MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE AND ISLAMIST DISCOURSE “DO NOT BE COOLNESS, DO NOT FLUTTER SAFETY”

With the rise of Islam, Arab civilization was given a defined ideological and cultural framework within which it could develop. Islam, as a system of symbols, represents the most significant factor in the explanation of Arab cultural, intellectual, and literary history since the seventh century. Arabic literature was never wholly a religious one, but since the revelation of the Quréān, the various activities in the literary system generally occurred within the borders defined by Islam and were guided by a cultural heritage that seemed nearly as sacred as the religious law. Islam and, more specifically, the Quréān, was also predominant in consolidating principles that ensured, according to most Arab intellectuals in the twentieth century, that modern Arabic literature could only be a direct extension of the classical literature. The dominance of Islamist discourse in the literary system during the last century was reflected through censorship and banning of books for religious considerations and for the harm they might do to public morality. Nevertheless, Arabic literature witnessed during the second half of the previous century a strong trend towards separation from its strict Islamic moorings in order to follow its course as a completely secularized literature. This trend has found its manifestation in both the interrelations of the literary system with other extra-literary systems as well as on the level of the texts themselves. (The term “Islamist” is used here to refer to the cultural activities and the discourse of the religious circles; conversely, the terms “Muslim” or “Islamic” are applied to general religious and traditional cultural phenomena).


Introduction
The nature of Arabic literature since the seventh century A.D. was largely determined by its interaction with Islam, the religion that the overwhelming majority of Arabs adhere to.With the rise of Islam, Arabic literature, as Arab civilization in general, 1 was given a defined INTERNET  FINAL   ideological and cultural framework within which it could develop.With time it admitted, as did Islamic civilization, such contributions from outside as would help it to keep its identity under changed conditions and at the same time broaden "its base beyond the limitations inherent in the Koranic text."This meant, as Gustave E. von Grunebaum said, that "while Islam for many a century continued liberal in accepting information, techniques, objects, and customs from all quarters, it was careful to eliminate or neutralize any element endangering its religious foundation, and it endeavored consistently to obscure the foreign character of important borrowings and to reject what could not be thus adjusted to its style of thinking and feeling." 2 Islam and, more specifically, the Quréān, were also prominent in consolidating the principles that ensured, at least according to some Arab intellectuals, that modern Arabic literature could only be a direct extension of classical literature.Thus the way we view the relationship between classical and modern literature is essential to our understanding of the nature of the Arabic literary system in the twentieth century and its relationship with the religious discourse. 3The question is whether modern literature is an extension of classical literature or a new creation that has hardly any relationship at all with its medieval predecessor.It is no coincidence that Arab, especially Muslim, scholars tend to the first view, whereas the second view has been mainly adopted by Western scholars.al-Dār al-Qawmiyya li-l-® Tibāôa wa-l-Nashr, 1966), 18 In his article "Arabic Literature between its Past and Future," 4 which opened in October 1945 the first issue of his journal al-Kātib al-miârī, ® Tāhā ® Husayn (1889-1973) asserts the continuity of Arabic literature.Unlike Greek and Latin literature, which have no direct contemporary extension, modern Arabic literature, according to ® Husayn, is a direct linear extension of classical literature: The historical existence of Arabic literature has never been cut off, and it seems that it will never be cut off.The connection between this literature and contemporary generations in the lands of the Arab East, from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, and in various Arab lands here and there, is still strong and fertile, like the connection between Arabic literature and the Arab nation during the period of al-Mutannabī and Abū al-ôAlāé.… Arabic literature is very traditional and at the same time very modern.Its ancient past has been directly mingled with its modern present without any break or bend.… Our Arabic literature is a living being and resembles, more than anything else, a huge tree, the roots of which have been consolidated and extended into the depths of earth, while its branches have risen and spread out in space.The water of life is still ample and running in its steady roots and its high branches.… Our Arabic literature is definitely a traditional one, possessing an old Arab-Bedouin character that it never relinquished, nor will it ever do so.… The way in which we see things might change as ages, regions and circumstances change.But our way of portraying things, even if it takes different shapes, will always go back to a set of traditional principles that cannot possibly be avoided, because such avoidance means killing this literature and breaking the connection between it and the new time, as well as deterring it from the road of the continuous life of the living literatures into the road of cut-off life that the Greek and Latin literatures took. 5is direct extension of classical into modern literature has been guaranteed, according to ® Husayn, by the continuous equilibrium Arabic literature retained until modern times between the factors of continuity and change: The revival of ancient Arabic literature6 was, and still is, turning modern Arab minds towards the past, highlighting elements of stability and steadfastness.On the other hand, the contact with modern European literature has been pushing INTERNET  FINAL   Arabic literature in a different direction, stressing elements of mobility and change.It is surprising that the Arab mind has maintained its equilibrium in spite of this fierce conflict.Indeed, it has benefited from it immensely. 7 preserving some traditional principles to ensure its distinctive identity and at the same time incorporating a variety of innovations both in form and content, Arabic literature, according to ® Tāhā ® Husayn, has proved its vitality through the ages. 8he contrary view we find neatly summarized by Hamilton Gibb, one of the first Western scholars to study modern Arabic literature systematically, 9 in an article published in 1928: It may be asked … by what right Arabic literature is called a young literature.To all appearances, it is entitled to claim a history of thirteen centuries, a longer period of continuous literary activity than any living European language can boast.But beneath the apparent linguistic continuity, Arabic literature is undergoing an evolution comparable, in some respects, to the substitution of Patristic for Classical Greek literature and idiom.Neo-Arabic literature is only to a limited extent the heir of the old "classical" Arabic literature, and even shows a tendency to repudiate its inheritance entirely.Its leaders are, for the most part, men who have drunk from other springs and look at the world with different eyes.Yet the past still plays a part in their intellectual background, and there is a section among them upon whom that past retains a hold scarcely shaken by newer influences.For many decades, the partisans of the "old" and the "new" have engaged in a struggle for the soul of the Arabic world, a struggle in which the victory of one side over the other is even yet not assured.The protagonists are (to classify them roughly for practical purposes) the European-educated classes of Egyptians and Syrians on the one hand, and those in Egypt and the less advanced Arabic lands whose education has followed traditional lines, on the other.Whatever the ultimate result may be, however, there can be no question that the conflict has torn the Arabic world from its ancient moorings, and that the contemporary literature of Egypt and Syria breathes, in its more recent developments, a spirit foreign to the old traditions. 10t least from one aspect, that is, the Islamic framework, modern Arabic literature produced during most of the twentieth century was largely perceived as an extension of the classical one.As numerous episodes attest, 11 most modern Arabic literary production adhered to the principles of the Islamic discourse, and Arabic literature, including that written in the modern period, has even been described as Islamic literature. 12According to this view Islam, as a system of symbols, represents the most significant factor in the explanation of Arab cultural, intellectual, and literary history.It is an ideological generalizing approach that sees Arabic literature as a cultural product of Islam, and at the same time overlooks the interactions between literary texts and the discursive contexts within which they were produced and the diverse literary and social movements that emerged over time.The dominance of Islamic discourse in the literary system was also reflected through censorship of books and their being banned for religious considerations and for the harm they might do to public morality. 1311 See, for example, Shimon Ballas, al-Adab al-ôarabī wa-l-ta− hdīth al-fikrī (Cologne: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 1993).

