I met a man few days ago who told me: “I follow everything you write about our late author Naguib Mahfouz because I’m one of his most devoted fans. I had sent you a letter a while ago where I asked why you always refer to him as our “great author?
“What’s wrong with that, I replied. “Isn’t he indeed our greatest author?
“Without a doubt, but God alone is “Great and we should not describe any human being with a name that should be restricted to God alone.
“Who said so? I replied. “Was it mentioned in the Holy Quran or the hadith for instance? Islamic teachings call upon us to emulate all the goodness we encounter in the attributes of Almighty God such as mercy and others.
“True, he said. “but emulating good attributes is one thing and taking on names that should refer to God alone is an entirely different thing. Even though this is not mentioned in either the Quran or the hadith, it is still not acceptable.
“Unacceptable to whom exactly? I asked. “This must be the work of one of those Sheikhs who keep coming up with interpretations of our religion that have no basis in the word of God. They are the takfiris who have summed up the entire religion into a few superficial rituals that will supposedly take you straight to heaven and if you fail to follow them, you’re doomed to hell. These are the Sheikhs who say you must enter the toilet with your left foot and not use your left hand when eating because it’s filthy! Others bombard us with Friday sermons and on television programs, only to come up with fatwas like prohibiting statues and breastfeeding adult men. They are the same Sheikhs who said that a woman’s face was a awra (source of shame) that must be covered; and so is her voice, and that shaking hands with her was a sin.
“Let’s just be reasonable, he said.
“I agree, but where is the reason in what these Sheikhs claim? I said.
“Do you deny that God is Great?
“Of course not, but he is also the Mighty, the Generous, the Guardian of Faith and the Responsive. Despite that, we do not shy away from bestowing such adjectives on those who deserve them. In fact we even use them as names in birth certificates, I said.
“Even in your own letter, you described me as Aziz (Mighty) and signed it with your name Kamal Galal El Din El Hamzawy when “Kamal (Perfection) may only be attributed to God alone and so is “Galal (Sublimity), I continued.
“Kamal is the name my mother gave me after her own father while Galal is my father’s name, he said.
“This means that you, your father, your mother and your mother’s father are infidels, I said.
The man looked at me in astonishment.
“You must fear God when it comes to what you say about religion, I told him. “And if you wish to protect Islam, then don’t do so by hanging on to superficialities that have nothing to do with religion and do not express the sublimity of divine faith. Hanging on every word the way you do only expresses one thing: the regression that has struck at the heart of our religious discourse nowadays which has led some of the most ignorant people to dabble in the interpretation of one of the greatest monotheistic religions in the world, whereas in the past our interpreters were people like Al Imam Al Shafie. Today those with the worst voices insist on making the call to prayer, when in the past Bilal was chosen to be the Prophet’s muezzin because he was gifted with the most beautiful of voices.
“But these days are long gone and those who make the call to prayer today are the descendents of those good men of the past, he said.
“That is not true. The descendents of our great interpreters are Imam Mohamed Abdu, Gamal El Din Al Afghani, and Sheikh El Baqoury and the descendents of our great muezzins are Sheikh Mohamed Rifaat and Abdel Aziz El Bishry who used to wait until he heard the call to prayer from Al-Azhar’s minaret so as to synchronize the rest of the calls using the same melody as that of Al-Azhar. Thus during the azan back then Cairo was flooded in a symphony of harmonious spirituality; a far cry from today’s jarring cacophony of porters and garage attendants.
“So I implore you to protect Islam from those people instead of asking me not to refer to Naguib Mahfouz as our “Great Author.
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writer’s Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
