yet every once in a blue moon a film comes along to the Swedish monopolised industry of theatres (sic!) that is outside of the norm. The formula seems to me to consist of an American hero who breaks rules and thus saves the world from aliens or horrible brown people (sometimes they are synonymous) so that we can all rest assured that the world is once again safe. Yet o how liberating it is when something other that that is played.

I am not going to present the plot of the film, nay the masterpiece, The Artist. What I do want to write about is my urge to applaud the movie when the end credit started to roll.

Sure, I have seen silent movies before. I have seen them on video, that is. To see one in a theatre, a proper old theatre with all its trimmings was truly an amazing experience. To begin with, I was shocked to find out that dialogue can be an obstacle for the drama. If anything the film proves the point that it is music that creates the entire experience of film. Surely it is nostalgia of a time I never experienced which makes me shudder with anticipation just by seeing the typography of the opening credit.

It is a promise from the director of the film. It is the promise of an illusion to experience film the way my grandfather's father would have and I am sold from the very beginning. I love this movie. I love that someone loves films so much that they would make a film like this. It's technically perfect, beautifully shot and the music is superb. If cinema still has a soul, this movie manages that heritage. Needless to say, it is of course a French production (although set in Hollywood).

There is still hope for this form of art, is what I sense at the end of the film. That magic place called cinema is still out there but it has become painfully obvious that it has slipped through the hands of the Americans, save but a very small number of directors. And that's why I wanna stand up and applaude the director. He managed to redeem a whole art form with The Artist. That may also be the reason it was nominated for ten Oscars.

It's not the plot that makes it great. It's the mere fact that it got made which makes it so special.

"Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects but sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things."(Catherine Deneuve)

SvD| DN | Metro | The Telegraph | The Guardian |

Battered wife syndrome

Every writer has a complex relationship with his hometown they say...

...What if your hometown is the equivalent of an abusive spouse?

AIK-Peking 5-2

I don't like football. I didn't watch the CL final yesterday. I couldn't care less. I like AIK and the substandard Swedish league. I could intellectualize about it but I won't. I walked the four hundred metres home a winner tonight. That's all.

Room with a view

'I heart this', she would say as if the word 'love' was somehow too holy to be mentioned. I thought of Judaism and the prohibition to pronounce God's name. In some strange way she had put love in the place of God and thereby made it too sacred to realize in words. Had she lost the ability to love thereby? I don't know, I did not stick around long enough to find out but many years later I'm having breakfast with my children. The sun just stretches over the tall blue building in front of us and I stop mid-bite into a bowl of Weetabix with black honey and think: 'I heart this place...'

Blue Hill (Hagalund, Solna) view from a kitchen window

First entrance

Hagalund, Solna.
The hardest part of this blog is to keep it personal. Not private but personal. In some way that I haven't figured out yet, this blog is as an important part of my research and the move to Egypt as anything. On the surface I'm supposed to be conducting a study on the change of a traditional rural society after the Egyptian revolution, on the other hand I'm starting an experience on myself. Can I cope? How will rural Egypt affect me and my family? I think that is the main part of this blog. It is a diary of some sorts. To help me understand how I will change as my social milieu changes.

My wife and two children are leaving on July 2nd. I'm leaving around the 23rd of July.