United Academics Journal of Social Sciences - Islam & The Western World

ISLAM & THE WESTERN WORLD Paradigms of Empowerment- Feras Alkabani Isabelle Eberhardt - Kirsty Bennett The Use of Latinized Arabic in Egypt - Mariam Aboelezz Biography - Betty Shabazz - By: Ruth Charnock Book & Author - Lori Peek - By: Elke Weesjes

FOCUS The United Academics Journal of Social Sciences is interdisciplinary, peer reviewed and interactive. We provide immediate Open Access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. In doing so, this journal underlines its publisher’s ethos, which is to ‘Connect Science & Society’. United Academics is an independent platform where academics can connect, share, publish and discuss academic research. Furthermore it facilitates online publications while respecting the author’s copyrights.

We will publish themed issues bimonthly, each consisting of a collection of articles, work-in-progress pieces and book reviews showcasing the broadest range of new (interdisciplinary) research in Social Sciences from both established academics as well as students.

While many academic journals are online and a growing number are available in openly accessible venues, the internet has not been utilized to its full extent. Therefore we have created a journal which truly does tap the power of the web for interactivity.

To begin with research papers and other contributions published in this journal, contain interactive media such as videos maps and charts in order to make research more accessible and engaging.

Secondly, in order to extent the peer review system, which is currently still limited with only a few colleagues reviewing papers, we invite the United Academics community to submit commentaries. By opening up the commenting and feedback process we will foster better critique of work. We want to encourage researchers to interact with the research, provide feedback and collaborate with authors.

CREDITS Editor-in-Chief: Elke Weesjes Executive Editor: Ruth Charnock Design Cover : Michelle Halcomb Editorial Board : Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, Anouk Vleugels, Ruth Charnock, Danielle Wiersema Daphne Wiersema Questions and Suggestions: Send an e-mail to: journal@ united-academics.org Advertisement : Send an email to: advertising@ united-academics.org Address : Oudezijds Voorburgwal 274 1021 GL Amsterdam The Netherlands

CONTENTS EDITORIAL ARTICLE ONE

‘Paradigms of Empowerment’ The Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment By: Feras Alkabani

ARTICLE TWO

03 06

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‘The True Story About Me’ Isabelle Eberhardt: The Legend of the Kahina and the Construction of Identity By: Kirsty Bennett

ARTICLE THREE

‘We are Young. We are Trendy. Buy Our Product!’

The Use of Latinized Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt By: Mariam Aboelezz

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BIOGRAPHY

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BOOK & AUTHOR

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‘Sister Betty’ The Life of Betty Shabazz By: Ruth Charnock

Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11 - Lori Peek By: Elke Weesjes

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September/October

EDITORIAL Islam & The Western World

W

ith the global spread of political Islam, Muslims in Western countries have faced more scrutiny, criticism and analysis than any other religious community. Significantly, and despite the often negative portrayal of Islam, the number of people in these countries choosing to become Muslim has increased dramatically over the past decade. A 2011 study by think-tank Faith Matters concluded that since 9/11 the number of converts in Britain has doubled. The study suggests that around 100,000 converts live in Britain, with as many as 5,000 new conversions nationwide each year. In European countries such as the Netherlands, France and Germany we see a similar trend. Arguably against all odds the number of conversions in the US has also increased since 9/11. In 2008, NBC news reported that 20,000 Americans convert to Islam each year. Of these converts, 67 per cent come from a Protestant background, 59 percent are African American and almost all (91 per cent) converts are native born.

Compared to other religions, Islam is one of the ‘easiest’ ones to convert to. All that is required is reciting the Shahada, the formal declaration of faith. One honest recitation is sufficient to

4

become a Muslim, but most people who choose to convert to Islam do it in front of two witnesses, one being an imam. When asked why so many people convert Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, replied: “I think there is definitely a relationship between conversions being on the increase and the prominence of Islam in the public domain. People are interested in finding out what Islam is all about and when they do that, they go in different directions.

Most shrug their shoulders and return to their lives but some will inevitably end up liking what they discover and will convert.”

Over the years many high profile celebrities have converted to Islam. From the boxer Muhammed Ali (Cassius Clay) and singer Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), to the actor Omar Shariff (Michel Demitri Shalhoub), British journalist Yvonne Ridley and comedian Dave Chappelle. The latter, who converted in 1998, told Time Magazine in May 2005: “I don’t normally talk about my religion publicly because I don’t want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And

I believe it is beautiful if you learn it the right way.” Many other converts share similar notions and emphasize that Islam is a religion of mercy, love and justice.

The fascination of the West with Islam and Arab culture as well as the experiences of Muslims, in particular of those who converted, are central to this current issue themed Islam & the Western World.

Complying with the UAJSS tradition, our contributors examine, from different disciplinary perspectives, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, the East and the West, English and Arabic.

As the diversity of articles in the issue demonstrates, the fact of this relationship is complex, nuanced, ever-changing and, perhaps most crucially, continuingly worthy of discussion.

Finally.

You’ve finished your thesis, you turned it in, you completed your studies & your work disappears on a shelf somewhere.

Was it all a waste of time?

NO. 5

United Academics Magazine brings it back to life.

Your thesis in our magazine? Contact us.

ARTICLE ARTICLE ONE ONE

Paradigms of Empowerment: the arabic orient and orientalist wish fulfilment

By: Feras Alkabani

Article One

A

stranger must, indeed, have something extraordinary about him to attract attention in the streets of the Holy City. But as this young Bedouin passed by in his magnificent royal robes, the crowds in front of the bazaars turned to look at him. It was not merely his costume, nor yet the dignity with which he carried his five feet three, marking him every inch a king or perhaps a caliph in disguise who had stepped out of the pages of ‘The Arabian Nights’. The striking fact was that this mysterious prince of Mecca looked no more like a son of Ishmael than an Abyssinian looks like one of Stefansson’s redhaired Esquimaux; Bedouin, although of the Caucasian race, have had their skins scorched by the relentless desert sun until their complexions are the colour of lava.

But this young man was as blond as a Scandinavian, in whose veins flow Viking blood and the cool traditions of jords and sagas.1 European Orientalism appears in different forms; its uses range from fascination

with the ‘otherness’ of the Orient to severe discontent with its ‘degenerate’ ways in a self-reassuring manner meant to highlight European superiority. The concept of the ‘Unchanging East’ has served as one of the more stable pillars of Orientalism; its applicability, however, may randomly change depending on context. Yet, the role of the Orient as a space or a theatrical stage upon which Orientalism is enacted is often not discussed when critiquing a certain Orientalist’s approach to it. In this article, I am going to shed light on an aspect of T E Lawrence’s complex relationship with the Arabic Orient and question the paradigm of empowerment at play in his Arabian campaign; that is, his part in co-leading the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the emerging separatist narrative of Arab nationalism. I propose a mode of analysis that explores the space between Orientalist text and its assumed relation to its writer’s practical experience of the Orient; that is, examining Orientalism through a formula of text and experience and determining the extent to which the

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

two are interrelated and how they interact, overlap and often interchange. In the case of Lawrence, an additional element of chivalric phantasy - a wish to become a medieval knight - is added to the formula. I shall start by shedding light on Lawrence’s early literary and historical interests and highlight the impact these (textual) interests seem to have had on his (experiential) involvement in the Arab Revolt. Lawrence’s trajectory from text to experience will then be analysed from a Freudian point of view in order to point out its relation to phantasy, dreams and wish-fulfilment. The relationship between text and experience in Lawrence’s applied Orientalism is rather remarkable. For Lawrence’s initial attraction to the Arabic East was mainly fuelled by a historical and literary textual fantasy, which found in the Arabic Orient the ideal space for its experiential materialisation in the form of the Arab Revolt, hence the shift from text to experience as I shall explain in this paper. Thus, not only did T E Lawrence’s Arabian adventure transcend the pages of text into the realm of experience,

but it also took centre stage by enacting a predetermined vision of (literature-influenced) chivalric experience. Essential to this, nonetheless, is his adoption of the figure of an Arabian knight (or sheikh), which Lowell Thomas later turned into the celebrated mythical figure of Lawrence of Arabia. Indeed, Lawrence’s ‘magnificent royal’ appearance, which ‘marked’ him ‘every inch king or caliph’, would not only allow him to ‘step out of the pages of “The Arabian Nights”’ as such, but also become a true Arabian knight, whose active engagement in the Arabic Orient has indeed changed the course of history and was arguably the manifestation of a short-lived, modernist marriage between European imperialism and anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism.

Best known for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916-18), Lawrence was Britain’s imperial agent in its war against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. As the Ottoman Empire joined the First World War on the German side, the British and the French (the Allies) made the strategic choice of supporting the anti-

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Ottoman strand of Arab nationalism, and, thus, gained the crucial – insider’s – help of the Arab subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The uniqueness of Lawrence’s role in the Revolt lies in his ability to not only bridge diplomatic, communicative and cultural gaps between the Allies and Sharif Hussein of Mecca, but also demonstrate an intrinsic understanding of the nature of Arabian tribal life, which helped unite the various tribes of Arabia, and rally them behind the cause of anti-Ottoman struggle. In this light, Lawrence managed to perform a double role in the Arab campaign as Britain’s imperial agent on the one hand, and the Arabs’ co-leader, on the other. In addition to this public double-role, Lawrence was also pursuing a personal interest – an ‘intellectual curiosity’ for desiring to be at ‘the mainspring of a national movement’, as he confessed to a friend2. Thus, the momentum of anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism seems to have coincided with the larger international narratives underpinning the Great War’s eastern front and Lawrence’s part in it. Yet, his eventual involvement in

the Arab campaign, I argue, can ultimately be traced back to an earlier textual narrative; that is, his interest in ancient antiquarianism as I shall show.

Infantile antiquarianism Young Lawrence’s literary and historical obsessions as well as his behavioural tendencies as a child appear to have been essential to his epic engagement in the Arabic Orient and his subsequent role in the Arab Revolt. To begin with, Lawrence’s interest in antiquarianism was evident from his early childhood; he was particularly fond of the medieval period and its chivalric literature and culture. By the time he was an undergraduate at Oxford, the ‘depth of his knowledge’ about the Middle Ages was outstanding, so much so that his fellow undergraduates were ‘all taken’ by it3. This was complemented by an ardent fascination with ‘the imaginative literature of early and high medieval France’4, which Lawrence spent most of his time reading after leaving Oxford. He was particularly drawn to ‘thirteenth-century Provençal trouvères

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

[…] and contemporary French gestes’ which featured the adventures of legendary paladins; this, James points out, was ‘a natural fusion of his childhood enthusiasm for Tennyson’s Arthurian verse and his later interest in the feudal world’5. However, the roots of Lawrence’s obsession with medieval culture and his intellectual engagement in its pursuit can be traced further back to his boyhood.

From mastering brass-rubbing and having his work (the rubbings) beautifully displayed on his wall6 to touring parts of England and France in search for traces of medieval antiquarian objects and castles7, Lawrence’s passionate interest turned

into a zealous study, which, in the words of Lawrence James, ‘fused the romantic with the intellectual’8. A more specialised archaeological interest in the Crusaders’ citadels was brewing during Lawrence’s undergraduate years at Oxford; his previous knowledge and experience of the citadels he had seen and examined on his excursions in England, Wales and France were smoothly guiding him into the project of his final thesis, ‘An examination of the then littleknown Crusader strongholds in the Lebanon, Syria and Palestine’9. By 1907, following his visits to medieval castles in France and Wales, Lawrence had developed an architectural

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curiosity about the Crusaders’ castles in Syria. He wanted to ‘find out whether the castles built by the Crusaders had followed the models of western Europe or those of Byzantine military architecture’10, hence Lawrence’s first encounter with the Arabic Orient.

Paradoxically, however, the Arabic Orient of the early twentieth century stood in sharp contrast to Lawrence’s medieval Orient, in which the ancient certainties (i.e. the tensions) of power relations between Christendom and Islam – the old conventions, as it were – were being shattered by the emergent regrouping of imperial alliances; that is, the new modernist order of power coalition in the region on the eve of the Great War. For the last Caliphate – the Ottoman Empire – was joining forces with the (Christian) Triple Alliance against the (Christian) Allies, amidst the increasing political discontent of its (the Ottoman Empire’s) Arab subjects, whose growing nationalist sentiment was deepening the fissure within the centuries-old Turco-Arab political (religiously-arranged) marriage,

and, thus, further demarcating the dichotomy between the religious and the nationalist in the last days of the last Muslim empire. Indeed, this Levantine-Arabian Orient was very different to the previous, late-Victorian, conventional concept of the Arabic Orient. Nonetheless, the political reality of the contemporaneous Orient was not quite relevant to Lawrence’s academic pursuit, or so it seemed. At any rate, he had the support of Dr David Hogarth, the British archaeologist, who recognised Lawrence’s archaeological gift and the pressing need for such an expedition at the time11.

Hogarth was also aware of the advantages of combining Lawrence’s natural appetite for (and scholarly knowledge of) the medieval past with a direct experience in the Middle East, ‘whose ancient monuments’, Hogarth believed, ‘conspicuously exalt the past at the expense of the present’12. Yet, hardly would Hogarth have ever predicted the consequences of introducing Lawrence to the Arabic Orient; for despite realising that Lawrence ‘was more at home in the past than the present’13, neither Hogarth

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

nor the entire Colonial Office would have anticipated the crucial impact Lawrence had had on the region. For Lawrence, the Arabic Orient proved to be the platform upon which he had been able to enact his literary-fuelled, chivalric phantasies. Not only did Lawrence transcend these phantasies from the scholar’s realm of the textual (the literary, historical and fantastical) into the soldier’s realm of the experiential (the physical involvement in the Eastern Front), but he also managed to somehow retrieve the very medieval, chivalric past and recreate it in the most modernist of ways by truly becoming an Arabian knight – a Saracen (rather than a paladin14) – and running (and eventually winning) the Eastern Front on horseback (without resorting to modernity’s un-chivalric killing machine15).

From text to experience and back to text: an act of Ekphrasis? In this light, Lawrence’s relationship with the Arabic Orient may appear romantic; yet it is complex for it is entangled with a plethora of complicated power relations. We ought

to question the empowerment paradigm in which Lawrence and the Arabic Orient (and the Arabs) were operating. Did Lawrence empower the Arabic Orient by taking part in ‘liberating’ it from the Turks? Or did the Arabic Orient, with its well-established Orientalised image (i.e. the Orientalist discourse), empower Lawrence and enable him to enact his chivalric dream? Lawrence’s special manipulation of text and experience within Orientalist discourse may offer some explanation. Not unlike many Orientalists, Lawrence’s interaction with the Arabic Orient (his Orientalism) involved text (books) and a form of experience. Yet, Lawrence’s intimate relationship with books, especially chivalric ones, extends back long before his involvement in the Arab Revolt. In a letter addressed to his mother in August 1910, Lawrence tells her of his delight at finding a better copy of Petit de Saintré, a xv Cent. a ‘novel of knightly manners’; Lawrence writes: You know, I think, the joy of getting into a strange country in a book: at home when I have shut my door and the town is in bed

Article One

– and I know that nothing, not even the dawn – can disturb me in my curtains: only the slow crumbling of the coals in the fire: they get so red and throw such splendid glimmerings on the Hypons and the brasswork. And it is lovely too, after you have been wandering for hours in the forest with Percivale or Sagramors le desirous16, to open the door, and from over the Cherwell to look at the sun glowering through the valley-mists. Why does one not like things if there are other people about?

