Egypt's Presidential Elections: Pick Your Poison

My predictions:

1)   Amr Moussa

2)   Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

3)   Ahmed Shafik

4)   Mohamed Morsi

5)   Hamdeen Sabahi (although I didn’t even feel the need to mention his name in my previous post because I thought he had no chance)

How it turned out:

1)   Mohamed Morsi

2)   Ahmed Shafik

3)   Hamdeen Sabahi

4)   Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

5)   Amr Moussa

And that, my friends, demonstrates the futility of making predictions about anything relating to politics in Egypt!

For many people in Egypt – revolutionaries and liberals in particular – yesterday was a pretty terrible day. Of all the possible runoff matchups, a Mohamed Morsi (Muslim Brotherhood) / Ahmed Shafik (Mubarak regime) showdown is the most extreme, polarizing scenario. From talking to my friends yesterday, reading reactions on Facebook and Twitter, and watching a few television talk shows, it seems like most of the young, technology-literate crowd is going to end up voting for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi (albeit while holding their noses). Despite all the fervid talk of being forced to choose between “religious fascists” and “military fascists,” the thought of voting for someone from the old regime to avoid the scenario of having an MB-dominated government is simply unthinkable. Given the Morsi’s strong MB base and the support he will likely receive from moderate Islamists and Salafis who supported Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and liberals who supported Sabbahi, it’s hard for me to envision a scenario in which Shafik (who will be looking to attract votes from former Amr Moussa supporters) wins the presidency. If the liberals decide that it is not worth voting, however, then it is anybody’s guess as to who will pull through in the end.

If there is a bright side to this situation, it is that a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government may result in one of two possible positive outcomes. First, with the legislative and executive branches under their control, the MB will be well-positioned to make a serious effort to bring the military under the government’s control. The military will not easily submit to government oversight of its budget and economic holdings, but this issue is without a doubt one of the most important ones that Egypt faces today. The Muslim Brotherhood may choose to cut a deal with the military in which they essentially agree to stay out of each others’ business, but, even if such a deal were to happen, their conflicting interests may eventually become so acute that they have no choice but to confront each other. Second, with the entire civilian government under its control, the MB will bear complete responsibility for what happens in Egypt over the next several years. Given the current economic crisis, the lack of a constitution, and the crippling of state institutions such as the police force to the point where they have become completely ineffective, this complete responsibility may turn into a curse instead of a blessing. Assuming that the MB allows for free and fair elections a few years down the road, Egyptians will have a chance to toss them out of power if they are unhappy with the direction the country has taken under the MB’s leadership.

On the other hand, the nightmare scenario for liberals is that the brotherhood uses its newfound power to reorient the old system to serve their own interests rather than reform it. If it so desires, the MB could adopt many of the old constitutional and legal tools that Mubarak used to consolidate his power and effectively minimize all political opposition. In my opinion, such a move wouldn’t lead to a theocracy, as many people fear, but it would result in the MB becoming the new version of the Mubarak regime.

A few other observations from yesterday:

1)   What was the main reason for the Muslim Brotherhood’s success? Its ground game! There is simply no better political organization in Egypt right now in terms of mobilizing its base and making sure that its supporters have a way to get to the polls. A friend of mine who lives in a small town in the Nile Delta, for example, told me that the MB had 15 tuk-tuks (rickshaw taxis) and 5 microbuses bringing people to the polls all day long.

2)   Hamdeen Sabbahi’s popularity shot up in the last few weeks as he took on the title of “revolutionary candidate.” I didn’t include him in my post a few days ago because I figured that, even though a number of my friends supported him, his popularity would be limited to the educated, urban middle and upper classes. As the parliamentary elections proved, these classes have relatively little voting power compared to the Islamists. Nevertheless, Sabbahi’s strong showing (as well as Aboul Fotouh’s) is one positive thing that the liberals can take away from this otherwise dark day. Of course Sabbahi, Aboul Fotouh, and the other liberal candidates are now regretting their decision not to unite around one consensus choice – if they had done so, they would have had one of their own in the runoff.

