The controversy over the headscarf in Egypt .. an uproar driven by politics

The experience of more than 3 decades of following the debate on cultural religious issues - both within different countries and internationally - has taught me to research the politics behind them, and related to this is another development that has emerged over the past decade, which is that an intense conflict has erupted over what I call the "spirit of Islam";

It is a battle over patterns of religiosity that should prevail within countries and be exported internationally.

Promoting what the Arab rulers call "moderate Islam" - which is in conflict in the region over who represents it - by institutionalizing and organizing the religious sphere;

It means reaching an image of Islam that does not represent a threat to their political entities, their survival, the pattern of their alliances, their financial and international networks of privileges, and not Islam that redistributes power and wealth in society - so that it will not be a state among the rich - as stipulated in the verse of Surat Al-Hashr.

The debate about the veil is old and renewed, dating back to Qassem Amin in his book on women’s liberation, which was published at the end of the 19th century, and extended throughout the 20th century to the present day - and almost no era of Egyptian history is devoid of it, but at every stage the parties involved in it are multiple, differ, and vary Arguments used in controversy about it

My view - then - is that the struggle over the various modes of religiosity and the heated religious debates;

It is a political struggle par excellence, dressed up in religious clothing or using religious preambles.

In more clear terms: the politician has penetrated the religious to reproduce it as an expression of the interests of those who stand behind it, and what we are witnessing are crises and political conflicts with religious and cultural dimensions in which the various parties are testing the balances of power and interests among them in light of a strong mixture of interests and religious feelings.

With the predominance of the politician - then - and his tyranny, everyone is summoned on his floor, which ignites the lines of contact, and therefore it is necessary to distinguish between the multiple levels;

Especially between the political and the religious/cultural, with awareness of the political ground on which the religious moves.

So what is the political ground on which the debate over the issue of the veil in Egypt is moving?

Which Saad Al-Hilali - Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University - recently launched through the "Al-Hekaya" program presented by Amr Adib - one of the media outlets for the Egyptian regime.

And through MBC Egypt, the Saudi channel dedicated to Egyptian affairs?

By the way, the debate about the veil is old and renewed, dating back to Qassem Amin in his book on women’s liberation, which was published at the end of the 19th century, and extended throughout the 20th century to the present day - and almost no era of Egyptian history is devoid of it, but at every stage there are multiple parties involved in it, The arguments used in the controversy vary, and most importantly, the political, economic and social contexts in which it takes place are very different, which makes the underlying policy different;

Although they have some common characteristics.

The political ground in the current debate revolves around three elements:

First

: The resurgence of religious debate and political nationalization

At a time when the political and economic debate is being dealt with with the utmost firmness by the Egyptian regime;

He notes the raging of religious debate in surging waves that hardly one ends until another begins.

He notes that the debate seems ineffective in practice, when the various participants put more effort into expressing their own positions rather than talking to each other.

In the meantime;

Officials are free to act no matter what is circulated in public.

It is true that the intensification of religious debate reflects the regime’s inability to fully control the religious sphere, despite its success to a large extent in controlling the political and economic spheres.

This argument is also used to serve the further emptying of the political sphere.

When the public debate is diverted to marginal issues that do not revolve around the distribution of power and wealth in society;

The central issue for all Egyptians and Arabs, which revolves around an efficient political system capable of meeting the requirements of their decent living.

The tyranny of the religious over the political, and the political over the religious leads to confusion for everyone, and most importantly is to cover up people’s priorities and issues;

The high ceiling of religious controversy is not matched by the same ceiling in politics or the distribution of wealth, and daring in religion is not matched by daring over power or the foundations of wealth, and disagreement over the formulations of the articles of the constitution is not rewarded by the effort to activate it.

Here is a paradox that is very noteworthy.

Based on the thesis of Nathan Brown in his book "Controversies of Islam" - published in English in 2017 - despite the escalation of the debate about religion in the public debate in the Arab region, with one exception: the creation of an emotional orientation towards some political practices and forces;

The republic of arguments and religious controversy does not affect the real politics of the countries of the region and does not impose a tangible change on them, and the general arguments about Islam convince and influence the change of policy only on rare occasions.