Why cannot one make one’s books live except in the night, after hours of straining? and you know they have to be your own books too, and you have to read them more than once. I think they take in something of your personality, and your environment also – you know a second hand book sometimes is so much more flesh and blood than a new one – and it is almost terrible to think that your ideas, yourself in your books, may be giving life to generations of readers after you are forgotten.

It is that specially which makes one need good books: books that will be worthy of

what you are going to put into them. What would you think of a great sculptor who flung away his gifts on modelling clay or sand? Imagination should be put into the most precious caskets, and that is why one can only live in the future or the past, in Utopia or the Wood beyond the World.

Father won’t know all this – but if you can get the right book at the right time you taste joys – not only bodily, physical, but spiritual also, which pass one out above and beyond one’s miserable self, as it were through a huge air, following the light of another man’s thought. And you can never be quite the old self again. You have forgotten a little bit: or rather pushed it out with a little of the inspiration of what is immortal in someone who has gone before you.17 It is remarkably striking to have such an early insight of what Lawrence had thought of the ‘joys of getting into a strange country in a book’ before acting upon his chivalric phantasy and turning the whole experience – the Arab Revolt – into one of the most ‘joyful’ of books: Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

(1926). The letter is replete with prophetic paradox, so much so that it renders any serious attempt to further dwell on this aspect in it into utter literary and critical redundancy! However, very interesting is Lawrence’s view about the impossibility of living in the present and the imagination’s role in allowing one to ‘live in the future

or the past’, for this is precisely what he had experientially done as he embodied the image (and persona) of the ‘mysterious Blond Bedouin’, to use the words of Lowell Thomas.18 Thus, not only has the Arabic Orient (as a platform) helped Lawrence truly transcend the pages of his books and physically experience his chivalric phantasy, but it has also aided him enact it in the past, where it belongs. The concept of the ‘Unchanging East’ is part and parcel of the Orientalised image of the Arabic Orient. Upon his first encounter with T E Lawrence, Lowell Thomas describes Christian Street in Jerusalem, where the encounter had allegedly taken place; he writes, Christian Street is one of the most picturesque and kaleidoscopic thoroughfares in the Near East. Russian Jews, with their corkscrew curls, Greek priests in tall black hats and flowing robes, fierce desert nomads in goatskin coats reminiscent of the days of Abraham, Turks in balloon-like trousers, Arab merchants lending a brilliant note with their gay Turbans and gowns, all rub elbows in that narrow lane

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bazaars, shops and coffee-houses that lead to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 19 In the middle of this colourfully depicted street, whose description, could easily place it timelessly in any historical era, Thomas spots Lawrence, who ‘seemed wrapped in some inner contemplation’, so much so, that Thomas’s ‘first thought as [he] glanced at [Lawrence’s] face was that he might be one of the younger apostles returned to life. His expression’, Thomas continues, ‘was serene, almost saintly, in its selflessness and repose’.20

No doubt, Thomas’s romanticised narration of the alleged encounter serves as an enhanced Orientalist dramatisation of the figure of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, whom he created. Yet the Arabic Orient itself plays a central role here in adding a sense of much needed antiquity into the setting in which Lawrence is performing his self-allocated role. For, indeed, if aspects of early twentieth-century Jerusalem are still ‘reminiscent of the days of Abraham’, the Arabian desert – the main stage where Lawrence’s epic took place – is eternity personified.

Whilst still on his archaeological expedition in northern Syria, Lawrence shows a remarkable admiration and longing for the desert – before he ‘plunges’ into it properly as he does later in Arabia. Upon stumbling across the Roman ruins of what the local Arabs believed to be a ‘desert-palace’ built by ‘a prince of the border’ for ‘his queen’, Lawrence succumbs to the overwhelming seduction of the Arabian desert, whose long-travelled wind – its ‘breath’, as Lawrence sensualises it – proves sweeter, purer and far more supreme than the ‘greater richness’ – ‘the precious essential oils of flowers’ – with which the ancient clay of this ‘desert-place’ was apparently kneaded. Upon reflecting on the incident in the Seven Pillars, Lawrence writes, My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, “This is jessamine, this violet, this rose”.

But at last Dahoum drew me: “Come and smell the very sweetest of all”, and we went to the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless,

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech.

“This”, they told me, “is the best: it has no taste.” My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part. 21 Lawrence’s attraction to the desert and the Arabs’ ‘sense of purity of rarefaction’22 is an intoxicated enchantment, so powerful that Lawrence, the man and the phantasy knight, was willingly sucked into it, to its eternal sands – Lawrence’s preferred stage of timelessness; that is, the past23. In a sense, Lawrence seems to be escaping the rapidly changing politics of modernity (his present) by going East to the Arabic Orient and its unchanging desert. Paradoxically, of course, Lawrence’s quest for the unchanging past results in one of the most

dramatic changes in the history of the Near East.24 As for the alleged desert palace, it seems to conjure up a luxurious image from The Arabian Nights; it stands for a magical gateway for full Eastern emancipation – a catalyst for going East and integrating with (and in) it. Indeed, the palace is the threshold that seems to lure Lawrence to transcend his time and space, and seek the original source of its timeless charm – the desert – in the manner of ‘[his]’ true ‘Arabs’. In this light, Lawrence’s past-orientated approach emerges as escapist yet integrative.

Thus, the empowerment of the Arabic Orient lies in the flexibility of manipulating its temporal and spatial significances as well as the different modes of interaction possible with and within it. As a platform of sorts the Arabic Orient’s timeless temporality – the ‘Unchanging East’ – renders it equally (but paradoxically) appropriate for projecting both present and past wishes and desires. Lawrence’s attraction to the Orient begins in the past (as a scholar), while his active, integrative interaction

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with it (as a soldier) leads to, and ends in, the future – an Ottoman-free Near East, with a new set of geopolitics very different to those existent when he first set foot in it.

Freudian narratives: dreams and the Arabic Orient Nevertheless, for Orientalists in general and for Lawrence in particular, the Arabic Orient remains by and large the ultimate platform for wish-fulfilment in the Freudian sense. To that effect, I would like to embark on a brief psychoanalytic examination of Lawrence’s use of the Arabic Orient – a psychoanalysis of his Orientalism, so to speak – and point out the functional similarity between the Arabic Orient and dreams. First of all, if we accept the hypothesis that the Arabic Orient has been a platform for fulfilling Orientalist wishes, (despite their varying natures and the dissimilar manifestation of their fulfilment)25, its function can then be said to resemble that of dreams, in the Freudian sense. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900-1901), Freud famously contends

that dreams serve as psychical fulfilment for (often infantile) wishes that cannot be realised in the material world.26 Bearing Freud’s theory in mind, I would like to draw on Lawrence’s rather escapist relationship with books (fantastical, legendary texts) and his fascination with the chivalric past (as highlighted in his letter above) on the one hand, and the (dream-like) role of the Arabic Orient in fulfilling his wishes/ phantasies materially. This will be done against the backdrop of a metaphorical assembly of Freudian concepts (the psychical and material realities) and my theorisation on the orientation of Lawrence’s Orientalism; that is, the text-to-experience formula. In other words, I would like to juxtapose Freud’s distinction between the psychical and the material with Lawrence’s trajectory – his progress from the textual realm of the scholar (his literary and historical interest) to the experiential realm of the soldier/knight (his physical participation in the Arab campaign).

To begin with, the two distinct assemblages I would like to suggest here revolve

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

around invoking a metaphorical correspondence between the realm of the textual and dreaming-life (because of their existential relationship within psychical reality) on the one hand, and the realm of

the experiential and waking-life (because of their functional/operational relationship within material reality) on the other.

In other words, it is perhaps easy to see how imaginary, fantastical texts (books),

OTTOMAN SOLDIERS, 1917 (Copyright: All rights reserved by: OTTOMANPALESTINE_1 )

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like dreams, serve as psychical outlets for fulfilling wishes and desires unobtainable in the material (real) world, hence Lawrence’s ‘joy of getting into a strange country in a book’ at night. By strictly emphasising the importance of reading at night, Lawrence appears to be somehow linking the act of reading to that of dreaming, whereby both of which can function as a wish-fulfilment.27 In addition, Lawrence appears to be aware of the similarity between the prerequisites of both modes of psychical wishfulfilment (dreaming and reading); that is, the solitary, private nature of fulfilling one’s wishes psychically. He writes, ‘Why does one not like things if there are other people about? Why cannot one make one’s books live except in the night, after hours of straining?’ Crucially, however, the main difference between reading and dreaming is the conscious willingness involved on the part of the subject to fulfil a wish as well as the potential realm in which such a wish is eventually fulfilled (i.e. whether it is pictured in the dreaming-life or the wakinglife). Remarkably, Lawrence appears to be

somehow conscious of this difference – the realm in which a wish is fulfilled and the ensuing consequences to its fulfilment, whether it remains psychical or becomes material. In a striking statement at the beginning of the Seven Pillars, Lawrence writes, All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts28.

From a Freudian point of view, Lawrence appears to be transcending the realm of the psychical (the fantastical and the literary) and moving towards that of the material (the experiential and the military) by “acting [his] dream with open eyes”.

What allows this transcendence between the two realms is the very Arabic Orient, whose timeless connection with the past –

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

its free-floating existence in it – appears to have somehow coincided with Lawrence’s previous infantile wishes and created the perfect (and perhaps only) platform possible for such a unique material transference and fulfilment of infantile desire from the psychical to the material. For Lawrence’s chivalric phantasies can be traced to his very early childhood, as evident in the recollections of his elder brother, Bob, who remembers: When we were small and shared a large bedroom, he used to tell a story which went on night after night without any end. It was a story of adventure and the successful defiance of a tower against numerous foes, and the chief characters were Fizzy-Fuzz, Pompey, and Pete – fur animal dolls that my brothers had. Long pieces of rhyme telling of his exploits and achievements were composed by him, and this was before he was nine.29 Bob’s recollection of this eerily Freudian narrative, with its typical compulsion to repetition as a way of fulfilling a persistent wish, also tallies with what Lawrence James tells us about Lawrence’s identifi-

cation with many of the literary chivalric heroes30 he had read about as a child as well as his pride at privately discovering his gentle ancestry, which, he – in typical medieval fashion – believed, would endow him with inherited moral virtue, passed on to him with the nobility of his blood. 31 Moreover, this also echoes Freud’s emphasis on the importance of infantile wishes and impulses in the dream-work; according to Freud, ‘we find the child and the child’s impulses still living on in the dream.’32 Yet, towards the end of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wonders about the strength of such mental impulses and their potential ability to perhaps transcend the realm of the psychical to that of the material; he writes, ‘Have not the unconscious impulses brought out by dreams the importance of real forces in mental life?

Is the ethical significance of suppressed wishes to be made light of – wishes which, just they lead to dreams, may some day lead to other things?’33 The ethicality of Lawrence’s wish (to become an Arabian knight and ‘liberate’ the Arabs and its en-

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suing not-so-honourable consequences which left the Levant under Anglo-French control) may be subject to endless debate; however, what is less debatable, perhaps, is the unique role of the Arabic Orient in making this wish/phantasy come true.

In this particular instance, the early thirteenth-century French epic poem, Huon de Bordeaux, one of ‘Lawrence’s favourite romances’34, bears a striking resonance with Freud’s rhetorical question above.

In this tale, Huon, accompanied by ‘his knightly band’, embarks on an impossibly tiresome adventure in Arabia whereby he and his knights suffer from fatigue, thirst and hunger and show a legendary, superhuman power of endurance before defeating the ‘Emir of Babylon and his paynims’.

Huon is aided by Auberon, a friendly magician prince, who also hosts him in his ‘enchanted kingdom on the shores of the Red Sea’ and grants him a magical horn that ‘can summon supernatural assistance’ when need be.35 Freud would perhaps have much to say about the ‘incidental’ relevance of this fantastical tale to Lawrence’s even-

tual involvement in the Arab Revolt, when the latter was simply ‘acting [his] dream [or textual phantasy] with open eyes’. For, indeed, dreams and phantasies (textual or otherwise) belong to the realm of the psychical and, as Freud rather half-mockingly prophesised, ‘may some day lead to other things’. Crucially, however, there needs to be a special situational platform for this transcendence – from the psychical to the material – to take place, and in this case, it was the Arabic Orient on the eve of modernism, hence Lawrence’s reverse-knightly role in it. For Lawrence was indeed fighting with the ‘paynims’ (the Arabs) against other ‘paynims’ (the Turks) and their Christian allies (the Germans). Quite paradoxically, the timelessness of the Arabic Orient seems to not only permit this very modernist reallocation of power alliances, but also somehow enable it in the name of the emerging idea (and ideal) of Arab ‘nationalist thoughts’ for which Lawrence wanted to lay the ‘foundations’ of ‘an inspired dreampalace’, as he declares in his quote above.

Indeed, for Lawrence, the Arabic Orient is

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Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

the point of convergence for psychical and material wish-fulfilment; dreams, textual phantasies and modernism coincide and converge for the actual wish/desire (to become a knight) to bypass the psyche and manifest itself (i.e. materialise) in the Arabic Orient.

Paradoxical temporalities In the same vein, Freud’s speculative epilogue to his book, in which he further complicates the relationship between dreams (as a platform for wish-fulfilment) and temporality, appears to chime with Lawrence’s complex relationship with imagination and his compulsive urge to flee the present.

As quoted above in his letter, Lawrence writes, ‘Imagination should be put into the most precious caskets, and that is why one can only live in the future or the past, in Utopia or the Wood beyond the World.’

Lawrence’s statement emerges as rather uncanny when juxtaposed with Freud’s philosophically intriguing conjecture, with which he concludes his book on dreams: And the value of dreams for giving us

knowledge of the future? There is of course no question of that. [Cf. p. 5 n.] It would be truer to say instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in every sense. Nevertheless the ancient belief that dreams foretell the future is not wholly devoid of truth. By picturing our wishes as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading to the future.