3)   Whence the Salafis? After their surprisingly strong showing in the parliamentary elections, the Salafis (hardline Islamic fundamentalists) didn’t field a candidate in the presidential elections. While a number of Salafi groups supported Aboul Fotouh, they clearly did not turn out as strongly for him as hoped. There is no way that the Salafis would support Shafik, an avowed Islamist-hater, in the runoff, but it is unclear if they will come out in large numbers to support Morsi. The Salafis and MB are intense competitors when it comes to fighting for control over the state’s religious and educational institutions, and the Salafis generally view the MB as having deviated from the true Islam in favor of pragmatism and compromise in attempt to gain political power. Hoping to gain some insight into the Salafi take on the current political situation, a few friends and I went to hear the Friday sermon at a popular Salafi mosque on the outskirts of Cairo yesterday. I was surprised to hear the sheikh directly criticize the democratic process as a whole (and elections in particular) as un-Islamic, basically arguing that splitting into political parties and competing in elections runs counter to the Quran’s call for unity among Muslims. While nearly all of the Salafis shared this view before the revolution, many of them abandoned it after the revolution and dove headfirst into the political sphere. There has been some evidence, however, that some of them may be reconsidering that decision. Given that Salafis make up 20-25% of the electorate, this will be an important constituency to watch over the next few weeks.

Suffice it to say that there will be plenty of intriguing developments between now and the runoff on June 17^th and 18^th. In light of my completely erroneous previous prediction for how things would shake out, I realize that I have very little credibility with which to predict the winner of the runoff. For what it’s worth, though, I think that Mohamed Morsi will be Egypt’s first democratically-elected president.

Today is my last day in Egypt, so this post will likely be my last (at least for now). To say that I’ve had a fascinating year here would be an understatement. Egypt is a colorful, amazing, and frustrating place all at the same time, and I hope that I have managed to convey at least a little bit of that unique character through this blog. Thanks for reading, and inshallah (God willing) I’ll be back here before long.

Living in the Palm of a Ghost

After spending nearly a full year in Egypt, I am about to bid the country farewell. This time next week I will be in San Francisco enjoying a combination of food, baseball, and fog – a far cry from the oppressive desert heat of the Cairo summer. Before leaving, however, I, along with 85 million Egyptians, am about to witness this country’s first ever competitive presidential election. Voting will commence on Wednesday morning and extend through Thursday evening, with the results to be announced soon thereafter. While this is only the first round (the top two vote recipients will face off in a runoff election on June 17^th and 18^th), the excitement and anticipation in the country are palpable. As my Egyptian dialect teacher told me last week, “we are living in the palm of a ghost [an Egyptian saying meaning that everything is very tenuous, nothing is for certain], no one knows what to expect!”

Indeed, the outcome of this first round is going to be as close to a complete surprise as possible. There are no reliable public opinion polls in Egypt, and, while most people have a general sense that the election is going to be between four main candidates (Amr Moussa, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the Arab League, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, former MB member turned liberal and Salafi favorite Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and Mubarak crony and former Minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafik), it is anybody’s guess as to who will make it into the runoff.

Whatever the outcome, Egyptians have thrown themselves into this campaign season with unmatched fervor. Literally every time I walk down the street past a café or overhear discussions in public areas, the subject is always politics! Taxi drivers love to expound on their reasons for voting for one candidate or another, and the newspapers and television talk shows are full of stories about the candidates and the campaign. These past two days have been deemed a “media blackout,” but that has done little to dampen the debate. When I told a friend of mine that I thought the blackout was a ridiculous idea, he responded “Don’t worry, Egyptians are naturally absurd like this: when there is a curfew we go down to the street to see what’s happening, and when there’s a strike we stay home instead of going to protest, so of course when there’s a media blackout everyone will just talk about politics more!”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a chance to see all of the main candidates in person. I wrote about the Mohamed Morsi rally I attended here, I heard Moussa and Shafik speak at luncheons held by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (where I have been interning for the past few months), and I attended a political rally-cum-festival last weekend held by the Aboul Fotouh campaign.

Like Morsi, Moussa had very little charisma and his rhetorical style was what I imagine Professor Binns (the “History of Magic” professor in the Harry Potter books known for his endless droning) would sound like. Nevertheless, Moussa has turned out to be highly popular because of his long tenure in government (which he has diligently tried to portray as endowing him with experience rather than associating him with the Mubarak regime). He is the John McCain equivalent in this race – old, a known entity, and running on his long record of civil service.

