CHARLES HIRSCHKINDUniversity of California, Berkeley

Beyond secular and religious:An intellectual genealogy of Tahrir Square

A B S T R A C TCompeting visions of Egypt’s future have long beendivided along secular versus religious lines, a splitthat both the Sadat and Mubarak regimes exploitedto weaken political opposition. In this context, onestriking feature of the Egyptian uprising that tookplace last spring is the extent to which it defiedcharacterization in terms of the religious–secularbinary. In this commentary, I explore how thismovement drew sustenance from a unique politicalsensibility, one disencumbered of the secular versusreligious oppositional logic and its concomitantforms of political rationality. This sensibility has adistinct intellectual genealogy within Egyptianpolitical experience. I focus here on the careers ofthree Egyptian public intellectuals whose pioneeringengagement with the question of the place of Islamwithin Egyptian political life provided an importantpart of the scaffolding, in my view, for the practicesof solidarity and association that brought down theMubarak regime. [Egypt, politics, intellectuals,secular, Islam]

One striking feature of the Egyptian uprising of January 25, 2011,is the extent to which it defied characterization in terms of thereligious–secular binary. I am not referring here to the way themobilization brought together political actors from both Islamistand secularist political currents, though it certainly did so. Nor

am I suggesting that the demands of the protesters concerned an issueon which notions of religion and secularity had no bearing. On the con-trary, arguments about political transformation and democratic reformin Egypt have pivoted around contrasts between secular and religious vi-sions for many decades. What I am pointing to, rather, is the way thatthe entire mobilization unfolded without the question “secular or reli-gious?” ever imposing itself on the expressions of popular sovereignty.1

Note, for example, that even though Tahrir Square was transformed onnumerous occasions throughout the protests into an arena of collectiveprayer for both Muslims and Christians, with hundreds of thousands wor-shipping in unison on some occasions, this was never identified by leftistand liberal protesters (to my knowledge) as a threat to the secular charac-ter of the political movement. In a context in which images of mass prayerfrequently stand as icons of politicized religion and its danger to ratio-nal politics, the failure of the incorporation of a distinctly religious ritualpractice into the field of political protest to provoke anxiety among lib-eral and left-leaning participants about the secular direction of the move-ment is noteworthy. Nor by all accounts were the more devout mem-bers of the protest movement disaffected or scandalized by the introduc-tion of popular, non-Islamic musical forms into the square or of irrev-erent, satirical poetry—genres that have frequently been criticized by re-ligious activists in Egypt as threats to the Islamic character of Egyptiansociety.2

How did the Egyptian protest movement forge a practice of political sol-idarity indifferent to the secular and religious polarities that have so pro-foundly structured the space of political possibility in Egypt?3 Competing

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 49–53, ISSN 0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C© 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01346.x

American Ethnologist � Volume 39 Number 1 February 2012

Figure 1. Egyptian demonstrators celebrating on a tank. Photographreprinted with permission by Ted Swedenburg.

visions of Egypt’s future have long been divided along sec-ular versus religious lines, a split that both the Sadat andMubarak regimes exploited to weaken political opposition.Since coming to power, the Mubarak regime had stakedits international legitimacy on its claim to be acting as abulwark against Islamic fundamentalists, particularly theMuslim Brotherhood, and thus as a defender of the coun-try’s secular traditions. Even within Egypt, secular-orientedopposition parties had often tempered their criticisms ofthe regime, viewing it as the lesser of two evils. In contrast,for many of those sympathetic to Islamist social and po-litical currents, the most pressing danger to Egyptian so-ciety came in the form of rampant secularization, the ero-sion of the society’s Islamic character under the impact ofWestern cultural forms. This oppositional logic—either sec-ular or religious—had long schematized the political terrainin Egypt.

To be sure, the democracy movement that coalescedon the streets of Egypt last spring was swept forward bythe collective experience of decades of political repression,poverty, and humiliation. It also, however, drew sustenancefrom a unique political sensibility, one disencumbered ofthe oppositional secular versus religious logic and its con-comitant forms of political rationality. This sensibility, asI argue below, has a distinct intellectual genealogy withinEgyptian political experience. In the following pages, I offera few reflections on the career of three Egyptian public intel-lectuals whose pioneering engagement with the question ofthe place of Islam within Egyptian political life provided animportant part of the scaffolding, in my view, for the prac-tices of solidarity and association that brought down theMubarak regime. To be clear, my point here is not to sug-gest that the protest movement owes its success to the ideasof a few writers and political commentators. Rather, my aimis to highlight the particularity of the uprising by locating itin relation to a national history of reflection on the religiousfoundations of political life and ethical citizenship.