But this future, which the dreamer pictures as the present, has been moulded by his indestructible wish into a perfect likeness of the past. 36 In this light, Lawrence, as a case study, seems to be the epitomical manifestation of Freudian thought on dreams, phantasy, wish-fulfilment and temporality. In fact, Lawrence’s ability to successfully enact his dream/phantasy in material reality – the Arabic Orient – may have even surpassed Freud’s own, often imaginative, psychoanalytic speculations. For although Freud seems to be able to envisage a form of existence where one may predominantly live in one’s own private world (i.e. psychical reality), he rules out any social, let alone

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political, success for such an attempt. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud argues that ‘He [who chooses to escape to his inner world] becomes a madman, who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion’.37 Surely, this does not quite apply to Lawrence, who not only managed to transfer his ‘delusion’ to a whole army which, thus, marched with him ‘on the road to Damascus’ to (re)claim his and its (the Arab army’s nationalist) ‘vision’, so to speak, but he also managed to achieve it, quite suitably, in the most modernist of ways by temporarily combining British (Christian) and Arab (Muslim) interests. In a sense, thus, Lawrence seems to add an aptly modernist flavour to Freud’s psychoanalytic thought by using the Arabic Orient to somehow successfully merge the psychical and the material in his attempt to fulfil a wish – an achievement which even the imaginative Freud did not seem to believe would be possible. Yet, Lawrence’s recalibration of temporality seems to typically adhere to Freud’s conjecture above. It also lends support to my claim regarding

Lawrence’s temporal relationship with the Arabic Orient, which started off with a literary, scholarly, phantasy-inclined attraction to its medieval, knightly connection with a legendary past – his study of the Crusaders’ citadels in Syria – and ended up with a truly experientially-altered future that ‘has been moulded by [an] indestructible wish into an [(im)]perfect likeness of the past’, yet with a modernist twist, so to speak.

To be sure, much of Lawrence’s modernist wish-fulfilment was aided and brought about by empire and its rapidly approaching encroachment in the region.

Yet, the region, itself, – the Arabic Orient – was behind the greater part of his success, for his dream/phantasy may not have probably materialised the way it did had it not been for his pre-imperial interest in Syrian medieval archaeology in the first place. Thus, the Arabic Orient allowed Lawrence to feel and experience the utmost degree of connection with his respective psychical reality, for if psychical reality ‘means nothing more than the reality of thoughts, of our personal world’, to quote

25

Paradigms of Empowerment: the Arabic Orient and Orientalist Wish Fulfilment

Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontails, the Arabic Orient has thus managed to reassure Lawrence that ‘it is as valid as that of the material world’38, hence the dream-like role of the Arabic Orient within Lawrence’s discourse of Orientalism.

Endnotes 1 Thomas, L., With Lawrence in Arabia, (London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1925). pp.-19-20.

2 James, L., The Golden Warrior: The life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, (London: Abacus, 1990). p.40.

3 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.34.

4 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.34.

5 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.38.

6 Lawrence became an accomplished brass-rubber in 1905 (James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.24.)

7 For more details on Lawrence’s archaeological interest in medieval culture, see Lawrence James, L., The Golden Warrior, pp.24-9.

8 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.25.

9 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.32.

10 Garnett, D., The Essential T E Lawrence, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951). pp14-5.

11 For the Germans were digging for ancient Near Eastern ruins too. Interest in Middle Eastern archaeology became a site for inter-European competitiveness and imperial tensions.

12 James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.31.

13 Cited in James, L., The Golden Warrior, p.31.

14 Lawrence’s wish to reenact his medieval chivalric phantasy seems to be paradoxically manifested by his adoption of the figure of the Saracen, the Arab-Muslim fighter – not the Paladin, the Christian Crusader warrior of Charlemagne’s court. Lawrence’s modernist role-assumption seems to mirror that of the era, in

which Christian and Muslim alliances intermingle.

15 Of course, Lawrence used dynamite and relied on the Allies’ arsenal to arm the Arabs in the desert.

However, the use of such modern warfare equipment on the Eastern Front was minimal compared to its counterpart on the Western Front, thanks to Lawrence’s insistence on controlling the supply of weapons and his attempt to keep the fighting techniques as native as possible by relying mostly on Bedouin-style raids, camel trains and other native methods of engagement.

16 Sir Sagramore of Hungary is a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian Legend.

17 Cited in Garnett, D., The Essential T E Lawrence, p.38-9.

18 Thomas, L., With Lawrence in Arabia, p.25.

19 Thomas, L., With Lawrence in Arabia, p.19.

20 Thomas, L., With Lawrence in Arabia, p.20.

21 Lawrence, T.E., Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, (London: Cape, 1926). pp.17-8.

22 Lawrence, T. E., Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p.17.

23 The desert, in this respect, seems to acquire a seemingly paradoxical role in that it represents timelessness and eternity at one and the same time – thanks to its unchanging landscape, which merges the two, and, thus, creates a seamless continuum between the past and the present.

24 The collapse of the centuries-old Ottoman Empire and the ensuing radical change in the geopolitics of the region.

25 I do not imply that every Orientalist’s relationship with the Arabic Orient can be seen through this analysis; however, the original text is based on a comparison between Sir Richard Burton’s and T E Lawrence’s Orientalisms; that is, their use of Orientalism per se.

26 Of course, Freud distinguishes between two types of reality in which we, humans, exist and function: the ‘psychical reality’, which belongs to the realm of the unconscious and governs the unconscious aspects of our life, including dreams, and the ‘material real-

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ity’, which belongs to the realm of consciousness and is governed by the external world and our (regulated) conscious ways of interacting with it. See Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900-1901), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and Civilisation and its Discontents (1930).

27 Albeit, reading is an active, conscious activity while dreaming is unconscious and involuntary.

28 Lawrence, T. E., Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p.4.

29 Cited in Garnett, D., The Essential T E Lawrence, p.11.

30 James observes the special boost of self-esteem Lawrence has had ‘by knowing that in the legendary medieval past his own birth [i.e. being an illegitimate child] carried no moral stigma nor hindered advancement’. See James, L., The Golden Warrior, pp.39-40 for more details.

31 James, L., The Golden Warrior, pp.7-8.

32 Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Vol. 4.

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1900). p.191.

33 Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Vol. 5.

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1901). pp.619-20.

34 James, L. The Golden Warrior, p.39.

35 James, L. The Golden Warrior, p.40.

36 Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Vol.5. p.621.

37 Freud, S., Civilization and its Discontents, (London: The Hogarth Press Ltd., 1930). p.18.

38 Laplanche, J. & Pontails, J., ‘Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality’. In Burgin, V., Donald, J. & Kaplan, C. (eds.), Formations of Fantasy. (London: Routledge, 1986). p.7. The italic is my emphasis.

FERAS ALKABANI moved from Damascus, Syria to the UK in 2007 to start his postgraduate study at the University of Sussex after having graduated from the University of Damascus in 2004, where he studied English Language and Literature for four years. He is currently conducting his DPhil research in Comparative Literature. Feras’ research is concerned with the changing trajectory of sexual politics across the Euro-Near-Eastern geopolitical space between the fin de siècle and the first half of the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in the impact of contextual intercultural factors (Orientalism, antiOttoman Arab nationalism, the Great Powers’ imperialist expansion in the region and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire).

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ARTICLE TWO ONE ARTICLE

The True Story A bout Me..

Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

By: Kirsty Bennett

Article Two

I

n 1903, Isabelle Eberhardt was invited to attend the press banquet in Algiers for the French President Monsier Loubet.

Eberhardt arrived dressed in her usual Arabic male attire, turbaned and in white wool. In France she would become infamous as the cross-dressing writer Isabelle Eberhardt; but in Algeria, Eberhardt was accepted, with ‘beautiful Arab discretion’, as Si Mahmoud Essadi, a Tunisian taleb.1 French journalists, knowing only spurious details of Eberhardt’s life, compared her in the national French press to La Kahina, the Aures Queen of the Berbers who rose-up against the Arab invaders and eventual conquerors of North Africa, between 693 and 702 A.D. Isabelle Eberhardt was in fact born and brought up in Geneva, of Russian descent; and after her marriage to Slimene Ehhni (an Algerian spahi in the French army who had gained French nationality after many years of service), she became a French national. Si Mahmoud Essadi was one of numerous identities (both male and female) that Eberhardt inhabited in her

short lifetime. Just one year after the Kahina episode, Eberhardt was to drown in a flash flood in Ain Sefra, Algeria, at just 27 years old.

This article examines what I consider to be Eberhardt’s highly strategic response to the journalists, in her published letter to the editor of the newspaper La Petite Gironde. Eberhardt’s identity politics are necessarily contextualised around the historiography of the Kahina legend. Furthermore, an exploration of the Kahina legend goes someway to explain not just the attitude of the journalists and settlers but also consolidates the colonial administration’s suspicions of Eberhardt as a dissident figure, which she felt compelled to rectify.

From the public platform of her letter, I argue that Eberhardt not only takes the opportunity to re-fashion her Islamic identity with great self-awareness; she attempts to ally herself to a French public - performing a delicate balancing act in the arena of early twentieth century French colonial politics; whilst simultaneously not shying from, but actively seeking a degree of celebrity status

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

with which to further her literary career; culminating in a heady mix of politics, religion, career, and fame.

The La Kahina incident has so far been overlooked by Eberhardt scholars and yet the palimpsestic nature of the Kahina legend mirrors the intricate layering of Eberhardt’s actual, and performative, identity construction. Moreover, my contention that Eberhardt strategically manages the Kahina episode to her advantage - in a slick publicity manoeuvre - adds greater strength to my positioning of Eberhardt, in Ali Behdad’s words, as a colonial ‘parasite who feeds on the system and produces a discourse of discontent in exchange.’2 La Kahina The legend of the Kahina, which in its various guises served all types of mythology, symbolized the chasm in Algerian society.

In the colonial period, the Kahina was the symbol of Algeria, whether as a Muslim or a Berber country. For both groups, she was a symbol, but with different content.3 A brief, partial overview of the historiogra-

phy of the Kahina legend offers a historicizing initial approach to Eberhardt’s identity construction. It also widens the field of postcolonial studies from a nineteenth century imperialist focus to an awareness of wider ideological formations to assess colonial ideology – as exemplified by Amar Acheraiou in his study Rethinking Postcolonialism.4 Since France first sought to colonise Algeria in 1830 - shifting from Napoleon III’s policy of association (which in a notion of partnership, sought not to transform the indigenous population into French), to Jules Ferry’s policy of assimilation (which aggressively sought to make Algeria an extension of France)5 - their eventual goal was to become more successful with their mission civilisatrice than the Arabs and their own civilizing mission of Islam in Algeria. The legend of the Kahina was the necessary link. French historiography elaborated a whole mythology to justify the enterprise and to explain the historical basis for making Algeria French. This justification was not for purposes of convincing the indig-

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enous population but to convince France of the validity of the enterprise. 6 Whereas the Arabs justified their colonisation of North Africa by maintaining that North Africa chose to be Arab and Muslim and that the Berbers adopted Islam of their own free will, motivated by their common origin with the Arabs; the French, argues Abdelmajid Hannoum, proceeded differently

Isabelle Eberhardt in Arab guise

and ‘focused on the resistance of the Kahina to demonstrate that North Africa did not choose to be Arab, but was forced.’7 Fur-

thermore, continues Hannoum, the French saw North Africa as originally Roman and that at the time of the Arab arrival it was at once Byzantine and Berber, therefore the French viewed their occupation of Algeria as justified. Hannoum corroborates David Proschka’s view that French colonial historiography obscures the Arab period and presents the Romans as the ancestors of the French in North Africa:8 The Arabs were not really colonised; the French took from them what, in the past, was Roman, therefore French.

This view justified any exclusion of the Arabs from power, any expropriation of their property, and any nullification of their cultural presence. The matter was different for Berbers, who in the French view were originally European, but who missed the boat, so to speak. The task of the French was to help them progress. This mythology is expressed in all the French writing

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

about the legend of the Kahina, with differences, sometimes slight and sometime significant, between each historian.9 But with the complications and resistance the French encountered in attempting to implement a policy of assimilation, the Kahina legend emerged anew, once again embodied antagonistically towards the colonisers. But with its manifestation in Eberhardt, it was embodied antagonistically towards the French and not the Arabs.

It was indeed as if time had ‘stood still, producing similar personalities and incidents’10 from different colonial moments; Eberhardt’s embodiment of La Kahina becomes a marker of historicity and cultural memory, condensing and personifying a temporal moment.11 However, citing the Kahina legend with reference to Eberhardt demonstrates its transformative abilities and multiplicity of use; it is now in complete reversal to its prior use as an ideological crutch or tool by the French colonisers. In embodying Eberhardt as La Kahina in her current guise, the journalists set Eberhardt up in opposition

to the colonial governnment. Eberhardt’s contemporary embodiment of this legend further adds to its content and complexity.

Not only this, it compounds Eberhardt’s already complex and contradictory positioning: as an Arabised European female, with an Arabic male persona; who opposed the brutalising aspects of European colonisation in publications of ‘fiction’ under her female birth name; whilst publicly inscribing herself to be pro-French in letters to newspaper editors; and finally, absorbing the persona of a historical figure that opposed the Arabs’ own earlier form of oppression to the Berbers.

To complicate matters, Eberhardt’s status with the colonial authorities was decidedly, given previous events, unassured. Despite Eberhardt’s recent patriotic protestations, the authorities had consistently considered her a dissident figure and a threat to the colonial order. This is not surprising, since Eberhardt had physically participated in a bloody uprising on the side of Muslim students against the colonisers in Bone (Annaba) in March 1899. In

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the clash that followed, the Muslims were outnumbered but Eberhardt managed to escape arrest. However, the colonial records in Constantine record her as ‘a dangerous Russian woman conniving with the natives.’12 And Eberhardt, in full awareness

of the implications of her involvement in the riot, made arrangements to leave Algeria for Marseilles the following day. What is more, two years after the Bone riots, and two years before the Kahina episode, Eberhardt was expelled from Algeria following an assassination attempt on her life. Eberhardt had similarly attempted to manipulate this situation by writing to newspaper editors in advance of the trial - ostensibly to elicit sympathy and a just trial for the accused. It functioned to raise her profile in simultaneous but opposing ways: negatively in the light of the colonial authorities (who proceeded to expel her), but positively in light of greater exposure for her future literary career.

Considering Eberhardt’s precarious history and her expulsion, the careful elaboration of her identity and purpose in Algeria following the Kahina incident was extremely politic. Eberhardt did not want to be expelled from Algeria a second time.

‘That is the true story of my life. […] I have never played any kind of politi-

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

cal role. It is enough for me to be a journalist.’