Censorship of Scholarly and Literary Texts
Cases of censorship on moral grounds have been very frequent and publishers have generally avoided publishing classical works considered as harmful to public morality without censoring them.For example, because it is sometimes considered as belonging to pornographic literature, 14 al-Raw− d al-ôāç tir fī nuzhat al-khāç tir (The perfumed garden in the promenade of the mind) by Mu− hammad b.Mu− hammad al-Nafzāwī from the 15the century has never been published unabridged by any major publisher in the Arab world.The only printed versions existing are popular editions or partial ones such as that by Maktabat Usāma in Damascus, which also includes several articles about the book and its reception. 15An unabridged edition was published by the London based publisher Riyā− d al-Rayyis. 16ne famous instance of censorship on moral grounds in Lebanon was the case of Laylā Baôlabakkī (b.1936) and her collection of short stories Safīnat − hanān ilā al-qamar (A space ship of tenderness to the moon) first published in 1963. 17 Saôīd al-Barjawī, summoned the writer, in accordance with item 532 of the Lebanese criminal law, and accused her of harming public morality demanding a prison sentence of one to six months plus an apparently symbolic fine of ten to one hundred liras.At the same time members of the Beirut vice squad confiscated the remaining copies of the book from the bookstores.On 23 August 1964, the Court's unanimous verdict was to cease procedures against Baôlabakkī, to abrogate the payment of any fine, to overturn the original decision to confiscate the copies of the book, and to return the confiscated books to their owners. 18ot a few literary works were described as pornography and banned in various Arab countries.I− hsān ôAbd al-Quddūs (1919-1990), for example, was accused of provoking "sexual disturbances" (shaghab jinsī), and even President ôAbd al-Nāâir expressed his reservations on the novel al-Banāt wa-l-âayf (The girls and the summer) 19 for its explicit descriptions. 20® Hikāyat Zahra (The story of Zahra) (1980) by the Lebanese ® Hanān al-Shaykh (b.1945), which nine publishers in Beirut had turned down before the author decided to publish it herself, was dismissed as pornography and banned in some countries. 21

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Wāzin (b.1957) 22 was also banned in most of the Arab world. 23owever, censorship in the Arab world during the twentieth century often focused on works by intellectuals who "resorted to rationalism in their examination of the Muslim Canon." 24The most notorious case of scholarly censorship may well have been that of ® Tāhā ® Husayn's controversial study of pre-Islamic poetry, Fī al-shiôr al-jāhilī (On Jāhilī poetry) (1926).Claiming that the major portion of pre-Islamic poetry was spurious and being skeptical about the historical truth of some sections in the Quréān, ® Husayn states, for example, that the Quréānic reference to Ibrāhīm in itself did not prove that he had indeed been in Mecca. 25The book raised a storm of protests and al-Azhar, Egypt's supreme Muslim authority, brought legal charges against the author, who then the following year published a toned-down version entitled Fī aladab al-jāhilī (On Jāhilī literature). 26 Tadākhul al-ansāq wa-l-mafāhīm wa-rihānāt al-ôawlama (Casablanca: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ôArabī, 1999), 13-51.The text of the prosecution decision against ® Tāhā ® Husayn was published in Fuâūl 1-2 (1990).On the place of ® Tāhā ® Tāhā ® Husayn was still described in certain circles in the Arab world as "aiming at destroying Islam." 27imilar cases involved several other outstanding Egyptian writers and intellectuals.One of them was ôAlī ôAbd al-Rāziq (1888-1966), who in 1925 published a book entitled al-Islām wa-uâūl al-− hukm (Islam and the principles of authority). 28The book aroused a violent reaction in religious circles; consequently it was denounced by a council of the leading scholars of al-Azhar, which pronounced the author unfit to hold any public function. 29 INTERNET FINAL court accepted a claim, brought by Muslim fundamentalists, that Abū Zayd's writings 31 proved that he was an apostate from Islam and therefore unqualified to be married to a Muslim woman.In Egypt the Islamic concept of − hisba allowed any Muslim to sue another for beliefs thought to harm society.Only following Abū Zayd's case did the Egyptian government restrict the use of − hisba to state prosecutors only.The arguments against Abū Zayd were reminiscent of those voiced against ® Tāhā ® Husayn. 32However, unlike the latter, Abū Zayd enjoyed support from many Arab intellectuals; his situation was even compared to that of the philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-98) and the astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1643). 33ôAzīz al-ôA− zma (Aziz al-Azmeh), for example, reacted by saying that "the reality of modern Arab history guides in the direction of secularism, which has been responsible for the progress of our societies, cultures and lives in general." 34ôAzīz al-ôA− zma, "Naâr ® Hāmid Abū Zayd fīmā warāé al-idāna wa-mā qablahā," Dirāsāt ôarabiyya 11-12 (September-October 1995): 3-7.Cf.Taslima Nasreen's speech in front of the sixty-third international congress of the Poets', Essayists' and Novelists' Club (PEN) in Mexico on 8 November 1996, in which she said: "Secularism is a must for democracy.Religious law and democracy are totally contradictory.… If we want to enjoy democracy, we have to separate religion and state" (according to al-Akhbār Muslim World News list-"I.A.P." <iapinfo@IAP.ORG> [10 November 1996]).Nasreen, a practicing gynecologist and writer, fled Bangladesh in August 1994 for Sweden after receiving death threats for allegedly insulting Islam in her novel Lajja (Shame) (1993).On the "Nasreen affair," see Bishnupryia Ghosh, "An Affair to Remember: Scripted Performances in the 'Nasreen Affair,'" in Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj, Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc.), 39-83.On the religious and the secular in contemporary Arab life, see al-Azmeh 1996, 41-58.
In August 1996 two Egyptian civil rights groups warned that the court's decision against Abū Zayd in effect constituted a license for Muslim extremists to murder the couple.According to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), it was a "death sentence," making Abū Zayd and his wife targets "for armed violent groups trying to carry out Islamic sentences."The Center for Human Rights Legal Aid (CHRLA) warned that the ruling could be perceived by radicals as "a green light to practice lethal intellectual terrorism."Both groups cited the case of Faraj Fawda (Foda), who was assassinated by Muslim extremists in 1993 just days after al-Azhar had described him as being "full of animosity against whatever is Islamic." 35On 23 September 1996, a coalition of international organizations36 condemned the court-ordered divorce as "a flagrant violation of one of the most cherished of human rights-the right of a legally married couple to remain married so long as both parties so desire-as well as the basic right of free expression, including academic freedom."The coalition called on President ® Husnī Mubārak to speak up publicly for the rights of Abū Zayd and his wife and to support the application by their lawyers to the Court of Cessation to nullify the ruling."By upholding the right of a civil court to declare an Egyptian citizen an apostate," the coalition asserts, "the ruling has a severe chilling effect on freedom of expression." 37Only in December INTERNET  FINAL   1996 did an appeals court indefinitely suspend the ruling that Abū Zayd and his wife must divorce. 38awāl al-Saôdāwī (b.1931), the Arab world's leading feminist, and her husband Sharīf ® Hitāta (b.1923) faced the same threat to their marriage as Abū Zayd and his wife.Following an interview given in March 2001 to the Egyptian weekly al-Maydān, in which al-Saôdāwī said that the rituals in the − hajj pilgrimage had pre-Islamic origins and in which she also called for sexual equality in Muslim inheritance laws, the Egyptian Mufti issued a statement that her opinions were beyond the bounds of Islam.The Islamist lawyer Nabīh al-Wa− hsh filed a case against her calling for a divorce from her husband in accordance with the concept of − hisba. 39Based on the previously mentioned decision to restrict the use of − hisba to state prosecutors, on 30 July 2001 a Cairo court threw out the petition, ruling that no individual could petition a court to forcibly divorce another person. 40The "danger" al-Saôdāwī's feminist writings pose to traditional society has nevertheless not escaped the vigilance of the Islamist campaign in Egypt, and her name was included on the death lists of radical Islamist groups. 41Al-Saôdāwī's novel Suqūç t al-imām (The fall of the Imam) (1987) was seen as a condemnation of ideological religious circles for taking part in the oppression of Arab woman. 42Her novel Jannāt wa-Iblīs (Jannāt and Iblīs [the names of the two protagowell as a collection of articles and essays by writers and intellectuals supporting his case (al-Qawl al-mufīd fī qa− diyyat Abū (sic!) Zayd [Cairo: Madbūlī, 1995]). 38The Washington Post, 20 December 1996, A49.
nists]) (1992) was seen as a sequel to Suqūç t al-imām. 43Its setting is an insane asylum where God and Satan are confined together as patients, and Muslim radicals have been quick to brand the book as blasphemy. 44art of the protest against al-Saôdāwī was the outcome of her views regarding homosexuality and lesbianism.Although Islam guarantees male homosexuals a place in Hell, 45