The three thinkers I discuss here share more thansimply ideas: Their intellectual and personal trajectories

converge around a political experiment that was of greatconsequence in setting the stage for the January 25 up-rising. Founded in early 2004, the Egyptian Movement forChange—or Kifaya (Enough!)—is widely credited with hav-ing pioneered the street protest movement centered on ademand for the end of the Mubarak regime.4 Many of theyoung leaders of the 2011 mobilizations cut their politi-cal teeth at Kifaya-organized events, particularly betweenthe years of 2004 and 2006 (see Hirschkind 2010). Key toKifaya’s success in mobilizing oppositional forces in Egyptwas its articulation of a moral and political vision capableof accommodating people of both religious and secular per-suasions. Indeed, among its founding members were liber-als, leftists, and Islamist activists, including Muslim Broth-erhood members. As I argue here, Kifaya should be seen asthe institutional expression of a unique political sensibility,one that, if only for a short period, gave impetus to the prac-tices of cooperation, solidarity, and political reasoning thatblossomed on the streets of Egypt on January 25.

As many observers of Middle Eastern politics havenoted, Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war with Israel markeda key turning point in the development of many Egyptianintellectuals’ political thinking (see Baker 2003; Beinin andStork 1997). The war shattered long-standing hopes for eco-nomic and political self-determination, leading many ofthose who lived through the experience to question the lib-eral and Marxist models of national development they hadsubscribed to, particularly in regard to the significance ofreligion within political life. Although nationalist goals of in-dependence as well as legal and political reform remainedcentral, many intellectuals and activists increasingly cameto view Islam as having an essential role to play in theattainment of these goals.5

Among those Egyptians who navigated this trajectory,Tariq al-Bishri is one of the best known. One of the coun-try’s most well-respected judges, al-Bishri was appointed bythe Supreme Committee of the Armed Forces to chair thecommittee charged with rewriting Egypt’s constitution fol-lowing the removal of Mubarak from power. He has also hada long and distinguished career as an amateur historian andcommentator on Egyptian politics and social life.6

In an interview conducted in the late 1990s, al-Bishridiscusses his reassessment of religion in the wake of the1967 defeat:

Little by little I began to reconsider the vocabulary usedin political discourse, and in thought itself in the way itintervened in reality. I began to reconsider the relationbetween religious thought and reality . . . Little by littleI became conscious of different social institutions. So-ciety began to appear to me to be composed of institu-tions which were themselves subdivided into internalsub-units which enabled individual activity and shel-tered within their breast masses of humanity. I realizedthat the cement of these different entities, that which

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composed the institutional fabric of society, was reli-gious thought. [Burgat and Dowell 1997:52]

If democracy and national independence remain pri-mary objectives within al-Bishri’s thought, they can only berealized on the basis of the forms of solidarity and passionalattachment that bind people to institutions, and in Egyptthose forms are inseparable from Islam (even for Christians,according to al-Bishri, insomuch as they equally partici-pate within the social and political institutions of nationallife).7 As he put it in an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera atthe end of 2010, “It is impossible that the [Egyptian] peo-ple will feel the sacrality of the nationalist movement with-out its grounding in Islamic traditions.” Much of al-Bishri’svast oeuvre can be seen as an attempt to develop a politicalanalysis and vocabulary capable of bridging the gap be-tween nationalist and Islamist currents. He has carriedthis task forward by engaging with the central concepts ofdemocratic political theory from the specific standpoint ofan Islamic society and its distinct modes of collective ex-pression and association.

In October of 2004, al-Bishri published a short pieceentitled “A Call to Civil Disobedience,” in which he laidout the legitimacy and necessity of confronting the regimethrough street activism (al-Bishri 2006). In an argument thatcombined democratic theory, human rights discourse, andIslamic ethical reasoning, he focused on the corruption andinertia of Egypt’s existing political institutions and the needto create new vehicles of political association and action.Shortly after its publication, al-Bishri’s “Call” was adoptedby the newly formed Kifaya as its manifesto.

