Frank Viviano Writes Ancient Muslim values compete with
the mall in Egypt
Two worlds living uneasily side by side
Cairo — The conflict now raging in Afghanistan is not
a war between the United States and Islam, the Bush administration
insists.- Yet in jarring contrasts throughout the Middle East, even
down to the level of two Cairo neighborhoods, the war’s underlying
tensions pit distinctly Islamic traditions, with roots deeply
embedded in 1,400-year-old Muslim values,- against the unmistakable symbols of a 21st century American
lifestyle.- “These are two competing world views, both of which
have a universal appeal, ” says Esam el-Arian, a leading
member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group that
has been outlawed as subversive by the Egyptian government. “Anyone
in the world is eligible to be a Muslim. Anyone in the world
can be an American.”- But to many, Islam embraces an entire complex of religious
and social views,- whereas America, in its exported form, represents godless
mass consumerism.- This clash of values, which existed long before the events
of Sept. 11, is nowhere more starkly apparent as in Egypt, the
most populous Arab nation with 62 million citizens. To understand
it is also to understand why several Egyptians — including the
alleged commander of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Mohammed
Atta, and Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, Dr. Ayman el-Zawahiri
— have played key roles in bin Laden’s violently anti-American
al Qaeda network.- In Cairo, the battle is symbolized by an immeasurable fault
line that lies between a nameless outdoor tea shop in a rundown
slum and a chic mall on the city’s north end, close to the official
residence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.- In their own courteous terms, the slum dwellers echo Osama
bin Laden’s assertion that they, too, are engaged in a “decisive
battle between atheism and faith.”- Four men are seated at the tea shop, located just behind
a mosque in the warren of narrow working class lanes known as
al-Sayyida Zeinab, when an American reporter approaches. By the
time he has been served a cup of heavily sweetened tea, a dozen
more residents have pulled up chairs to join them.- Goats graze in a nearby empty lot, on scraps of greens thrown
to them by a vegetable peddler. Women, all of them veiled and
many with their faces covered,- hurry by with enormous brass water jugs balanced on their
heads.- “You are not to ask them any questions, it is only allowed
to speak with men,” an interpreter warns.- The scene might have been set in a rural hamlet in the Prophet
Mohammed’s own time, but it unfolded less than a mile from the
U.S. Embassy in one of the most congested urban centers on earth,
a city where an estimated 90 percent of all dwellings have been
illegally built or are below government-set standards for sanitation
and safety.- The conversation is polite, but pointed. “When you drop
bombs on the Afghan people, you also make war on us, on our ways,”
says Mohammed Nasrut, a construction worker, pensively inhaling
from his she-sha, the Cairo version of a water pipe.- The ways to which Nasrut refers include harsh limits on the
lives and behavior of women, and a firm code of respect for elders.
“I can neither smoke nor stretch my legs out for relaxation
in front of my father,” says Ibrahim, a 30-year-old hotel
worker. Relations between the sexes, he adds “are not like
100 years ago. They are like 1,000 years ago. It is forbidden
to meet a girl at all away from her family.”- But as in traditional hamlets anywhere, this urban village
also enjoys warm,- intensely strong bonds reaching back generations. “We
look out for each other every day, make sure everything is OK,
just as our great-grandparents did in the same streets,”
says Nasrut. “Al-Sayyida Zeinab is not just a place, it
is the blood that runs through our bodies. Even if I move away
from here, that blood will still be in my veins.”- And the bonds are inseparable from the beliefs. Islam, as
a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan explained, “is
not just a religion, it is an entire way of life.” In short,
the code of Islam and the lifestyle of al- Sayyida Zeinab are
interchangeable. To threaten one, however unintentionally, is
to threaten the other.- By contrast, it would be hard to find a place more American
in spirit than the Genena Shopping Mall in the wealthy district
of Heliopolis seven miles to the northeast. If al-Sayyida Zeinab
conjures up a timeless country village, Genena has the controlled,
air-conditioned chill of an upscale Midwestern American suburb
— right down to the startling sight of an indoor ice-skating
rink, where teenaged girls in tight sweaters and short skirts
pirouette through figure-eights, oblivious to the 90-degree desert
temperatures outside.- McDonald’s is present at Genena, along with a Ciao espresso
bar, a Nike sports shop, a giant video game arcade, a booth selling
subscriptions to Showtime and boutiques displaying the latest
in push-up bras and lace thong bikinis. A Timberland outlet is
a few hundred yards down the street. The local cinema features
“Jurassic Park II,” “Legally Blonde,” Nicole
Kidman’s “Moulin Rouge” and “Planet of the Apes,”
all in English.- So thoroughly has America been implanted in Genena that the
most incongruous sight there is six teenagers dressed in the
traditional ankle- length gowns of the upper Nile Valley, country
boys gawking at the ice-skaters.- “They are window-shopping at Genena, that’s all,”
the interpreter says. “No harm in it.”- In fact, he maintains, “these boys probably consider
the people who actually buy goods at Genena to be fools, because
you can find better things much cheaper in a place like al-Sayyida
Zeinab.”- Others are less certain about the harmlessness of this exposure.
Such U.S.- based chains as McDonald’s, Hardee’s and KFC have
opened outlets all over Cairo, even in poorer areas. Spending
on fast food has doubled since 1996, according to government
statistics. Increasingly, says Dr. Magdi Nazeh of the National
Nutrition Institute, Egyptians “do not have set times for
meals,” a trend that threatens the close family ties associated
with traditional Muslim societies.- Satellite television is increasingly bringing the gospel
of consumerism into old Cairo, as well as its affluent neighborhoods,
offered on $25-per- month time-purchase plans that put modern
communications within the means of al-Sayyida Zeinab.- On each block, a receiving dish or two has bloomed, allowing
residents to watch Arabic transmissions from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon
and the Persian Gulf — but also from Israel, Western Europe
and the United States. The sounds of “Sex and the City,”
“Seinfeld” rebroadcasts and “The Young and the
Restless” vie with the muezzin’s prayers from the venerable
Zeinab mosque.- One result is a tendency among young Cairenes, even in the
poorer neighborhoods, to dream the unthinkable — moving to America,
the source of the most seductive consumer images, and a country
to which mostly well- educated Egyptians emigrated in the past.- “A few of the local kids come up to me and ask about
the U.S., but never in front of their parents,” says a 55-year-old
former dockworker returned recently from Brooklyn.
back
to index pageback to 