So states Eberhardt halfway through her 800 word letter to the editor of La Petite Gironde. However, just one example from Eberhardt’s chequered history in North Africa reveals a different story. It was the 1899 Bone riots that sealed Eberhardt in the early years of her Islamic identity with radical elements. In unpublished journal notes she decided in advance that, ‘I shall be fighting for the Muslim revolutionaries like I used to for the Russian anarchists … although with more conviction and with more real hatred against oppression. I feel now that I’m much more deeply a Muslim than I was an anarchist.13

Yet in this letter to the editor she plays down her previous political (read anarchist) sensibilities and activities, of which she was involved in Geneva before arriving in North Africa; and plays down her empathy for the colonised Muslims and Berbers in Algeria. Despite her early activities in Algeria, by the time this letter to the editor was written, some four years after her

participation in the Bone riots, Eberhardt arguably had no interest in becoming embroiled in colonial politics; and endeavoured to operate as an educated observer, in her ‘journalistic’ guise. Eberhardt found what she termed the kitchen politics of Algeria repugnant.14 She states in the letter: I have never played any kind of political role. It is enough for me to be a journalist. I study life by being close to it, this ‘native life’ about which so little is known, and which is so disfigured by the descriptions of those who, not knowing it, insist on describing it anyway. I have never engaged in any propaganda among the people here, and it is totally ridiculous to state that I pretend to be an oracle. Wherever I go, whenever possible, I make a point of trying to give my native friends exact and reasonable ideas, explaining to them that French domination is far preferable to having the Turks here again, or for that matter, any other foreigners. It is completely unjust to accuse me of anti-French activities.15 Eberhardt is keen to defend herself against

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the accusation of ‘anti-French activities’ because the representation of Eberhardt as La Kahina places her in a dangerous position, and therefore justifies her vociferous response. As Eberhardt states at the end of her letter, ‘I consider my cause entirely legitimate.’16 After several years of experience in negotiating colonial politics, Eberhardt’s approach is evidently more considered and she openly acknowledges the ideal of France’s mission civilisatrice; explaining to her native friends that ‘French domination is far preferable to having the Turks here again’.

In addition, Eberhardt had been subjected to a great deal of negative press coverage and political criticism.17 Thus her response is predicated upon accumulated events and experience. In particular, the criticism in two newspapers, Les Nouvelles and the Union Repuclicaine, became so relentless that she sued the latter for defamation of character in 1902, for the following piece: What relationship is there between madam Mahmoud of the Turco, madame Ehnni

of L’Akhbar, and mademoiselle Eberhardt of the Depeche? Is this a reincarnation of the Blessed Trinity? [...] Is this young man a woman? Is it a miss or a madam, what is her real name? Does she live in Tenes or Mustapha? Oh, cruel, cruel enigma.’18 Eberhardt’s presence in Algeria, her subversion of gender norms and threat to racial hierarchies by dressing as an Arab man (as well as being married to one) created a considerable noise in the colonial system, a corresponding ‘discourse of discontent’.

Eberhardt’s multiple identity constructions confused and provoked her detractors, but her complaint was upheld. Eberhardt did have her supporters, although they were less vocal during her lifetime. One such person was Victor Barrucand, Eberhardt’s friend, and colleague, in his position as editor of the Algiers based, bilingual newspaper, El Akhbar. Although the following passage was written posthumously - in the appendix to Eberhardt’s Dans l’Ombre Chaude de l’Islam which Barrucand edited - it provides a salutary introduction to Eberhardt’s letter to La Petite Gironde.

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

Barrucand comes to Eberhardt’s defence, aestheticizing her in the process: The presence of this young Moslem divinity student with the powerfully sculpted forehead and the long thin hands, the soft voice and slow speech, did not go unnoticed by the reporters who were following the presidential tour. Certain of them, poorly informed, sent back to their newspapers inexact information as to the identity of, and the life led by Isabelle Eberhardt, comparing her to the warlike Berber queen of Aures, La Kahina, who rode from tribe to tribe preaching hatred of the conquerors. These reports were merely local calumny, disseminated by a few smalltime journalists afflicted with Arabophobia. Isabelle Eberhardt felt that she must put things straight.19 ‘The true story about me […] I was born a Moslem.’

The true story about me is perhaps less romantic, and surely more modest, than the legend in question, but I think it my duty to tell it. My father was a Russian subject

of the Moslem faith, and my mother was a Russian Catholic. I was thus born a Moslem, and I have never changed my religion.

My father died shortly after my birth in Geneva, where we lived. My mother then stayed on with my great-uncle. It was he who brought me up, and he did so exactly as though I had been a boy. This explains the fact that for many years I have worn, and still wear, men’s clothing.20 In this letter there is a conflict between what Eberhardt confesses to in her lifestyle, how she happens to be the way she is (why she dresses as a man, for example), and the clear and deliberate self-fashioning she seems to be actively engaged in for a triad of reasons: political, religious, and career. For political reasons, as previously discussed, Eberhardt is keen to play down the association between herself and the war-like La Kahena, stating that, ‘The true story about me is perhaps less romantic, and surely more modest than the legend in question, but I think it my duty to tell it.’

Eberhardt refuses the mantle of La Kahena and in exchange creates a legend around

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her religious identity: an Islamic identity of her own construction. Eberhardt continues with what she purports to be the true story of her life, ‘My father was a Russian subject of the Moslem faith, and my mother was a Russian catholic. I was thus born a Moslem, and I have never changed my religion.’ It is a statement of doubtful veracity which compels me to the following interrogation and contextualisation of Eberhardt’s personal history.

Eberhardt scholars commonly refer to her conversion to Islam (alongside her mother’s conversion) at the end of the nineteenth century in Algeria.21 Existing studies of Eberhardt’s life state that she converted to Islam sometime in 1897 when she visited Bone in Algeria with her mother. However, although there is no evidence of Eberhardt’s conversion at this point in time - it is a highly probable deduction of fact - there is evidence that her mother did convert in 1897 and took on the name Manoubia Fatma. Eberhardt referred to her mother as ‘la rouma convertie’, the converted non-muslim woman, without any awareness of the

Kahina the Berber Warrior By: Frederick Arthur Bridgman 1875

irony of her own converted position.22 Interestingly, in the letter above, Eberhardt refers to a fictional Islamic paternity, ‘my father was a Russian subject of the Moslem faith’, to justify her ‘belief’ that she was ‘born a Moslem’. However, this fictional Islamic paternity is ultimately negotiable for Eberhardt - in one account she states that

39

Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

she was born a Muslim because her mother was raped by a Turkish doctor – and these multiple constructions of her Islamic paternity are probably due to the fact of her own illegitimacy and the imaginative rein she gave to it. Furthermore, Eberhardt’s emphasis on paternity is also indicative of her masculine identifications throughout her life and career.

Eberhardt’s very particular relationship with Islam and apostasy or conversion, is notable - bearing in mind, firstly, the Western relationship with Islam in the nineteenth century colonial era; and secondly, more specifically, the historical context of any pan-European conversions to Islam. Indeed, apostasy is a subject that Eberhardt covets and it extends into her fiction; it is written into several of her short stories, such as ‘Yasmina’ and the aptly named ‘The Convert’.

From the early modern period onwards, conversion to Islam was commonly referred to as ‘Turning Turke’ and a convert was referred to as a ‘renegade’ or ‘renegado’.23 In brief, conversion or apostasy

was more often than not a pragmatic action in order to secure survival on behalf of the significant number of slaves captured

by North African, Barbary pirates (the Algiers pirates being particularly active in this practice); although Nabil Matar notes that a significant number of voluntary cases are also well documented.24 In addition, Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612) recounts numerous ‘renegade’ marabouts in Algiers.25 But by the end of the nineteenth century, after the decline of the Ottoman Empire as a world power and by the end of the Napoleonic Empire, the balance of power between Europe and the Islamic countries had fully shifted in favour of Europe. Only then did the lands of Islam become material for orientalist construction and colonization.26 It is within this cultural context of ‘orientalizing’ and ‘othering’ the Muslim that we encounter the surprising figure of Eberhardt, who voluntarily embraces Islam and claims it as her birthright.

Although Eberhardt did not have a Muslim father, significantly, she grew up in

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a context where Islam was not alien. Eberhardt was born and grew up in Geneva, in the context of a family in exile from Russia, with her German/Russian mother and Armenian tutor. Alexander Trophimowsky, her tutor, played a key role in her future fashioning of an Islamic identity. He was an unconventional and eccentric man, and an anarchist who was friends with Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian revolutionary and influential theorist of collectivist anarchism.

Trophimowsky taught Eberhardt classical Arabic at her own behest, alongside Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. Eberhardt casually states in the letter that she speaks ‘Arabic fairly well, having learned it at Bone.’ Eberhardt makes no reference to her previous learning, which is well documented; and the archives reveal letters written by Eberhardt, in Arabic, to various correspondents - well before she arrived in North Africa or Bone. It is highly likely that here Eberhardt is referring to when she learned colloquial Arabic rather than the standard modern Arabic that Trophimowsky taught her.

Trophimowsky’s interest in Islam revived in the early 1890s during Eberhardt’s adolescence, ‘partly from re-reading the Koran with her and partly because by the 1880s, Islam, under its charismatic leader Jamal al-Din al Afghani, was beginning to represent itself as a radical force for the Arab peoples’ liberation, from the expansionism of the European colonial powers.’27 The methods of Al-Afghani, who left Egypt for Paris in 1883, must have recalled those of Trophimowsky’s revolutionary days: secret societies, peoples’ solidarity, assassinations; and Al-Afghani’s agnostic view of Islam as a civilization rather than a religion coincided with Trophimowsky’s own.28 What Eberhardt constructed, she began to believe was true. As Patricia Lorcin points out, citing Valentine Cunningham, “What is perceived as reality is ‘as much a part of the truth […] as what ‘actually’ happens.’ ”29 It is thought that it was only during her adulthood that Eberhardt came to believe she was born a Muslim. Although Eberhardt did not know definitively who her father was, it is generally suspected that her

41

Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

father was in fact her tutor, Trophimowsky, ing on the quay of La Joliette, watching the who was her mother’s lover. Eberhardt was Saint-Augustin leaving for Oran, he had born in Switzerland significantly later than been haunted by the idea of Africa, and nine months after her mother (abandoning above all of Muslim Africa. He thought of her Russian husband who was a General in all his own atavistic links to Islam through the Tsars army) and Trophimowsky eloped his maternal side, Tartar and nomadic.30 there from Russia. Nevertheless, it was Tro- This fragment in her highly biographical phimowsky who had sparked her interest novel draws attention to a collective Islamin Islam through his own. In Eberhardt’s ic ancestry, in such a way that Eberhardt’s first novel, Tricreative claim madeur (Vagato an Islamic bond), we read lineage could of the protagobe considered nist Orschato have some now’s thoughts loose basis – in on his own mathe collective ternal ancestral Islamic anceslinks to Islam try of Trophiwhich closely mowsky’s namirrors Ebertive Armenia. hardt’s claim Moreover, as that she is MusTrophimowsky lim through her sowed in Eberpaternal side: hardt the seeds Ever since he of interest in sat daydream- Isabelle dressed as an Arab man Islam with his

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‘May Islam, instead of assimilating the lies and impure posture of the West, return to its purity of the first centuries of the Hedjira, especially in its original simplicity’ (Isabelle Eberhardt) teachings, Eberhardt, during her adolescence, was introduced to the more purist, militant version of Islam, in Wahabism, long before she set foot in North Africa.

One of her earliest correspondents was Ali Abdul Wahab, a Tunisian friend of her brother Augustin. Wahabism derived from Ali’s own family dynasty, and had for centuries challenged Islam to return to the simplicity of its Koranic roots (and still does).31 The Wahabi stress on the return to the simplicity of a mythical, unadulterated Islam, led believers to interpret the jihad against unbelievers, as war on those who had compromised its purity.32 Eberhardt expresses these concerns in her first novel Rakhil, (as yet un-translated into English it was never completed, and was published posthumously) through the protagonists, Rakhil- a Jewish prostitute, and a well-todo, Paris-educated Muslim, Mahmoud. In her journal, Eberhardt states that, ‘Rakhil, solely a plea in favour of the Koran and against the prejudices of the modern Muslim world, will interest no-one.’33 However, contrary to Eberhardt’s doubts, her plea in favour of the Koran and her antipathy to the modern Muslim world is exactly what is interesting. There was a surge of reform and revival within Islam at this time in

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

Wahabism which sought ways to resist the West, although resisting the imperialist West was not the sole reason for reform in Islam by any means. Nevertheless, Eberhardt identifies with the former motivation for reform, as a means to resist the West. In her text ‘Silhouettes d’Afrique’, she states: ‘May our Islam, instead of assimilating the lies and impure posture of the West, return to its purity of the first centuries of the Hedjira, especially in its original simplicity.’34 Whether the colonial authorities were aware of Eberhardt’s Wahabi sympathies can only be the subject of speculation.

Ultimately, Eberhardt’s trajectory can be traced from her early sympathy for the Koranically-defensive call to arms; to her support for her Muslim brethren; to the necessity of mediating herself to a French public to ensure her literary reputation. If, as I argue, Eberhardt’s letter to La Petite Gironde consists of a strategic response, to not only negate any negative political action against her, but to further her career with celebrity status; the self- fashioning of her Islamic identity is the defining part of

the legend she chooses to create. If fame, from the Greek and Latin is ‘to speak’, Eberhardt’s utilisation of the newspaper’s mass readership is the perfect means of doing so. If fame is to be ‘much talked about’ in order to achieve renown,35 Eberhardt doubly succeeds. The colonial space enabled Eberhardt’s creative and professional development and her ambiguous navigation between an Arab and French public has continued to intrigue posterity. Just as in the myth of the La Kahina, Eberhardt remains a complex symbol with potential for ideological re-construction; she is no more done with in our time than we are with hers.

Endnotes 1 “Eberhardt knew that on face value she would be completely accepted as Si Mahmoud Essadi but that on longer contact the Arab and Berber tribes were not deceived: ‘They knew perfectly well, from all sorts of European indiscretions, that Si Mahmoud was a woman. But, with beautiful Arab discretion, they argued that it was none of their business, that it would have been inappropriate to allude to it, and they carried on treating me as they had at first, as an educated and slightly superior friend.’” Eberhardt file, Archives d’ outré mer. Quoted in Kobak, A., Isabelle, The Life of Isabelle Eberhardt, (London: Penguin, 1990), p.216.

2 Behdad, A., Belated Travellers, Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution, (Cork: Cork University

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Press, 1994), p. 121.

3 Hannoum, A., Colonial Histories, Post –Colonial Memories. The Legend of the Kahina, A North African Heroine, (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). p. 189.

4 Acheraiou, A., Rethinking Postcolonialism, Colonialist Discourse in Modern Literatures and the Legacy of Classical Writers, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). p. 1.

5 ‘In 1870, assimilation became the official colonial policy of the Third Republic. It was championed by Jules Ferry, the Prime Minister of the Third Republic, and one of the founding fathers of colonial education.’

Zayzafoon, L. B.Y., The Production of the Muslim Woman. Negotiating Text, History, and Ideology, (Oxford: Lexington, 2005). p. 35.