He adds that "the problem is not a dearth of argument and argument, but rather the weakness of institutional mechanisms for translating public debates into public policies."

Moreover, political systems and institutions in general are not prepared to reflect political arguments of any kind, hence the problem of weak political structures.

With the weakening of its institutional culture in terms of the ability to manage diversity and pluralism;

They only know the language of exclusion and oppression.

The matter was exacerbated by the fact that the nature and characteristics of the religious debate leaves its mark on the political sphere when polarization prevails.

Failure to connect to the argument for governance reinforces polarization, gives little room for persuasion, and provides few incentives for compromise or attempts at compromise.

Polarization is an environment in which authoritarian regimes grow and are nourished by it.

We also see heated debates separate from any outcome, and they are heated up especially for this very reason.

Especially since politics has the ability to amplify some voices at the expense of others, given that some of these spaces operate under the watchful eyes of the security services.

And politics - by virtue of the nature of religious debate - turns to work in one direction and not - by its nature - in multiple directions, and last but not least;

What I called in the middle of the first decade of this century the “excess of religiosity” in Egyptian society leads politics to be of an ideological nature centered around identity;

It is not programmatic or “political,” as we witnessed during the Arab Spring, in which the secular Islamic debate intensified with the inability to provide solutions to the problems of the masses. It may take a doctrinal nature when governed by the vocabulary of right and wrong, right and wrong.

Second: religious debate and serving the regime’s agenda;

This is done in several ways, the most important of which are:

• Complete the control of the 7/3 regime over official religious actors;

  After completing his control over everyone, there was nothing left but the Al-Azhar institution and its good sheikh, who launched successive campaigns against him from several parties whose main purpose was to submit to the authority of the political leadership.

  Among the most acute aspects of the Egyptian president’s attempts to control the religious sphere is his ongoing public dispute with the Sheikh of Al-Azhar. When he assumed the presidency in 2014, he found a mixture of religious institutions, some of which were allies to him in one way or another, while others refused to compromise, determined that the credibility of the institutions Religious faith is based on keeping a safe distance between it and daily political practices, and on its ability to protect the Islamic heritage and forensic sciences, which are a national treasure that transcends the organizational directions of senior members of the executive authorities.

  Which is one of the pillars of the legitimacy of Al-Azhar and its sheikh.

• The regime also issues perceptions of a society that is more disciplined and less rebellious, and that, after the decline of critical dangers, it devote itself to rearranging societal conditions in a way that enhances the stability of governance in the long run.

  And this understands the start now of family law procedures.

  
  

  But what does this have to do with the issue of the veil?

  Transforming the veil from being a private affair (based on the free will of its owner) to being a public affair;

  makes it associated with control and authoritarianism - whether by political or any other authoritarianism - patriarchal or patriarchal;

  In the context of a private matter, the guarantee in it is that - as presented - is done with free will without coercion from anyone.

• Complete the restoration of the land that the Islamists have “occupied” over the past five decades;

  The regime was able to eliminate them - even for a while - in the political, economic, charitable fields...etc, as well as in the religious field when it nationalized all religious institutions, but the social field in which the veil is one of its manifestations remains, and Saad Al-Hilali explicitly stated that when he said: The veil is one of the manifestations of the presence of Islamists in the public sphere, and with it an image is exported to the outside about their continued presence and influence in Egypt.

  To clarify here;

  The battle revolves around the recovery of religion from the Islamists, in order for it to be controlled and controlled. Here, we note that for the first time in the Egyptian political traditions, the president has religious opinions that he expresses;

  More importantly, it pushes state institutions to adopt it, such as the oral divorce case.

  
  

  The likes of the speeches of Al-Hilali and Ibrahim Issa...etc. Contrary to what some feminists imagine, they are not useful for advancing the liberation of women, because in return they provoke areas of religious and social conservatism, which is what the Sheikh of Al-Azhar drew attention to when he was keen to combine renewal in some issues and issues with preserving the curriculum. Heritage in view

Third: The monetization of religion while redefining political values

In the debate over the veil, two types of religious discourse emerge.

