by Ibrahim Essa
Before getting up to leave, Hatem added, “Hassan, are you sure you’ve never taken drugs or smoked weed or drunk beer?”
“I’m sure, Sheikh Hatem,” Hassan replied cheerfully.
“By the way, you sound like a Buddhist,” said Hatem as he turned to go. Then he looked back, took the strip of pills out of his pocket, and threw it into Hassan’s lap.
“Anyway, take two pills just in case, because I don’t believe you,” he said.
Omayma woke Hatem up with a rough push on his shoulder.
“Please get up and go to see the girl.”
He slipped out of his sleep with difficulty and tried to put some words together.
“Girl? What girl?” he said.
Omayma scowled, unable to appear indifferent.
“She says her name’s Nashwa and she’s been waiting for you since seven o’clock in the morning. The guards had to let her into the office since we didn’t answer and she was insisting. She said she was a relative of yours and when I woke up they told me about her. I didn’t go down because I wasn’t ready to receive anyone, especially a girl who’s come so early in the morning and without an appointment. I said I’d wake you up so you could go down and see her.”
Hatem mulled over the surprise and pushed the cover off his body. He got up and went into the bathroom.
“You know her. She’s the girl who asked me about the Mutazila,” he shouted through the half-open door.
Her tone changed. “Oh, now you tell me, so she must be mad!”
“Since she came to our house at seven o’clock in the morning and found out the address and decided to wait till I woke up, then your description of her resonates with me,” he said.
He came out of the bathroom with wet hair, puffy eyes and his sleeves rolled up, with a towel around his neck.
“The possibility that would be most reassuring is that she turns out to be mad. It’s the other possibilities that are worrying,” he said.
“Such as?”
“God alone knows.”
“That she’s mad about you, for example?”
He laughed out loud, gruffly and with a bit of a cough.
“That would make good sense,” he said.
He found the last thing he expected when he opened the office door on Nashwa. He found her lying on the sofa with her legs stretched out and her shoes off, fast asleep. He could hear the muted but regular whistling sound she made as she breathed in and out with her nose buried in the cushion. He saw an exhausted young woman preoccupied by thoughts much too weighty for her to bear. Her head was wrapped tight in a hijab tied expertly to her loose, shapeless gown. Her fingers were buried inside gloves of some silky material and she was wearing military-style boots that reached up her calves. Nashwa had covered her face in make-up—kohl, lipstick, powder, and eyeliner—but it had all gone to waste when she fell asleep on the sofa. Strangely, as soon as she heard him come in she stood up and pulled herself together and then sat down like someone caught red-handed. She excited him, aroused him, although he had slept little, and restlessly at that, and was tense and annoyed by her visit and worried that Omayma might react angrily, but her sleepy eyes were so seductive that he felt refreshed despite his misgivings.
“Would you like breakfast?”
“No, thanks, I had breakfast ages ago.”
“What do you mean, ages ago? It’s only half past eight in the morning.”
“No, seriously, I’ve had breakfast, thank you.”
“Okay, coffee or tea?”
“No, thanks, the guard already brought me some tea.”
Hatem looked at the half-drunk cup of tea and smiled.
“The tranquilizer he put in it must have had a very powerful effect.”
She laughed, conniving in his attempt to banter flirtatiously. The look she gave him wasn’t that of a student of religious learning, and the way he looked back at her wasn’t the way the teacher would look at a student.
“I haven’t slept all night,” she said. “I’ve read masses about the Mutazila on the Internet. It’s true that most of it was the same stuff repeated, but I read it carefully and I can say I didn’t understand much of what I read, but from what I understood I’m sure that they reject the Sunna, as the Salafists accuse them of doing.”
Hatem was calm and not in the mood for defiance.
“I like you saying you read about them on the Internet,” he said. “Aren’t there any printed books left in this day and age?”
He looked at the books on the shelves that covered the walls in his office. The ones that stood out were the ones with gilt bindings and the titles written in Kufic script with arabesque decoration. She looked at them too: apparently she hadn’t seen them when she came into the room earlier.
