Trek Update: Religion and Some Politics (Retro Update)

Religion and some Politics
begun: 7/21

I'm sure that you're all wondering about Christian/Muslim interactions here.
I will tell you:

The specific kind of religion seems more linked to personal identity
here than I notice in the States. Even being in a particular
denomination seems more like a sense of nationalism.
Non-denominational churches are not something I've heard about here.
In Egypt you are pretty much either a Christian or you are a Muslim.
It says which you are on your ID card. Basically, you are born into
your religion and that's what you are. Most people's understanding of
the United States is that everyone is a Christian and everyone is born
into a Christian family. In both countries, there are self-identified
Christians who don't necessarily pursue Jesus.


There are a lot of Christians. A large number of them have cross
tattoos on their right arms in one of three places. It's a small,
decorative X inside the arm just below the elbow, on the back of the
hand between the thumb and index finger, or, most commonly, on the
right wrist below the palm. People with tattoos are easy to spot
holding onto rails on the metro. They say that they put it over their
wrist so that if they ever wanted to leave Christianity and remove it,
they would have to kill themselves. Christian women do not wear
veils. Muslim women wear veils because Allah says so in the Koran.
But, it's a little ambiguous how much of your face you should cover.
Asmaa says that it's one of the things that she questions and talks
about with her Muslim friends.

Tiffany, Ange, and Anna met our Egyptian friend Asmaa on the metro.

They went to visit her family and she's been here to visit us twice.
She is awesome. She's 29 and wants to be a doctor, preferably in the
United States or Canada, but her parents won't let her live on her own
until she is married, which she doesn't want to do if it's not for
love. tricky.

She thinks that the veil should not have to cover a woman's entire
face, and even if she goes to Saudi Arabia and to Mecca where face
veiling is the law, she will not cover her face.

We gave her tea and cookies when she came over, and she asked us
about American culture and Christianity - like those movies where
people kiss each other and if that was actually ok. In the midst of
responding, we tried to explain that though we can talk about
'American culture', there is a wide range of beliefs and lifestyles.
Asmaa understands because she is cool. Two days ago, she took us to
see the oldest mosque in Cairo. She offered to take us to a very old
church (St. George's, right outside the Coptic Museum). Even though
she's only been in a church once before, she would go into one again
for us because we are friends. awww. But the church was closed, so
we just went to the mosque. It was built in 642. It's amazingly
beautiful. As foreigners, we were given green robes with hoods that
had the same kind of shine to them that you see on top of a bowl of
chicken noodle soup. We took our shoes off and left them at the
reception desk where we picked up our complementary green robes. The
mosque is just so big. It's big in a different way than a cathedral
is big. A cathedral is painstakingly ornate and very dizzyingly tall.
Walking through the mosque was like walking through a park with
burgundy patterned carpets for grass and row after row after row of
white pillars, linked by white arches.

None of us have been treated poorly because we are Christians, but
then again we are also dressing and behaving appropriately to the
culture (Some of us have been asked if we are Muslims) and we are only
interacting with Muslim Egyptians on an individual level. I'm not
sure what would happen if we started looking at the ways in which
religion and politics influence each other at the systematic level
here. I've heard stories about people being threatened for starting
churches or for not converting to Islam. And one girl in an Egyptian
youth group wanted to come to America partly because she saw a show in
which Christians went door-to-door to evangelize. She asked us if
that was really allowed in America. We said yes, but most people
don't like it. Last year, there were some schools that the trek
almost weren't allowed into because there had been some other
Christians proselytizing (this is illegal) and the administrators
thought that they were with us. After they got that sorted out
though, our volunteers were allowed to go to the schools.

