Berkley Center

Tonight, around 5:00 p.m., I went up to the Khan al-Khalili and sat across from Al-Husayn Mosque at a small restaurant to get dinner. The food was traditional Egyptian fare: baladi bread, hummus, tomatoes and lettuce, pickled vegetables, and kebab. It might have been an unexceptional meal, except for one important fact: it’s Ramadan. We waited to eat, out of courtesy to everyone around us, until the muezzin’s call from the mosque announced that the sun had set, and it was time to break the fast.

I was excited to be studying abroad in a Muslim country during this holy month because I had heard that the decorations, lavish iftars (the evening meal where Muslims break their fast), and nighttime livelihood of the city were not to be missed. What I did not anticipate was that I would be struck and intrigued by the religious devotion and commitment of the entire society, and by how much the expressions and practices of religion would permeate the simplest aspects of life. As I sat down to eat dinner, the square outside the mosque was full of families and groups of friends chatting and lounging at temporary tables. The iftar is a social meal. One eats with family, friends, colleagues, fellow mosque-goers, or neighbors. While it is your personal devotion and discipline that get you through the day without food, water, medicine, cigarettes, or any other item that might pass your lips, the community of believers is there to support you.

I think that the social aspect of fasting reinforces the fortitude it requires. Not just being around other people who are fasting, but also being bound up in the religious and cultural environment—where the work day and the infrastructure of the country is built around the expectation of fasting—helps people get through the strength-sapping practice. I attempted to fast for a few days, but found myself not up for the task, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who fast. Here, that's nearly everyone. I want very much to understand that level of religious commitment, both out of personal curiosity and because I believe it speaks loudly about the importance of religion in Egypt. Religion points to deep convictions that cannot be ignored in politics, as we in the United States like to try to do.

Whatever the relationship between fasting and social relations, public piety, evident from the moment I stepped out of the airport here in Cairo, is all the more apparent during this month. As always, people everywhere fit prayer into their lives as regularly and naturally as we students check our email or text-message a friend. The security guards who ensure that no men enter the women’s side of the dorm take turns praying in the stairwell. I waited quietly the other night outside a photocopy shop’s door while the proprietor completed his evening prayer. Friends have told me that soccer fans stop to pray in the mezzanine of the stadium and use their team flags as prayer rugs. Every Friday, mosques overflow and alleys fill with people observing the noon prayer, listening to sermons via radio or the loudspeakers blaring from the nearest mosque or street corner. Later in the afternoon, calls to prayer blanket one another in an intoxicating mix of sound that puts me, a non-Muslim, in a spiritual mood. Taxi and bus drivers play sermons and Qur'anic recitations in their vehicles constantly.

While many people argue that the prevalence of religious values contributes to discrimination, backward thinking, intolerance, and incomprehensible policies (not just in relation to Islam, but in relation to Christianity in the United States and other religious traditions elsewhere), I see power and beauty in the strong presence of religion in Egyptian society. I can see why Egyptians are concerned about what they see as tradeoffs between a freer political environment and the prominence and resilience of religion in the public sphere. These are the questions that have led me to study religion and politics: Must they be separate? Can they be separate? How can religion inform democracy and its goals without endangering it? Are alternate ways of governing that fall more in line with religious dogma desirable or feasible or dangerous or useless? These questions are only growing stronger during my time here.