University of North Dakota UND Scholarly Commons Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects January 2016 Redefining Islamic Identity: Cosmopolitanism In The Theater Of Tawfiq Al-Hakim And Akbar Ahmed Gaber Abdelghaffar Abdelrahman Hasaneen Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/theses Recommended Citation Hasaneen, Gaber Abdelghaffar Abdelrahman, "Redefining Islamic Identity: Cosmopolitanism In The Theater Of Tawfiq Al-Hakim And Akbar Ahmed" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1899. https://commons.und.edu/theses/1899 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REDEFINING ISLAMIC IDENTITY: COSMOPOLITANISM IN THE THEATER OF TAWFIQ AL-HAKIM AND AKBAR AHMED by Gaber Abdelghaffar Abdelrahman Hasaneen Bachelor of Arts, Assiut University, 2000 Master of Arts, Assiut University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of North Dakota in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Grand Forks, North Dakota May 2016 PERMISSION Title Redefining Islamic Identity: Cosmopolitanism in the Theater of Tawfiq Al- Hakim and Akbar Ahmed Department English Degree Doctor of Philosophy In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a graduate degree from the University of North Dakota, I agree that the library of this University shall make it freely available for inspection. 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Gaber Abdelghaffar Abdelrahman Hasaneen 04/25/2016 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………..v ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….vi INTRODUCTION Partial, Muslim Cosmopolitanism………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER I. “Wherever My Wife Lives”: Cosmopolitan Answers to Identity Questions…………………………………………………………………..13 II Tawfiq Al-Hakim: The National and the Cosmopolitan…………………..61 III Akbar Ahmed: The Dilemma of Representation…………………………110 CONCLUSION Who Is Worthy of Representation?………………………………………150 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………….154 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the members of my advisory Committee for their guidance and support during my time in the PhD program at the University of North Dakota. v ABSTRACT The question whether Islam is compatible with American, or generally “Western,” values has now imposed itself on public debates, gaining more urgency and traction with every tragic act of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. In these debates Islamic identity is usually defined in Orientalist terms. Fundamentalist Muslims reiterate Orientalist concepts of who a Muslim is. Orientalist observers on the one hand, and on the other fundamentalist Muslims have defined Islam as the West’s inimical Other, which has made the so-called clash of civilizations sound inevitable. I argue that cosmopolitan observers challenge these misrepresentations. Representation, particularly self-representation, of the so-called Islamic world requires a thoughtful reading of current events as well as an accurate evaluation of Islam’s historical relationship with other religions and cultures. By examining the concepts of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s “partial cosmopolitanism” and Bruce Lawrence’s “Muslim cosmopolitanism” in the theater of Tawfiq Al-Haim and Akbar Ahmed, this study redefines identity contours and suggests an accurate nomenclature regarding Islamic identity. There is an urgent need to represent the cosmopolitan dimension we encounter when we read writers from different generations and different “Islamic” cultures who illustrate the resources of cosmopolitanism shared across the Islamicate world. Tawfiq Al- Hakim and Akbar Ahmed are examples for these writers. vi O mankind, We have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. (Quran 49:13) Like a compass I stand firm with one leg on my faith And roam with the other leg all over the seventy-two nations. (Jalaluddīn Rumi) INTRODUCTION Partial, Muslim Cosmopolitanism In a new sort of discourse defined by Carl Ernst and Richard Martin in Rethinking Islamic Studies as “post-Orientalist,” emerging throughout the last three decades, the study of the Islamicate world in the humanities and social sciences has found in Cosmopolitanism theory an alternative to Orientalism. To be part of this new discourse, studies of literature need to look for works that stress what Bruce Lawrence calls “Muslim Cosmopolitanism” instead of those adapted to the expectations of a biased public affected by mainstream media, especially after 9/11. Though Lawrence does not give an explicit definition of the term, he associates it with “the challenge to redefine Islam apart from both fundamentalists/Islamists and their statist/nationalist opponents…, project[ing] a larger, cosmopolitan canopy for Islam beyond the iterations, at once local and ideological, of several Muslim actors.” Using the word “challenge,” Lawrence echoes Kwame Anthony Appiah that “Cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution 1 but of the challenge [emphasis mine]” (Appiah xv), and states in the case of Muslim Cosmopolitanism what the challenge is: creating a new discourse in the middle of competing representational forms” (Lawrence 306). It should be noted, however, that as this study adopts cosmopolitanism as a new discourse and argues for tracing its manifestations in the theater of Tawfiq Al-Hakim and Akbar Ahmed, it is necessary to refer to debates on and critiques of cosmopolitanism. In Critiques like John Gray’s “Easier Said than Done,” Serge Latouche’s The Westernization of the World: Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity (1996), Danilo Zolo’s Cosmopolis: Prospects for World Government (1997), Craig Calhoun’s Cosmopolitanism and Belonging: From European Integration to Global Hopes and Fears (2006), one finds cosmopolitanism, or the ways it is presented by cosmopolitan writers, is criticized as, at best, elitist and too ideal to put into practice, and, more important, as Western-centric, ultimately a reiteration of orientalism and neocolonialism. Central to critiques of cosmopolitanism are these questions: What does it mean to be cosmopolitan? Where do we locate cosmopolitans in relation to their own local cultures and the world at large? In “‘Belonging’ in the Cosmopolitan Imaginary” (2003), Calhoun argues that “cosmopolitan liberals often fail to recognize the social conditions of their own discourse, presenting it as freedom from social belonging rather than a special sort of belonging, a view from nowhere or everywhere rather from particular social spaces. The views of cosmopolitan elites express privilege; they are not neutral apprehensions of the whole.” Calhoun also suggests, “an approach that starts with individuals and treats culture as contingent cannot do justice to the legitimate claims made on behalf of ‘communities,’ 2 and the reasons why ‘thick attachments’ to particular solidarities still matter—whether in the forms of nations, ethnicities, local communities, or religions (532). Calhoun does not argue against cosmopolitanism, but objects to the way cosmopolitan writers present it: “Cosmopolitanism need not be presented as the universalistic enemy of particular solidarities, but it often is.” For Calhoun, both extreme cosmopolitans1 and moderates misrepresent cosmopolitanism: “Nussbaum and other extreme cosmopolitans, and to a lesser extent many of the moderates, present cosmopolitanism first and foremost as a kind of virtuous deracination, a liberation from the possibly illegitimate and in any case blinkering attachments of locality, ethnicity, religion, and nationality.” Thus, Calhoun is concerned with locating cosmopolitans somewhere in the world. He contends, “Cosmopolitanism is a presence not an absence, an occupation of particular positions in the world, not a view from nowhere or everywhere” (544). Calhoun’s is a legitimate concern, and perhaps Appiah’s biggest contribution to cosmopolitan studies is addressing questions about the position of cosmopolitans through the concept of “partiality.” In “Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism” Chike Jeffers explains, “The question of partiality as it relates to cultural cosmopolitanism is whether the cosmopolitan is claiming only that one need not be situated within a single cultural tradition in order to flourish or, more strongly, that one cannot flourish unless one has transcended attachment to a single culture” (490). While this question, as Jeffers observes, may lead to an 1 Distinctions between different types of cosmopolitanism (institutional and moral, political and cultural, extreme and moderate) need to be considered. For more details on these distinctions see Samuel Scheffler’s “Conceptions