On the surface, they seem to be different, but they are of the same nature and essence with regard to women's issues:

• The first: It pushes religiosity to the areas of private individual affairs, as it requires liquidity in the interpretation of the revealed text, and it uses in one of its entrances jurisprudential pluralism - which is one of the features of Islamic historical experience - not to push the value of pluralism forward;

  But to fill the spaces of the religious void that is now being reshaped.

  The Arab Barometer survey on the relationship of Arab youth to religion showed 2021/2022;

  According to the poll, Morocco witnessed a 7% decrease in the number of people who described themselves as non-religious among all age groups, followed by Egypt, with a decrease of 6%, and Tunisia, Palestine, Jordan and Sudan, with a decrease of 4%.

  This return to religiosity is offset by an identity crisis and fragmentation in religious discourses, which has been pushed forward by social media.

  In contrast to this pattern, which uses jurisprudence for more religious fluidity;

  We find a pattern centered around the revealed text as an interpretation, a pattern driven by the historical role entrusted to it, which is to preserve Islamic teachings as it perceives them.

  As for why these two patterns are similar in terms of the nature of the position on women's rights?

  It is what we discuss in the next point.

• The two discourses - even if the feminist discourses celebrate the first - do not emanate from an integrated or holistic vision that deals with women's issues, as the Islamic feminist movement - which was able to develop a holistic perspective that triumphs for women's rights based on Sharia, but rather deals with a fragmented logic with women's rights. To conduct a dialogue with Ramzi Al-Khattabain - Al-Hilali and Al-Azhar - on the subject between 2012 and 2013, which resulted in the issuance of the Alexandria Declaration on Women’s Rights in Islam, or what was later known as the Al-Azhar Document. In addition to a number of studies explaining this declaration - he concluded that politicization the social conservatism that governs the debate on women's rights has hurt the cause;

  and that without liberation from these two factors and having a holistic vision for its establishment;

  Any talk about sub-issues of idle talk - which is Fat-Zai, which means commotion and mixing of voices - will not result in much.

  I would add that the speeches of Al-Hilali and Ibrahim Issa...etc. Contrary to what some feminists imagine, they are not useful for advancing the liberation of women, because they provoke, in turn, the areas of religious and social conservatism, which is what the Sheikh of Al-Azhar drew attention to when he was keen to combine renewal in some issues and issues with the governorate. on the traditional approach to looking at;

  It is a school that began to appear in the second half of the twentieth century, but crystallized in the last quarter of it.

• Finally;

  Is it possible to separate the debate over the veil from the current developments regarding the position on the issue of normalization with the Zionist entity in accordance with Abraham’s agreements and the claims of the Abrahamic religion?

  Its essence, regardless of the details, is "redefining the enemy".

  This relationship is realized from two angles highlighted by a report issued by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, which has a pro-Israel and neo-conservative orientation, entitled: “Reclamation: A Cultural Policy for the Arab-Israeli Partnership”:

The regime presents its initiatives related to the role of religion in Egyptian politics and public life as a call for modernity, tolerance between religions, and the fight against extremism. However, these initiatives may in fact be an attempt to extend influence and tighten control over Al-Azhar and all religious institutions and subject them to its leadership, while at the same time integrating Egyptians or sectors of them into networks its international alliances and regional sponsors.

I conclude by pointing out that monetizing religious teachings is one of the difficult issues, but if it is easy for you to redefine the enemy, and to reformulate society and the state according to what you want;

This is what the regime has been doing from 2014 until now.

Liquefaction is a temporary task whose purpose is to occupy the areas liquefied by the regime’s visions and perceptions, whose essence is control and control. However, the resurgence of religious controversy collides with this vision from 3 aspects:

• Moving the place of religious debate from the mosque to the media in its traditional and new form eases the grip of the regime;

  While mosques have been controlled and the entire religious sphere nationalized, social media has become a place of public debate rather than nationalized spaces, and the “virtual” public sphere may provide an effective basis for challenging authoritarian regimes, but not necessarily for building effective political alternatives.

• The multiplicity of participants in it shows the heterogeneity of the state itself, and this is against the general image in which the regime tries to deal with the state as a single unit that it controls.

• Encouraging religious debate supports - in terms of what the regime does not want - the Islamists' thesis that revolves around a greater religious presence in the public sphere.