See also Betts, R.F., Association and Assimilation in French Colonial Theory, 1890-1914, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).

6 See Hannoum, A., Colonial Histories, p. 187.

7 See Hannoum, A., Colonial Histories, p. 186.

8 Prochaska, D., Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870-1920, (Paris: Editions de la maison de sciences de l’homme, 1990). p. 213. Quoted in Zayzafoon, L.B.Y., The Production of the Muslim Woman, p. 45.

9 See Hannoum, A., Colonial Histories, p. 186 10 Lorcin, P., Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria, (London: I.B. Taurus, 1995). p. 21.

11 To paraphrase Apter, E., ‘Celebrity Gifting: Mallarme and the Poetics of Fame’, in E. Berenson and E. Giloli (eds.), Constructing Charisma, Celebrity, Fame, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, (New York/Oxford: Berghann Books, 2010). P. 89.

12 Quoted in Zayzafoon, L.B.Y., The Production of the Muslim Woman, p.38, from Kobak, A., Isabelle, (London: Chatto & Windus). p. 65.

13 Kobak, A., Isabelle, p. 63.

14 Lorcin, P., Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia, European Women’s Narratives of Algeria and Kenya

1900-Present, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). p.60.

15 Eberhardt, I., The Oblivion Seekers, trans. P. Bowles, (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1982). p.

87.

16 Eberhardt, I., The Oblivion Seekers, p. 88.

17 For the political criticisms see Kobak, A., Isabelle, pp. 239-245.

18 Kobak, A., Isabelle, p. 204.

19 Quoted in Eberhardt, I., The Oblivion Seekers, p.

84.

20 Eberhardt, I. The Oblivion Seekers, p. 85.

21 See, for example: Abdel-Jaouad, H., ‘Isabelle Eberhardt: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nomad’, in Yale French Studies, No.83, Post-Colonial Conditions: Exiles, Migrations, and Nomadisms, Vol.2 (1993), p.

97.

22 Zayzafoon, L.B.Y, The Production of the Muslim Woman, p. 32.

23 The Spanish word ‘renegado’ specifically means a convert from Christianity to Islam and was first used in English in 1583. For more in-depth coverage, see Nabil Matar’s chapter on ‘Conversion to Islam in English Writings’ in Islam in Britain, 1558-1665, (Cambridge University Press, 1999). p. 22; and An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam, Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), ed., Maria Antonia Garces, trans., Diana de Armas Wilson, (University of Notredame, Indiana, 2011) 24 Matar, N., Islam in Britain, 1558-1635, (Cambridge University Press, 1998). pp. 23-30.

25 See the chapter ‘ The Marabouts of Algiers’ in An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam, Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), pp. 174-180.

26 Matar, N., Islam in Britain, p. 11.

27 Kobak, A., Isabelle, p.28. See also Keddie, N.R., An Islamic Response to Imperialism, Political and Religious Writngs of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, (London: University of California Press, 1983) 28 Kobak, A., Isabelle, p. 28.

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Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina, and the Construction of Identity

29 Lorcin, P. Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia, p.107, quoting Valentine Cunningham in Edward Berenson and Eva Giloli, (eds.), Constructing Charisma, Celebrity, Fame and Power in Nineteenth Century Europe (New York/Oxford: Berghann Books, 2010). p. 4.

30 Abdel-Jaouad, H., ‘Isabelle Eberhardt: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nomad’, p. 98.

31 Kobak, A., introduction to: Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad, The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt, trans.

Nina de Voogd, (Chichester: Summersdale, 2002). pp.

14-15.

32 Trimingham, J.S., The Sufi Orders in Islam, (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). p. 105.

33 Eberhardt, I., The Nomad, p. 39.

34 Quoted in Abdel-Jaouad, H., ‘Isabelle Eberhardt: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nomad’, p. 97 35 See Berenson E. and Giloli E., (eds.), introduction, Constructing Charisma, p. 5.

KIRSTY BENNETT is in the final year of her MPhil at the University of Sussex and is an associate tutor within the department of English.

The title of her thesis is ‘Isabelle Eberhardt and the Textual Construction of Identity’ and she has presented on Eberhardt for the British Middle Eastern Society. Her initial academic background was in law but she returned to her first love and read for a degree in English Literature. Kirsty is also an award-winning entrepreneur and a published poet.

ARTICLE ONE ARTICLE THREE

‘We are young.

We are trendy.

Buy our product!’

The Use of Latinized Arabic in Printed edited Magazines in Egypt

by: Mariam Aboelezz

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F

rom its infancy, the Internet has been notorious for its submission to the English language.2,3 For a long time, the limited Latin characters in ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) – which was the only code that the internet supported – accommodated no other language than English.

Other Latin script orthographies had to do without their accents and diacritics, but it was non-Latin script orthographies that suffered the most. Internet users speaking such languages had no choice but to yield to the hegemony of English or to use Latin characters to transliterate or ‘transcribe’ their own languages.4 In later years, software support for the once- neglected nonLatin script orthographies started to become readily available, but by then the Latinized forms had grown on the users as well as extended beyond the reach of the Internet.

Even if software support would appease Latinization online, it meant little to mobile phone users where the compromise in message size for non-Latin script is often

thought too high a price to pay by avid texters.5 The hegemony of the English language in cyber space is still apparent despite the introduction of support for non-Latin script orthographies. Indeed, even “the term ‘extended character set’ ... suggests that the symbols used for writing English are the norm, from which other alphabets are derived by ‘extending’ the English alpha be t with diacritics and so on”.6 Today, software support is hardly an issue, and yet, English is still the highest ranking language of all Internet content by a staggering majority7, and Latinized forms of non-Latin script orthographies have anything but disappeared. Among these forms is Latinized Arabic (henceforth, LA), a written form of Arabic that uses Latin or Roman characters as an alternative orthographic form of the Arabic language which normally employs Arabic script. The use of LA in computer mediated communication (CMC) has been reported across the Arab world from countries such as Egypt8,9, Jordan10,11, Lebanon12 and the United Arab Emirates.13 Despite the pool of Arabic-content websites which

49

Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

are being accessed by Arabic-speaking users from all over the Arab world14, the Latinization conventions reported in the modest literature on LA indicate regional variation influenced by local spoken dialects.

This variation can be mainly seen in the representation of Arabic consonants which are absent in English, for which the users resort to using numerals which resemble the Arabic characters in appearance.

Table 1 is a summary of the numerals and digraphs (number + apostrophe) used to represent LA according to three authors reporting on conventions encountered in CMC samples of Gulf Arabic15, Jordanian Arabic16 and Egyptian Arabic.17 Yaghan also reports the use of the number 8 to represent the Arabic /q/ sound.18 However, it is not clear which regional variety his data is based on. This use of numerals to represent Arabic consonants is considered the hallmark of the contemporary form of LA which prevails in CMC between Arabic speakers, setting it apart from earlier forms which have specialized applications – referred to by Palfreyman and Al

Khalil as Common Latinized Arabic or CLA.19 CLA differs from LA in that it is not intended for communication between Arabic-speakers, but rather for communication of Arabic content to non- Arabic speakers. Thus, in CLA the phonetic value of Arabic consonants is approximated by assigning the closest sound in the English lexicon, such as in the ALA-LC Romanization scheme adopted by the Library of Congress20, which is used to transcribe spoken Arabic content in this paper. In LA, however, the emphasis is on retaining these Arabic sounds, and so the numbers serve as additional symbols (characters) that codify these sounds so that the words sound more ‘locally authentic’21 to the intended Arabic reader. Of course, this is in itself paradoxical, as Palfreyman and Al Khalil point out, since LA “is in orthographic terms no more ‘Arabic’ than CLA”. Moreover, since CLA predates the LA discussed here, its influence can be seen in the way some writers Latinize Arabic in CMC (e.g. the use of ‘kh’ and ‘gh’ to represent /x/ and /ɣ/ respectively in Table 1).

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Table 1. Representation of Arabic consonant sounds based on three different Arabic dialect groups: most common to least common representations from left to right

In addition to regional variation in consonant representation, there is great individual variation in how Arabic Internet users transcribe vowels which are predominantly absent from the consonantal Arabic orthography.22,23 However, the most important observation of all has perhaps been that it is mostly spoken Ara-

bic which is Latinized in CMC – a point on which there is absolute consensus in the literature. Bianchi refers to this as Latinized Arabic Vernacular (LAV).24 Another important observation has been the spread of Latinized Arabic outside of CMC. With the exception of text messages, LA was initially thought to have been restrict-

51

Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

ed to online communication, but there is growing evidence that this is no longer the case. Palfreyman and Al Khalil25 cite examples of LA found in cartoons and in offline correspondence among friends, Yaghan26 includes examples of LA in handwritten notes and wall writings (graffiti), while ElEssawi examines the use LA in handwritten texts.27 This trend does not seem to be paralleled in what has been reported of Latinized forms of other non-Latin orthographies.

A well-documented case is that of Latinized Greek or “Greeklish”.28,29,30 Like LA, Greeklish owes its popularity to the initial lack of support for non-Latin scripts online.

Greek users also resorted to the creative use of numerals to express Greek sounds which do not exist in English such as 8 or 0 for the Greek character ‘θ’ (/θ/), also clearly based on a visual resemblance.31,32 Moreover, like LA, Greeklish is still vigorously used in online communication today even though software support is no longer an issue. However, the so far similar careers of LA and Greeklish diverge here: unlike LA, Greeklish has not crossed over

to offline communication. This may have something to do with the recent growing public concerns that Greeklish may pose a threat to the Greek Language, and the role that Greek academic institutions and scholars have played in taking up this cause.33 Tseliga points out that many of the Greeklish users she has interviewed have a neutral attitude towards the variety, merely viewing it as practical.34 Thus, the situation in Greece is contrasted with that in the Arab countries where no formal authority has stepped forward to discourage the use of LA.35 This, in tandem with the growing popularity and acceptability of LA among young Arab technology users appears to have facilitated the diffusion of LA into offline mediums. However, nowhere does LA seem to be spreading faster to offline communication than in Egypt. Encounters with LA have become a daily business in the Egyptian capital. Not only is LA clearly visible in graffiti (Figure 1), but also on movie billboards (Figure 2), in branding (Figure 3), on products such as chocolate bars (Figure 4), and more importantly, in print,

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Figure 1. LA in Graffiti on street walls in Cairo (picture taken January 2009).

The message translates into “I love you, fool’ (as would be read from right to left): writing mixes Arabic in Arabic script with Arabic in Latin script with the two scripts proceeding in opposite directions. The last word is perhaps placed on a separate line to overcome this conflict in script directionality so that the writing can only be read from right to left. 7 used in the last word to denote the /ħ/ sound.

with a number of magazines now including content in LA. LA has even featured in literary works by young writers, published by Malamih, a pioneering publishing house with a mission to empower young Egyptian writers ‘without ideological, national, or linguistic restrictions’. These developments are significant not only because they indicate the diffusion of LA from online to

Figure 2. LA on a film poster: Eza3et 7ob ‘Love Radio’

offline mediums, but because they signal a transition from unregulated spaces to regulated spaces.36 From this viewpoint, the speed and manner with which LA is spreading in Egypt does not appear to be paralleled anywhere else in the Arab world.

53

Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

To understand why and how this is happening, this study explores the use of LA in printed, edited magazines in Egypt. Of course, this would hardly be possible without a preliminary understanding of the context and setting, which is what the next section seeks to deliver.

Figure 3. LA in Branding: The logo of an Egyptian band: Uss W Laz2 ‘Cut and Paste’

Figure 4. LA on commercial item: From top to bottom the LA messages on the wrappers mean: “On my mind”; “Chill out”; “I love you”

The Setting: The Sociolinguistic Situation in Egypt The language situation in Egypt is a textbook case of what Ferguson terms ‘diglossia’37. Broadly speaking, there are two varieties of Arabic in constant use in Egypt. The standard, taught (High) variety is the variety of official, religious and highly formal use. This is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is most com-

Article Three

monly found in religious sermons, political speeches and in print material. It is predominantly a written variety acquired through formal education. On the other hand, the vernacular, informal (Low) variety is the variety of casual conversation and everyday use. In the case of Egypt, this is Egyptian Arabic. It is predominantly a spoken variety acquired at home. With the exception of folk literature and works of poetry or fiction which may contain varying amounts of Egyptian Arabic38,39, the overwhelming majority of printed, edited Arabic periodicals and works of non-fiction in Egypt would be expected to be in MSA. Apart from Arabic, another language which is visibly present in Egypt is English. The way in which the use of English has grown steadily in past decades suggests that it may be fitting to revise its status from a foreign language to a second or additional language40. English has become increasingly important as “a practical vehicle for educational, economic and ... social mobility”; a development which “parallels, in many ways, the development of Egypt’s identity

as a modern nation”.41 According to Kachru, there are four main functions which English may serve in countries where it is a foreign or second language: a regulative function for official or administrative purposes; an instrumental function as a medium of instruction; an interpersonal function for social communication; and an imaginative/innovative function involving creative and literary use of language.42 Writing about the English language in Egypt in 1997, Schaub notes that English serves limited interpersonal functions between professionals and the very well-educated.43 Similarly, the regulative functions are limited to international diplomacy, while hardly any English is used for imaginative/innovative functions. Schaub suggests that the main application of English lies in its instrumental function as an obligatory subject that is introduced at preparatory level in public schools and much earlier in private schools, and as a requirement in most faculties of public universities across Egypt.

Over the last half century, English has

55

Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

overtaken other foreign languages (particularly French) as the language of choice for the educated elite.44 Schaub also notes the role that English plays in the tourist industry, and its salient presence in the media. In audio and visual media this includes imported entertainment such as music, films and TV programs. In printed media, Schaub mentions imported English newspapers, publications geared towards expatriates, and two publications explicitly intended for Egyptian readers.

Although the two magazines cited by Schaub, which were geared towards an Egyptian readership, have since disappeared from the market, the publishing industry and the market for magazines in general, and English publications in particular, has undergone a tremendous boom at the turn of the century.45,46 The number of English magazines actively targeting Egyptians significantly increased in a relatively very short amount of time.47 In recent years there was also the appearance of English literary works by young Egyptian writers, published by Malamih. This clearly ful-

fills a creative/innovative function which Schaub deemed absent a decade ago. In addition, there has been an important extension in the interpersonal functions of English in CMC.48 Both developments support Schaub’s remark that English appears to have the greatest appeal among Egyptians who are characterized as young, educated, and middle or upper class.49 The overreaching ideological and symbolic factors underlying these changes are by no means simple. However, these changes are often associated with globalization and the status of English as a global language.50 In explaining the increasing interest in English, Schaub states that “an obvious motivation ... is the promise of more money or better jobs that many Egyptians associate with the ‘commodity’ of English”.51 The word commodity here immediately brings to mind Bourdieu’s notion of the linguistic market place, where: Linguistic exchange ... is also an economic exchange which is established within a particular symbolic relation of power between producer, endowed with a certain symbolic capital,

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and a consumer (or market), and which is capable of procuring a certain material and symbolic profit.52 Bourdieu’s theory assumes that the language of the dominant groups – i.e. the official language sanctioned by the state – would be the language of greatest cultural, economic, social and symbolic power. Haeri53 critiques the suitability of this model for Egypt, where the state’s power to reproduce the symbolic capital of its chosen language is restricted to public institutions (schools, businesses and media), while private institutions thrive on a preference for foreign languages. In line with Schaub’s observations, Haeri notes that foreign languages have greater commercial and symbolic capital to Egyptians than MSA, the official language of Egypt.