Fahmi Howeidy, one of Egypt’s leading journalists,shares al-Bishri’s emphasis on the importance of Islam asa resource for political thought. Like al-Bishri, Howeidycomes to the question of religion from a concern about the

Figure 2. A moment of collective prayer in Tahrir Square. Photographtaken by Jessica Winegar.

conditions necessary for political transformation. For boththinkers, the failure of the postcolonial state to secure realautonomy stands as a primary point of reference for anypolitical analysis. When I first interviewed Howeidy, in themid-1990s, he identified the most pressing challenges thenfaced by Egyptians as democratic reform and the elimina-tion of state corruption, a view he has maintained acrossthe years. As it is for al-Bishri, the question of Islam, forHoweidy, is deeply entwined with the issue of national inde-pendence. As he states in his 1994 publication, Al-tadyyunal-manqus (The missing religiosity),

I address the Islamic Shari‘a here, not from the stand-point of religious commitment, but from the perspec-tive of national independence, including cultural andcivilizational autonomy. For if we are serious aboutbuilding an Arab, Islamic society—and that is our onlychoice—we will never get there as long as we rely upona (legal) foundation (shari‘a) elaborated in order toserve a French or Belgian or German society. [Howeidy1994:56]8

Importantly, the answer to Egypt’s incorporation offorms and models drawn from Western civilization is notsimply to produce Islamic alternatives. For Howeidy, anIslamic society is one that enables the cultivation of cer-tain moral and intellectual virtues, not one in which every-thing necessarily has its origin or basis in Islam. Note, forexample, his response during a 1986 workshop on “Media inIslam” to one scholar’s attempt to define “Islamic media”:

If we remove the sign (al-lafta) “Islam” from whatDr. Muhammed Sayyid has told us about media, thenwe find that it is a call to recognize the principles ofcorrect media practice. That is, that those working inmedia should not cheat, or deceive, or slander, prin-ciples that do not need the sign “Islam” for their jus-tification. We just have to say that media profession-als should abide by these principles . . . If Islam has notadded anything to a field of practice, then it is not nec-essary to append the word, whether to “media,” or “ac-counting,” or “management” . . . It is enough that Islamaddress the conscience of Muslims, shape their judg-ment, and impart its spiritual values to Islamic society.[Howeidy 1986:4]9

Here and throughout his writings, Howeidy has en-deavored to think through the significance of Islam asa frame of reference for Egyptian political thought whileavoiding the rush to divide the world up according to thecategories of Islamic and Western or religious and secular.When I spoke with him during a visit to Egypt in 2008, hehad a sense that some of his ideas were gaining ground:“Back in the eighties and nineties, the threat of secular-ization was the paramount concern among those support-ers of the Islamic movement. Now it is the removal of the

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Mubarak regime, the end of routinized state violence, andthe creation of a free and fair electoral system. Seculariza-tion is no longer our main issue.” Although Howeidy andal-Bishri have frequently differed in their opinions on po-litical issues, they share a commitment to open and dia-logic inquiry about the entailments of an Islamic society,an intellectual stance and practice that has earned them re-spect from many. Although Howeidy was never a member ofKifaya, he indirectly contributed to the political ethos at theheart of the movement both through the close associationhe maintained with many of its leaders and through theweekly political commentaries he published in Egypt’s mostwidely read daily, al-Ahram.

A last thinker I briefly mention is Abd al-Wahhab al-Messiri. A scholar of English literature, trained at Columbiaand Rutgers, al-Messiri pursued an engagement with thequestion of religion that was cast in far more philosophicaltones. Having left the Marxism of his early years behind, heproduced a series of critical reflections, first, on materialistphilosophy and, later, on secularism. Although he came tobe associated with Islamist political currents in Egypt andcounted many of the leading Islamist intellectuals amonghis friends, his literary and philosophical interests were fartoo wide-ranging to be slotted into any singular perspective.Just in the last few years of his life, before his death in 2008,he published an annotated and illustrated bilingual edition(Arabic–English) of Samuel Coleridge’s “Rime of the AncientMariner,” the last of a many-volume series titled Encyclope-dia of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, a two-volume historicalexploration of the concept of secularism, an autobiography,and the first draft of a book of Egyptian jokes.