Shafik, on the other hand, is making no bones about his connection to the old regime. At the AmCham luncheon he made his distaste for the revolution clear, speaking of the “huge crisis” that Egypt was currently facing as a result of doing away with Mubarak. Shafik is running on a security and stability platform, claiming that security will return in “100 days – maximum!” if he becomes president, and there is little doubt that he plans to achieve that goal by letting the police force loose as Mubarak used to do and allowing it to round up anyone and everyone it so desires. Like Mubarak, Shafik is also fiercely opposed to the Islamists and hinted that he would take steps to push them out of politics (primarily by instituting a presidential system and effectively stripping the Parliament of its power). As you might expect, many of the revolutionaries are apopleptic at the possibility of a Shafik presidency. A friend of mine told me that if Shafik wins, he and all of his friends would go down to Tahrir Square with only two possible outcomes in mind: “Either we overthrow him, or he kills us. I would rather die than live in an Egypt where Ahmed Shafik is president.” Despite that fervor, however, I have met a surprisingly large number of people who plan to vote for Shafik.

And finally, we come to Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the closest thing to Obama that Egypt has to offer. Fotouh was a longtime Muslim Brotherhood member, although he was from a decidedly more liberal wing of the brotherhood than Mohamed Morsi. Soon after the revolution, he split off from the group in order to run for the presidency, taking a large chunk of the MB youth with him. Since then, he has assembled a coalition of youth who see him as the most revolutionary candidate, liberals who see him as a pseudo-liberal candidate who has a realistic chance of winning, and Salafis who like that he comes from an Islamist background and don’t want the MB to control both the parliament and the presidency. A true “big tent” campaign. As expected, Aboul Fotouh has been accused of pandering to the different constituencies supporting him, and many liberal and Christian friends are also highly suspicious of his history in the MB (“once a brother, always a brother” is a common refrain). Nonetheless, Aboul Fotouh seems to have been steadily rising in popularity, and the rally I went to last weekend was well attended. In classic Aboul Fotouh form, he stated in his speech that he wanted to create a “civil democratic state built upon a civilized Islamic foundation” - every word in that sentence, of course, was targeted at a particular constituency.

Unlike the parliamentary elections, which hinged much more on a candidate’s local ties and reputation in a particular community, the presidential elections are going to be the first real indicator of the overall political mood in the country. At the same time, however, these elections are certainly not an end in and of themselves. Whoever takes power will inherit an Egypt that still does not have a coherent governing framework, is plagued by the military’s “state within a state” of economic and security interests, and currently faces a huge economic and budgetary crisis. For now, though, it’s time to let the voting party begin!

Finally, here's my off-the-cuff prediction for the first ever competitive presidential elections in Egypt's history:

1) Amr Moussa

2) Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh

3) Ahmed Shafik

4) Mohamed Morsi

           

Election Season in Egypt

Catchy slogans, campaign rallies, seemingly sane and intelligent people making outrageous statements…it’s election season! The election I’m talking about, though, is not between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. No, this is presidential politics [cue the remix music] Egyptian style!

Last night, a few Egyptian friends and I attended a campaign rally held by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) for their party leader-turned-presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy. Before diving into the details of the rally, I’ll provide a little background for those of you who have not been able to keep up with the circus that Egyptian politics has become of late. In an effort to assuage fears that the MB wanted to immediately establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt, the group’s leaders pledged that they would only contest a portion of the seats in the parliamentary elections and would not, under any circumstances, field a presidential candidate.

Mohamed Morsy

They did not live up to either of those pledges. After fielding candidates in nearly every parliamentary district, the group announced about a month ago that they had reviewed their earlier pledge not to field a presidential candidate and decided that “new political developments” forced them to put forward one of their own for the presidency. The MB’s chosen candidate, Kheirat al-Shater, did not pass muster, however, in the eyes of the country’s electoral commission (which by most accounts was heavily influenced by the old regime and the ruling military council).  After Shater was disqualified from the race on what was essentially a technicality, the MB scrambled to put forward Mohamed Morsy as an alternative. He’s spent the past few weeks campaigning throughout the country, but from what I saw last night it’s easy to see why he didn’t get the nod in the beginning.