The Present Study The recent developments in the use of LA in Egypt are perhaps better understood in the context of the recent developments in the Egyptian publishing industry. With this in mind, a study was outlined to inter-

view magazines which use LA in order to understand their motives and to investigate any contributions they may be making to regulating the use of LA. The following research questions were formulated: • Why does the magazine use LA? • What is the magazine’s target audience?

• What are the readers’ attitudes towards LA? • Does the magazine moderate the use of LA? The magazines interviewed had to satisfy a number of conditions: they had to be based in Egypt; they had to be printed, edited magazines; they had to have a considerable market share; and they had to be using LA regularly for the previous year. Magazines where only the occasional odd use of LA could be found were not included in the study. At the end of 2008, four magazines satisfied the study’s conditions: Convo, GMag, Live and Teen Stuff. Convo and Live have since made a silent exit from Egypt’s fickle magazine market, but G-Mag and

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

First Published Price Copies Printed Distribution

Convo July 2007 L.E. 10 7,000

Egypt & 4 other Arab countries Age of Contribu- 17-35 tors

G-Mag March 2003 L.E. 3.5 6,000-8,000

Teen Stuff April 1996 L.E. 10 10,000

Egypt

Live August 2006 Free 5,000 (soon to rise to 8,000) Egypt

21-26

20-29

13-21

Egypt

Table 2. Profile Information of the Four Magazines

Teen Stuff are still going strong, suggesting that the tough competition in this sector favored more established publications The interviews with the magazine editors were supplemented by studying the content of the magazines’ most recent issues (June to December 2008). Table 2 lists the profile details of the four magazines based on the information obtained from the interviews. The rest of the information in the interviews was divided into 5 broad themes: target audience, motives for using LA, readers’ attitudes, and measures to regulate LA use.

With the exception of G-Mag, which was issued every 45 days, all of the magazines in this study were monthly magazines. The

distribution of the magazines in Egypt is restricted to the main cities of Cairo and Alexandria and coastal regions during holiday seasons. None of the magazines had regular distribution in other Egyptian regions. Despite the varying degree of LA used in the magazines, English was the dominant base language of all four magazines. With the exception of Teen Stuff, which was established in 1996, the magazines in this study appear to have emerged in the context of the recent boom in English publishing industry.

Convo Convo was the latest arrival on the market among the magazines in this study. The idea behind the publication was to create

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a magazine that used “internet-chatting style language”, and in that sense, the magazine’s family considered themselves market innovators. As the magazine cover in Figure 5 shows, this approach did not only entail the use of LA but also word play using symbols, emoticons, abbreviations and non-standard spelling – as is common in Internet-chat.

Convo targeted youth and young adults (17 to 35 year-olds), who belonged to the A+ to B social classes. Their audience included university students, young employees and married people. According to the assistant editor, Rania Hussein, they bridged the gap between magazines for teenagers and grownups, catering for a niche that had been neglected. LA was an integral part of the magazine’s identity and its “fun and easy” language since its inception, and this original use of language in the magazine received positive feedback from the beginning. Hussein noted that this was in part owing to the launching campaign which featured celebrities and VIP clients praising the magazine’s unique style. Not sur-

Figure 6 Cover of the December 2008 issue (no. 17) of Convo magazine

prisingly, most of the letters and feedback that the magazine received contained LA. LA was not restricted to any one section of Convo, but could rather be seen scattered in bits and chunks throughout the magazine. According to Hussein, LA was ideal for when the writer wanted to say something in Arabic which is not readily translatable into English. When asked if LA could be re-

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

placed by Arabic in Arabic script (AA), Hussein said ‘no’ adamantly: “But what would be special about the magazine then?” She added that the magazine may as well become an Arabic magazine if it started using AA. This response is interesting in that it has two subtle implications. It suggests that LA is not Arabic, and it implies that the magazine identified itself primarily as English (and not Arabic).

Hussein noted that there was great variation in contributors’ use of LA, and that the spelling of LA words might be modified in the editing process. With regard to quantity, editors would only interfere if the whole article were written in LA. Some measures were also taken to standardize consonant representation. For instance, 5 is changed to 7’ (representing the sound /x/), “because it is less confusing”. Other changes were made, according to Hussein, so that the words ‘look better’, or so the words would not be mistaken for English words.

This includes changing ‘kh’ to 7’ and ‘gh’ to 3’. This justification is important as it suggests that the numerals in LA serve an aes-

thetic function, as well as act as a marker of Arabic words.

G-Mag G-Mag was the first magazine to use LA regularly in print. It is part of Core Publications, a publishing company which started out with an English magazine Campus in the 1990’s. Then came G-Mag in 2003, followed a few years later by an Arabic maga-

Figure 6. Cover of the 1 December 2008 to 15 January 2009 issue (no. 48) of G-Mag

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zine E7na which uses Egyptian Arabic in Arabic script.54 G-Mag’s price (L.E. 3.5) is proportional to its compact size. It is a pocket magazine which serves as a guide to dining and events around Egypt and provides reviews of newly released films and books. It also contains jokes and light, humorous pieces usually containing specific references to aspects of Egyptian life or culture. The corporate definition of the age of G-Mag’s target audience is 9 to 99.

However, a closer look at the magazine’s content suggests a readership in the 15 – 30 age range. As readers are expected to have at least some basic understanding of English, the magazine is generally targeted at those in the A and B social classes.

Junior editor, Eddie Zidan, described the writing style of G-Mag as that of one friend talking to another, telling them were to go and what movies to watch. He described the language of the magazine as “witty, humorous, everyday language, with no big words”. If he had to put a language label on the language they used, he said it would be something like “Franco-Arab: Primar-

ily English with a bunch of Arabic words thrown in”.55 Zidan highlighted the positive attitude towards the magazine’s style of writing among its loyal readership. He also mentioned the very positive response that the magazine had when it first started.

Most of the feedback and contributions that the magazine received from readers contained LA. According to Zidan, LA was inserted in the text “to give it a local feel”.

He explained that there were some things which simply could not be translated, particularly words referring to the local culture, which, if translated, would no longer conjure the same image in the readers’ minds. Although LA had been a distinctive part of G-Mag’s identity since its inception, Zidan concedes: I’m pretty sure that no one actually sat down and thought, well, we’re going to do this. It’s actually a matter of, we’re talking to people, so we’re just going to write exactly the way we talk ... and the way we talk, is that sometimes we do use Arabic in the middle of English.

And you see that everywhere – this whole idea of Franco-Arab – where mumkin a’ūl

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

kilmitein bil ‘arabi [I might say a couple of words in Arabic] and then suddenly switch back to English and it’s totally fine.

When asked, why he says that they switch from English to Arabic when, as Arabic speakers, it might make more sense to say the opposite, Zidan explains, “this is an English magazine in the end. It’s not an Arabic magazine.” This highlights how the magazine regarded itself primarily as an English publication. It also points to the manner in which the magazine attempted to simulate the speech of its target audience. On the question of using AA, Zidan felt that it would stand out too much, adding that the different script and script direction would be odd-looking and off- putting to the reader. As part of the editing process, the editors would go over the LA content to make sure it is readable. Sometimes, this involved adding vowels to make sure that consonants are separated by vowels where necessary. Also, 2 (denoting the /ʔ/ sound), would be omitted if it occurred in an initial position in a word, “since the letter ‘a’ does the job,” explained Zidan. In

general, only the numbers 2, 3 and 7 were used to denote Arabic consonants. Numbers such as 6 and 9 were never used, and the sounds /ɣ/ and /x/ were de noted as ‘gh’ and ‘kh’ respectively (rather than 3’ and 7’ or 5). As an advertising-based magazine, Live Live was the only magazine in this study which was distributed for free. It was also the only magazine with an online edition (although Teen Stuff did make some older archived articles available online). Live was geared towards people aged 18-32 and belonging to the A and B+ classes who are well-educated English speakers. Live’s executive manager, May El-Naggar, narrowed the audience down further to young English-speaking Egyptians with a particular interest in art and culture. These are people who have dual cultural sensitivity in that “they are bilingual as well as bicultural”. However, El-Naggar was careful not to exclude the expatriate community of English speakers living in Egypt from the magazine’s target audience. She identified

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Figure 7. Cover of the November 2008 issue (no. 28) of Live Magazine

Live as an English magazine, but one based in Cairo, which she felt was an integral part of its identity. El-Naggar described the magazine’s writing style as humorous, daring and personal, and mentioned the influence of blogging journalism on the magazine’s style. She described the language as neither formal nor informal, with lax spelling restrictions. She explained that

the magazine went through a series of experimentation phases with the language it used, and that LA was one of the things they experimented with. The initial motivation behind using LA was to get closer to the way that a segment of the magazine’s target audience speaks. However, this implied alienating another segment of the audience, which, however small, “is still readership”. This gradually changed the magazine’s approach to LA which featured much less in the magazine’s later issues.

El-Naggar noted that the only readers who complained they could not understand LA content were in their forties or fifties, well above the target age of the magazine.

Having said that, she pointed out that the overwhelming majority of the feedback they receive from readers included LA. According to El-Naggar, the manner in which contributors used LA was characterized by randomness and inconsistency: sometimes they would use numbers, and sometimes they would use letters to denote the same sounds. “The writers are confused,” El-Naggar remarked, “which con-

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

fuses me as an editor”. El-Naggar explained that she had started editing such contributions to moderate the use of LA. Her interventions would depend on the content: first, she would attempt to remove the LA and replace it with an English translation, if she felt that the content would suffer, she would then remove all the numbers and replace them with English characters (converting LA to CLA) followed by an English translation in brackets, so that the text became accessible to non-speakers of Arabic. However, El-Naggar explained that sometimes she had no choice but to keep the numbers in LA. Examples included quoting segments from chat conversations, or reviewing a film whose title appeared in LA on billboards. The content was always the determining factor: If I cannot present an English alternative to an Arabic word, then I write it in Arabic using Latin characters but without the numerals which would result in narrowing down my readership; and then it’s up to the reader to research the word ... I will keep it [LA] only when I feel that it will af-

fect the meaning if I take it out. So, it is just to serve the content, and not the other way round; the content won’t promote this kind oflanguage. Live had no clear guidelines for editing LA, but the sounds /ɣ/ and /x/ were de noted as ‘gh’ and ‘kh’ respectively, while 3 and 7 were still occasionally used for /ʕ/ and /ħ/ respectively.

Her plan for the future was to develop a style book to regulate the magazine’s use of LA. She mentioned that she referred to the Associated Press style book with regard to the English content, and that she would like to have a similar point of reference for LA. In general, she planned to use Arabic only when absolutely necessary in the future, but she added: That is not to say I will not use Latinized Arabic in the form of English letters. I would. Definitely. We are an English magazine released in Cairo. This is how we speak. We insert some Arabic words in the middle of our speech, even when we’re speaking English. ElNaggar did not rule out the possibility of using AA instead of LA either, saying that it might provide an interesting visual experi-

Article Three

ence that she is not opposed to as an editor so long as it is there to serve the content.

However, she conceded that the different script would bring up design and typesetting issues, making proof-reading more difficult and time-consuming. When asked if this would not put off readers who do not speak Arabic, she responded, “Well, I’m sure that the 3 and the 5 would put them off just as much”.

Teen Stuff Teen Stuff was the oldest of the magazines in this study, which may explain the fact that it was also the magazine with the largest circulation and widest fan base. This is emphasized on the magazine’s cover (see Figure 8) with the sentence “Egypt’s bestselling English magazine” which appears below the title. The use of the word ‘English’ on the magazine cover already implies a claimed identity. Teen Stuff is based on the slogan “from teens to teens”, alluding to the fact that the contributors are teenagers who write for teenagers like themselves. It also has a sister magazine, Kel-

Figure 8. Cover of the December 2008 issue (no. 130) of Teen Stuff Magazine

metna, also directed to Egyptian teenagers, but written in Standard Arabic and some Egyptian Arabic in Arabic script. Teen Stuff ’s content is a combination of contributions sent by readers and material prepared by in-house teenage ‘staff’. Most of these inhouse writers fell between the 16-19 agerange despite the magazine’s aim to attract a wider age range of 13-21. This is the same as the age-range of the magazine’s target audience who belong to the A and B social

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

classes; mainly English-educated school and university students.

Teen Stuff ’s chairperson, Manal El-Mahdy, described the magazine’s language as “light English”; “English that is not sophisticated at all”. Teen Stuff did not use LA at all when it first appeared on the market.

In fact, it was not until very recently that the magazine started using LA. El-Mahdy is not sure when exactly this happened, but says that the trend grew in the last two years. She explained that it started rather spontaneously with LA appearing in feedback mail and in contributions by readers. “I am not in favor of it, but I can’t help it,” she said, “personally, I would like to stick with English.”

In readers’ feedback, which abounded in LA, readers would sometimes use LA to write expressions that they did not know how to translate into English. On the other hand, writers would typically use LA in articles where there was a funny quote in Egyptian Arabic that would only “click” with the mainly Egyptian readership if

it remained in Arabic, whereas “English would kill the joke”, according to content supervisor Omneya Ragaie.

LA was mainly used for its comic effect and because it made it easier for the Egyptian reader to relate to some content. This explains why most of the articles containing LA were found in the “Fankesh” section of the magazine (a section for jokes and comic pieces). Commenting on the possibility of replacing LA with AA, Ragaie said that it would look odd because of the different script – “it would not suit the magazine because it is an English magazine.” She added that AA would only be used in “very rare and very obvious” occurrences such as in a book review or a coverage of an event where the picture of the book or the logo of the event is in Arabic script, and in these cases the AA becomes an image rather than text. Measures taken by the magazine content supervisors Omneya Ragaie and Mai Hany to moderate LA use included limiting LA content. This entailed excluding articles with too much LA since, as Hany points out, “it [Teen Stuff] is still main-

Article Three

What would happen The magazine will lose popularity The magazine will lose appeal among its current audience It will be more difficult to convey cultural content The magazine will become less unique Readers will object

Convo

G-Mag

Live

Teen Stuff

no

no

no

no

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

no

no

no

not sure

no

not sure

Table 3. Magazines’ Responses to the Final Question in the Interview

ly an English magazine.” While the content supervisors were less explicit about the type of amendments that they might make to the spelling of LA words, they said that they would generally modify the spelling slightly (e.g. by adding vowels) if this made the word easier to read, especially if a misreading could alter the meaning of the word. Their criterion was that, if they find a word too difficult to read, then the readers probably would too. They also mentioned that LA words would sometimes be flagged by inserting them between in-

verted commas.

