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Chapter 1: Egypt and North Africa
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CHAPTER I tSl1pt al1~ Noril1 Africa Peter Von Siver) 1YI ~'119g9, an eighteen-year-old woolcarder set fire to the Husayn Mosque in Cairo. The incident was written up in an Islamic newspaper by a journalist who deplored the act. The article began by asking why this young man would travel from his northern suburb all the way downtown to pray in a mausoleum-mosquea place where, because of his stance on saint veneration, he believed prayer would be invalid; could he not instead have gone to any of the many mosques ofCairo that did not have tombs? In the remainder of the article, the journalist presents authoritative opinions by establishment figures on the specific requirements of order and decorum during mausoleum visits and on ordinary Muslims wrongly taking the law into their own hands. The article concluded that the woolcarder's act was indefensible .I This incident illustrates a typically modern conflict in northern Africa. A Muslim accepting the teaching of absolute separation between God and his creation literally takes drastic action to end the deeply rooted popular tradition of saint veneration in Egypt. And a believer in the traditionally broad Sunni orthodoxy defends saint veneration, provided it occurs in an orderly fashion according to accepted custom (adab). The conflict is not without precedent in earlier centuries, but it is only today that the two positions are seen as irreconcilable, This chapter deals with, first, the formation (700-r250 C.E.) and dominance (I250-I800 C.E.) of a broad Sunni orthodoxy as the religion of the majority of the inhabitants of northern Africa; and second, modern efforts at political centralization and a narrowing of orthodox Sunnism, both ofwhich have contributed to the rise of contemporary Islamism (r800 to the present). The form..\tiN1 "\11~ Domil1..\l1ce ofSl-fl1l1i Ortho~oxl1 (700-1800) 22 The promotion of a specific religion as orthodoxy by an empire is a relatively late phenomenon in world history. The first to be so promoted was Zoroastrianism, adopted by the Persian Sasanids (224-651 C.E.) as their state religion. Islam, supported by the Arab caliphal dynasties of the Umayyads and 'Abbasids as the religion oftheir far-flung empire after their rise in the seventh century C.E., was the most recent . In all cases-be it Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, or Islam-the endorsed religion was attributed to a founding figure who preceded the empire. These religions went through more or less extended formative phases in the empires before they crystallized into dominant orthodoxies and a variety of heterodoxies that either died out or became marginaP Christianity, the state religion ofthe Roman-Byzantine Empire from the fourth century C.E., was in the last stage of its doctrinal evolution toward imperial orthodoxy when the Arabs occupied Byzantine Syria and Egypt in 634-55. It appears that it was the still unsettled question of a Christian orthodoxy for the Byzantine Empire that inspired the rulers of the new Arab empire to search for their own, independent , religion. Caliph 'Abd ai-Malik (685-705) was the first to leave us an idea of the beginnings of this new religion in the inscriptions of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691). He called this new religion "Islam" and proclaimed its superiority over Christianity.3 During the early seventh century, Byzantium had been racked by the controversy between the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria over the orthodox interpretation of Christology. Constantinople advanced the doctrine of Christ's mysteriously double nature, divine as well as human (the Nicene Creed). Alexandria insisted on the more rational doctrine ofGod's single, divine nature descending into the human form of}esus (Coptic monophysitism). While the emperors vainly sought to impose a compromise formula, the caliphs took advantage of their disarray. "Do not speak of three (gods)," warns one of the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, disposing of Christology altogether.4 Islam was presented as the new, superior religion , built on a clear, rational separation between a single, non-Trinitarian God and the world. Proclaiming a new religion was one thing; turning it into an orthodoxy was another . Inevitably Islam underwent the same process of rancorous divisions as did Christianity before orthodoxy eventually emerged. The rancor began over the nature ofthe caliphate and its ability to define doctrine. The caliphs interpreted themselves as representatives (caliphs) of God, and said that their decisions, therefore, were divine writ. On the other hand, it was claimed that because the divine word was laid...