The rally was held at the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, reputedly Cairo’s oldest, in a working class neighborhood just south of the center of the city. While the rally was technically supposed to begin at 7:00 PM, we arrived at around 8:30 (most official events here run on “Egypt time,” meaning that they begin two to three hours after their supposed start time), just in time for evening prayers. As I sat in the mosque waiting for my friends to finish praying, an older man greeted me, declaring to me ,“I grew up in this mosque! I joined the brotherhood when I was this tall [making a gesture to indicate that he joined at a young age], I grew up a brother, and I will die a brother! Islam is always first!” Similar to most political rallies in the US, nearly all of the attendees seemed to be ardent MB supporters.

My friends completed their prayers, and we, along with hundreds of other men, spilled out of the mosque and onto the street in front of it where the rally was being held. A few words about the set-up of the event: the first thing that caught my eye was that the MB, apparently with an eye towards not causing a major traffic snarl by blocking off an entire street to hold the rally, had decided to put the stage and chairs on half the street, leave the other half open for traffic, and then put the spillover crowd on the opposite sidewalk! As a result, a steady stream of buses, trucks, and cars through the middle of the rally kept up throughout the night. Secondly, this was a gender-segregated rally. The chairs directly in front of the stage were occupied by men, and the sizable contingent of women were relegated to a spot on the sidewalk between the mosque and the stage (essentially at a 45 degree angle from the stage). When I asked my friend why the women didn’t have as good a view as the men did, he shrugged and said that it must be because they just ran out of space to fit them all in the front. I decided that it would be better not to press him on the issue.

As to the campaign rally itself, it actually bore somewhat of a resemblance to what you would expect at a campaign event in the US. Loud music (a mixture of Islamic and national songs), lots of flag-waving, campaign literature being distributed, etc. Morsy and his entourage didn’t arrive until about 9:30 (even presidential candidates get stuck in Cairo’s traffic), so the emcee led the crowd in a number of chants, such as “the people want Morsy to be president!” and “all the people call for Morsy to be the president of the country!” As the wait for him to arrive dragged on, I made up one of my own: “Where are you, oh Mohamed Morsy? I still can’t find a chair!” (all of those slogans rhyme in Arabic, by the way).

When Morsy finally showed up, everyone greeted him with whoops and cheers. Sitting next to him on the stage were a number of MB bigwigs, including Essam el-Erian (current MP and former member of the MB’s Guidance Bureau) and Safwat Hegazi, an outspoken imam and televangelist who has major street cred for being one of the first people to publicly come out in favor of the revolution in January of last year.

The first speaker of the night, however, was a woman (who also had a seat alongside Morsy). While I didn’t catch her name, she gave a ten minute speech about the special role of women in Islam, referring to the important role women played in the time of the prophet Mohamed and calling on the women in the audience to continue to work hard to make Egypt a more Islamic country. She yielded the floor to Essam el-Erian, who delivered a speech in impeccable formal Arabic that was long on flowing rhetoric and short on actual content. Perhaps the most rousing speech of the night was delivered by Hegazi, who drew a huge rise out of the crowd with his calls for the toppling of the ruling military council. He also drew another loud roar and a sustained period of slogan-chanting when he declared that the Egyptians would work with all Arabs to liberate Jerusalem. As a whole, however, the anti-Israel rhetoric that is so common on the Egyptian street was largely absent from the night’s dialogue.

And then it was Morsy’s turn. Like his colleague el-Erian (and unlike the other speakers), Morsy spoke exclusively in formal Arabic. He spent the first ten minutes of his speech touching on broad, nationalist themes, which included the idea of a “national renaissance,” and he spoke in general terms about the need to harness Egypt’s resources and the power of Egyptian workers to bring about economic and social development. After those first ten minutes, however, most of the crowd was losing interest. Unlike the other speakers, Morsy spoke in a monotone and stood in place on the stage, not using any hand gestures or other rhetorical devices to drum up interest in what he had to say. That being said, what happened next was absolutely shocking. The emcee, who had been silent throughout the previous speeches, suddenly interrupted Morsy when he was in the middle of a sentence and started shouting into the microphone “the people want Morsy for president!”, to which the crowd half-heartedly responded in kind. Morsy went on to drone on for another ten minutes, but the closest he got to laying out any kind of specific program was to say that he had convened a meeting of Very Smart People to study all of the problems that Egypt currently faces and come up with solutions. What exactly those problems are or what solutions he might be promoting are still unclear. Twenty minutes into his speech, el-Erian seemed to be dozing off in his chair next to Morsy, and a shouting match broke out on the street next to the stage which led a large portion of the crowd to take their waning attention off of Morsi and flock toward the bickerers. The emcee, again unprompted, broke in with more slogans just as Morsy was in the middle of explaining how Egypt’s foreign relations must be based on “mutual respect and shared interests.”

