Onze Arabische broeder uit Egypte

Gestart door buɛluz, 12/09/2010 om 23:47:19

buɛluz

Omdat wij Irifien vanwege ons stammenverband nou eenmaal gewend zijn om te denken in termen van wij tegen jullie, zeker als het aankomt op de eeuwige Arabier-Amazigh discussie, leek het Senor Canardo wel aardig om een keer een tegengeluid te laten horen. Dit maal van een "Arabische" broeder uit Egypte, een historicus, die luistert naar de naam van Sayyid Mahmoud al-Qimni. Een man die door sommigen bestempelt wordt als een van de meest provocatieve denkers van Egypte van tegenwoordig. En tegenwoordig ben je pas echt provocatief bezig als je minstens een paar el Qaeda-achtige doodsbedreigingen op je conto kan schrijven en daar kan Ahmed Adgherni wel over meepraten. Maar eerlijk is eerlijk wat deze al-Qimni allemaal wel niet te vertellen heeft is best wel een beetje.... ehm.... ja....*touchy subject*....  Weet je wat: oordeel eerst zelf maar ........>




Sayyid al-Qimni, Egyptian Muslim thinker and historian

Sayyid Mahmoud al-Qimni was born on March 13, 1947 in the city of Al-Wasita, south of Egypt (1). His father, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Qimni graduated from Al-Azhar University. Sheikh al-Qimni was a very religious traditionalist Azharite and always dressed in a traditional way. In his large house, Sheikh al-Qimni organized religious gatherings to substitute for his days in Al-Azhar. Most of those gatherings took place during the month of Ramadan. Although Sheikh al-Qimni was a very religious man he was also open-minded to other people's opinions. Accordingly, he adopted the ideas of the Egyptian reformist Muhammad Abduh.

Sayyid was brought up in this religious home. He was sick from childhood. The sickness was a heart problem, as stated in an interview conducted by Hala Mahmoud for the Middle East Times (2), but al-Qimni has also said that his childhood was not happy because of this early sickness. Despite this, he graduated from Ain Shams University from the faculty of philosophy. After studying philosophy al-Qimni joined al-Azhar University and studied Islamic history. The defeat of Egypt by Israel in 1967 was a turning point in the life of al-Qimni. He wanted to find the reason for the defeat and this led him to concentrate his life on studying Islam and other religions. He undertook thorough research on Islamic sciences such as Fiqh, philosophy, and kalam in different schools of thought, but did not decide to be a writer until 1985. His writings were concentrated on the critical study of Islam and Islamic discourse. However, the occupation of Kuwait by Saddam's troops changed the attitude of al-Qimni from being a Nasserite who believed in a single Arab community to one who focused on the Egyptian community. In other words, Egypt as a nation replaced Egypt as an Arab country. At this junction, liberalism became a belief and dogma for al-Qimni. Three books al-Qimni read while he was studying philosophy at Ain Shams University, which influenced his intellectual life were Spinoza by Dr. Fouad Zakaria; Towards A Wider Horizon by the late Abkar al-Asqaf; and The Adventure of the Ancient Mind by Faras al-Sawah.

Al-Qimni was concerned to understand the cause of Egypt's 'backwardness'. In that respect, he said 'what disturbs me most is the backwardness of my nation and its civilized defeat. Every project I take is meant to discover some unknown cause for the reason of Egypt being behind other civilized nations' (3). At the same time, he wanted to re-write the Prophet's Sira (life) and the holy text in accordance to their historical development, which led to the foundation of a political Islamic state at the time of Muhammad. He discusses this in his first book, al-Islamiat. In his books Al-Ustoura Wa Al-Turath (The Myth and Heritage) and The Story of Creation, al-Qimni traces the origins and roots of myths and how they found their way in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One of the main projects which al-Qimni is currently undertaking is the re-organisation of the Quran in a chronological order. According to al-Qimni, the present Quran was arranged by caliph Uthman like walls starting from the longest Surahs to the shortest ones. Due to this arrangement 'the Nasikh verses became near the Mansokh verses, a second law before a first law, the verse of peace near the verse of war, and the verses of freedom of faith mixed with the verses which made Islam compulsory and no other faith would be accepted' (4). Therefore, the ordinary Muslim cannot understand the Quran without a Mufasir (an interpreter) and a Mufti. Al-Qimni believed that this was a key reason for the monopolisation by a group of scholars who claimed that their interpretation was the only right one. Any other interpretation was considered Kufr (unbelief). Through this interview al-Qimni expressed his views as follows:

1- Quran needs to be re-arranged and looked upon more carefully.

2- There is no priesthood in Islam.

3- The law of apostasy does not exist in the Quran.

