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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520300835 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 02/26/2019 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Revolutions Don't Stop Charity
ON 25 JANUARY 2011, TENS OF THOUSANDS of Egyptians took to the streets, beginning a movement that would alter their country and the region, though mostly in unexpected and unintended ways. Eighteen days later, longtime president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, and about four months after that, I arrived in Cairo to begin my fieldwork. Between June and December in 2011, I went back and forth between the places of ongoing protest and the places of my research. Tahrir Square had a strong pull on me, and so did the idea of a revolution, or what remained of it. It seemed possible, if not urgent, to rethink and reimagine what it means to live with and among others. This was a moment of profound and contagious hopefulness. But that moment is over. Most of the writing of this book took place during a later moment, when the revolution had been lost or stolen — a moment of far-reaching oppression; a moment, as many of my activist friends would say, of profound and contagious hopelessness.
How do we inhabit this space? Between hopefulness and disillusionment, between fieldwork and writing, between a time still infused with a revolutionary spirit, and a time when a counterrevolution has crushed this spirit? This book combines a tense temporal arc — from uprising to disappointment — with another arc, a spatial one: from the profoundly symbolic space of Tahrir Square to the multiple and banal spaces of giving, including in neighborhoods that are not even represented on the city's maps. Most of this book tells stories of people handing out food in Cairo's alleys, slums, and Sufi khidmas, as well as people at the receiving end. The people with whom I spent the other half of my days — the activists who were fighting an increasingly losing battle — nearly all dismiss such forms of giving as apolitical if not anti-political. At times, it felt as though the kinds of practices I was studying were not even translatable into a language that would make sense to secular progressives, the people with whom, I thought, I shared many values, commitments, and sensibilities. Among these people was Marwa, a somewhat marginal figure in the context of my fieldwork whose random comment nevertheless had a lasting impact on me.
I met Marwa when I was back in Egypt in June 2012, not long before Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, became president. At the time, protesters were once again gathering at Tahrir Square, which had also become a popular destination for sightseers. Families were strolling, taking pictures, posing. I met up with Hani, an activist friend, and two friends of his: ?Azza, who lives in Cairo, and her cousin Marwa, who lives in Paris, returns to Cairo once a year, and who introduced herself as a revolutionary. Walking past murals depicting young men who had died in the uprising, we started chatting. Mostly in Arabic, some English, and a word here and there in French. It was comfortable, smooth, and fun. We talked about politics: Did it make sense to vote for the presidential candidate Khaled Ali, the lawyer-activist fighting for labor rights, even though he did not stand a chance? How could diasporic Egyptians like Marwa support the activists in Egypt?
Later, when Hani gave me a ride home, Marwa asked from the backseat what exactly I was doing in Cairo. I gave a short answer: "studying 'amal al-khayr." The latter phrase means "doing good deeds" and is often translated as "charity." Thinking back, I suspect that the brevity of my answer was intended to cover up my own discomfort — I felt a twinge of embarrassment, as I often did, for not being engaged in a more progressive, cutting-edge, revolutionary research project. I did not want to be mistaken for an Orientalist or folklorist trying to capture quaint customs and beliefs; I tried to think of how best to explain the politics of my project. But before I could formulate my thoughts, Marwa cut me off.
"I'm against all forms of ?amal al-khayr! They keep people in a state of dependency. They don't change anything."
I felt a gulf widen between Marwa and me, and I felt defensive. What's so bad about dependency? I thought with frustration. We're all dependent; no one is autonomous. And these practices don't change anything? Say that to the people who ate the meals that Madame Salwa handed out this morning. And in any case: What are you doing to make a difference in the lives of people struggling to get by?
I said none of these things.
Instead 'Azza, Marwa's cousin, jumped in: "Some people who do khayr are just after power, like the Muslim Brotherhood, but others are not." She told us that whenever the young woman who cleans their home has extra money, she gives it to the charity organization Resala. Doing good is about an attitude, an orientedness toward others, cultivated even by those who themselves have very little. "It's about everyone helping everyone else." Charity is a good thing, she seemed to be saying.
Marwa disagreed. She said it would be better to have higher taxes and to use them to fund social services. Herself a critic of neoliberal and humanitarian logics, she said that if social services are provided by NGOs, conditions are attached. If they are offered by individuals, they are unreliable. This should be the state's job. Hani joined the conversation and claimed that Egyptians already pay a minimum of 25 percent taxes on income, in addition to sales taxes.
Marwa wasn't impressed.
"In France we pay over 40 percent, and if you're rich, you pay over 50 percent. Now we're talking! Paying taxes is an investment in the future."
We were back on familiar grounds: higher taxes. A welfare state. Investing in the future.