It was just that kind of night for Morsy. Since this was the first time I’ve seen him in person, I can’t say whether he was having a bad night or whether this is just who he is. I suspect, however, that the latter is true. Morsy wasn’t the MB’s first choice, he is not very well known outside of MB and political circles, and he doesn’t have the charisma and presence that you would expect in a presidential candidate. Despite the fact that the MB won 40% of the seats in Parliament, the latest opinion poll (which, admittedly, is of questionable reliability) had his level of support at just 3.6%! While there are still a few weeks to go before the first round of the elections, Morsy faces a Herculean task if he is to win one of the top two spots to advance to the runoff in June.

While most of the attendees at the rally were diehard MB supporters, the three friends who came with me left unconvinced. Riding the subway home, I asked them what they thought of the rally. “I’m still undecided,” my friend Mohamed said, “but I’m definitely not voting for that guy!”

Cab Ride

12:10 PM, Wednesday, February 22, 2012

As I plopped into the front seat of my taxi, I was instantly taken aback by the racy music video that I found playing on top of the glove box in front of me.

“Ay da?!” (what’s that?!) I asked, with an expression of mock-amazement.
“A DVD player!” my cab driver replied. “Do you like it?”
“It’s nice” I responded, turning to look out the window just in time to see a mass of oncoming traffic cascading towards us. Unperturbed (this is a normal phenomenon on Cairo’s streets), I turned back to the driver, who was looking at me with a big grin on his face.

“Are you Catholic?” he asked.

This was a bit of an odd question, not because of its religious element but because of the fact that he asked me specifically if I was Catholic. In fact, asking foreigners about their religion is not an uncommon occurrence on Cairo’s streets and taxicabs, but usually when someone asks me the question they’ll phrase it as “are you Muslim?”

“No, I’m not Catholic.” I responded, “I’m Jewish.”
“You’re Jewish!?” he looked at me with an expression of disbelief, “I’m Jewish too!”

That moment was quite possibly one of the oddest I have had in Egypt. I looked at him, did a double-take, and the first thing that popped into my mind as a response was: “No, you’re not!”

I know for a fact that there are no Egyptian Jewish men still living in the country. About a dozen old women, all of whom are over 70, is what remains of a once flourishing Jewish community. I have attended a few Jewish functions during my time in Cairo (primarily for the food), and the only men in the room are expatriates, the boisterous Egyptian lawyer who does all the legal work for the Jewish community, and a smattering of security guards.

“Yes, I am Jewish!” my driver replied. “We’re from the same religion!”
“Ok,” I said, skeptically, “but you’re Christian, right?”
“Yes, of course!” he replied.

Just as I breathed a sigh of relief at clearing up that issue, he let forth with a second statement that was equally as odd as the first: “I migrated to the U.S. two months ago!”

“You what?”
“Yes, two months ago, I went to the embassy and gave them my documents, you know, all that, and they told me to check back in a few months to see if I could migrate.”
“Oh, I think what you mean to say is that you applied for the green card lottery.” I replied. I didn’t want to sink his hopes, so instead of telling him that he had about a 1 in 200 chance of winning, I simply said “May God be with you” (an Egyptian phrase meaning “good luck”).

“I really want to leave this country!” he declared to me a few moments later.

I had a sense that I knew where this conversation was going. I have had a few Christian cab drivers in the past few months who conveyed similar sentiments: simply put, a large percentage of Egyptian Christians wish that the revolution had never happened. They felt secure in the Mubarak era, happy with a sort of “live-and-let-live” agreement with the largely Muslim – but secular – Mubarak regime. Instead of focusing their efforts on gaining influence in government, Christians occupied themselves with developing a robust network of businesses throughout the country. As a result, they control a disproportionate share of the wealth in today’s Egypt.

