A Quiet Revolution (25 page)

to a variety of organizations, including, in some cases, militant groups, were generally reluctant to admit a connection with any organization at all. The early
1990
s was an era when the government was cracking down on Islamists and making sweeping arrests, often indiscriminately group- ing together militant and mainstream Islamists.
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This era is viewed by human rights activists and other observers as a period when the government’s struggle to stamp out Islamist violence “degenerated into indiscriminate state repression,” as John Esposito wrote. “More than twenty thousand Islamists were imprisoned . . . many of them having been detained without charges and subjected to torture. Extralegal military courts that exclude the right to appeal were created; laws were enacted to restrict freedom of the press, take control of mosques, and prevent elected Islamists from leading professional asso- ciations.” Esposito’s account goes on: “Like other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the Mubarak government seized the opportunity to use its war against terrorism to silence both extremists and mainstream legal opposition.” It cracked down not only on groups that had “carried out violent attacks,” but also on others, and most particularly on the Muslim Brotherhood, which “had become dominant in university fac- ulties, labor and professional organizations and many municipalities.”
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In this atmosphere, the threat of arrest for anyone admitting con- nection with any Islamist group, no matter how nonviolent, was ever

present.

Islamists’ shared activist conception of Islam, Wickham found, shaped and informed their relations with each other. It also defined their rela- tions with the “ordinary Muslims, whose beliefs and conduct they sought to change.”
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Through da‘wa these activists enthusiastically set out to “educate their uninformed peers” about the proper practice of Islam and their proper duties as Muslims.

The da‘wa message they preached quite noticeably was not a mes- sage that appealed primarily to people’s own self-interest. On the con- trary, it stressed moral and ethical renewal and emphasized a “new ethic” of activism and responsibility that was religiously obligatory. The duty of working for the reform and renewal of society was, they taught, incum- bent on every Muslim, “regardless of its benefits and costs.”

In their da‘wa activism, notes Wickham, Islamists were drawing on a well-established Islamic tradition of da‘wa, which they transformed as they adapted it to their specific purposes. Da‘wa traditionally entailed outreach targeting non-Muslims for conversion to Islam. Among Is- lamists the targets of outreach and da‘wa were now the “ordinary” Mus- lims among whom they lived: people who, in the eighties and early nineties, still made up the mainstream Muslim majority. These “ordi- nary” Muslims regarded themselves as already observant Muslims. But to Islamist eyes they were people who had “grown up with a mistaken understanding of Islam” and who observed and practiced their religion in “faulty or incomplete” ways.
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Their goal, quite simply, as Wickham also notes, was to “indoctri- nat[e] their targets with a particular interpretation of Islam.” Moreover, this interpretation of Islam was one that, as Wickham points out, “stood apart from and challenged the validity of mainstream forms of religious faith and practice.”

Wickham’s research offers direct information on how Islamists persuaded their peers and other “ordinary” Muslims in mainstream society to adopt their understanding of Islam and its proper duties and practices, includ- ing how they induced women to adopt a new style of dress.

Islamist associations, Wickham shows, served their members in a wide variety of ways, providing them, for example, with valuable social support networks. Many of Wickham’s interviewees mentioned that Islamic networks had helped them secure jobs, obtain visas to work abroad, gain access to funds distributed by mosques, and even improve their marriage prospects. Islamist peers, for example, “could vouch for the morals of unmarried men and women and expand their range of el- igible mates.”
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Both men and women shared in these benefits. Being part of the Islamist network and wearing Islamic dress in fact empowered the young, Wickham found, giving them a sense of moral authority in relation to parents and neighbors, for instance. Thus, paradoxically, Wickham ob- served, adopting a strict Islamic code enabled women to be freer to flout traditional limits on their autonomy. This was particularly important to

lower-middle-class women traditionally subject to confining conven- tional codes. By adopting Islamic codes and dress, such young women “gained an aura of respectability that enabled them to move more freely in public spaces without fear of social sanction.” In addition, Wickham points out, “they were able to invoke their ‘rights in Islam’ as a means to mobilize social pressure against parents or spouses who mistreated them.” Such findings of course are entirely in consonance with Macleod’s findings.