Was that all that remained of the revolutionary imagination that had swept us all away in 2011? Is a stronger welfare state the only viable definition of social justice? What about the stories people had been telling about Tahrir Square, tales of togetherness not contained by the framework of the state? What of other modes of being that are not contained by the state, nor dependent on it? The khidmas, voluntarism, Madame Salwa's meals, the sensibilities that are cultivated through seemingly mundane practices such as almsgiving. Do they not enact their own form of justice?
All this ran through my head as I sat in that car. How could I get this across to Marwa? But then again, who am I to say what a revolutionary imagination should consist of? At least Marwa is fully Egyptian, though she, too, lives elsewhere. I'm only half-Egyptian.
Hani had reached my street. It was too late to try to explain. I felt a sense of relief. I wanted to forget about this moment, the disturbing realization that my research project was utterly incomprehensible to self-declared revolutionaries like Marwa. That the gap was simply too big.
Before I got out of the car, Marwa asked for my contact information. She said we should be in touch and write an article together.
"About what?" I asked.
"About how charity is anti-social-justice."
I did not know it at the time but with this invitation, with this assertion, Marwa took part in shaping this book. This is not simply a study of Islamic charity; it is about charity at a time of revolution. My goal is not to celebrate religion's hidden revolutionary potentials; I rather hope to ethnographically open up a space in which we can think beyond the entrenched claim that "charity" inherently and necessarily stands in the way of "social justice."
In this book, the loudness of the revolution is in conversation with the quiet everyday practices of pious givers and recipients — people who tend to get far less international attention than political activists. I begin by amplifying the revolutionary moment that formed the backdrop to much of my fieldwork and to my thinking about an Islamic ethics of giving. Along with my time at Tahrir Square in the summer and fall of 2011, I draw on conversations with activists and friends over the years, and on fifteen interviews with selfdeclared revolutionaries. Through the activists' views and recollections, impressionistic as they are, I reflect on how the uprising related to the problems of poverty and social inequality — problems that also lie at the heart of religious charity practices, yet there are differently framed, understood, and addressed.
By the end of this chapter, the revolution fades into the background only to reemerge in the form of a counterrevolution in the final chapter. Yet, voices of the revolution will echo throughout this book, inviting us to think about convergences, resonances, and frictions.
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY
When the protests began in Egypt, I was propped up on a sofa. I had broken my ankle five days earlier, while visiting my parents in Germany. And so, we watched together: my Egyptian mother, who had moved to Germany almost fifty years earlier. My German father who, since his retirement, had been moving with my mother back and forth between the two countries. My sister and brother-in-law. And occasional visitors who were hoping to get an insider's view from my mother. The TV was on nonstop, along with two or three laptops showing Twitter feeds and Facebook posts and live streaming al-Jazeera both in English and Arabic. We called relatives and friends in Cairo. Some were worried the city might descend into chaos; others sounded ecstatic. The streets of Egypt were filled with disbelief and excitement, but also laced with fear.
The protesters in Cairo converged at Tahrir Square, literally "Liberation Square," a large open area downtown. By nightfall, security forces had violently dispersed the crowds, but the next day, the square was again filled with people. In the days that followed, the protests continued, calling for an end to police violence; then that grew into a call for the regime's fall; and then to a full-throated demand for bread, freedom, and social justice. Despite a media blackout, everyone knew violent clashes were happening between protesters and the police, especially in Suez and Mahalla, two cities with a long history of labor organizing. On 28 January, the so-called Friday of Anger, even more people joined the demonstrations after the communal Friday prayer. Police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons into the crowds, and over a thousand protesters were injured. Later many would say that on this day they realized that something big was happening.
Withstanding the riot police's arsenal of crowd dispersal weapons, protesters began occupying Tahrir Square; others began delivering food, blankets, and medicine. Tahrir Square became an international stage and a space in which protesters were protected by their sheer numbers, even as they collectively defied the military-imposed curfew (the police had withdrawn, and the army taken over). The square became a city of sorts, replete with eight hospitals, six pharmacies, thirteen medical stations with first aid supplies for injured protesters, toilets built by volunteer plumbers, a school, barbers, security, a newspaper, a radio station, a projector and screen to watch the news and footage of clashes, exhibitions of art produced at the square, stages for musicians, memorials for the uprising's martyrs, a tent labeled "library," and a media tent.