“Egypt is going down the drain,” he continued, “all those crazy Islamists have taken power and they hate Christians. I don’t trust them at all! I would even move to Israel if I could!”

Huh. Maybe this cabbie’s assertion that he was Jewish had some unintended nugget of truth to it…I was too dumbfounded to respond with anything other than a bewildered laugh.

“So, who did you vote for in the parliamentary elections?” I asked, although I realized a second after I asked him that there was only one possible answer.

“The Egyptian bloc,” he replied, speaking of the bloc of liberal parties headed by Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris’ “Free Egyptians Party.” Indeed, if not for the Christian vote, the liberal parties (including the Egyptian bloc) would have almost zero representation in Parliament.

“And do you make any distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis?” I asked. “In my opinion,” I added, “the Muslim Brotherhood is much more pragmatic and moderate than the extremist Salafis.”

“No, all of them are terrible.”

As we climbed onto the bridge linking Giza to Zamalek, the island in the middle of the Nile on which we have classes, the conversation turned back to religion.

“So, tell me, do Jews worship Jesus and the Virgin Mary?” he asked
“No,” I replied, “Jesus and Mary don’t have anything to do with Jewish theology.”
“Really, so then who do you worship? Idols?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Just like his previous statement incorrectly claiming that he was Jewish followed by his expressing a desire to move to Israel, this one also held a nugget of twisted truth. The Jews did, in fact, once worship idols. In the story of the golden calf (which, coincidentally, was my torah portion for my Bar Mitzvah), the Jews – Egyptian Jews, moreover – began to worship a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while they waited for Moses to return from his communion with God at the summit. When Moses returned with the ten commandments in hand, he flung them down in anger at the sight of his people worshiping an idol.

Given the driver’s complete lack of knowledge about Judaism, however, I decided that it would be best not to point out this irony: “No,” I replied, “Jews worship God, the same one that Christians and Muslims do, but they’re still waiting for his prophet to return.”

“Ah, I understand,” he said with a knowing nod, although I suspect that he still thinks that Jews are some breakaway sect of Christianity.

That was the end of our deep conversation, although I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two more outlandish statements that he made in the last five minutes of the trip. First, after asking me if I had a lot of Egyptian girlfriends and hearing my response that no, unfortunately, I did not, he insisted that he would change that.

“I will bring you dozens of girls from Shubra [a working class neighborhood in Cairo that is home to a mix of Christians and Muslims]!”
“Thank you,” I replied, “may God keep you” (an Arabic expression that basically is a polite way of saying “thanks but no thanks”).

A few moments later he turned to me and said with complete earnesty:
“Michael, I want to go to Israel so badly that I would even become an Israeli spy here in Egypt if they would grant me citizenship!”

I can say with complete certainty that that statement is the single most shocking thing I have ever had someone tell me in Cairo. Talk of Zionist conspiracies and espionage, of course, is one of the favorite pastimes of the Egyptian media, and just as unfortunate is the extent to which many Egyptians – both Muslims and Christians – take what they hear in the media as the pure, unadulterated truth. To understand the absurdity of this comment, just imagine an American coming up to you and declaring that he had a deep-seated desire to move to Afghanistan and join the Taliban.

Weirder than weird. And also completely hilarious. Welcome in Egypt.

A Timbuktu Madrassa

Timbuktu, a town whose name elicits visions of an exotic African paradise, is a decidedly boring town. Although it is only a few miles from the Niger River, the lifeblood of northern Mali, the sands of the Sahara have overrun every inch of the town. Dust devils spring up at random intervals on city streets, mixing trash and sand into a fetid cone, and you cannot walk for more than a few minutes without pausing to empty a pile of sand from your shoes. Given this disconnect between imagination and reality, it is no wonder that Rene Caillie, the first European to reach Timbuktu and return to tell the tale, found himself the object of intense ire in Europe from Europeans who could not fathom that Timbuktu was anything but a heavenly city.