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the modern period it has never been easy to be homosexual in Egypt, 46 the subject has frequently appeared in highbrow Arabic fiction, and several novels and films portray homosexual characters living normally in society and causing no public outcry. 47n May 2000 the Islamist-oriented opposition Labor Party and its newspaper al-Shaôb led a public campaign against the novel Walīma liaôshāb al-ba− hr (A banquet for seaweed) (1983) by the Syrian writer ® Haydar ® Haydar (b.1938), saying it defamed Islam and denigrated the Prophet Mu− hammad and the Quréān.They demanded the resignation of the Culture Minister because his ministry had reprinted the novel. 48Fol-lowing clashes with the police, in which dozens of students were wounded, the Egyptian authorities effectively froze for a time the activities of the Labor Party and closed al-Shaôb. 49® Haydar himself said that the campaign against the novel was based on passages taken out of context. 50In a press release on 9 May 2000, EOHR expressed its alarm over the apostatizing campaign against ® Haydar as well as against the Egyptian writer Idwār (Edward) al-Kharrāç t (b.1926).Warning that judgment of creative works on other than artistic considerations threatened to impose religious or political custodianship on human thought, the organization mentioned that past experience had proved the intensity of the discourse could erupt into bloody violence. 51imilar cases were not rare even in Arab states known for their openness.In Lebanon, which has long been regarded as "the most liberal state in the Arab world," 52 the Baôlabakkī case described above was not the only instance of the kind.Thus intellectuals who resorted to rationalism in their writings were exposed to legal proceedings here as well.In December 1969 − Sādiq Jalāl al-ôA− zm (b.1934) was jailed for several days following the publication of his book Naqd al-fikr al-dīnī (The criticism of religious thought) (1969).A multi-sectarian society, Lebanon has laws prohibiting the slander of religion and religious figures.Al-ôA− zm and the publisher Bashīr Dāôūq, owner of the Lebanese Dār al-® Talīôa, were accused of offending Christian, but especially Muslim religion.In July Quâūr al-Thaqāfa, 2000).The first edition of the novel, which had been written between 1974 and 1983 in Algeria, Beirut and Cyprus, appeared in Beirut in 1983 at the author's expense after publishers had refused to publish it.A second edition was published by Dār Amwāj in Beirut in 1988.On the novel, see Adab wa-naqd 21 (April-May 1986): 25-54. 49According to Reuters, 20 May 2000.Mu− hammad Salamāwī (b.1945), foreign editor of al-Ahrām, explained that the demonstrations should be seen as an attempt by the Muslim extremists to strengthen their position in the internal political arena (BBC World Service, 9 May 2000).On the controversy surrounding ® Haydar ® Haydar's novel and the political protest the novel ignited, see also the New York Times, 9 May 2000, A5; AlJadid (Los Angeles), 31.In al-Ādāb, July-August 2000, ôAbd al-Razzāq 'Īd argues against a "secular" interpretation that "kills" the novel while "protecting" the writer from possible death.On  Joseph and they Threw me into the well and accused the wolf, though the wolf is more merciful than my brothers, O my father!Did I wrong anyone when I said that I saw eleven stars, and the sun And the moon, I saw them bowing down before me. 54e last lines use the fourth verse from Sūrat Yūsuf, in which Joseph addresses his father Jacob (both revered in Islam as prophets):

، ‫א‬ ‫א‬
When Joseph said to his father, "Father, I saw eleven stars, and the sun and the moon; I saw them bowing down before me." As in other poems included in Ward aqall, Darwīsh describes in the poem the suffering of the Palestinian Joseph at the hands of his brothers.A similar theme appears in "Yuôāniqu qātilahu" (Embracing his murderer) from the same collection, in which the story of Cain and Abel is used to illustrate how the Palestinian Abel embraces his brother Cain who is about to slay him.With Cain unwilling to relent, Abel strives desperately to gain his brother's mercy. 55Abd Allāh Bīç tār (Bayç tār), the chief prosecutor of Beirut, charged Khalīfa with blasphemy, even though the singer had obtained permission from Lebanon's General Security Censorship Bureau to release the song. 56Under article 473 of Lebanon's penal code, blasphemy in public INTERNET FINAL is punishable by one month to one year in prison.Article 474 of the penal code authorizes imprisonment of six months to three years for publicly insulting a religion. 57Khalīfa's was an interesting test case because, while some Muslim clerics maintain that all singing of the Quréān is forbidden, other clerics have had no qualms about making such lyrical recordings.Also, of course, Quréānic verses, whether in the original Arabic, or translated Persian, have routinely been used in Iranian revolutionary songs since 1978. 58Perhaps that was the reason why the Higher Shiite Council in Lebanon, while issuing a statement that Islamic law does not allow verses from the Quréān to be included in popular songs, was at variance with the drive to try Khalīfa. 59uslim and Christian poets, writers, scholars and journalists said they were disgusted by the charges against Khalīfa, calling them bizarre and reminiscent of campaigns waged against intellectuals in some Islamic countries.Reacting to the charges against Khalīfa, Professor Stephen P. Sheehi, an American intellectual and scholar of Lebanese descent, said that this was a politically motivated witch hunt by Prime Minister ® Harīrī in order "to intimidate, if not silence, his critics." 60Addressing the prosecutor, the Lebanese poet Paul Shāéūl (b.1942) put it: "Sir, you were preceded in your edict by those who issued edicts in Egypt, Sudan, India and Pakistan and before them the Inquisition courts of the dark Middle Ages."Another poet, Shawqī Bazīgh (b.1951), said that the charges against Khalīfa as well as against the writer al-− Sādiq al-Nayhūm (1937-1994), and the confiscation in 1991 of his books that were considered an offense to Islam 61 "falsify Beirut's spirit and role" as a cultural center. 62It is as if we face a new version of the saga of Youssef Chahine [Yūsuf  Shāhīn, b. 1926] and his film The Emigrant [al-Muhājir]," 63 wrote another poet.64 Darwīsh himself criticized the legal proceedings in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Diyār on 10 October 1999 stating that fundamentalism is in the process of stifling culture and creation in the Arab world: "We should all be ashamed.If Khalīfa is found guilty, it will be an insult to culture."65  64 Based upon a Reuters news-wire report from Beirut, 21 September 1996 (according to adabiyat@listhost.uchicago.edu[22 September 1996]).Following Khalīfa's case the journal AlJadid (Los Angeles) dedicated an issue to the freedom of artists, intellectuals and media in Lebanon (2.11 [September 1996]).Among the articles published in this issue "Arab Artists, Intellectuals, Condemn Charges Against Khalife as Attack on Liberty, Civil Freedom," by Elie Chalala; a special article by Marcel Khalīfa in which he reflects on his American tour and other issues, "We Turn the Page from City to City"; "Marcel Khalife and the Modern Inquisition," by Paul Shaéūl; "Lebanese Media Restrictions Stir Broad Opposition," by Michelle A. Marzahn. Onthe case, see also AlJadid (Los Angeles) 28 (1999). Onhe general issue of freedom of expression in Lebanon, see Samā− h Idrīs's editorial in al-Ādāb 11-12 (1999).65 According to Human Rights Watch <hrwatchnyc@igc.org>(1 November 1999).

