Religion, National Identity and Nation Building
Muhammad Mitwalli Sha'rawi’s Concept of Islam and Its Ties to Modern Egyptian Politics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.18472Keywords:
Religious scholars [‘ulamā’], Nationalism, Egypt, Television, Islam, ModernityAbstract
Muhammad Mitwalli Sha'rawi (1911–1998) was a Muslim religious scholar (s. 'alim, p. 'ulama') who worked in an official capacity for the Egyptian government, and gained celebrity through his televised Quranic interpretations. By the time Sha'rawi began his television career, Al-Azhar, the premier institution for training Sunni 'ulama', was fully integrated into the apparatus of the Egyptian Republic, which made it easy for the state to solicit the help of 'ulama' like Sha'rawi in its nation-building project. Sha'rawi used Islam to bring forth a new sense of belonging, but his language about national belonging clashed with his exclusivist religious language. By looking at the attempted construction of national identity over time, this article charts the negotiation between religion and politics in late twentieth century Egypt where religion was not ousted from public discussion, but was subject to institutionalized restrictions, and allowed continuities in order to support national inclusivity.
References
Abdalla, Ahmed. 2008. The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt: 1923– 1973. Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2005. Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2000. “Introduction.” In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, edited by F. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin, 1–38. Berkley: University of California Press.
Agrama, Hussein Ali. “Secularism, sovereignty, indeterminacy: Is Egypt a secular or a religious state?” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 52 /3 (July 2010): 495–523. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0010417510000289
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.
Armstrong, John A. 2004. “Definitions, periodization, and prospects for the Longue Duree.” Nations and Nationalism 10: 9–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1354-5078.2004.00151.x
Arnal, William and Russell McCutcheon. 2013. The Sacred is the Profane: The Political Nature of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. 2003. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ayoub, Mahmoud. 2009. A Muslim View of Christianity: Essays on Dialogue. Edited by Irfan A. Omar. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Bassiouney, Reem. 2014. Language and Identity in Modern Egypt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748689644.001.0001
Brinton, Jacquelene. 2015. Preaching Islamic Renewal: Religious Authority and Media in Contemporary Egypt. Berkley: University of California Press.
Cavanaugh, William. 2009. The Myth of Religious Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385045.001.0001
Eickelman, Dale and John Anderson. 1997. “Print, Islam, and the prospects For civic pluralism: New religious writings and their audiences.” Journal of Islamic Studies 8(1): 43–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jis/8.1.43
Eickelman, Dale and Armando Salvatore. 2004. “Introduction.” In Public Islam and the Common Good, edited by A. Salvatore and D. Eickelman, 1–21. Leiden: Brill.
Fahmy, Zaid. 2011. Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Formas, Johan. 2003. “The crucial in-between: The centrality of mediation in cultural studies.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 3(1): 45–65.
Gellner, Ernest and J. Breuilly. 2008. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hirschkind, Charles. 2001. “Civic virtue and religious reason: An Islamic counterpublic.” Cultural Anthropology 16(1): 3–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.2001.16.1.3
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2010. “The global rise of religious nationalism.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 64(3): 262–273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357711003736436
———. 2001. “Rethinking the Secular and religious aspects of violence.” In Rethinking Secularism, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer, Carig Calhoun and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 185–204. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1993. “Encoding/decoding.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, 90–104. New York: Routledge.
Hammond, Andrew. 2007. Popular Culture in the Arab World: Arts, Politics and the Media. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.
Hatina, Meir. 2003. “Legacy in the Middle East historical legacy and the challenge of modernity in the Middle East: The Case of al-Azhar in Egypt.” The Muslim World 93: 51–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1478-1913.00014
———. 2010. 'Ulama', Politics, and the Public Sphere: An Egyptian Perspective. Utah: University of Utah Press.
Hefner, Robert W. 2007. “The culture, politics and future of Muslim education.” In Schooling Islam, edited by Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, 1–40. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1992. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoover, Stewart M. 2002. “The cultural construction of religion in the media.” In Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media: Explorations in Media, Religion and Culture, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 1–7. New York: Columbia University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.7312/hoov12088-intro
Hoover, Stewart M. and Shalini S. Venturelli. 1996. “The Category of the Religious: The Blindspot of Contemporary Media Theory?” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13: 251–265. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295039609366978
Jauss, Hans, R. 2001. “The identity of the poetic text in the changing horizon of understanding.” In Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies, edited by J. Machor and P. Goldstein, 7–29. New York: Routledge.
Laffan, Michael Francis. 2003. Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma Below the Winds. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203222577
Mahmood, Saba. 2012. “Religious freedom, the minority question, and geopolitics in the Middle East.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54(2): 418–446. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0010417512000096
Mann, Michael. 2003. “The autonomous power of the state.” In State Space: A Reader, edited by Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, Martin Jones, Gordon Macleod, 53–65. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Martin, David. 2014. “Nationalism and religion; collective identity and choice: The 1989 revolutions, evangelical revolution in the global south, revolution in the Arab world,” Nations and Nationalism 20: 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/nana.12034
Moustafa, Tamir. 2000. “Conflict and Cooperation Between the State and Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32: 3–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800021024
Rajagopal, Arvind. 2001. Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Indian Public. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489051
Rieffer, Barbara-Ann. 2003. “Religion and nationalism: Understanding the consequences of a complex relationship.” Ethnicities 3(2): 215–242. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468796803003002003
Sha'rawi, Muhammad Mitawalli. 1992. In interviews given to Mahmud Fawzii. Al-Shaykh al-Sha‘rawi: Min al-Qaryah ila al-Qimah. Al-Qahira: Dar al-Nashr Hatih.
———. 1987. Min faid al-Rahman fi tarbiat al-insan: Min qaul Shaykh Muhammad Mitwalli Sha'rawi, al-juz' al-thani. Al-Qahira.
———. “Shaykh Sha'rawi to Husni Mubarak.” Last modified July, 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=NGEEIn_Cpi4&feature=PlayList&p=56DAB157FC3C8344&playnext=1&index=31
———. “Al-Shaarawi on the Muslim Brotherhood.” Last modified October 1, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UraOAacsr38.
———. 1999. Tafsir al-Sha'rawi: Khawatir fadilat al-Shaykh Muhammad Mitawalli al-Sha'rawi hawla al-Qur’an al-karim. Al-Qahira: Akhbar al Yawm.
Skovgaard-Peterson, Jakob. 1997. Defining Islam for the Egyptian State. Leiden: Brill.
Smith, Anthony. 2003. Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
———. 2004. “History and National Destiny: Responses and Clarifications.” Nations and Nationalism 10(1): 195–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1354-5078.2004.00163.x
———. 1992. “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity.” International Affairs 68(1): 55–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2620461
Smith, Charles. 1997. “Imagined nationalisms: Print culture and the rise of nationalism in Egypt in light of recent scholarship.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29: 602–622.
Starrett, Gregory. 1998. Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt. Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520209268.001.0001
Tadros, Mariz. 2013. Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.5743/cairo/9789774165917.001.0001
van der Veer, Peter. 1999. “The moral state: Religion, nation and empire in Victorian and British India.” In Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, edited by Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann, 15–44. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. 2002. The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Zeghal, Malika. 1999. “Religion and politics in Egypt: The Ulama of al-Azhar, radical islam, and the state (1952–1994).” International Journal of Middle Studies 31(3): 371–399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800055483