Despite its downtrodden appearance, however, Timbuktu still has a few gems that revealed themselves as I explored the town. The town was a center of trade and Islamic learning in the middle of the last millennium, and a few beautiful mosques and libraries of old manuscripts remain to tickle any traveler’s imagination. Trudging through the sand berms that passed for streets, I stumbled upon the Sankore mosque, a an mud-brick mosque with a pyramid-shaped minaret that dates back to the 14^th century and used to house Timbuktu’s biggest madrassa (Islamic school).

The Sankore Mosque, Timbuktu

Unfortunately most mosques in Mali have signs posted outside their gates that specify that entry for non-Muslims is interdite (forbidden), and Sankore was no exception. Rumor has it that foreigners used to have free access to mosques until Vanity Fair used the Great Mosque of Djenne as the scene for a risqué photo shoot that did not go over so well with Malians. While the profit motive ultimately triumphed over religious concerns in Djenne (my guide there informed me that I could have a look inside the mosque if I forked over $10 to a man sitting in a ambiguously official manner beside the mosque’s rear door), Timbuktu still seemed to be holding out. Sankore was closed and the prominently posted sign next to the front door discouraged me from knocking.

After I had circumambulated the mosque, I came upon a small group of low-slung mud buildings where, lo and behold, I heard a language that sounded a lot like Arabic. As I moved closer to investigate, I found myself peering into a classroom filled with students listening intently to a teacher lecturing them in Arabic as he gestured at pictures on a chalkboard. I paused for a few seconds outside the window to listen, but in that short period of time the attention of the entire class had shifted from the teacher to me (the large white man at the window). Not wanting to distract them, I decided to keep walking. After I had taken a few tentative steps, however, I stopped and thought to myself, “this is an opportunity that you should not pass up.”

“Salaamu aleikum,” I said to the teacher as I appeared at the door to the classroom, “can I sit for a few minutes in your class?”

“Please, here you go,” He responded with a mixture of surprise and bemusement as he pointed me to an empty desk in the front row, but he was able to pick up his train of thought immediately after I sat down.

The lesson of the day was about reptiles. The teacher had written out all of the material on the chalkboard, and he led the class through it in a sing-song voice.

“What types of reptiles are there?” he asked rhetorically in flowing, formal Arabic. “Some have legs, like the turtle and the lizard, and others, like snakes, just slither.”

To emphasize key points, he would take a statement that he had just made and turn it instantly into a question, expecting that the students would answer in unison.

Teacher: “Most lizards live in dry, desert-like climates. Where do they live?”

Students (in unison): “In dry, desert-like climates.”

Before attending this class, I had not realized that some Malian madrassas taught more than just how to read the Quran. In Djenne, for example, madrassa students begin their lessons at the crack of down and finish a few hours later so that they can head off to their conventional schools. They study Arabic primarily through the Quran, and as a result most students can read and understand Quranic Arabic but have no practical mastery of the language. This school in Timbuktu, however, was clearly different. As I learned from the teacher after the lesson ended, these seventh graders had been learning in Arabic since kindergarten, and they were expected to speak it in class as well.

Mali, like almost every other country in sub-Saharan Africa, must navigate some rocky terrain when it comes to language and education. The affairs of state are conducted in the colonial language, French, but two Malians speaking to each other on the street are much more likely to use a local language – “mother tongue.” Bambara, the most prominent of the mother tongues, is widely spoken in the southern part of the country, but it becomes less common as you head north. In Timbuktu, for example, you are just as likely to hear Tamashek (the language of the Tuareg nomads) or Songhai (the descendants of the great Songhai Empire that ruled Mali in the 15th and 16th centuries). This mixture of languages poses a serious pedagogical dilemma: should students learn in their mother tongue, the language that they speak with their family and on the street, or should teachers throughout the country use French as a unifying language? In fact, the Malian educational system seeks to find a middle ground: in government schools, students learn in the dominant mother tongue of their particular region for their first three years, after which all lessons are taught in French.

Unfortunately, this language dilemma has no perfect solution. The problem with the current arrangement is that children whose parents do not speak French find it very hard to connect what they learn in school with what they do at home. Ideally, a positive learning environment at home can reinforce the knowledge that a child picks up at school, but in rural Mali (and to a lesser extent in the cities), school and home are two different worlds.