Discussion The importance of LA to the magazines interviewed in this study varied according to the identity that the magazine claimed for itself. This is illustrated in Table 3 which summarizes the responses of the four magazines to the final question in the interview: If the magazine were to stop using LA, which of the following – if any – would be likely to happen?

As Table 3 indicates, for Convo and G-Mag,

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

LA was an indispensable part of the magazine identity despite the fact that they still classed themselves as mainly English. For each of these two magazines, LA was part of the magazine’s appeal, and it contributed to its uniqueness. For Live and Teen Stuff on the other hand, the use of LA was not indispensable. This was clearly associated with these two magazines’ consciousness of a need to conform to their self-description as English publications. May El-Naggar of Live magazine says, “If I am standing out because I use 3 and 7 then I have a big problem – as a magazine; as a publication. If that’s all that’s going on for me, then we have a serious issue to address.”

This serious issue would be the clash between the magazine’s claimed identity and attaching excessive importance to LA. The responses in Table 3 also indicate that the main motive for using LA was the fact that it facilitated the expression of references to the local culture. On the other hand, magazines were less sure about the importance of LA to their readers. For Teen Stuff, it was readers’ feedback and contributions

which first introduced LA to the magazine, and so, the editors felt that it is possible that some readers might object if the magazine were to stop using LA. Eddie Zidan of G-Mag was not sure that the readers were as conscious of the presence of LA as we might assume, and thought that they might not immediately notice if it disappeared. He offered an example to make his point: If they stop putting sesame seeds on the bread buns in fast food, you will probably eat it the first couple of times without noticing. But then the fourth time you’ll wonder: where did the sesame seeds go?

The four magazines in this study started using LA within the last decade. They were also all staffed by young writers and geared towards young readers. These similarities all suggest a trend in the growing popularity and acceptability of LA. However, the discrepancies in the measures adopted by the four magazines in this study to regulate LA suggest that there is a long way yet towards an agreed ‘standard’ for LA. For instance, while Live and G-Mag favored the CLA variants ‘gh’ and ‘kh’ for the sounds

Article Three

/ɣ/ and /x/ respectively, Convo uses 3’and

7 ’for the same sounds . Indeed, the examples from billboards and graffiti are no more consistent. An interesting observation is that, with the exception of Live, the magazine editors did not seem to be conscious of the steps they are taking to regulate LA use. When asked about how they regulated LA use, their responses always pertained to quantity rather than quality. It was only when they were asked how they represented specific LA vari-

ants that they admitted to a set of ad hoc guidelines. It was clear that the four magazines were still negotiating their way into a set of rules for editing LA specifically, which may explain conflicts between the editing guidelines that some of the editors cited in the interviews and actual instances of LA use which were found in their respective magazines. Despite the differences in the specific age ranges of the target audiences of the four magazines, there is still a significant overlap; that is, young, English-educated Egyptians of the more advantaged social classes. This is consistent with Schaub’s56 description of the group to whom English is of the most interest, and with Haeri’s57 group to whom foreign languages have the greatest symbolic and commercial value. This group also happens to be the fastest growing group of Internet users in the Arab world.58 Palfreyman and Al Khalil59 indicate that it is this younger generation among whom the use of LA is most popular. It is perhaps no surprise then that May El-Naggar remarks that LA is used by the advertising industry

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

to send the message: We are young. We are trendy. The movie is cool. The ad is cool.

Buy our product. Watch our movie... It’s a selling mechanism. You are trying to appeal to a younger audience, and this is part of your strategy: using their language.

This statement suggests that it is not just English which has symbolic and commercial value in Egypt, but also LA. Indeed, combining the two appears to maximize their value. This also explains the reluctance of some of the interviewees to attribute the same value to AA: because LA uses the Latin script like English, it becomes more like English than Arabic, making it easy to forget that LA is still Arabic.

Conclusion LA continues to grow in popularity and acceptability in Egypt, and its spread to print magazines is one manifestation of this.

The popularity of LA among the younger generation appears to be an important motive behind its growing use, particularly among businesses which capitalize on LA’s appeal to the youth market. Like

English, LA has become a commodity that has symbolic and commercial power, and their value appears to be maximized when combined. The magazines in this study use LA to make it easier to refer to objects or concepts in the local culture, but more importantly, they use it in order to speak the language that their audience speaks. Even where the magazine also caters to a nonArabic speaking audience, it is difficult to ignore the audience of young Egyptians to whom LA has clear appeal. Here, striking a balance becomes a tricky issue. Despite the magazines’ efforts to regulate the use of LA, the steps they have taken appear to be proceeding in different directions, suggesting that these attempts will remain, at least for the time being, isolated efforts which reflect the magazines’ respective needs with no far-reaching implications.

Endnotes: 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 18th Sociolinguistics Symposium: Negotiating Transnational Spaces and Multilingual Encounters, September 1-4, 2010, Southampton, UK

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2 Crystal, D., Language and the Internet, 2nd ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

3 Danet, B. and Herring, S. C., ‘Introduction: Welcome to the multilingual Internet’, in B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). pp. 3-39.

4 Cf. Beesley, K. R., Romanization, transcription and transliteration, http://open.xerox.com/Services/arabic- morphology/Pages/romanization, (1998). Accessed 01/08/2010.

5 Crystal, D., Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

6 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 9, No. 1, (November 2003). Reprinted in B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online.

7 B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online.

8 Aboelezz, M., ‘Latinised Arabic and connections to bilingual ability’, in S. Disney, B. Forchtner, W. Ibrahim, and N. Millar (eds.), Papers from the Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching (LAEL PG), Vol. 3, (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2009).

9 Warschauer, M., El Said, G. R., and Zohry, A., ‘Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 7, No. 4, (July 2002). Reprinted in B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online.

10 Al Share’, B., A sociolinguistic analysis of Jordanian netspeak (JNS), Unpublished MA dissertation, (Irbed: Jordan University of Science and Technology, 2005).

11 Yaghan, M., ‘“Arabizi’’: A contemporary style of Ar-

abic slang’, Design Issues, Vol. 24, No. 2, (Spring 2008). pp. 39-52.

12 Abdallah, S., ‘Online chatting in Beirut: sites of occasioned identity-construction’, Ethnographic Studies, No. 10, (May 2008). pp. 3-22.

13 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’.

14 Hofheinz, A., ‘Arab Internet use: popular trends and public impact’, in S. Naomi (ed.), Arab media and political renewal: Community, legitimacy and public life, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007). pp. 56-78.

15 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’.

16 Al Share’, B., A sociolinguistic analysis of Jordanian netspeak (JNS).

17 Aboelezz, M., ‘Latinised Arabic and connections to bilingual ability’.

18 Yaghan, M., ‘“Arabizi’’: A contemporary style of Arabic slang’.

19 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’.

20 R. K. Barry (ed.), ALA-LC romanization tables: Transliteration schemes for non-Roman scripts approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, (Washington: Library of Congress, 1997).

21 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’.

22 Al Share’, B., A sociolinguistic analysis of Jordanian netspeak (JNS).

23 Warschauer, M., El Said, G. R., and Zohry, A., ‘Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt’.

24 Bianchi, R. ‘Revolution or fad? Latinised Arabic vernacular’, in P. Davidson, M. Al Hamly, J. Aydelott, C. Coombe, and S. Troudi (eds.), Proceedings of the

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Examining the Use of Latinised Arabic in Printed Edited Magazines in Egypt

11th TESOL Arabia Conference: Teaching, learning, leading, Vol. 10. (Dubai: TESOL Arabia, 2006). pp.

329-344.

25 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instant messaging’.

26 Yaghan, M., ‘“Arabizi’’: A contemporary style of Arabic slang’.

27 El-Essawi, R. ‘Arabic in Latin Script in Egypt: Who Uses It and Why?’, in A. Al-Issa & L. S. Dahan (eds.), Global English and Arabic: issues of language, culture, and identity. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011). pp.

253-284.

28 Androutsopoulos, J., ‘Greeklish: Transliteration practice and discourse in a setting of computer-mediated digraphia’, in A. Georgakopoulou, and M. Silk (eds.), Standard languages and language standards: Greek, past and present, (Ashgate: CHS Publications, 2009). pp. 221-249.

29 Koutsogiannis, D. and Mitsikopoulou, B, ‘Greeklish and Greekness: Trends and discourses of “Glocalness”’, in B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online. pp. 142-160.

30 Tseliga, T., ‘“It’s all Greeklish to me!”: Linguistic and sociocultural perspectives on Roman-alphabeted Greek in asynchronous computer-mediated communication’, in B. Danet and S. C. Herring (eds.), The multilingual Internet: Language, culture and communication online. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). pp. 116-141.

31 Androutsopoulos, J., ‘Greeklish: Transliteration practice and discourse in a setting of computer-mediated digraphia’.

32 Tseliga, T., ‘“It’s all Greeklish to me!”: Linguistic and sociocultural perspectives on Roman-alphabeted Greek in asynchronous computer-mediated communication’.

33 Tseliga, T., ‘“It’s all Greeklish to me!”: Linguistic and sociocultural perspectives on Roman-alphabeted

Greek in asynchronous computer-mediated communication’.

34 Tseliga, T., ‘“It’s all Greeklish to me!”: Linguistic and sociocultural perspectives on Roman-alphabeted Greek in asynchronous computer-mediated communication’.

35 Warschauer, M., El Said, G. R., and Zohry, A., ‘Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt’.

36 Sebba, M., Regulated spaces: Language alternation in writing, paper presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Bilingualism, (Vigo, October 23-26, 2002).

37 Ferguson, C, ‘Diglossia’, Word, Vol. 15, (1959). pp.

325-340.

38 Armbrust, W., Mass culture and modernism in Egypt, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).

39 Cachia, P., ‘The use of colloquial in modern Arabic literature’, Journal of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 87, No. 1, (1967). pp. 12-22.

40 Schaub, M., ‘English in the Arab Republic of Egypt’, World Englishes, Vol. 19, No. 2, (July 2000). pp. 225-38.

41 Imhoof, M., ‘The English language in Egypt’, English around the World, Vol. 17, (1977). p 3.

42 Kachru, B., ‘The pragmatics of non-native varieties of English’, in L. Smith (ed.), English for Cross-Cultural Communication, (Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1981). pp. 15-39.

43 Schaub, M., ‘English in the Arab Republic of Egypt’.

44 Imhoof, M., ‘The English language in Egypt’.

45 Atia, T., ‘Instant publishing’, Al-Ahram Weekly, Vol. 437, 8-14 July 1999.

46 Khalil, A., ‘Investment in publishing booms’, Business Monthly, (February 2000).

47 Khalil, A., ‘Investment in publishing booms’.

48 Warschauer, M., El Said, G. R., and Zohry, A., ‘Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt’.

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49 Schaub, M., ‘English in the Arab Republic of Egypt’. p 235.

50 Warschauer, M., El Said, G. R., and Zohry, A., ‘Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt’.

51 Schaub, M., ‘English in the Arab Republic of Egypt’. p. 228.

52 Bourdieu, P., Language and symbolic power, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). p. 66.

53 Haeri, N., ‘The reproduction of symbolic capital’, Current Anthropology, Vol. 38, No. 5, (1997). pp.

795-816.

54 Borg, G. ‘How to be Kool in Arabic Writing: Linguistic observations from the side line’. In E. Ditters & H. Motzki (eds.), Approaches to Arabic Linguistics (Leiden: Brill, 2007). pp. 527-542.

55 Cf. Aboelezz, M., ‘Latinised Arabic and connections to bilingual ability’.

56 Schaub, M., ‘English in the Arab Republic of Egypt’.

57 Haeri, N., ‘The reproduction of symbolic capital’.

58 Hofheinz, A., ‘Arab Internet use: popular trends and public impact’.

59 Palfreyman, D. and Al Khalil, M., ‘A funky language for teenzz to use: Representing Gulf Arabic in instantmessaging’.

All pictures: ©Mariam Aboelezz

Mariam is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the department of Linguis-

MARIAM ABOELLEZZ is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University in the UK where she completed an MA in Language Studies in 2009. Her PhD research examines changes in language roles and powers in revolutionary Egypt and her research interests include diglossia, computer mediated communication, linguistic landscapes, writing systems, and reading research.

She has recently been studying the language of protest messages during the Egyptian revolution and has given a number of presentations on this topic

Call for Papers United Academics Journal of Social Sciences

ECONOMICS & THE ENLIGHTENMENT The United Academics Journal of Social Sciences (UAJSS) invites research papers from the various disciplines of the social sicences and humanities that reflect on aspects of Economics and the Enlightenment.

Deadline: 20 January 2013 See our website: www.united-academics.org/journal

for submission guidelines Email: elke.weesjes@united-academics.org

ARTICLE ONE BIOGRAPHY

Sister Betty: The Life of Betty Shabazz By: Ruth Charnock

Biography

R

ussell J. Rickford’s 2003 biography Betty Shabazz: Surviving Malcolm X opens with the story of Hajar the Egyptian, searching for water to give her thirsty son:Hajar prays for deliverance, staggering over the parched earth. Surely God will not abandon her. She presses on. The child is near death. She sprints between the hills of Safa and Marwah.

She flings her legs before her. The sand is scorching. She runs on the bulbs of her feet.

Her lungs are fingers of flame. She sucks air from her belly. The child is still. Hajar collapses, weeping for her half-dead boy.

Miraculously, where her feet have tattooed the land, a spring gushes. The water of Zamzam is cool, sweet redemption in the wilderness.1

Hajar has been abandoned with a child, cast out by Sarah for having a child with Abraham. This is a story of estrangement, of bereavement and loss, but is also about endurance: where Hajar’s feet tattoo the land, the water comes. At the moment she gives up hope, hope delivers. As a story, Rickford argues, it dramatizes Shabazz’s

transformation from ‘young and destitute widow’ of Malcolm X to: educator, heroine, lecturer, “queen mother”, custodian of Malcolm’s legacy, informal ambassador, radio personality, symbol of grace and survival, healer, grandmother, counsellor, fund-raiser, socialite, corporate board member, mediator, and internationally embraced traveler.2 Betty Dean Saunders, Betty X, Dr. Betty Shabazz: the woman who, for most, will be known only through her marriage to one of the most incendiary figures of the twentieth century, also made a life beyond him – a life that was no less troubled but which also featured triumphs, accolades and, perhaps, its own ‘sweet redemptions.’

