Sacred Language, Ordinary People Sacred Language, Ordinary People
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Sacred Language, Ordinary People Sacred Language, Ordinary People ~ Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt Niloofor Haeri SACRED LANGUAGE, ORDINARY PEOPLE Copyright © Niloofar Haeri, 2003. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-312-23898-8 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-312-23897-1 ISBN 978-0-230-10737-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230107373 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haeri, Niloofar, 1958- Sacred language, ordinary people: state, religion and modernity in Egypt 1 by Niloofar Haeri. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-23897-1 I. Arabic language-Dialects-Egypt. 2. Arabic language Variation-Egypt. 3. Arabic Language-Social as pects-Egypt. 4. Diglossia (Linguistics)-Egypt. 5. Language and culture-Egypt. 6. Arabic language-Religious as pects-Islam. l. Title. PJ6773. H34 2002 492.7'70962-dc21 2002074880 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre, Inc. First edition: January 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 For Abdullah & the blue flame Contents Prefoce IX Acknowledgments X111 Notes on Transliteration xv Chapter One Introduction Chapter Two Humble Custodians of the Divine Word: Classical Arabic in Daily Life 25 Chapter Three Text Regulation and Sites of Ideology 53 Chapter Four Creating Contemporaneity: Struggles with Form 73 Chapter Five Persistent Dilemmas: Pleasure, Power and Ambiguity 113 Chapter Six Conclusion 143 Notes 159 Bibliography 171 Index 181 Preface When I was a child, my mother used to gather us around regularly and ask us to read parts of the Qur'an out loud. She did not demand any recitation talents but simply correct pronunciation and fluency. I remember that the Qur'an we read had line by line translations in Persian. The Arabic was set off by a beautiful and thick calligraphy with little circles, dashes and curly lines above and below the letters. The Persian in contrast was in a plain or dinary type-face. While reading, my brother and I would glance quickly at the Persian to try to get some idea of the meaning of the verses. My mother would gently correct us, pause once in a while to explain the significance of what we had just read, and scold us when we giggled because some of the Arabic words sounded like Persian ones for extremely mundane objects. Her emphasis was on our recognition of the diacritic marks and the necessary li aisons between the ends of some words and the beginning of others. Even tually, she and my father taught us the five obligatory daily prayers (namaaz in Persian, il-?alaa in Arabic). In time, we memorized all of them, and learned the correct body movements that serve to mark different parts of the prayers. My parents also tried to teach us special prayers for particular occa sions-those for important Islamic dates or for times of personal crises. My interest began to fade as I entered adolescence and left Tehran for Boston. But these experiences, along with my parents' love for the language of the holy book, stayed with me. As did countless childhood memories that are forever laced with the sounds of the Qur' an. Many years later in graduate school in Philadelphia, I began to learn Ara bic in order to do field research in Egypt. I studied the grammar of a lan guage that I had first encountered in childhood as mere sounds and melodies. I found the chance to learn that language finally and become pro ficient in it exhilarating. Eventually, I went to Egypt to begin my first period of research in 1987-88, and was stunned to discover, like many researchers before me, that I was unequipped to have even a rudimentary conversation in the language. Of course I had been briefly told that the language I was taught was the language of writing and that it was different from the spoken x Sacred Language, Ordinary People language. But what I had not quite grasped was just how great the differ ences are. It was clear that in order for me to be able to do my research and have conversations with Egyptians, I had to devote time to the study of Egyptian Arabic as well. Soon I realized that Egyptian schoolchildren and I have a somewhat com parable experience but in reverse: they start out knowing Egyptian Arabic because it is their mother tongue, and begin to learn Classical Arabic at school, since this is the official language and the medium of education. Why isn't Egyptian Arabic the medium of education? Most primary and sec ondary school teachers give their lessons in Egyptian Arabic-classroom in teractions in general are in that language. So, unofficially, Egyptian Arabic is also a medium of education. But why not officially as well? The constitution of 1980, like those before it, declares Classical Arabic as the official language of Egypt. No mention is made of Egyptian Arabic. Why is citizenship in part defined in relation to a language that is no one's mother tongue? What does it mean to have a divine language as the official language of a state? These and similar questions motivated me to go back to Egypt for more field re search in 1995-96. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur' an and of Islamic rituals such as the five daily prayers. It has been and continues to be the language of writing-used in textbooks, newspapers, magazines, fiction and nonfiction, and in bureaucracy. The language of daily exchanges and that of nonprint media is Egyptian Arabic, used in television, radio, theatre and film, but on the whole prevented from becoming a language of writing. Many Egyptians told me that in order to learn Classical Arabic well, one had to study the Qur' an, whose language is the Word of God and the high est exemplar of Classical Arabic. If Classical Arabic is both the language of Islam and of the state, do Egyptians identifY the two as the same? Or, as sec ular intellectuals believe, there has emerged a new form of Classical Arabic a "third language"-over the past century and a half that is "modern"-a language that is independent of religion and in which "anything can be said"? If so, why do most other Egyptians find these claims so controversial, asserting, on the contrary, that there is only "one" Classical Arabic that is the language of the Qur' an and of Islam? This book is an attempt at understanding the cultural and political im plications of the divide between Classical and Egyptian Arabic. Since the nineteenth century, Egyptians set out to modernize and simplifY (ta&dith and tabsiit, respectively) Classical Arabic in order to make it more re sponsive to their needs and to the exigencies of contemporary life more generally. The central question that I pursue in the following chapters is: What does it mean to modernize a sacred language? I explore whether such an endeavor is possible, what kinds oflimits it has and how it affects Preface =~ Xl personal self-expression, cultural production and social and political rela tions in Egypt today. So far, I have used the term "Classical Arabic" to refer both to the lan guage of the Qur' an and to the contemporary written language. Some scholars may take issue with this choice, preferring instead to refer to the contemporary language of writing as "Modern Standard Arabic" or MSA for short. I resist this term for a number of reasons. First, there is no equiv alent to this term in common usage in Arabic. The term MSA was coined by a number of linguists at Harvard University in the 1960s, according to the renowned linguist Charles Ferguson. In addition, its use implies that we understand the "modernity" of contemporary Classical Arabic and that the modernization of this language is now an accomplished fact. The term has allowed us to take the entire question of modernization for granted and hence has prevented inquires into the many complex issues surrounding it. The closest translation of the name of the language in Arabic-al-Iugha al 'arabiyya al-fu.s~a-is "the Eloquent Arabic Language." Egyptians often shorten this term to either al-Iugha al- 'arabiyya or to fu!~a. I could have fol lowed this usage throughout and used the term the "Arabic Language." But as non-Arab readers already need to be reminded that there is not just one "Arabic" language, and as many scholars writing in English use the term Classical Arabic, I have chosen not to do that. Finally, for those who write in English, it is common to refer to the non-Classical varieties of Arabic as "colloquial Arabic." I do not use this term because the modifier "colloquial" refers to a style of speaking or writing, and cannot characterize an entire lan guage in which there are many styles of self-expression. I return to the issue of terms a number of times in the following chapters.