The quest for Muslim liberalism: An Egyptian’s journey from ultraconservatism to liberalism

Ahmed M. Abou Hussein *

An Egyptian man waves the national flag 

next to a graffiti on a newly whitewashed wall

 in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday, Sept. 21. 

(PHOTO ap, Nasser Nasser)

I come from a typical Egyptian family that did not emphasize religious teachings as much as it did morals in general. Stealing, lying and cheating are bad traits because they are immoral, not because they are forbidden.

My relationship with Islam was very opaque until the age of 15, when a friend of ours started attending religious seminars and listening to Islamic recordings by state-banned sheikhs. I started to indulge myself in conservative Islamic teachings so fast that, as I remember, in the first few months of being a practicing Muslim, I read dozens of Islamic books and booklets (printed in the Gulf), listened to multiple recordings and attended dozens of Islamic seminars. The excitement of getting to know my religion and doing something against the state was quite gratifying, yet not fulfilling. Soon and at the age of 16, I stopped talking to girls or shaking their hands, listening to music, watching television or going to the movies. My family had some objections, but the more they objected, the more stubborn I became.

It was like an unofficial competition with everybody. The more alarmed people would be by my drastic views, the firmer I became. However, whenever I was alone, I would start doubting and questioning. “Is Islam so inflexible?” I asked myself repeatedly. Later on, I started to discuss these matters with my ultraconservative friends. I started voicing my opinions against our segregation from women. We should not focus all of our attention on what they wear or don’t wear. I started to read about music’s history and wonder how it could be wrong to listen to music when it can make you love God, the world and humanity. Above all I started to question our sense of superiority over other faiths. “Fascism,” I remember saying once. I attended a seminar on a famous ultraconservative sheikh, in which I felt he was preaching hate, whether it be towards Sufis, Asharites, Christians, Jews, or whoever. I detested his message of hate.

As I joined the American University in Cairo (AUC), I detached myself from the ultraconservative crowd, which some call Salafis, though I don’t. Why not? Salafi means someone who bases the foundations of his faith on the beliefs and actions of the Prophet (PBUH) and his companions. This means that all Muslims are Salafis, not a specific group. Therefore, people with ultraconservative ideas shouldn’t be called Salafis or Islamists, they should be called ultraconservative. At AUC I became friends with a group of “moderate Islamists” which later I identified as youth of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were nice people dedicated to charity. However, I was appalled by their extreme attitude of Islamizing everything -- Islamic music, Islamic acting, Islamic politics, Islamic demonstrations, Islamic meetings (gender segregation), Islamic male dominance (girls cannot head the club) and so on. Their greatest rival was a group called the Christian Assembly, a religious group that became political; both these groups helped to segment a supposedly liberal university into two camps with the crescent and cross apart. For me both groups were the same. They notoriously used religion for political gains and manipulating the masses, which resembles the current situation in Egypt. In the Islamic group, I didn’t get the chance to question, to preserve my individualism, so I left it and felt pity towards the Christian one.

I went astray for some time. I felt lost. A professor of mine told me to read about Turkey and Sufism. I told him that I heard that Istanbul’s mayor got imprisoned for reciting an Islamic poem. My professor replied that this mayor is the current prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. My appetite for reading about Turkey had and has no end. Since then I started reading about Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Fethullah Gülen and others who I felt had a way of bridging Islam with liberty (hürriyet in Turkish), not just democracy. I held their message of love and freedom in esteem. Much later when I was done with my master’s courses, I decided to write my thesis about Turkey’s political parties’ governance, especially the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

Through my thesis I became familiar with the work of Mustafa Akyol, a young Turkish writer with a wonderful book called “Islam without Extremes, a Muslim Case for Liberty.” In his articles firstly and later on in his book, I was introduced to a concept that I always had deep in my heart but couldn’t label, “Muslim liberalism.” Akyol’s writings make you understand why Turkey is much more sophisticated and developed that its Muslim counterparts. It is because Turkey, even though it is secular, has worked on implementing Shariah more than any other “Islamic” country. Their pursuit for the preservation of “religion, life, lineage, intellect, property,” which are the goals of Shariah (maqasid), while at the same time maintaining Akyol’s three freedoms -- freedom from the state, freedom to sin and freedom from Islam itself -- is more evident than the rest of the Islamic countries. Though Turkey is not a model quite yet and there is much more work to be done (especially on press freedoms and social justice), it remains a good example for Muslim liberalism.

* MPPA policy analyst with the Egyptian Decentralization Initiative (EDI).

Published on Today's Zaman, 17 October 2012, Wednesday

Posted in: Ahmed Abou Hussein, Egypt, Fethullah Gulen, Islam, Liberalism, Mustafa Akyol, Recep Tayyip Erdogan