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bring criminal charges against Khalīfa for "insulting religious values," and the next day senior Sunnī Muslim clerics in Lebanon ruled that singing verses from the Koran was "absolutely banned and not accepted."The highest Sunnī Muslim religious authority in Lebanon, Grand Mufti Mu− hammad Rāshid Qabbānī, maintained that "there is a limit to freedom of expression.One limit is that it should not infringe on people's religious beliefs."In reply, Hanny Megally, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, said that this case is a direct legal challenge to the right to freedom of expression in Lebanon. 66In another move the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) encouraged intellectuals throughout the world to sign a petition on behalf of the singer, saying that the charges against him are a "flagrant violation of intellectual freedoms which should be guaranteed to artists in all countries.… In fact, the song is dedicated to the people of Lebanon and Palestine, referring symbolically to their suffering, using the narrative of the Prophet Joseph's famous story." 67In the middle of December 1999 Khalīfa was cleared by the court of any guilt. 68his was not the first time charges of blasphemy had been leveled against singers in the Arab world.For example, in two previous cases, poems that the Egyptian musician and singer Mu− hammad ôAbd al-Wahhāb (1901-1991) set to music and sang were involved: "al-® Talāsim" (The talismans), written by the Mahjarī poet Īliyyā Abū Mā− dī (1889-1957), 69 and "Min ghayr leh" (Without asking why), written by the singer himself. 7066 According to Human Rights Watch <hrwatchnyc@igc.org>(1 November 1999). 67According to msanews@msanews.mynet.net(MSANEWS) (19 October 1999). 68According to Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), 19 December 1999, A3. 69 For the original poem, known for its repeated phrase lastu adrī (I do not know), see Īliyyā Abū Mā− dī, Dīwān (Beirut: Dār al-ôAwda, n.d.), 191-214. 70On the poem and the attempt to ban it, see Karin van Nieuwkerk, "A Trade Like Any Other": Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 65.The Jewish writer of Iraqi origin Mnashshī Zaôrūr (1897-1972) mentioned in an interview (al-Sharq, May-June 1977, 63) that Abū Mā− dī's poem is similar to an Iraqi popular song in which the concluding words are: ‫א‬ Also in Kuwait, which used to be an island of relative openness in the Middle East, Islamists, basing themselves on Kuwait's Press and Publications Law, brought a series of cases against journalists, writers, and academics for expressing controversial views on religious and political themes.The law makes it a criminal offense to publish materials that abuse "by allusion, slander, sarcasm, or disparagement, God or the prophets or the companions of the prophet Mu− hammad," or that "sully public morals."A similarly vague article in the Criminal Code mandates prison sentences for the dissemination of "opinions that include sarcasm, contempt, or belittling of religion or a religious school of thought."For example, University professor A− hmad al-Baghdādī was sentenced to one month in prison in October 1999 after the court found that an article by him in a student newspaper defamed Islam by contending that the Prophet Mu− hammad had failed to convert non-believers during his time in Mecca.He was later pardoned due to his poor health.Other rulings in 1999 have resulted in journalists being fined and publication of their magazines and newspapers ordered suspended.On 22 January 2000 a Kuwaiti court sentenced ôĀliya Shuôayb, a Kuwait University professor of philosophy, her publisher Ya− hyā al-Rubaôyān, and the short story writer and novelist Laylā al-ôUthmān (b.1944) to two months in prison for writings that the court said "included expressions that defy God, and indecent and shameless expressions."In addition to the prison sentences, Shuôayb and al-Rubaôyān were each fined 100 dinars for the publication and distribution without a permit of Shuôayb's book of poetry ôAnākib tarthī jur− han (Spiders bemoan a wound). 71Hanny Megally, mentioned earlier, from Human Rights Watch remarked that "this kind of legislation provides an opening for the arbitrary prosecution of almost any kind of speech or writing." 72he above-mentioned cases of censorship and the struggle for freedom of expression that accompanied each of them shed light on the fact that Arab culture since the nineteenth century has gradually been detaching itself from subjection to the religious factor alone.Signs highlighting the acceleration of this development have been both organizational and social, important examples being the establishment in Berlin in 1998 of the non-governmental Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought and the thorny Rushdie affair and its implications in the Arab world.

Signs of Gradual Change
Often considered the supreme mediator between the Arab world and the West, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known as Averroes in Europe, was celebrated for his efforts to reconcile philosophy and religion.In the spirit of the man whose name it took, the Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought, established on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Ibn Rushd's death, was dedicated to the support of the right to free speech and democracy in the Arab World.The Fund established a prize to be awarded annually to organizations or persons having rendered outstanding service to the right of free speech and democracy.The Ibn Rushd Prize was awarded for the first time in Berlin on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Fund's foundation on 10 December 1999 to the private TV station al-Jazīra (The Island [Peninsula]) Satellite Channel (Qatar), in order "to support the existence of this medium so important to democracy and freedom of speech in Arab countries."Founded only in 1996, the station had soon become a source for information for Arabs throughout the world, a role that took on special significance after 11 September 2001.
Unlike other Arab mass media, which are subject to their respective heads of state, who use them as instruments to achieve legitimacy and channels to convey their politics, al-Jazīra has become a forum for democratic discourse about current topics and events, whether of a political nature, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, or of a social nature, such as the emancipation of women and the defense of human rights, or even religious themes, such as Islam and democracy and political Islam.According to Mu− hammad Jāsim al-ôAlī, al-Jazīra's chief editor, "Other TV stations hold too many taboos.We do not know any taboos.Our audience have a right to the truth."According to the station's owner Shaykh ® Hamad ibn Thāmir al-Thānī, "the neighboring oil countries seem to fear a cultural revolution, because Al Jazeera is like a virus, a contagious virus exercising a positive influence on freedom of speech in other Arab countries."Described after its name, by the awarders of the prize, as "an island of freedom of speech," the station has been the target of criticism from all quarters.For example, the station's office in Kuwait was closed after the Emir felt insulted by one of the programs the channel broadcasted."On another occasion," the awarders note, "US diplomats tried to keep the station from broadcasting an interview with Osama Bin Laden." 73Similar incidents occurred following the commencement of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 74he second Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought (2000) was awarded to the Palestinian Women's Rights Activist ôIâām ôAbd al-Ghanī ôAbd al-Hādī (b.1928), President of the General Union of Palestinian Women, for her "outstanding services to women's rights in the Arab World."The Egyptian scholar and thinker Ma− hmūd Amīn al-ôĀlim (b.1922) received the third Ibn Rushd Prize (2001).He was honored "for his struggle for freedom and democracy, for his critical thinking and his political commitment, for his writings and analyses, his engagement in support of open dialogue and services to a culture of rational dispute and enlightenment."The fourth Ibn Rushd Prize (2002) was awarded to Dr. ôAzmī Bishāra, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset "for special contributions to freedom of speech and democracy in the Arab World."The fifth went to the Algerian-born scholar Mohammed Arkoun (b.1928) for his championing a dialogue between cultures-"his comparative approach to religions and cultures make him a modern-time Ibn Rushd."The sixth was given to the Egyptian writer − Sunô Allāh Ibrāhīm (b.1937) for encouraging "the reader to resist and not to tolerate the deplorable state of affairs, but to fight them." Against the background of the activities of the Ibn Rushd Fund for Freedom of Thought in Berlin, which are admittedly marginal from the point of view of culture inside the Arab world, the Rushdie affair and its implications reflect, retrospectively, a more gradual change in the relationship between religion and literature inside the Arab world, especially if we compare it with a previous similar affair involving the Egyptian writer Najīb Ma− hfū− z (b.1911).Although an interval of 30 years separates the two cases, both of them intersect to uncover the fact that a significant change took place during the period.The international furor surrounding The Satanic Verses (1988)