“You won’t find a single book here about the Mutazila or by the Mutazila because I wouldn’t put them here,” said Hatem. “But a number of well-known history books or biographical works are by Mutazilites, either overt or covert.”
He looked at her carefully.
“You read all night and then you couldn’t wait to meet at the studio or in the office, and so you came to my house around dawn. Isn’t that rather strange?” he asked.
Flustered, she apologized. “I’m really sorry but I didn’t feel like sleeping until I lay down on the sofa, and then I told myself you were bound to get up early. I’ve disturbed you, haven’t I?”
“Why do you care so much?” he asked with a smile.
“Because I’m a fan of yours!” She didn’t say it in a way that suggested she wanted to talk about theology.
He cleared his throat and said, “By the way my wife’s upstairs and she was having trouble sleeping and if she doesn’t get back to sleep it’ll be a bad year for me, as well as for you and for the Mutazila.”
Nashwa smiled in a way that seemed at odds with the way she was dressed.
“I mean a fan of the way you explain things and address the audience and simplify religion, but I’m very upset by the campaign against you on the Internet and on Facebook. They’re accusing you of lots of things,” she said.
He was surprised at what she said but he was cautious about how he replied. He stuck to the conventional.
“But what made me very angry is that you really are a Mutazilite,” she continued, shooting the accusation like an arrow into a target.
He sighed.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever heard this from,” he said, “and I’ve never seen any trace of these accusations on my Facebook page. In fact my many fans on the Internet, and those who contribute to my Facebook page and my website, have never mentioned these accusations on the Internet. But I sometimes say things to my fellow sheikhs and ulema that the Salafists on the Internet can’t understand. Besides, the only people who would understand this story about me being a Mutazilite would be people versed in Islamic schools of thought and I don’t think there are any of those among the wider audience you’re talking about. It’s very true that the Salafists don’t see me as authentic, but I have never appeared in any public forum, let alone on television, and said anything on which people disagree. Nashwa, I don’t display my learning in interviews and on television programs. I say things that shock people only a little, to spare them any distress and to make my own life easier.”
Nashwa was shocked by what he said, but he continued: “I’m speaking to you frankly, but I want you to be completely frank in return. You can’t stick a label on me for things I’ve said in interviews and meetings that might offend people’s thinking. I’m well aware of my own best interests and they could deal my interests a deadly blow if I came out with opinions or ideas that are different from what everyone wants to hear. Everything I say in public is what I believe of course, but it’s on the margins, on the surface. I give people moral guidance, remind them of God, tell them interesting historical anecdotes and give them fatwas for daily life that meet their need for piety. But the fatwas don’t change anything in their lives or even in their souls. The
difference is that I speak in language that’s simple, as I said, and connects with people, and isn’t complicated and heavy or traditional in an old-fashioned way. I’m a sheikh in a turban but, in my style and manner, I’m not like many others who wear turbans—people see me as modern, like the young preachers who wear suits and shirts and who act all reverent on camera and speak like the Muslims spoke in the film The Dawn of Islam. And by the way, some people think that the way we look and the way we talk are modern, but what we say comes from the museums of thought, preserved, text-based, old, and recycled. The preachers who are my competitors in the marketplace may not know any other way of speaking but I have studied and I have learning that I have found convincing, fell in love with in fact, but I don’t make any effort to deviate from the television version of religion.”
“You mean that what you say in public is not what you think in private?” asked Nashwa.
“No, you idiot. That would be hypocrisy, but I don’t make public everything I think and feel. I don’t tell lies, but I say superficial stuff.”
Nashwa was moved by this candid outburst. “But that means you might not be the man I thought you were,” she said.
“That’s why I’m telling you what shouldn’t be said, but I can say it because you’re an idiot and enthusiastic and you woke up early to listen to what I think, and most importantly because I expect to hear the truth from you in return.”
“Why are you suspicious of me?”
“Who said I was suspicious? Anyway, forget the reason and concentrate on the answer.”
She looked at him in a way that asked for sympathy and trust.