Marked by togetherness and solidarity, the days at the square would come to fuel the utopian imagination of activists (and social scientists) for years to come. The Tahrir sit-in would later also be compared to the Occupy movement, with calls such as "America needs its own Tahrir" or "Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?" and some Tahrir activists visited New York to support Occupy Wall Street. As many have noted, however, the comparison is somewhat flawed. The Tahrir occupation was far larger and far more volatile. While at times the atmosphere at the square was festive and carnivalesque, fierce battles continued to be waged against pro-Mubarak protesters trying to break in, culminating in the so-called Battle of the Camel on 2 February 2011, when pro-regime thugs descended upon the square on horses and camels, armed with sticks, clubs, whips, and swords. Using improvised shields and weapons, such as burned-out police cars and pavement tiles, the protesters defended the square as best they could. Five were killed and over eight hundred were injured, but the protesters prevailed. Over the next two days, even more Egyptians flooded the square, defying the army's calls to disperse the crowds and the anti-protest stance of the Coptic Church and of prominent Muslim scholars associated with al-Azhar, the authoritative institution of Sunni Islam.
The protesters persisted, and a newly founded federation of independent trade unions called for a general strike. Tens of thousands of workers — including those employed at large and strategic workplaces like the Cairo Public Transport Authority, Egyptian State Railways, the subsidiary companies of the Suez Canal Authority, the state electrical company, and Mahalla's textile workers — answered the call, engaging in some sixty strikes and protests (Beinin 2016). Finally, on 11 February 2011, eighteen days after the uprising had started, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. By that time, I had returned to my teaching in Toronto, and in June 2011, having finished the semester and finally able to walk again without crutches, I headed to Cairo, a city transformed, buzzing with ideas, debates, and new initiatives. Less than a month after my arrival, protesters began another sit-in at Tahrir Square to object to the military trials and the slowness of reforms, to demand that the police officers who had been implicated in the killing of protesters be held accountable, and to once again call for bread, freedom, and social justice.
My friend 'Umar, who is an engineer and a Sufi, accompanied me on my first visit to the sit-in. As he put it, at that point the square was merely an echo of what it had been like during the eighteen decisive days, but it was nevertheless "unlike anything you've ever seen." He described feeling sakina in the midst of the square, a term that refers to calm or peace but also to God's presence. To him, he said, looking at the protesters' faces was a form of worship (?ibada); the faces were "God's gallery."
While the protests continued, elections were held. The Muslim Brotherhood won nearly half the seats in parliament, and Mohamed Morsi, aligned with the organization, won the presidency. Many Egyptians I know voted for Morsi but soon came to criticize him for his failure to make progress on the country's economic crisis, and they accused him of having more loyalty toward the Muslim Brotherhood than toward the nation. Capitalizing on this widespread discontent, the military ousted Morsi in July 2013 and put him into solitary confinement (where he remained five years later). Egyptian security forces subsequently raided two sit-ins of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo, killing over eight hundred people. In June 2014, Abdelfattah el-Sisi, the former minister of defense, became president. Since then, the state has been violently cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood and numerous NGOs in the country — all in the name of stability and security. Under the same pretext, hundreds of activists have been arrested, tortured, or have disappeared. At the same time, the military has expanded its business empire, while a politics of "tightened belts" has made it even more difficult for the poor to get by.
In March 2018, el-Sisi was reelected for a second term with 97 percent of the vote. His sole opponent was someone whom political scientist Mona El-Ghobashy (2018) calls "an obscure toady gleaned from the scrap heap of fourth-rate politicians," who on his Facebook page had touted his own support for el-Sisi. But, aside from the elections, across different social classes, many Egyptians continue placing hope in el-Sisi's promises of development, growth, recovery, and stability — promises to which I return in the final chapter. Most former activists I know, however, are disillusioned, skeptical, cynical, or depressed. Still, they hold on to their memories of 2011, and the things they were fighting for. It is these things — vague, contradictory, and elusive as they might be — that I want to put into conversation with an ethics of giving that people like Marwa are quick to dismiss as irrelevant, or even an obstacle, to the revolutionary struggle.
WHOSE REVOLUTION? WHOSE JUSTICE?
Before erupting on Cairo's streets, waves of mass protest had swept over Tunisia, where one of the key catalysts was the death of Mohammad Bouazizi. A twenty-six-year-old vendor and the sole income earner for his extended family of eight, Bouazizi sold vegetables from a cart in the town of Sidi Bouzid. When a policewoman confiscated his cart and produce, he went to the local municipality officials to complain, and when his complaints were rejected, he doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire. His act of self-immolation led to mass protests. He died ten days before longtime Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Giving to God"
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Copyright © 2019 Amira Mittermaier.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Illustrations vii
Note on Transliteration ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
During The Revolution
1 Revolutions Don't Stop Charity 21
Giving
2 Divine Minimum Wage 49
3 Caravan to Paradise 74
Receiving
4 Performances of Poverty 105
5 All Thanks Belong to God 129
After The Revolution
6 Tomorrow Is Better 155
Postscript 179
Notes 187
Glossary 209
Bibliography 211
Index 221