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engendered by the death sentence hurled at him in the fatwā given by Āyatullāh Rū− hullah Khumaynī (1902?-1989), the spiritual head of Iran after the Revolution of 1979: I inform the proud Muslim People of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an, and all involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death.I request brave Muslims to quickly kill them wherever they find them so that no one ever again would dare to insult the sanctions of Muslims.Anyone killed in trying to execute Rushdie would, God willing, be a shaheed (martyr).In addition, anyone who has access to the author of the book but does not have the strength to execute him should introduce him to the people so that he receives punishment for his action. 76is fatwā was prompted in particular by a description, in a chapter entitled "Return to Jahilia," of a popular brothel given the name Hijab in the city of Jahilia, where the whores had each assumed the identity of one of the Prophet Mu− hammad's wives: The fifteen-year-old whore 'Ayesha' was the most popular with the paying public.… The oldest, fattest whore, who had taken the name of 'Sawdah' … The whore 'Hafsah' grew as hot-tempered as her namesake.… 'Umm Salamah the Makhzumite' and, snootiest of all, 'Ramlah' … And there was a 'Zainab bint Jahsh', and a 'Juwairyah' … and a 'Rehana the Jew', a 'Safia' and 'Maimunah', and, most erotic of all whores, who knew tricks she refused to teach to competitive 'Ayesha': the glamorous Egyptian, 'Mary the Copt'.Strangest of all was the whore who had taken the name of 'Zainab bint Khuzaimah'. 77 to the Nth Degree by the Greek author Mimis Androulakis, in which a couple of pages give a steamy account of Mary Magdalene's imaginary relationship with Christ.Consequently the novel was denounced by religious groups such as the Greek Orthodox Salvation Movement as "insulting the religious conscience and personality of every Greek Another stimulus for the fatwā was the riwāyat al-gharānīq (the narration of the cranes), on which the title of the novel is based-verses that were allegedly transmitted by the Prophet Mu− hammad as part of the Quréānic revelation.In these verses Satan inspired Mu− hammad to praise the idols al-Lāt, al-ôUzzā and Manāt, calling them al-gharānīq al-ôulā (the lofty cranes).However, the Prophet later realized that he had been tricked by Satan and withdrew the verses, 78 transmitting others in their place.79 Rushdie deals with this story in the second chapter of the novel, entitled "Mahound," which concludes with the following words: Mahound has reached his oasis: Gibreel is not so lucky.Often, now, he finds himself alone on the summit of Mount Cone, washed by the cold, falling stars, and then they fall upon him from the night sky, the three winged creatures, Lat Uzza Manat, flapping around his head, clawing at his eyes, biting, whipping him with their hair, their wings.He puts up his hands to protect himself, but their revenge is tireless, continuing whenever he rests, whenever he drops his guard.He struggles against them, but they are faster, nimbler, winged.He has no devil to repudiate.Dreaming, he cannot wish them away. 80umaynī's fatwā reawakened the radical religious circles in Egypt against Najīb Ma− hfū− z, whom they accused, together with Rushdie, of apostasy. 81Surprisingly enough, the accusation against Ma− hfū− z was due to a novel he had published almost 30 years before The Satanic Verses, namely, Awlād − hāratinā (Children of our alley) (1959), 82

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condemned at the time on the pretext that it did not treat the sacred beliefs of Islam with the appropriate reverence.Consequently, the novel was never published in book form in Egypt. 83Among typical books published since the late 1980s in the Islamic world to defend Islam against Rushdie and Ma− hfū− z, 84 one opens with the following Quréānic verse:
84 Similar books were written in various languages in addition to Arabic.For example, Iran's Ministry of Islamic guidance published in 1996 a book by Ahmad Zomorodian entitled "Who is The Satan," written according to its introduction, in order to expose "anti-Islamic propaganda" in Rushdie's novel and "stop spiteful nonsense from being spread against the pillars of our religion" (according to adabiyat@listhost.uchicag.edu[7 September 1996] Arab writers are earnestly called upon to write about Arabs and Muslims in living international languages in a style that Westerners will understand, and to develop these Islamic and Arabic studies in their homelands based upon their own heritage, instead of on Orientalists' writings about Islam and Arabs, which they infused with their hostile desires and tendencies against everything that is Arabic and Muslim, beginning with the crusades and until the modern period. 91nting to show that among Westerners and Christian writers there are also other images of Islam, the Egyptian writer Sayyid ® Hāfi− z Abū al-Futū− h (b.1952), published, in 1989, a book entitled "They said about Islam: letters to Salman Rushdie from the greatest intellectuals and philosophers of the Christian world," which opens with the following Quréānic verse:

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Another book, by Rifôat Sayyid A− hmad, opens with the following Quréānic verse:

‫א‬ ‫א‬
Never will the Jews be satisfied with thee, neither the Christians, not till thou followest their religion. 95 an appendix the author lists the names of "the most famous of Western Orientalists, the majority of whom offended Islam, did not understand Islamic civilization and distorted its various symbols."The more than 380 scholars are divided into seven sections according to their nationality-France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, USA, and USSR. 96As for the attitude of Muslim writers and intellectuals to Rushdie's novel, the author argues that "the reactions of the Muslim collective mind (which is comprised of the nation's writers, intellectuals and scholars) were varying between full rejection of the novel (this is the dominant characteristic of the reactions) and rejection with caution and reservations." 97 INTERNET FINAL calling for the death sentence against Ma− hfū− z himself. 102He argued that if such a fatwā had been published when Ma− hfū− z's Awlād − hāratinā had first come out, Rushdie would never have dared to publish his blasphemies. 103The fatwā of ôUmar ôAbd al-Ra− hmān is believed to be behind the assassination attempt against Ma− hfū− z in Cairo on 14 October 1994. 104ôUmar ôAbd al-Ra− hmān, whose name has been associated with calls for violence and terrorism in the name of religion, left Egypt in 1990 and was able to take up residence in the United States, thanks to what American officials admitted were a series of administrative errors.
In 1994 he was tried in Egypt in absentia, convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.However, by then he was about to stand trial in New York on a twenty-count indictment for his role in the plot to blow up the United Nations and other New York monuments. 105et, in total contrast to the reactions in the late 1950s, following the outcry of the Islamist circles against Ma− hfū− z's novel, ôAbd al-Ra− hmān's fatwā aroused many protests in the Arab world,106 as did Khumaynī's fatwā against Rushdie.Many of these protests were incorporated later in Awlād − hāratinā, as of this writing, has still not been published in Egypt in book form and does not appear on the lists of Ma− hfū− z's works habitually given in the back of his books. 109It is significant to mention Judith Miller's observations, after meeting Ma− hfū− z in early 1994: Now the silence of intellectuals was not officially enforced; it was voluntary.Some intellectuals had been terrified into passivity.… Even before Mahfouz was attacked, he had softened his own defense of fellow writer Salman Rushdie to avoid antagonizing the militants.… Mahfouz had told me that Rushdie's work, which he said he had not read, was "very disturbing."Rushdie had "insulted Islam," and insults had "consequences."… I was saddened by Mahfouz's retreat on such a critical principle of free expression.His revised position was not all that different from that of the Muslim brotherhood or, for that matter, from that of Sheikh Abdel Rahman in jail in New York. 110good illustration of the way the Islamist literary discourse takes on the secular canonical center of the Arabic literary system as seen against the background of the Rushdie and Ma− hfū− z affair is given by − Sādiq Jalāl al-ôA− zm in his book Dhihniyyat al-ta− hrīm (The proscribing mentality) (1992): Actually, if we lead Islamist logic to its utmost boundaries, it would be better if the Arab world had not known phenomena such as ® Tāhā ® Husayn or Tawfīq al-® Hakīm or Najīb Ma− hfū− z or Adūnīs or Khalīl ® Hāwī, since each of them represents a mode of intellectual and artistic expression which is imported from the West: criticism, theater, novel, and modern poetry. 111