4- Muslim scholars do not want to recognize woman's rights and label her as deficient in religion and intellect.

5- The concept of Jihad is a communal and racist idea and is rejected by the modern time.

6- What the early Muslim Mujahdeen had done in those countries they had invaded need to be apologized for today.

Al-Qimni controversially argued that the occupation of Arabs in Egypt should be counted as the longest foreign occupation in the world (5). The backwardness of Egypt came, he believed, from the acceptance of this Arabic occupation and the adoption of the Arabic culture. This view undoubtedly stirred discontent amongst the rligious traditionalists in Egypt. Referring to a speech delivered by al-Qimni on the International Book Exhibition in Cairo on Jan 14, 2004, The Muslim Brothers newspaper (al-Akhwan al-Muslmoon) argued that the speech was meant to demolish all the pillars of Islam (6). The newspaper stated further that al-Qimni had said the first Muslim invaders had stolen all the treasures of Egypt and therefore Egypt should not be called an Arab and Muslim country any more. Islam should not be the official religion of Egypt and the Sharia laws should not be considered the main basis for the Egyptian constitution. In an article called 'Doubtful Books,' in al-Watan newspaper, Abd Allah al-Samti said 'writers like Khalil Abd al-Karim, Sa'id al-Ashmawi, Sayyid al-Qimni, al-Sadig Nihum, and Nawal al-Sa'adawi want people to believe that the Quran is not revealed but the word of Muhammad'. For these writers Muhammad was just a great man and not the seal of the prophets (7). In another interview conducted by Hala Mahmoud for Middle East Times, the interviewer stated, 'Sayyid Al Qimni deals with early Islamic history like no other Egyptian historian will dare. He saves himself from being labelled either an apostate or a tool of the West by only using sources approved by Al Azhar, but many of his conclusions would make Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd blanch. Works such as Al Hizb Al Hashimi (The Hashemite Faction), Al Dawla Al Mohamadiya (Mohammedite State), and Hurub Dawlat Al Rasul (The Wars of the Prophetic State), trace the tenets of Islam to political pressures rather than revelation, while books like Al Nabi Ibrahim (The Prophet Abraham) find a secular explanation for the myths of the earliest Prophets' (8 )

When Mahmoud asked al-Qimni whether he faced any physical or verbal attack by the radical Islamists, he replied, 'Ideologically and physically. First there was Fahmi Howiedy in Al Ahram. He said I am more of a risk than Salman Rushdie in an article entitled 'Pluralism without going beyond the bounds' in March 1989. He wrote, 'They differ from [Rushdie's] books in the degree of the insult, but not in the essence'; 'It damages what is sacred'; and 'we must stop this writing.' He only referred to me as SQ but he mentioned my books by name. Four years ago, in Al Islam Watan (Islam is a Nation), a general in the Interior Ministry, Essam Eddin Abdel Azayem wrote, 'Oh Lord, please do not allow anyone like this man into our land. They destroy our religion and give birth to unbelievers.' (A Quranic verse) Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Al Musayyar, in Al Nour of July and August 1992, wrote 'Someone shut this voice up.' In 1989, after the Howeidy article, I was driving in [the Giza village] of Badrshein when someone shot at me with a Kalashnikov. I had kids with me. It was a warning. If they wanted to kill me, they could have' (9).

Al-Qimni was counted by Samir Sarahan as one of the provocative thinkers in Egypt due to his 'written revisionist histories of the era of the Prophet' (10). In a long debate in the Al-Gazeera Radio, between him and Kamal Habib, a radical Islamist, Al-Qimni said that 'we are at the bottom of the sea of darkness because we teach our children at school only Islamic religion and Arabic language' (11) In other words, the education system in Egypt and other Arab countries produced people who know how to pray and speak. Besides that, Al-Qimni believed the educational curriculum in Muslim countries produced terrorists (12).

Some of the information about Sayyid Mahmoud Qimni was taken from an interview conducted with him by Abd Al-Gadir, Asharif Abd al-Fatah while he was in the hospital and from other internet websites.

(1) Abd Al-Gadir Feb 2, 2004
(2) Mahmoud 2004, Middle East Times, p 1
(3) Abd Al-Gadir Feb 2, 2004, p 4
(4) ibid p 3
(5) Al-Muhsin Feb 26, 2004, p 1
(6) al-Akhwan al-Muslmoon, Jan 1, 2004, p 1
(7) Al-Samti March 15, 2002, p 1
(8 ) Mahmoud, Middle East Times, p 1
(9) ibid p 4-5
(10) Sarahan Feb 5, 1998, p 1
(11) ibid p 15
(12) ibid p 11

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Botermes

En waarom hadden zij ook al weer hun taal veel sneller verloren, zij spraken toch een andere taal?