Kneeling in Judgment

Stretching out toward the great pyramids, sprawling Giza is another area where prosperity has been stymied. Fundamentalist religious life is flourishing. Hassan Howainy is a professor of philosophy at the ancient al-Azhar University in Cairo -- for centuries a center of Islamic learning. He lives off Faisal Street, in Giza, infamous for the Egyptian government's seizure there of fundamentalists during its periodic crackdowns. Howainy, who is blind, sits in a red plastic lawn chair, rocking back and forth as he speaks. He is graying, and lives in a small apartment surrounded by books, some of which are read to him by former students. By local standards, Howainy is considered a moderate.

"Ad and Thamud went against the laws of God, and God took revenge upon them," he says. "We see a lot of signs of how God takes revenge on people who violate his laws, who go far away from religion. What's going on in America -- forest fires, floods, hurricanes, this kind of destruction -- and the diseases, like AIDS, caused by abnormal ways: We consider all of these as signs of the revenge of God."

He speaks as if these things were obvious and only a mind traduced by atheism and Western corruption could fail to see the meaning of Ad and Thamud. As a professor at al-Azhar, Howainy is part of an ancient and venerated religious establishment. But while his language echoes ideas heard from Christian fundamentalists in this country (Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians," among others), Howainy has little patience with the particular fundamentalism heard at mosques like al-Aziz Billah.

"They do not understand the core of Islam," he says. "They are the ones that export terrorists because of their strictness and their limited moral understanding. It is a school of thought that suits a mind that is simple, Bedouin-like." He claims that Egyptians completely refuse to embrace this thinking; he minimizes both the fundamentalist threat and their feelings of persecution.

Stability is a word that Howainy uses frequently, and it is the destabilizing influence of the al-Aziz Billah brand of fundamentalists that is his primary concern. They presume to make judgments about what is and is not religiously proper, about who is and isn't a good Muslim. It's not that one shouldn't make these kinds of judgments, he feels. Rather, these are judgments best left to established institutions like al-Azhar (which is essentially state-run). He points to his own lack of a beard and laughs that this would make him, in some people's eyes, an unbeliever. Howainy is not a secularist. He supports an Egypt ruled by sharia law, the traditional Islamic code that regulates matters both spiritual and practical. The best route to stability for Egypt is a sharia-based democratic society, he says, with religious thought developed under the university's tutelage. In fact, democracy within the limits of religious law is the best route to stability not just for Egypt, but for the rest of the world, he says. It would be a wise choice for America, he believes.

Listening to Howainy gives one the sense that America is not a particular place one might find on the map, but merely a collection of pathologies: mental illness, homosexuality, atheism, materialism. It is, like Ad and Thamud, a mythical incarnation of arrogance. But while Howainy is vague about where he gets his news of America ("We know these things," he says), he is not ignorant of America. Far from it. He is up-to-date about social issues, including gay marriage. He has devoted his life to understanding America through the ideas of its philosophers, especially the late 19th-century "pragmatists" such as Charles Sanders Peirce, James Dewey and William James, who sought a grand synthesis between the scientific method, spiritual and social life, and human happiness. Like many people in this country, he knows a great deal about America, but in a very particular way.

"Being religious, according to William James, depends on personal benefit," he says. "We don't have this belief." The pragmatists' focus on the material -- on the efficiency and effectiveness of ideas and social structures -- led them and America astray, Howainy believes. He connects this lack of pure, spiritual commitment to God to a general, pervasive malaise within America that explains all its actions in the world: It is a land of power and personal satisfaction which destroys the soul, and leads the country to grasp for oil and land in the Muslim world. It is a philosophy that will destroy the United States, just as godlessness destroyed the Soviet Union.

Knowing America, knowing its flaws, weaknesses and contradictions, is for him almost a theological exercise, a way of clarifying Muslim values and defeating, if only rhetorically, American claims to idealism. Again and again, while America is castigated for its policies, for its unconditional support for Israel during the second intifada, and its interventionist foreign policy that began with 9/11 and the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan, it is the sin of Ad and Thamud -- arrogance -- that is uppermost in the general indictment.

Decline and Fall

The discourse on arrogance is apocalyptic.