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Al-ôA− zm's major argument is that all attacks against Rushdie have been based upon the assumption that literature, and art in general, must be submitted to Islamic concepts, that is, the literary discourse is not independent but has to remain within the limits of the religious discourse.Al-ôA− zm quotes a review, entitled "Nihilistic, Negative, Satanic," that Professor Syed Ali Ashraf, Director-General of the Islamic Academy in Cambridge, wrote about Rushdie's novel in which he typically asks such questions as "How could the two characters Gibreel (Gabriel) and Saladin fall from the sky and still be alive?How could they get transformed and how could they become normal again?How could they have the normal human body and how could they at the same time move about and influence people across space and time?" 112 The clash between religious and secular discourses by no means entails that all advocates in either camp support the conclusions expected of them.Even religious notables are sometimes found to oppose the conclusions generally derived from the religious discourse.The collection of articles entitled al-ôUnf al-uâūlī: Muwājahāt al-sayf wa-l-qalam (Fundamentalist violence: the clash of the sword and the pen) (1995) consists mainly of articles about the Rushdie affair by secular intellectuals denouncing the Islamist position regarding the affair. 113  11 Al-ôA− zm 1992, 237-38.Ashraf's article was originally published in Impact International (London), 28 October-10 November 1988 and published again in Appignanesi and Maitland 1990, 18-21. 113The book, published by Riyā− d al-Rayyis in London, is a selection of articles that appeared after the outbreak of the Rushdie affair in the journal al-Nāqid (London).leader of ® Hizb Allāh (Party of God), entitled "Love of East and identity of Islam," is the sole contribution in a section entitled "Islamiyyūn − didda al-taôââub" (Islamists against fanaticism).Fa− dl Allāh does not adopt the usual religious stance vis-à-vis Rusdhie 114 and states that there is no topic that is not open to discussion, that Islamic history has been culturally diverse, and that "this diversity has made Islam a civilization and the Muslim a rich human being." 115The collection opens with an article by ôAzīz al-ôA− zma (Aziz al-Azmeh) entitled "Riwāya kāfira" (Novel of unbelief) attacking the Islamist view with respect to the Rushdie affair. 116Al-ôA− zma ironically points out that the Islamist radicals base their attitude to the novel, "as they are accustomed to do," on the "formula" that "ignorance is a sign of piety."117He concludes with the following lines: The claim of the Islamists that they are speaking in the name of "the people" and that they are representing the majority is nothing but an imaginary expression of an indomitable political desire.The claim that Salman Rushdie and others that do not agree with the Islamists are rising against their history, nobility, and heritage and are propagandists for the West against Islam, is nothing but proof of the conflict the Islamists are living in, not with the West-since the Islamist political regimes are in harmony with it-but with modernity and progress in their own countries.We should emphasize that their illusion of totally representing the heritage, and their attempt to confiscate every important saying, point to a craze to confiscate the future in order to lay down foundations of comprehensive dictatorship in the name of a pure past devoid of any history.

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This is a program that anyone desiring any poor backward [form of] fascism could be proud of. 118-ôA− zma explains elsewhere that "in many third-world countries, The Satanic Verses is characterized as the work of a self-hater eager to ingratiate himself with the coloniser simply because the novel challenges the most conservative instincts of those groups claiming Muslim 'nativism.'" 119he clash outlined in the foregoing between the Islamist and the modernist discourses illustrates that Arabic literature is still fettered by religious restrictions.In this respect, as we have seen above, there is no difference between the various genres.Thus, Homi K. Bhabha's reading of Rushdie's blasphemy, following Yunus Samad's analysis,120 seems to be without solid ground, at least not from the point of view of Arabic literature.Bhabha says: It is the medium Rushdie uses to reinterpret the Koran that constitutes the crime.… By casting his revisionary narrative in the form of the novel-largely unknown to traditional Islamic literature-Rushdie violates the poetic license granted to critics of the Islamic establishment.… Rushdie's sin lies in opening up a space of discursive contestation that places the authority of the Koran within a perspective of historical and cultural relativism.It is not that the "content" of the Koran is directly disputed; rather, by revealing other enunciatory positions and possibilities within the framework of the Koranic reading, Rushdie performs the subversion of its authenticity through the act of cultural translation-he relocates the Koran's "intentionality" by repeating and reinscribing it in the locale of the novel of postwar cultural migrations and diasporas.

‫א‬ ‫א‬ .
If one should look at all for any generic differentiation, the matter touches on the popularity of the genre: the more popular the literary work, the stronger the demand to see it bound in traditional religious fetters.Thus, Darwīsh's poem cited above, "O My Father, I Am Yūsuf" had not provoked any public storm before Khalīfa sang it.The same could be said about Ma− hfū− z's novel Children of Our Alley, the "danger" of which increased only in the light of the popularity of The Satanic Verses.
Nevertheless, especially from the view point of the intellectuals who expressed their unlimited support for Rushdie and Ma− hfū− z, what happened in the 1980s is totally different from what happened 30 years before; and seems to be from another planet compared to the Arab literary arena of the 1920s.Significantly enough, the same change has occurred during the same period on the level of the literary texts themselves.Canonical Arabic literature has witnessed during the twentieth century a strong trend aiming at gradually separating it from its strict Islamic moorings in order to let it follow its course as secularized literature. 122

Linear versus Ironic Intertextuality
In order to illustrate the nature of the "secularized" trend in Arabic literature and the revolutionary attitude to traditional religious and literary texts it introduced into the literary system, one can point to the dialectical cultural and poetic tension between the conceptions of the Egyptian poet and prose writer Mu− hammad Tawfīq al-Bakrī (1870-1932) and the Syrian poet Adūnīs (b.1930), both of whom are Muslims. 123Considered to be pillars of Arabic literature, each of them in his own time, the short temporal span between them reveals the great changes that occurred in Arabic literature during the twentieth century.