Interestingly enough, we met a group of Christians on a bus whose
purpose was to come here to proselytize. They were with a different
organization and have been in Cairo for 5 or 6 weeks already. I was
really confused because they've been here longer than us and had
months of preparation together, but they really don't know very much
arabic at all, and their organization only provided them with some
pamphlets about Muslims and arab culture. I have yet to see a
pamphlet that fairly represents its subject. No, we didn't really
receive much instruction about Muslim customs either, but we also had
only 1 week of orientation compared to their several months. And, we
definitely received instruction in Egyptian culture. I'm sure they're
having a very different experience of Cairo than we are, especially
since we came with the purpose of serving the poorer communities. So
they talk about playing games in internet cafes all night and and buy
lots of chips and snack foods (which gets expensive here. Did you
know that BBQ flavored chips are 'Exotic'?). They're probably acting
the same way I would if I was visiting a city with some friends.

They met this Egyptian dude and invited him to dinner after hanging
out for a while. His response was something along the lines of You
Americans - You're all so rich and you just want to flaunt your
wealth. I've never gotten that response. Maybe because we usually
invite people into our home to have dinner with us. They said they
were trying to explain that not all Americans were rich. I think that
this is a difficult statement to defend.

I took a class on ancient Christianity last semester and learned
about how much of Christian tradition comes from Alexandria and the
Eastern Empire. Sanaa has been really excited about her camel Akbar,
Bedouin clothing, and just being here because half her heritage is
from this part of the world. I've been exited about being here,
seeing the early churches, and visiting the Coptic museum because now
I know that so much of my religious heritage comes from this part of
the world. It's strange to think that this was the happenin' place
for Christianity back in the day. Nobody thinks of Egypt as a former
center of Christianity anymore.

The most Christian part of Cairo I found was Mokattam. I believe the
church there was coptic. This is why it's exciting: in my ancient
Christianity class, we learned about the coptic desert fathers - these
men who reputedly posessed such great spiritual wisdom that people
would journey into the desert just to hear a word from them. They
lived simply, didn't eat much, and wore hair shirts. Later on, some
Christian movements and ideology started promoting various
uncomfortable practices like not eating, not sleeping, and wearing
hair shirts as penance or as a measure of discipline of the mind and
body. It must be good because the desert fathers did it, right?
Actually, the desert fathers wore hair shirts because they were poor
and couldn't afford anything else. They lived in the desert because
they couldn't afford to pay taxes or live in the cities.

Mokattam reminds me of that because it's still an isolated community
of poor copts.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/mokattam.htm
There are crosses everywhere in Mokattam, and further proof of
Christianity is Mokattam's pigs. Muslims don't eat pork, but pigs are
important business in Mokattam. Guess what Mokattam's other business
is? I'll give you a hint. Cairo has one of the most efficient
recycling programs ever. I think something like 80% of garbage
returns as something useful.
Mokattam runs on garbage. It's workers are called the zabbaleen. In
our apartment, taking out the trash means taking it to the sidewalk,
turning right, and setting it next to the 2nd post on the left. Later
on, it would disappear. The zabbaleen (men and boys) quietly run a
trash-collecting network through all of Cairo. The trash goes back to
Mokattam where it is hand-sorted by the women and girls. Some
projects have been started to give people safer, more dignified,
educating jobs than sorting through trash.
http://www.ape.org.eg/act.html

Has anyone read the Myst book trilogy? They're the story of what
happens between the Myst computer games. In one book, there are these
invisible people who live in the walls of the buildings owned by a
more wealthy, high-class people. The invisible people are essentially
the slaves of the priveliged. They do all of the tasks required to
keep the privileged comfortable. They are invisible because the
privileged have been trained from birth not to notice them. This has
become a metaphor for me to think about the zabbaleen, the migrant
workers, and all the other people who are ignored and forgotten by a
society that can afford to ignore and forget.

And now, as a relevant preview for the next post, I'll mention that
in Sudan, the government has been warring against its own people
essentially since the British left. For years, the Islamic government
has gotten support from neighboring countries by claiming to fight
Christianity. Now consider that Darfur is like, 98% Muslim. This has
been going on for decades. It's straight-up ethnic cleansing. And
because government is both committing the genocide and controlling the
media, the Sudanese people go unheard.
We cannot be a society which allows a people group to go unheard and
forgotten.

badain (later),
Tracy