But Wickham goes on to make quite clear that, practical and use- ful though the dress was for some women, hijab and Islamic attire were also being quite deliberately, actively, and systematically promoted by Islamists. Among the women who adopted the dress were young women who attended weekly religious classes taught by teachers who circulated from one neighborhood mosque to another. Several among them, in- cluding some who wore
niqab
(the veil covering the lower half of the face), said that they had first been persuaded to wear it through the ser- mons of a charismatic young preacher at their neighborhood mosque. In addition to persuading young women to wear Islamic dress, this imam would rebuke parents who objected to the niqab. “What’s wrong with it? Isn’t it proper, following the path of the Prophet?” In addition to attest- ing to the methods of persuasion being used, this account (along with those offered by researchers of the previous decade) attests to the grow- ing commonness of women’s attending mosques, a further change that Islamism was bringing about, and further evidence of the movement’s ongoing successes.

Two of Wickham’s descriptions illuminatingly capture Islamist outreach and da‘wa methods and strategies. Simultaneously they vividly convey a sense of how Islamists thought about the da‘wa work they en- gaged in. In the first of these vignettes, Wickham, interviewing a group of young male Islamists, asks if they distributed pamphlets outside pri- vate mosques after Friday prayers. The government does not permit this, they respond—and in any case, as one of them goes on to explain, hand- ing out pamphlets is not an effective way of reaching people, for people simply take the pamphlet, read it, and throw it away. “What is needed is a change of heart,” the speaker continued. For example, he said:

A group of my committed friends and I will think of getting two or three other guys from our neighborhoods more in- volved. So we invite them to play soccer, but of course it’s not only soccer; we also talk to them about right and wrong. They see that we play fair, that we don’t cheat, that we set a good ex- ample, and gradually, gently, over time, we try to show them the right path.
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In the second account Wickham describes a number of interviews she conducted: one set with a woman who had been persuaded to wear Islamic dress, and then another set with the women who had persuaded her, as well as others, to wear it. The woman, Salma, had acted in high school, and in her junior year she was asked to play a “big role.” One of her classmates, who wore
khimar
(a garment that, Wickham explains, was an “Islamically correct” dress covering hair, neck, and torso), in- vited her to come and talk with another young woman, Siyam, who in addition wore the niqab. Siyam explained to Salma that “acting was for- bidden in Islam,” and she suggested that Salma begin reading the Quran. When Salma did so, she found herself in tears. But how, she asked, could she leave acting? “They said, what’s more important, to please God or to be an actress? I told them I will start wearing the khimar on the first day of Ramadan. So two weeks later, at the start of Ramadan, they brought me the khimar. The girls all helped with the cost; that’s how they do it, they bring it to you as a gift.”
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The second set of interviews included conversations with the women who had been involved in introducing Salma to “the movement.” Thus one woman explained that she and others in her Islamist circle had identified Salma as someone “who would be receptive to the idea of veil- ing, given that she was serious and well-meaning. ‘We saw in her the de- sire to be a good person and to obey God.’” Their actions obviously were among the strategies activists drew on to help women make the decision to veil. As another Islamist woman explained, “We buy the khimar for those who can’t afford it, or one of us gets the material and another one sews it. When a woman is ready to make the decision, we try to get things ready very quickly, before she changes her mind.” Peer pressure and gen- tle albeit insidiously powerful coercion toward social conformity and the

acceptance of “correct” religious practice (“Isn’t it proper, following the path of the Prophet?”) clearly were all brought into play in the process of Islamist da‘wa and outreach in regard to Islamic dress.