Al-Messiri’s roaming curiosity and spirit of open in-quiry found its greatest expression in the weekly salons heheld at his house for many years. Many of Egypt’s best-known artists, writers, and journalists were often on hand,but it was particularly young people and students that al-Messiri sought to include. Topics for discussion were usu-ally left up to his visitors, though once al-Messiri got hold ofa thread, he would not easily let go. What was particularlystriking about these salons was the heterogeneity of theattendees he would invite, including leftists, liberals, andIslamists of all stripes. It is probably fair to say that many ofthe younger generation of politically minded Egyptians atone point or another went through al-Messiri’s living room.

In 2007, al-Messiri agreed to become the acting coor-dinator for Kifaya. Although he had little experience as apolitical organizer and leader, his eclecticism and pluralistoutlook fit perfectly with Kifaya’s rejection of existing po-litical and ideological positions and with its aim to build agrassroots movement around the goal of ending the author-itarian regime. Although al-Messiri did not live to see thefull fruit of his labors, Kifaya went on to play an importantrole in organizing and building support for the January 25uprising.

All three of these men have had a profound role inshaping the intellectual trajectory of Islamist thought inEgypt over the last four decades, although not one of themwas ever strongly tied to any of the Islamist political par-ties or associations in Egypt.10 Their thought never quitefit comfortably within the ideological slots these organiza-tions occupied. They refused to reduce their understand-ing of Islam’s political vocation within postcolonial Egypt tothe narrow space afforded by the religious–secular binary,a refusal that has frequently made their work difficult tolocate within the existing grids of political interpretability.Importantly, what unites the thought of these three men isnot a common political vision. Rather, their point of com-monality resides in an insistence on an open, nondogmaticstyle of political engagement as necessary for the task ofworking out the specificity and institutional composition ofa modern Islamic society. For this reason, and despite thestrong emphasis on democratic institution building sharedby all three, they have frequently taken positions that sit un-comfortably with secular nationalist visions of Egypt’s fu-ture. All three, for example, have written critically on certainaspects of Western popular entertainment that they find tobe incompatible with Islamic sensibilities.

Since the end of the 18-day uprising, which culminatedin the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, divisions between thesecular and the religious have returned and proliferatedwithin the field of Egyptian political contestation. Largestreet protests continue to be held, but they are frequentlylimited either to self-declared secularists or Islamists, withone contingent refusing to participate in the other’s event.This divisiveness has once again served to exaggerate differ-ences and render the many commonalities that exist acrosssuch divisions difficult to recognize. Admittedly, there arealso movements in a contrary direction, aiming to buildon the experiences of political engagement and solidar-ity forged during the January 25 uprising to create a newpolitical discourse outside of secular–religious oppositions.The outcome of these efforts, however, is far from clear atpresent.

Notes

1. Hussein Agrama (2011) coins the notion “asecular” to refer tothis dimension of the Egyptian uprising.

2. An excellent description of the street poetry and humor thatfound expression in Tahrir Square during the protests is found inElliot Colla’s “The Poetry of Revolt” (2011).

3. Elsewhere, I have explored how activists working withinEgypt’s political blogosphere sought to develop a political languagecapable of overcoming the division between secular and religiousmodels of political life. See Hirschkind 2010.

4. Referring to the movement as “the spiritual father of the rev-olution,” Egyptian journalist Akram al-Qasas notes, “Kifaya brokethe fear barrier, opened the door of street protest, and, togetherwith opposition newspapers, raised the ceiling for criticism of theregime and the president” (2011: 1).

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5. In The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and IslamicCounterpublics (2006), I explored the broad-based Islamic move-ment that emerged in Egypt between the decades of the 1970s andthe 1990s. Based on a year and a half of field research in Cairo dur-ing the late 1990s, this book gives particular attention to the impor-tant role of cassette-recorded sermons within this movement.

6. Ellis Goldberg (2011) has provided a concise biography ofal-Bishri’s career on his blog.

7. Al-Bishri has written widely on the question of the status ofCoptic Christians in Egypt and has often been criticized by the Cop-tic community for his views. See his Al-muslimun wa al-aqbat fi itaral-jama‘a al-wataniyya (Muslims and Copts within the frameworkof the national group; 1982).