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Al-Bakrī was a typical representative of neoclassicist rhetorical Egyptian prose and the author of − Sahārīj al-luélué (The reservoirs of pearls), 124 in which he said he had been striving to achieve the eloquence of al-® Harīrī (1054-1122) and the language of Ruéba b. al-ôAjjāj (685-762).This work, which is by no means religious, contains three travel impressions (two from France and one from Constantinople), an ode to solitude, a description of a ball in Vienna, a glorification of Saladin, and finally the announcement of the birth of the author's son.In his travel impressions, al-Bakrī tried his skills at imitating French poetic prosefor example, when describing the Bois de Boulogne and the battle of Austerlitz-but the result is full of allusions to Arabic proverbs and Arab history.Since he was especially fond of employing gharīb (rare words), frequent similes and classical poetic diction, sometimes even for romantic themes, the author's style is hardly reminiscent of the spirit of modern times.Al-Bakrī's poetry and prose were considered canonical by the literary establishment of his time.According to ôAbbās Ma− hmūd al-ôAqqād (1889-1964), his love poem "Dhāt al-Qawāfī" was the first to use shiôr mursal (blank verse). 125Al-Bakrī was not only a distinguished poet from the very canonical center of the Arabic literary system, but also a religious notable who belonged to the Bakriyya − Sūfī brotherhood (ç tarīqa).He was later to be appointed Sheikh of this brotherhood, and he was likewise appointed to the leadership of all − Sūfī brotherhoods (Mashyakhat al-Mashāéikh) and to that of the organization that registered the descendants of the Prophet (Niqābat al-Ashrāf). 126ignificantly, since the 1950s, no poet has been able to be simultaneously a central figure in the Arabic literary system and a traditional religious notable; literary modernism has not been able to live in harmony with traditional religious concepts.The literary vision of Adūnīs differs radically from that of al-Bakrī, whose death two years after Adūnīs's birth represents metaphorically the revolutionary change in Arabic literature, which comes to differ in nature from the whole canonical Arabic literature of the first half of the twentieth century.The "Arabic-Islamic concept," as Adūnīs himself states in his comments on the poetry of A− hmad Shawqī (1868-1932), 127 has been supplanted by a new concept that holds that Islam is not only a religion but also a literary and cultural heritage. 128Adūnīs sees two major trends in the 1950s in the field of Arabic poetic modernism, one stressing the national Arab identity of poetry and the other inspired by Marxist-Communism.There is, however, a third trend that reads the Arabic heritage in a different way, that is, to include not only pre-Islamic poetry, but also other cultures that have interacted with Arab culture, so that, for example, the Sumarian, Babylonian, and Canaanite cultures, are seen as part of the Arab cultural heritage: 127 See Adūnīs, "A− hmad Shawqī: Shāôir al-bayān al-awwal," Fuâūl 3, 1 (October-December 1982): 18-22. 128Adūnīs's conceptions are presented here only from the literary point of view.As to his world view, his opinions have gone through several stages since the late 1940s.

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According to this conception Arabism took on another dimension.It is not Arabism of race and nation, but Arabism of language and culture, in the sense that in linguistic and cultural Arabism all ancient heritages mingled together.In other words, this view considered the Arabic cultural poetic heritage not as a separate independent bloc, but a living continuity of a civilized heritage of about five thousand years.Hence, the Arabic language does not take its individuality and particularity only from its containing the whole of the pre-Islamic and Islamic heritage, but also from its richness and continuing capacity to revive and widen, that is, from its genius to absorb the ancient heritage that preceded it, and from its being the historical continuity of this heritage and its creative completion. 129 order to illustrate this new concept of modernism, suffice it to compare the attitude towards the Quréānic text of neoclassical poetry and the new poetry advocated by Adūnīs.Shawqī's poem, "al-Jāmiôa al-Miâriyya" (The Egyptian University), 130  This allusion is considered to be entirely within the linear mode of intertextuality, 132 that is, it draws on the Quréānic image in full agreement with the religious discourse.That same discourse is totally rejected by Adūnīs in his poem, "al-Mawt" (Death), subtitled "Thalāth marthiyāt ilā abī" (Three elegies for my father), from the collection Qaâāéid Ūlā (First poems) (1957).In the second elegy, he writes:

‫א‬ ‫א‬
O flames of the fire that embraced him Do not be coolness, do not flutter safety In his heart is the fire that was rolled up Into a land we worshipped and that was shaped as men.He did not die in the fire but Took it back to the first source To the coming time As the sun in its first rising Goes down suddenly from our eyelids But over the horizon it has not gone down. 133e ironic mode of the intertextuality 134 is evident: while God commands fire to "be coolness and safety for Abraham," Adūnīs demands the very opposite.Not only does the Quréānic allusion function in a radically different way from what we find in the original, it might be seen as implying a sarcastic comment on it. 135Adūnīs here assumes the role of 133  the omnipotent almighty power who can guarantee eternal life for his dead father.This experience of being parallel to or one with God appears in many of Adūnīs' poems since the 1950s.In a poem entitled "Asrār" (Secrets), the poet says: ‫א‬ ‫א‬ ‫א‬ ‫א‬ ‫א‬ ‫א‬ .

Death embraces us Risking His life, abstaining
Bearing us as a secret on His secret Making from our plurality One. 136, against this background, it is little wonder that radical religious circles consider Adūnīs to be a mul− hid (heretic) or mukharrib (saboteur), 137 interestingly, in contrast to other Muslim writers who in their writings deal with the Prophet, 138 Adūnīs has never been under a death threat.

‫א‬
Timothy Brennan states that "there has traditionally been less tolerance towards attempts to humanize Muhammad or historicize the Quran than to attack God himself." 139The outstanding example is the Urdu poem "Shikwah" (Complaint) by Mu− hammad Iqbāl (1875-1938), in which he accuses God of infidelity.He catalogues all that Muslims have done for God over the centuries, and points out that nevertheless God has neglected them and allowed the Muslim world to be destroyed.In one of the more startling passages of the poem, Iqbāl exclaims: "At times You have pleased us, at other times / (it is not to be said), You are a whore." 140Iqbāl was angrily denounced as a blasphemer, but his life was never in danger.
Adūnīs's new poetic vision has gradually penetrated into the center of the Arabic literary system.There is no better proof of this development than the sharp reactions to that vision from both marginal edges of the present literary system: on the one hand, the conservative, especially religious circles, who consider it as a heresy and a great danger; 141 and on the other hand, the modernist circles who refer to Adūnīs's revolutionary vision not only as traditional but also as a "disgrace." 142Still, his vision has never gained much popularity among the Arab masses, and Adūnīs himself, not to mention representatives of modernist circles opposing his vision, is mainly active in the West.