“I saw you a while back in several programs and in fact I wasn’t concentrating very hard, and then a few months ago I watched two of your programs and I was very interested and I admired you. I started following the things you did and your programs and interviews and I asked Sheikh Fathi about you because I attended all his lectures at the Institute of Missionaries, and he told me you were a gangster, not an Azhar sheikh!”
Hatem laughed till he cried.
“I thank him for his opinion, and you for your honesty,” he said.
“What he said really shocked me, but I like him and respect his opinion and I’ve memorized many of his fatwas,” Nashwa said.
“Wow!” said Hatem. “So there are people who memorize fatwas? When did you take up this hobby?”
“As soon as I made a commitment.”
“A commitment to what?”
“Sheikh Hatem!” she said with a laugh, looking at him disapprovingly, with eyes that were not in the least committed.
“Nashwa!”
“No, really, you must know what it means when someone says they made a commitment.”
“In fact I do know but I’m just acting dumb.”
There was no longer any doubt that they were warming to each other.
“Then I asked the preacher Yasser Abul-Ezz and he told me you were a respected sheikh, but he was uneasy about what he had heard about you from major sheikhs, which was that you don’t like the Salafists and that several times you had attacked Abdel-Aziz bin Baz, the mufti of Saudi Arabia. So I went and asked Dr. Mohamed el-Alami about you after his meeting in the mosque and he just said he didn’t follow you and that really annoyed me and I concluded he was arrogant.”
“But you know, Nashwa, I don’t follow him either, but I hear he’s a good eye doctor. He’s a physician, as you know.”
“He’s a useless eye doctor,” Nashwa said firmly. “He almost blinded the daughter of a friend of mine.”
Hatem laughed.
“A friend of mine from the institute,” Nashwa continued, “told me she met you at a seminar and after it she asked you about the hadith that goes: ‘The grave is either one of the gardens of Heaven or one of the pits of Hell’ and you answered her by saying, ‘Is that grave in Old Cairo or on the west bank of the Nile?’”
“Your friend must have been very ugly or very pretty for me to reply like that,” Hatem said.
“She wears a niqab.”
“Oh dear, now I’ve put my foot in my mouth.”
“I think you met her before she started wearing the niqab.”
“In that case my answer must have been the reason she started wearing the niqab.”
“No, it was because she got married. She started wearing the niqab after she got married. Anyway, her husband, who was her fiancé at the time, told her he knew some Salafist sheikhs who said you spoke about the Mutazila at a seminar as if they were religious reformers, whereas they thought the Mutazila were heretics. They also said that in discussions with sheikhs in private sessions you rejected some sayings of the Prophet. I decided I had to confront you because I like you.”
She blushed and Hatem blushed with her. He looked around despite himself, as if to see if anyone was watching them.
“Like you in the Platonic sense of course, and then I came to see your program,” she continued.
Then she went back to speaking like a girl in secondary school.
“I was given the runaround and everyone and his uncle gave me hell before I could attend your program and, to tell the truth, when I was in the office at your place I couldn’t hate you, though I was quite convinced that you do in fact reject the Sunna.”
He slapped her on the head disapprovingly without thinking what he was doing or about the consequences of touching her head with his hand. But she didn’t resist. In fact she smiled.
“My dear, there isn’t a Muslim in existence who denies the Sunna of the Prophet. How could we live and pray and worship God without believing in the Prophet and the things he did and said? The Prophet couldn’t possibly have spent twenty-three years carrying out his mission as prophet without teaching his companions, talking with them, explaining things, giving them advice, telling them what to do and what not to do, but because what the Prophet said and what instructions he gave is so important we have to make sure that these acts and sayings really are the Prophet’s. For example, after the Prophet died, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq gathered the people together and said people were telling dubious stories about the Prophet, and that in the future people would disagree even more about which ones were true. So, he said, don’t tell any stories about the Prophet and if anyone asks you, say, ‘We have the Book of God to settle any disagreements. If the Quran says something is halal, then treat it as halal, and if the Quran says something is haram, then treat it as haram.’
