“One cannot achieve true faith until one wants for one’s neighbor what he or she wants for himself or herself.” When I asked the advisor to the Egyptian Grand Mufti what he thought was the most beautiful part of Islam, he offered this response, as written by the prophet Mohamed.
That speaker ended a day of activity related to Islamic Cairo and Egypt. I’ll come back to him in a bit. We began with a lecture on Islamic art and architecture from an architect who explained that the art that comes from Islam is a “state of being.” Heexplained that in Islam, all activities are meant to be contemplative and acts of art, even pouring milk over Cornflakes (his example). Shortly afterwards we walked through the King Mohamed Ali Mosque and Islamic Cairo. The mosque is a beautiful structure with many European influences, including basilica-like domes and marble column work. The Islamic elements of geometric designs in window screens and in marble work were also present. Islamic Cairo has houses from the 1300s still as well as ancient mosques and sisterns for the poor to take water. The sisterns are no longer used but were used centuries ago when there was no running water in the city—it was a way to make an offering to the poor. There is also a large, touristy shopping district where I satisfied my desire to buy a nice piece of silver by researching the going rate for a gram of silver. I finally settled in with Imar inside his tiny market stall, who insisted on offering me a cup of tea (the tradition in many of the market stalls here). I didn’t take the tea but did manage to reduce his original asking price by half. Some of the seminar participants feel we should just give them what they ask. Maybe it’s the years of living in Mexico where negotiating prices was the norm that make me want to bargain down to market value. There’s a lot more I could say about this, but I’ll continue with Islam.
After a quick swim back at the hotel, I joined the group in the Thebes Conference Room (inside the palace of the hotel, a room with grand ceilings and its own Islamic architecture with geometric shapes around the windows in shades of green and yellow). We listened to a discussion about Islamic feminism. The most important point I took was that, according to our speaker, women were not relegated to the role of staying inside the home until modernity. It was only in the 19th century, she said, that scholars began interpreting the Koran to say that women should stay inside the home. She said that there are many other interpretations where women do have an equal status to men, and the Islamic feminists are trying to point to those points. She said they have had some successes in Egypt, particularly in securing the rights of women in the workplace to offer, for example, better pregnancy benefits than offered in the US.
Back to the advisor to the Grand Mufti (a mufti is a state-sanctioned wise person who interprets the Koran, somewhat similar to the appointment of a bishop). The advisor completed his PhD with a dissertation on interfaith dialogue at Indiana and then lived in New York until 2004. He explained the ten most important parts of Islam to us, many aspects of which are quite similar to Christianity. Naturally, our group had a lot of questions about Islam in a post 9/11 world. He explained that when he lived in the US, he wrote articles, even for the New York Times, spoke at over 30 churches and synagogues, and worked with other Muslims in the US to help explain that 9/11 was not a representation of Islam but rather an aberration of what he referred to as Islamic “exclusivists” or extremists. He explained that Islamic people are just like people everywhere—with their own problems, wanting to please God, wanting to do their best in life.
What struck me was that if we had had this dialogue with a great scholar of Buddhism, for example, our questions would not have been as political. Yes, we’re in Egypt, a 90% Islamic country. But it seemed like a pity for me that instead of learning more about Islam and how it influences the daily life of Egyptians, we spent our time looking through the lends of 9/11 and its aftermath. I don’t want to discount the tragedy and the repercussions of 9/11, but I do wish we could get beyond politics and work toward understanding each other. That’s why I started with the quote he shared. Like so many religious traditions, there are sentiments and words of wisdom that resonate with us all. And I left our discussion with the thought of trying to want for my neighbor what I want for myself and felt that indeed there are places of common understanding if we can begin to hear each other.
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