Conclusion
From the seventh century the activity in the Arabic literary system generally occurred within the borders defined by Islam, as well as by a cultural heritage that had become nearly as sacred as the religious laws, although Arabic literature was never wholly a religious one. 143 cases in which attempts at censorship have been challenged by human rights organizations and have produced protests from intellectuals throughout the Arab world and outside it is one of the indications that Arabic culture since the nineteenth century has been gradually detaching itself from subjection to the religious factor alone.In addition, contemporary Arabic literary output is no longer, as it was in medieval times, the production so-to-speak of an international cultural community.It has been gradually becoming again, as it was in the pre-Islamic period, a literature of the Arabs alone.In the Abbasid period, many of the central literary figures were of non-Arab descent, Persians being particularly numerous.From about the tenth century onwards, Muslim Persia began to replace Arabic with Persian as the predominant literary medium, a process that was continued elsewhere outside the Arabic speaking countries.Even in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Arab poets of non-Arab descent could become part of the center of the literary canon. 144Today the three major peoples of the Middle East, Arabs, Turks and Iranians, have become intellectually isolated from one another.Arabic is still taught as a classical and scriptural language in Iranian schools and it has also been reintroduced into Turkish religious seminaries, but in effect Cairo, Teheran and Istanbul are culturally very remote from each other. 145Moreover, although the literary production of Islamist circles in the Arab world is considered to be an integral part of the discourse that brings together also the Islamist Persian and Turkish literary writings, this discourse is by no means part of the contemporary literary canon.
Also worth mentioning are the minor, but sometimes important, exceptions of Christian and Jewish contributions to Arabic literature. 146 144 Fr example, the Egyptian A− hmad Shawqī, Amīr al-Shuôarāé (The Prince of Poets), was of Kurdish and Arab descent on his paternal side and of Turkish and Greek descent on his maternal side (cf.Brugman 1984, 35-36). 145 totally confined to secular intellectuals who accept the Muslim framework of Arabic culture.Even today we find Christian religious notables who are engaged in composing traditional Arabic poetry.One outstanding example is the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, Shanūda the Third, who has written poems in the qaâīda form and even recited some in public gatherings. 149In any case, in contrast to the formative stage of modern Arabic literature, the number of Christian writers has become constantly fewer, and Christians were the first to adopt other languages as a new medium for literary creation.
See Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968), 73.Cf. the rationale behind the study of Islamic popular literature and the literary relationship between the Arabs, Turks and Persians, as alluded to respectively in ® Husayn Mujīb al-Miârī, Fī al-adab al-shaôbī al-islāmī al-muqāran (Cairo: al-Dār al-Thaqāfiyya li-l-Nashr, 2001), esp.5-9, 229-40; idem, − Silāt bayna al-ôarab wa-l-furs wa-l-turk: Dirāsa taérīkhiyya adabiyya (Cairo: al-Dār al-Thaqāfiyya li-l-Nashr, 2001), esp.5-7; idem, Bayna al-adab al-ôarabī wa-l-turkī: Dirāsa fī al-adab al-islāmī al-muqāran (Cairo: al-Dār al-Thaqāfiyya li-l-Nashr, 2003), esp.7-28.146On the contribution of Christian and Jewish poets to Arabic poetry afterINTERNET FINALThat the contribution of Christian Arab writers and intellectuals to modern literature in its formative stage in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century was highly significant is not in any doubt.However, it is instructive to recall I. I.Krachkovskii's remark that the literary work of the Christian writer Nāâīf al-Yāzijī (1800-1871) was the first to violate the Muslim principal al-ôArabiyya lā tatanaââaru (Arabic language cannot become Christian), which means that "Arabic literature cannot grant recognition to Christian writers." 147It also goes without saying that a contributory factor in the lead taken by Egypt in the Arab renaissance was the influx into that country, since the nineteenth century, of Christian Syrian men of letters, who pioneered free journalism and various cultural activities there.Christian Syrian writers also comprised the major nucleus of the intensive Arabic literary activities in the Mahjar, especially in North and South America.Still, Arab Christianity has never been disconnected from Arabic-Islamic social and cultural systems, and Christian writers in Arabic have never entered the canonical center of the literary system without adopting the Arabic-Islamic literary heritage. 148It is interesting, especially against this background, that the writing of Arabic literature by Christians has never been the rise of Islam, see Louis Cheikho, Shuôarāé al-naârāniyya baôda al-Islām (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1967); S. M. Stern, "Arabic Poems by Spanish-Hebrew Poets," in Romanica et occidentalia: Etudes dédiées à la mémoire de Hiram Peri (Pflaum), ed.M. Lazar (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1963), 254-63; R. Brann, "The Arabized Jews," in The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: The Literature of al-Andalus, ed.M. R. Menocal, R. P. Scheindlin, and M. Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 435-54. 147I. I. Krachkovskii, al-Riwāya al-taérīkhiyya fī al-adab al-ôarabī al-− hadīth wa-dirāsāt ukhrā (tr.ôAbd al-Ra− hīm al-ôAç tāwī) (Rabat: Dār al-Kalām li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīô, 1989), 24.Cf.Ajami 1998, 42-43. 148See the Christian writers mentioned in Hilary Kilpatrick, "Brockelmann, Ka− h− hâla & Co: Reference Works on the Arabic Literature of Early Ottoman Syria," Middle Eastern Literatures 7.1 (2004): 33-51.Kilpatrick shows, for example, how Carl Brockelmann omits in his GAL all texts by Jews and Christians intended only for their co-religionists: "Arabic literature is essentially Islamic" (ibid., 34).Cf.Ilyās Khūrī's statement in his introduction to a collection of articles dealing with the Arab Christians (al-Masī− hīyyūn al-ôarab: Dirāsāt wa-munāqashāt [Beirut: Muéassasat al-Ab− hāth al-ôArabiyya, 1981], 9): It is significant that as late as 198022ôAbduh Wāzin, ® Hadīqat al-− hawāss (Beirut: Dār al-Jadīd, 1993).23On the novel and the sensuality of the text, see Stefan G. Meyer, the case, see also Mu− hammad ôAbbās, al-Waôy yanzifu min thuqūb al-dhākira (Cairo: Rakwat ôarab (Arabic coffeepot).Khalīfa, who won a cult following in the Arab world and the Arab diaspora through his nationalistic songs during the Lebanese civil war, and who draws thousands of people to his concerts, was alleged to have "insulted Islam."The music of the song is Khalīfa's while the lyrics are based upon a poem by the Palestinian poet Ma− hmūd Darwīsh (b.1941), from his collection Ward aqall (Fewer roses), the poems in which were inspired by the Lebanese war of 1982 and its aftereffects: my father, I am Joseph.O father, my brothers neither love me nor want me in their midst, O my Father, they assault me and cast stones and words at me.They want me to die so They can eulogize me.They closed the door of your house and left me outside.They expelled me from the field.They Poisoned my grapes, O my father.They destroyed my toys, O my father.When the passing gentle wind played with My hair they were jealous, they flamed up with rage against me and you.What did I do to them, O my father?The butterflies stopped on my shoulder, the ears of grain bent down to me and the birds hovered over My hands.What have I done, O my father?And why me?You named me O On 2 October 1999, the newly appointed investigating judge, ôAbd al-Ra− hmān Shihāb, recommended that prosecutors Nayhūm 1991 and al-Nayhūm 1994.On how Shāhīn's controversial film narrowly escaped being banned for allegedly depicting Joseph, see Wild 1996, 389-90 and the references in nn.21, 22; Ayalon 1999, 33.During the fiftieth annual Cannes Film Festival (May 1997), a special lifetime achievement award was presented to Shāhīn.On Shāhīn in general, see Claude Michel Cluny, Dictionnaire des nouveaux cinémas arabes (Paris: Sindbad, 1978), 161-72; Mu− hammad al-− Sāwī, Sīnimā Yūsuf Shāhīn: Ri− hla Aydiyūlūjiyya (Alexandria: Dār al-Maç tbūôāt al-Jadīda, 1990); Hind Rassam Culhane, East/West, an Ambiguous State of Being: The Construction and Representation of Egyptian Cultural Identity in Egyptian Film (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 49-56, 71-75; Mustafa Darwish, Dream Makers on the Nile: A Portrait of Egyptian Cinema (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 43; Sharon A. Russell, Guide to African Cinema (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 47-50.On the attempt to ban Umm Kulthūm's singing of Rubāôiyyāt al-Khayyām translated by A− hmad Rāmī (Beirut: Dār al-ôAwda, 1977), see Sélim Nassib, Oum (Paris: Balland, 1994), 193-96 (=Salīm Turkiyya, Kāna âar− han min khayāl, tr.Bassām ® Hajjār [Beirut: al-Masār, 1999], 208-11).