The students at the Sankore madrassa also learned French, further strengthening their status as true polyglots. Their French skills enable them to navigate the world of Mali’s capital Bamako, and their Arabic enables them to communicate with their neighbors to the north (although they have to cross the desert in order to do so). But as residents of Timbuktu, their education still sells them short: if the leaders of tomorrow still conduct official business in Arabic or French, what hope is there for the vast number of people who will never make it past primary school? As long as this language dilemma persists, the prospects for comprehensive economic and social development remains slim.

Two More Muslim Countries, Two More Perspectives on Islam, Politics, and Society

Continuing my winter break sojourn, I left Israel just before Christmas and I’ve spent the past 2+ weeks in Tunisia and Mali. I am currently in Mopti, a transit hub on Mali's Niger River. Blocks of salt from Timbuktu, cargo pinasses (dugout canoes with outboard motors) loaded to the brim with food staples and other goods headed up the river, passenger buses headed to Bamako that are relics from a bygone era of transportation – it’s all here! Tomorrow morning, I am going to board a private pinasse and begin a leisurely three day journey up the river to Timbuktu. That world famous town is home to the Festival au Desert, a three day desert music spectacular that features both Malian and international artists. While the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime experience” has turned into something of a cliché, I think that it actually might apply in this instance.

The festival will be the culmination of my winter break travels, but I have also picked up a wealth of other experiences along the way. In particular, I have been fascinated by the different faces of Islam that I have seen in Tunisia and Mali. My reference point for Islam is, of course, Egypt. Thus, whenever I travel to another Muslim country, I find myself comparing it to the land of the pharaohs.

The Tunisian take on Islam is, from what I could tell, fairly similar to Egypt. Both countries are now about to usher in a new era of Islamist government, people who I interacted with asked me similar questions about my religious background and used similar arguments to try to convert me to Islam (they were just as ineffective in Tunisia as they have been in Egypt), and Tunisian Arabic, like Egyptian, is peppered with religious phrases. One major difference, however, is that the Salafi (hardline Islamist) movement that has taken Egypt by storm over the past decade has yet to manifest itself in Tunisia. I saw a few Tunisian men sporting the long beard that has become a Salafi trademark, but the phenomenon was nowhere near as widespread as it is in Egypt. Al-Nahda, the formerly banned Islamist movement that won a majority in the recent parliamentary elections, seems to be decidedly centrist, and people were quite happy about the appointment of a well-known secular politician as the country’s president (the prime minister is an Islamist). Just as many people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told me that they did so primarily because they respected the brothers and wanted to see how they would handle being in power (and not out of a fierce devotion to the party or a desire to see Egypt go the way of Iran), a number of Tunisians told me that they had voted for Al-Nahda for the same reasons. “Give them a chance,” one taxi driver told me, “and if we don’t like them we’ll find someone new next time around.”

Mali, on the other hand, is a world away from Egypt. The most notable difference is linguistic. The country is 90% Muslim and mosques abound, but the vast majority of Malians only know a few token Arabic religious phrases (perhaps a close analogy is that of American Jews who pray in Hebrew but have no practical understanding of the language). I enjoy using those phrases (Peace be upon you, God willing, praise God, etc.) when I speak with Malians, but the only full conversation in Arabic that I’ve had here was with the imam of the Great Mosque of Djenne (pictured below).

I was able to gain some insight into Islam’s place in Malian society when I ate dinner with a volunteer from the Peace Corps who is living and working in southern part of the country. The mosque in her village, she said, is largely the domain of the old men who study and pray there. The youth, she observed, tend to be fairly uninterested in religion. Nevertheless, the whole village does observe Ramadan (even the Christians join the prayers during Eid Al-Fitr at the end of the holy month) and Eid Al-Adha (the day of sacrifice), engaging in practices like fasting and slaughtering a goat that would be instantly recognizable to Muslims around the world.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the beautiful Islamic architecture that I have seen in both Tunisia and Mali. I have included some pictures of the exquisite doors on houses in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia and a white mosque wedged onto a hill in a Berber village in southern part of the country. Mali, on the other hand, is all about mud. The Great Mosque of Djenne surpassed my sky-high expectations that I held coming into this trip – it is, simply put, a stunning building.

A Kairouan door

A hilltop mosque in Berber country

The Great Mosque of Djenne