8. Howeidy’s use of the term shari‘a (in the indefinite) to connotethe bases or foundations of French or Belgian society works in histext to pull the term out of the narrow confines of both “religion”and “law,” concepts that are inadequate for grasping the social andpolitical extensiveness of the notion in Howeidy’s view.

9. The kind of argument Howeidy elaborates here has gained in-creasing acceptance in recent years. One brief example: In Mayof this year, a group of liberal and leftist writers and artists in-vited members of the Islamic Group (al-Gama‘ al-Islamiyya)—untilrecently, a militant movement, most of whose members were inEgyptian prisons—to discuss their views of art and its place inEgyptian society. The viewpoint articulated by al-Gama‘ memberNegeh Ibrahim strongly resembles Howeidy’s:

There is no Islamic literature and non-Islamic literature. Lit-erature is literature. There may be things that are unacceptedby the general taste, or a danger to national security . . . likewe say that in literature that you should not curse the presi-dent, we can say that in literature you should not curse God. . . So first of all, there is no Islamic and non-Islamic literature.[Updike 2011]

10. I do not have space here to discuss the work of other Egyptianthinkers who have made important contributions to developing thestyle of religious and political engagement exemplified by al-Bishri,Howeidy, and al-Messiri. Foremost among them is MuhammedSalim al-‘Awwa, a onetime member of the Muslim Brotherhoodwho broke with the organization in 1995 to help found a new partycomprising both Muslims and Christians, al-Wasat. He has recentlydeclared his candidacy for the Egyptian presidency.

References cited

Agrama, Hussein2011 Asecular Revolution. Immanent Frame. http://blogs.ssrc.

org/tif/2011/03/11/asecular-revolution/, accessed July 10.Baker, Raymond

2003 Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Beinin, Joel, and Joe Stork1997 On the Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International

Context of Political Islam. In Political Islam: Essays fromMiddle East Report. Joel Beinen and Joe Stork, eds. Pp. 3–25.Berkeley: University of California Press.

Al-Bishri, Tariq1982 Al-muslimun wa al-aqbat f i itar al-jama‘a al-wataniyya.

Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq.2006 A call to civil disobedience (Ad‘ukum ila al-‘asyan). In Misr:

Bayna al- ‘asyan wa al-tafakkuk. Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq.Burgat, Francois, and William Dowell

1997 The Islamic Movement in North Africa. Austin: University ofTexas Press.

Colla, Elliot2011 The Poetry of Revolt. Jadaliyya, June 31. http://

www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/506/the-poetry-of-revolt,accessed July 5.

Goldberg, Ellis2011 Tariq al-Bishri and Constitutional Revision. Nisralnasr,

February 15. http://nisralnasr.blogspot.com/2011/02/tariq-al-bishri-and-constitutional.html, accessed July 10.

Hirschkind, Charles2006 The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic

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vista de Dialectologı́a y Tradiciones Populares 65(1):137–154.

Howeidy, Fahmi1986 Ta‘qib [Comment]. In Haqq al-i‘lam wa al-ta‘lim fi al-Islam

[Right to media and education in Islam]. Munshirat al-Ma‘ahidal-islami, pp. 33–40. Cairo: al-Ma‘ahid al-‘alami li al-fikr al-islami.

1994 Al-tadayyun al-manqus [The missing religiosity]. Cairo: Daral-Shuruq.

Al-Jazeera2010 Interview with Tariq al-Bishri. http://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=KOVIecbQNXw&feature=BFa&list=PL8FF7522C00CAEFFC&lf=results main, accessed May 15, 2011.

Al-Qasas, Akram2011 Haraka al-kifayya: al-Abu al-ruhi li al-thawra [The

Kifaya movement: The spiritual father of the revolution].Yom al-sabi‘, February 25: http://www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=357602&SecID=162&IssueID=0. accessed July 15.

Updike, Nancy2011 Act Two. Monday Cairo Egypt. This American Life. WBEZ,

May 6.

Charles HirschkindDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyBerkeley, CA 94720

chirschk@berkeley.edu

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