“And through the caliphate of Omar the ban on hadith continued. His ban didn’t only apply to Abu Hureira and Kaab al-Ahrar, though he did accuse them of narrating hadith and threatened to expel them to their original homes if they didn’t stop it. His orders also applied to important Companions of the Prophet, including Abdullah ibn Masoud, Abu Darda, and Abu Masoud al-Ansari. To them he said, ‘You’ve told too many stories about the Prophet,’ and he confined them to Medina. In other words he banned them from traveling and so from spreading these sayings of the Prophet. And of course the decision also applied to his military commanders and, when he was walking along with them to see them off, he made them give a pledge to avoid telling stories about the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. Then he told them he had come out with them to give them this advice: ‘You will meet the people of a town where they recite the Quran like bees that are buzzing. Don’t distract or divert them with hadiths. Don’t complicate the Quran by adding hadiths or stories on the side. Don’t tell too many stories about the Prophet. If anyone insists, refuse and blame it on me.’ And when some of the commanders arrived in Iraq, they met new Muslims who were impatient to hear anything about the Prophet because they had never seen him. They hadn’t been Companions of the Prophet or even contemporaries. And the new Muslims said, ‘Tell us about the Prophet.’ And the commanders said, ‘Omar has forbidden us from saying anything.’ But with the death of Omar things loosened up and everyone felt quite free to tell stories about the Prophet, and for hundreds of years hundreds of thousands of sayings of
the Prophet appeared, very many of them fabricated, attributed to the Prophet by people who wanted to flatter the Umayyads or the Abbasids, or just to entertain. The difference here is over how to handle the hadiths, and that leads us to the Mutazila, but did you understand what I said before we move on to the Mutazila?”
“Wow. You do trust me!” said Nashwa.
At this point Hatem invited her into the garden so that they wouldn’t be behind closed doors too long and to have breakfast with Omayma while they were at it.
“But I tell you, it’s good to be committed,” Hatem said. “I mean, if you can wear the niqab for an hour or two that would be great too.”
Omayma treated Nashwa as any wife would when subjected to an unwanted visit to her home by someone she doesn’t know who sits with her husband without asking his wife’s permission and without the visitor apologizing to her. But Nashwa, by playing with great expertise the role of a strict and committed Muslim woman who also happened to be in a foul mood, managed to mitigate Omayma’s annoyance, especially when Hatem began a speech she hadn’t heard before.
“It always begins with politics. All these ideas and schools of thought and different and contradictory opinions arose under the barrage of politics. When the Prophet Muhammad set up an Islamic state, Islam wasn’t a religion with denominations or theories. But as soon as he died, political disagreements arose over who should succeed him and who should govern. Since the Companions of the Prophet, who had great prestige, all lived under the same sky and in the same circle, the disagreements remained under control because everyone knew how much weight and authority and knowledge everyone else had. But when the Companions of the Prophet left Medina during the reign of Othman and the Muslims grew more powerful and wealthier and the empire expanded and they became the center of attention for the masses, other phenomena started to intrude into Islam. Then disaster struck in the form of the first civil war with the assassination of Othman, then there was the conflict with Muawiya and his rebellion against Ali, ending in Ali’s son Hassan ceding power to Muawiya, and then Muawiya turned the Islamic caliphate into a hereditary monarchy. There was a heavy price, paid in the blood and the belief of Muslims. Movements sprang up in opposition to Muawiya and the hereditary monarchy he set up. The opposition needed a theory and some religious basis, and the Umayyad regime under Muawiya and his successors likewise had to find a theoretical religious basis. Because the Quran doesn’t provide much scope for politicians to mess around with interpretation or for the rulers or their opponents to twist the Quran to their liking, they made use of the sayings and doings of the Prophet by making up a vast number of hadiths attributed to the Prophet to justify or support one point of view or another. So Muslims have been inundated over the years with hundreds of thousands of fabricated hadiths. And don’t forget, the Sunna only started to be properly written down in the third century of Islam, about two hundred and fifty years after the Prophet died. In the meantime, people found their rulers were openly violating the sharia and the Quranic injunctions. So the Umayyad rulers and the jurists and preachers who worked for them were in a fix, so they came up with an idea called ‘deferral.’