Ad and Thamud were utterly destroyed. The Soviet Union, which suppressed Islamic life in its Central Asian republics, can no longer be found on any map. The United States is all-powerful, which is no defense against divine judgment. When the subject is arrogance, the language here takes on an absolutist tone. Almost everyone agrees that America's last claim to be any force for good in the world ended with the Bush administration's decision to attack Iraq.

The attack on Iraq is described, in sermons at al-Aziz Billah, and by moderate figures as well, as a complete annihilation of the Iraqi people. "History is collapsing and a nation has fallen," says the fundamentalist sheik Hassaan. The image of Iraq is not one of suffering, violence and instability, as presented by the news networks. Rather, Iraq is gone; its culture demolished; an entire society has been lost. Things keep disappearing from the mental map of this region: Ad and Thamud, Iraq. Even the old America -- once seen as a benign and neutral presence, a balance to the old European colonial power -- is described as having disappeared.

But arrogance is not the only sin. Hypocrisy is a close second, and hypocrisy is a curious sort of sin, in which one's claims to be something are measured against one's actions. With the sin of hypocrisy, there is a small rhetorical opening to a view of America not entirely contemptuous; to accuse America of hypocrisy is to at least acknowledge that it has professed ideals that are not exclusively a matter of power, ambition, and pride.

Listen, for instance, to Muhammad Tosson, vice president of the Lawyers Syndicate, a group that has criticized the Egyptian government for its policy of detaining political and religious opponents. Or to the man sitting next to him in a crowded first-floor office in downtown Cairo, another lawyer who identifies himself only as a member of Gamaa Islamiya. Both men cross the line that the sheiks at al-Aziz Billah only skirt. They criticize America, Israel and their own government, and for that, both have been arrested. Both see America as directly responsible for the detention, torture and death of Muslims in Egypt. Both return again and again to American hypocrisy as a central theme, perhaps even more important than all the other, more tangible crimes of America.

"America has completely destroyed human rights," says Tosson, through an interpreter. "We have so many detainees here, with no trials. The U.S. knows about this. The U.S. prefers that it happens because the detainees are cases of Islamic detention. They know very well that we have detainees under torture. The Egyptian government is doing this to satisfy the U.S."

Tosson identifies himself as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group with long roots in Egyptian political life and a group that, though officially banned, enjoys an uneasy truce with the government and functions as a behind-the-scenes opposition party. The man from Gamaa Islamiya ("The Islamic Group") subscribes to a more radical fringe, and is more radical in his rhetoric. He wears a threadbare green suit with sandals; his beard is unkempt. Asked the difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and Gamaa Islamiya, he laughs a mirthless little laugh and then holds his hands as if cradling a rifle and pulls an imaginary trigger.

"Attacking America is justice," he says. "To defend my nation, I would go and kill if attacked. The Islamic nation and the Arab nation are one, in all countries."

He describes his own encounters with the Egyptian authorities -- a series of arrests since 1988 that he says included torture, hours of electric shock, chairs placed on top of him, kicking and beating, hours of questioning. Some of the specifics defy credulity, but he insists the long litany -- 10 hours of electric shock, 17 hours of hanging on a door, beaten for five hours, then five more hours of electric shock -- is all true. Although it's impossible to confirm his particular story, human rights organizations have accused Egypt of all of these practices.

"I would be the first to carry a gun," he says. But he has not, he says, yet carried a gun. And though he may be one of the angriest men in Egypt, he sees an easy solution: Yankee go home.

"We don't want anything from America but one thing: Just leave us alone," he says. "Have peace with us. Don't take our lands. Don't give aid to dictators who put this pressure on us."

With "don't take our lands," he reiterates the widely held belief that America covets direct control over the region, for its oil and to further the aims of Israel. But as he says all this, and as he demands from a reporter some response to a barrage of questions -- Why does America always support Israel and never the Palestinians? Why does America support human rights at home, but never abroad? Why are Muslim prisoners, at places like Abu Ghraib, treated like animals? -- it's hard not to hear a note of betrayal in his voice. He may be willing, perhaps, to carry a gun against America. But the America of high ideals, it seems, has gone missing from his map, and for a moment he seems more hurt than angry.