A sense of the motivations of Islamists and of the vision and com- mitments informing their work vividly emerges from Wickham’s reports of her interviews. One woman who had been active in the movement since the
1970
s explained that she fully identified with the goals of the

Muslim Brotherhood as articulated by al-Banna. “Our goal in life is to promote the da‘wa. I want to add a brick to the edifice of Islam in my so- ciety and in the world.” In pursuit of this goal she explained, “I will raise my children in the correct way and, through my work, try to ensure that the people around me come closer to Islam.” This woman’s commit- ment had led her to establish an Islamic kindergarten. “‘When mothers come to the mosque, I encourage them to send their children to our school; I tell them not to worry about the money.’ She stressed that the earlier a child was imbued with the principles of Islam, the better. ‘The new generation is in our hands,’ she declared.”

Activism also meant fully engaged participation in the political process. While non-Islamists typically withdrew from the political process, viewing it as hopeless and/or dangerous, the Muslim Brother- hood, for example, stressing every Muslim’s duty to work for social and political reform, urged people to be fully involved in society and to vote. Wickham quotes one young activist saying to her: “The young person who is religious is the one who is interested in the affairs of society— Islam requires it.” Another said: “An observant Muslim will not be quiet when she sees oppression or wrong-doing going on around her.”

Mainstream Islamism, maintains Wickham, in contrast to militant Is- lamism, is not simply “against the status quo but also for a better alter- native.” Though couched in religious terms, their vision for a better society, she writes, “embodies many of the same hopes and aspirations

—for freedom from dictatorship and for social justice and public ac- countability—that have inspired secular movements for democracy else- where around the globe.” The hope it offers for a better future through the project of social and moral renewal is, she writes, a “constructive and life-affirming one,” and it is the “main source of its appeal.”
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This focus on the future and a passionate preoccupation with work- ing to change and improve society also gave Islamists an optimistic out- look, which they evidently also cultivated. Wickham found that a sense of optimism about the future was widespread among Islamists. In the words of one young Islamist who worked in a bookstore selling Islamic books: “If you talk to ordinary youth, you will find that they are nega- tivists . . . they are miserable and they complain a lot and they feel that nothing can be done. But Muslim youths are positive thinking.”

Indeed, in interview after interview, Wickham notes, Islamists pointed out that while others despaired and complained, they were “pos- itive thinkers.” Despite the difficulties that Islamists were undergoing, they commonly believed that the “influence of Islam as a global force was destined to expand.”

This faith in Islam’s inevitable advance was prevalent among re- formists and militants alike. Accompanying it, often, was the belief that the West was in decline, a fact evidenced, they argued, by the “high rates of crime, teen pregnancy, and drug use; the breakdown of the family, and the presence of homelessness and poverty amid great wealth.” Only Islam, they believed, “could offer humankind the moral and spiritual framework it needed, and in time this would be obvious to all.”
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An Is- lamist journalist captured this common understanding of Islam’s in- evitable advance in the following words:

First Islam will spread through the neighborhoods, and then to Egyptian society as a whole, and then to the Egyptian state, and then to other Muslim countries, and then to countries in which Muslims were formerly the rulers, and then to other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States.
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Such was the vision and the world that Islamists were tirelessly working to bring into being. This was the early
1990
s, a time when Is- lamism was certainly a rising force in Egypt but when also its vision, commitments, and practices had not as yet become the norm for the overwhelming majority of society, as they would come to be by the close of the century.

Wickham describes a moment in
1991
that captures a sense of the vision, energy, and commitment that Islamists were bringing to their lives, at work and at play, in pursuit of their goals of steadily working to Islamize and profoundly transform society—first Egypt’s, then those of other Muslim countries, and onward to other parts of the world, “in- cluding Europe and the United States.”
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On a spring evening that year, Wickham joined an audience of about three hundred to watch a play at the Engineers’ Association Sport- ing club. The club, in Zamalek, an affluent Cairo suburb, in the past had been frequented by Westernized engineers and their families. Now, and since Islamists had taken over the Engineers’ Association in the mid- eighties, it catered to a different clientele. The women in the audience all wore Islamic dress and sat on the right of the central aisle—the men sat on the left.