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The Discourse of Drug Use in Egypt: an Interdisciplinary Exploratory Study

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The Discourse of Drug Use in Egypt: an Interdisciplinary Exploratory Study American University in Cairo AUC Knowledge Fountain Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2015 The discourse of drug use in Egypt: an interdisciplinary exploratory study Alejandro Gutierrez Follow this and additional works at: https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds Recommended Citation APA Citation Gutierrez, A. (2015).The discourse of drug use in Egypt: an interdisciplinary exploratory study [Master’s thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/118 MLA Citation Gutierrez, Alejandro. The discourse of drug use in Egypt: an interdisciplinary exploratory study. 2015. American University in Cairo, Master's thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/118 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by AUC Knowledge Fountain. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of AUC Knowledge Fountain. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The American University in Cairo School of Global Affairs and Public Policy THE DISCOURSE OF DRUG USE IN EGYPT: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPLORATORY STUDY A Thesis Submitted to Middle East Studies Center in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Alejandro Gutierrez under the supervision of Dr. Mohammed Tabishat December 2015 © Copyright Alejandro Gutierrez 2015 All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been long in the making and wouldn’t be possible without the help of countless friends, professors, and other colleagues. Foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my committee. Special thanks to my advisor, Dr. Mohammad Tabishat, for taking the time to read and edit countless drafts of abstracts, proposals, and chapters—for inspiring me, motivating me, and guiding this project throughout its entirety. I offer sincere thanks to my reader Dr. Sandrine Gamblin who helped shape this project from its inception until its conclusion. I also must thank Dr. Helen Rizzo, whose insights and feedback on my work have been invaluable. I have grown immensely from their guidance. I have truly enjoyed working with all of you. I would also like to thank the participants of this project for their assistance in my research and for their invaluable cooperation. This thesis could not have been completed without the aid and knowledge they provided. Finally, I thank Mariam Salloum—for always believing in me, and whose unwavering support made this project possible. I am truly grateful. iii ABSTRACT This thesis sets out to better understand how Egyptian society constructs and labels the ‘deviant’ behavior of drug use. However, it is not about drugs per se, it is about scrutinizing the complex process through which Egyptian society encounters, experiences, and regulates behavior. Through an interdisciplinary approach, it builds an alternative and critical understanding of a stigmatized group of individuals by describing how they shape or are shaped by the dynamic system in which they exist. Thus, it creates a conversation between the structures of power that regulate the moral economy of society on the one hand and individuals practicing a role with their substance use on the other. It explores the structural power that disciplinary mechanisms have over ‘deviant behavior’, while simultaneously illustrating that ‘deviant drug users’ are judged according to a variety of unique circumstances and spectrum of acceptability. While some are successfully stigmatized for violating norms, others are able to retain their autonomy and shape their own rules and value systems outside the judgment of mainstream society. So, by using drug use as a lens to examine society, this thesis analyzes the fluidity of power within society in this context and also the ambiguity of behavior within different times and spaces. Ultimately, this thesis shows that deviant behavior like drug use is essential to any society that designates boundaries and rules. For how do individuals know what roles, interactions, behavior, value systems, are legitimate if society doesn’t create a ‘deviant other’ whose transgressions teach right from wrong, lawful from unlawful, and the acceptable from the unacceptable. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1 A. The Context ............................................................................................................. 3 1. A Brief History of Drugs in Egypt .......................................................................... 4 2. Drug Use in Contemporary Egypt .......................................................................... 7 3. Theoretical and Methodological Framework: Discourse Analysis and an Alternative Approach to Drug Research ............................................................................. 8 B. Methodology and Limitations ............................................................................... 12 C. Exploring Egyptian Society: Chapter Outline ...................................................... 13 1. A Broader Drug Discourse .................................................................................... 13 2. Muhammad: The Repressive System and its Hold Over a Drug User ................. 14 3. Deviance, Labeling, Liminality and Communitas ................................................ 14 II. CHAPTER TWO: IDENTIFYING THE DRUG DISCOURSE IN EGYPT ....... 16 A. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 16 B. Drug Discourse and Power Relations in Egypt: An Assortment of discourse ...... 17 C. Prevailing Drug Discourse in Egypt: .................................................................... 18 1. Governmental/ State Discourse ............................................................................. 18 2. Religious Discourse .............................................................................................. 25 i. The Fatwa: Hukm Taʿāti al-Makhadarāt (The Rule of Drug Use) ................... 27 ii. Dar al-ifta’ ........................................................................................................ 32 iii. Perspectives from an Imam: Dr. Hassan ......................................................... 35 3. Popular Culture: .................................................................................................... 39 i. Amr Khaled’s Anti-Drug Campaign: Hamāya /Stop Drugs. Change Your Life 39 ii. Shaʿban Aʿbdal Rahim and Ahmad Mekky: Juxtaposing Egyptian Drug Songs ............................................................................................................................... 43 iii. Drugs in Literature: Mahfouz and Youssef ..................................................... 49 iv. Representations of Drugs in News, Television, and Film ............................... 54 B. Conclusion: Creating A Broader Discourse of Drugs in Egypt ............................ 59 v III. CHAPTER THREE: THE REPRESSIVE SYSTEM AND ITS HOLD OVER A DRUG USER .................................................................................................................... 61 A. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 61 B. Foucault and Goffman: An Integrated Approach to Studying Stigmatized Behavior ........................................................................................................................ 62 C. Muhammad the ‘Drug Addict’ Caught in a Repressive System ........................... 64 D. Muhammad: Escaping ‘Total Institutions’ ........................................................... 68 E. Family: An Institution within the Repressive System .......................................... 71 F. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 75 IV. CHAPTER FOUR: DEVIANCE, LABELING, LIMINAL SPACE AND THE REALITY OF DRUG USE IN EGYPTIAN SOCIETY .................................................. 77 A. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 77 B. Defining Drug Deviance and Processes of Labeling ............................................ 79 1. Becoming a “Deviant” Drug User in Egypt: A Users Perspective of General Conditions ......................................................................................................................... 81 2. Becoming a “Deviant” Drug User in Egypt: A Unique Experience ..................... 85 C. Liminality and Communitas: Creating Drug Space in Egypt ............................... 93 1. Drug-Selling Sites: From Hashīsh to Heroin ........................................................ 95 2. Nightclubs: The Drug Privilege ............................................................................ 98 3. Southern Sinai/ Dahab and Ras Shaytān: A Drug Holiday ................................. 101 4. Recognized Drug Space in Egypt: Weddings, Cafes, and Cabarets ................... 105 D. Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 108 V. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION ..................................................................... 111 A. Findings ............................................................................................................... 111 B. Theoretical Implications and Contributions
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