The act of surviving that Rickford suggests in his title is two-fold: Shabazz succeeded her husband in life but also weathered, no less significantly, his legacy. Having spent her marriage performing the off-stage duties of a devoted Muslim wife, following Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, Shabazz emerged as an eloquent, forceful and erudite spokesperson on issues of health,

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Sister Betty: The Life of Betty Shabazz

education and race.

Born in 1934 as Betty Dean Sanders, Shabazz’s birthplace is unclear. Whilst Shabazz always insisted that she was born in Detroit, Michigan, school and medical certificates had her born in Pinehurst, Georgia. Certainly, this is where she spent

the earliest years of her life until she moved to Detroit. Shabazz’s parents, Ollie Mae Saunders and Shelman Sandlin were an unmarried young couple. Her father left before she was born and her mother was suspected of neglect – leading to Betty’s eventual fostering by Lorenzo and Helen Malloy when she was 9.

Shabazz considered the Malloys her parents and saw her real mother infrequently after they had fostered her.

Helen Malloy was a prominent member of the Housewives League of Detroit, an organization ‘dedicated to urging black homemakers to buy within their race.’3 That said, narrating her formative years in an article for Ebony Magazine in 1995, Shabazz gives a sense of a childhood environment where conversations about race went unexpressed: The history of America makes it impossible for African-American children, however “sheltered”, to escape the psychic legacy of discrimination and racism, even when they escape the physical aspects of racism. This psychic legacy was ever-present and although it was

Biography

not openly discussed, it was manifested historically in the geographical area of my Detroit childhood. The impact, however, was not as destructive or penetrating due to my support network (parents, church, and a host of other built-in structures).

Race relations were not discussed and it was hoped that by denying the existence of race problems, the problems would go away. Anyone who openly discussed race relations was quickly viewed as a “troublemaker.”4

Shabazz credited Malcolm X as giving form and voice to her racial consciousness.

Whilst her foster mother was especially instrumental in fostering economic and social improvement in Detroit’s black communities during the 1940s and 50s, as Shabazz describes, discussions about racism or race relations were left at the front door. That said, it is impossible to see how Shabazz could have avoided what Rickford describes as the ‘crackling racial climate’ of Detroit in the 1940s and 50s: the riots of 1942 when black families attempted to move into the Sojourner

Truth housing project, the discrimination practiced by local businesses, the police killings following further riots in 1943.

Whilst the Malloys did not foster in Betty Dean Saunders the kind of racial consciousness she would later develop as “Betty X”, they did encourage ‘talent, grace, book smarts, and Christian ethics.’5 She went to Detroit’s Northern High School where she was a diligent student.

Describing her teenage years, Betty would later comment on their uniformity, telling Essence magazine in 1992: ‘Pick a week out of my life. If you understood that week, you understood my life.’6

In 1952, Shabazz moved to Tuskegee, Alabama to commence training as a teacher. Tuskegee Institute was a predominantly black college yet during Shabazz’s infrequent trips into town she was frequently confronted with much more stringent segregation than had been practiced in Detroit: Some area whites complained about those “uppity niggers” at the Institute, while the students privately dismissed the locals as

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“rednecks.” Downtown clerks would tend to every white customer in the store before they served Betty and her classmates – if they served them at all. But she would not confront this and other Southern injuries until she met Malcolm, for the Malloys still refused to discuss racism, insisting that “if you’re quiet if will go away.”7

By 1953, her studies slipping, Shabazz switched to nursing and, on the advice of her supervisor, moved north to Brooklyn to continue her studies there. Taken to a dinner one night by a work-mate, she would encounter, for the first time, the Nation of Islam and one of its most outspoken ministers.

Whilst Betty Dean Saunders was in high school, socialising with friends both white and black, thinking only of her studies, friends and parties, Malcolm Little had gone through at least three incarnations: as a hustler, an inmate and a convert. Born 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska as Malcolm Little, X’s early life (unlike Shabazz’s childhood) was marked and marred by acts of racial hatred. Aged 4, X

witnessed his family home burned down – most likely by the Black Legion, a white supremacist group who objected to the presence of the educated and outspoken Littles in their town. Two years later, one night in 1931 Malcolm’s father Earl Little, a preacher and Garveyite, ‘slammed on out’ of the family home following an argument with Malcolm’s mother, Louise. In X’s account of this night, he describes how his mother ‘had this vision […] of my father’s end’ and ran out of the house, screaming after her husband who ‘waved at her. But he kept on going.’8

Earl Little was killed that night – his skull crushed in and his body laid out across the tracks where a streetcar cut it ‘almost in half’, according to X.9 Whilst his death was officially reported as a suicide (a physical impossibility when one considers that his skull was hit from behind), documentaries such as PBS’s Malcolm X: Make it Plain (2005), Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) and X’s Autobiography (1965) all present the death as murder at the hands of the Black Legion. Life insurers refused to pay out to

Biography

Louise Little because of the official verdict of suicide and the family began to slide into poverty. Malcolm Little began stealing food from local businesses. Meanwhile, his mother started a relationship with a man who then jilted her – an event which X describes as ‘the beginning of the end of reality for my mother’10 who was committed to the Kalamazoo State Hospital in 1938 until her children managed to engineer

her release 24 years later. ‘I truly believe that if ever a state social agency destroyed a family, it destroyed ours’, X writes in his autobiography, ‘the Welfare, the courts, and their doctor, gave us the one-two-three punch.’11

Without a guardian, the Little siblings were farmed out separately to foster homes.

Malcolm Little excelled as a student but was wayward and in reform school by the

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time he was 13, abandoning his education shortly after his junior high school teacher told him that his desire to become a lawyer was ‘no realistic goal for a nigger.’12 He moved to Boston to live with his halfsister, Ella and befriended Shorty – a small-town hustler and pool-shark. Shorty introduced Malcolm to reefer, lindy-hop, liquor, cocaine, craps and white women. In pictures from this period, X is always in a zoot suit – ‘posed the way “hipsters” wearing their zoots would “cool it.”’13 Acquiring the moniker ‘Detroit Red’ because of his brown-reddish hair, Little spent the rest of his teens working the railroad, bussing, and dancing, moving to Harlem for a spell in 1943. He hustled and dodged the draft by telling an army psychiatrist ‘I want to get sent down South. Organize them nigger soldiers, you dig? Steal us some guns, and kill up crackers!’14

Taken under the wing of a West Indian racketeer called Archie, Little became a skilful gambler- perhaps too skilful, as he also tried to cheat Archie on a bet. Archie’s henchmen ran Little and Shorty out of

Harlem and they returned to Boston, where Little set up a home of sorts with his white girlfriend Sophia. With Shorty and Sophia’s younger sister, the pair worked over the rich, white homes of Boston. The gang were eventually caught out and Malcolm was arrested by the rather wonderfully named Detective Slack in January, 1946.

Shorty and Little were both sentenced to 8-10 years, the women ‘got low bail [and] one to five years’ as X recalls. ‘They were still white – burglars or not.’15 Interred for seven years, Malcolm Little spent the first several years pacing for hours ‘like a caged leopard’, his favourite targets ‘the Bible and God.’16 It was only when he met fellow convict Bimbi who urged him to use the brains he had been given, that Little stopped cursing and started reading. ‘I didn’t know a verb from a house’, X writes in his Autobiography.

Yet after a year he was able to write ‘a decent and legible letter’ and had ‘quietly started another correspondence course – in Latin.’17

When he was transferred to Concord

Biography

Prison, Malcolm’s brothers Philbert and Reginald began to write to him about the Nation of Islam. X remembered his initial bewilderment when Reginald visited him in prison with the express purpose of educating him further: To say I was confused is an understatement. I don’t have to remind you of the background against which I sat hearing my brother […]talk like this. I just listened, knowing he was taking his time in putting me onto something. And if somebody is trying to put you onto something, you need to listen.18 Reginald told Malcolm about how the white man was the devil, that Allah and Elijah were black and that black men had been systematically brainwashed into believing otherwise: You don’t even know who you are,’ Reginald had said. […] You don’t even know your true family name, you wouldn’t recognize your true language if you heard it. You have been cut off by the devil white man from all true knowledge of your own kind. You have been a victim of the evil of the devil white man ever since

he murdered and raped and stole you from your native land in the seeds of your forefathers…’19

Incrementally, Little’s thoughts turned towards the Nation of Islam. Eventually, he wrote to Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation and proclaimed ‘Messenger of Allah.’ Then he began to write to him every day. Feeling limited in his expression, Little started to work through the dictionary, copying out every entry by hand, committing words, etymologies, and definitions to memory. Intoxicated by the new vistas of knowledge unfurling in front of him, he joined the prison’s debating society and began to speak out.

Released in 1952, (three years before he was to meet Betty for the first time) X immediately joined Detroit’s Temple Number One. By 1953, he was named assistant minister, then went on to set up Temple Number 11 in Boston and to build up Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia. X’s speeches from this period are incendiary – shot through with the fervour of a man who has just discovered the strength of his own

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Mosque No. 7 was the mosque in Harlem where Malcolm X preached until he left the Nation of Islam in 1964

conviction: ‘‘We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters – Plymouth Rock landed on us!” […] This white man always has controlled us black people by keeping us running to him begging, “Please,

lawdy, please, Mr White Man, boss, would you push me off another crumb down from your table that’s sagging with riches…”’20

X’s ascent in the Nation of Islam was rapid, in no doubt owing to his oratorical

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verve. By June, 1954, Elijah Muhammad had appointed him to lead Temple Number Seven in Harlem – the place where he would most make his mark and the place where he would meet Sister Betty.

The first time Betty Dean Saunders saw Malcolm X speak in 1956, she was more struck by his underfed appearance than by his oratorical abilities: “My God, this man is totally malnourished! […] He needs some liver, some spinach, some beets, and broccoli. You know what I’m saying? […] I wanted to hold something in front of him so no one could see what I saw.”21 Shabazz’s account portrays her instinctively maternal inclination towards Malcolm X, and also humanises the austere, ascetic X. Malcolm X’s corresponding memory displays none of the same warmth – he ‘just noticed [Betty], not with the slightest interest, you understand […] You know she never would have dreamed I was even thinking about her.’22 Despite his insouciant posturing, one gets the sense of an early inclination towards this ‘tall, brown-skinned’ sister with the ‘brown

eyes.’23

As she would later recall, when Betty was finally introduced to Malcolm, her response ‘was somewhat akin to respect or maybe even fear.’24 She was not instantly wooed by the Nation or by Malcolm, although when she attended a Nation dinner, a conversation she had with the minister about her experiences of racism living in the South got her thinking about her own political agency: ‘”Hey! […] I am in this picture after all. I’m not an appendage.

I am not […] a part of the begging class, the welfare class, not that I was reared to think like that.”’25 Russell J. Rickford suggests that Betty’s foster parents, evershy of discussing race or racism, had left Betty with the impression that the racism she had encountered in Tuskegee was her own fault.26 Betty also felt it wise not to tell her parents that she was fraternising with Black Muslims.

Whilst other women vied (albeit demurely) for Malcolm’s attentions, Betty ‘”was not about to be in line, ever.”’27 Meanwhile, Malcolm would ‘drop in’ on

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Betty’s health and nutritional education classes ‘just as on other nights I might drop in on the different brothers’ classes.’28 Whilst Spike Lee’s film shows the two going on dates, this would not, in fact, have been the case – the Nation of Islam stresses that unmarried men and women should not be alone with each other, for fear of carnal temptation. One wonders also how Shabazz responded in lectures when X would pronounce that women ‘were only tricky, deceitful, untrustworthy flesh’ who ‘talked too much.’29 Whilst these were beliefs that came from Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X no doubt upheld them in the early stages of his ministry, although as Rickford identifies ‘his attitude toward women and their place in the movement would evolve […] dramatically’ into a much more celebratory attitude towards black women.

X’s non-interested interest in Betty continued apace, documented in the Autobiography where he describes feeling snubbed when Betty did not confide in him about the difficult relationship she had

been having with her parents, now that they had found out about her involvement with the Nation. In mid-1956, Sanders converted to Islam – a conversion which reported ‘inspired great speculation among her friends’30 who wondered what Sanders’ motivation was. The religion? Or the man?

For Sanders, now “Betty X”, the two were inseparable: The turning point in my life and racial consciousness was meeting Malcolm. In fact, I can look at my life as pre-Malcolm and post-Malcolm (although he lives forever in my heart). […] I was pursued persistently – and correctly –

by Malcolm, who is responsible for the development of my racial consciousness and for my subsequent involvement in the movement for social, political and religious change over these past 30 years.31

Whilst Betty X’s involvement in these movements after Malcolm’s death testifies to her own considerable agency, to some extent there is no way to think Betty X or Betty Shabazz, without thinking of Malcolm X. Certainly, there was never any suggestion on Shabazz’s part that this was

Biography

an association she wanted to break.

Malcolm X proposed to his future wife in characteristically brusque fashion: ‘Getting gas at a filling station, I just went to their pay phone on a wall; I telephoned Sister Betty X […] I just said it to her direct: “Look, do you want to get married?”’32 According to the Nation’s teaching, a ‘proper Muslim bride was half a man’s age plus seven’33 and should be relatively as tall as her husband (short men belonged with short women and vice-versa). Betty fulfilled both of these qualities and was modest, beautiful and educated to boot.

They were married on January 14, 1958.

In an article for Ebony Magazine in 1969, Shabazz describes her marriage to Malcolm X as ‘hectic, beautiful and unforgettable – the greatest thing in my life.’34 By Malcolm X’s admission, he was not an easy man to be married to: I would even say I don’t imagine many other women might put up with the way I am. Awakening this brainwashed black man and telling this arrogant, devilish white man the truth about himself, Betty understands, is a

full-time job. […] I’m rarely at home more than half of any week; I have been away as much as five months. I never get much chance to take her anywhere, and I know she likes to be with her husband.35 According to Rickford, throughout the marriage, Betty developed ‘a powerful sense of duty as the minister’s wife’36, learning how to cook gourmet meals for the husband whose malnourishment had so struck her on their first meeting. As Malcolm X’s account of their marriage implies, there were large tracks of time when husband and wife were apart and X would very rarely take Betty with him on his missions around America. Yet between 1958 and 1965, the couple had six daughters (one set of twins, whom Betty was carrying when Malcolm X was assassinated), and their oldest, Atallah would later remember how her parents ‘were silly and giggly and whimpery. They’d go off on long walks alone, and when he was traveling, he’d leave her treasure maps with love letters at the end. I know now how extraordinary their love affair was.’37 Shabazz would later

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say that the notion of remarrying after Malcolm’s death was ‘unfeasible.’38 Towards the end of the 1950s, Malcolm’s star continued to rise – pushed on by his protest regarding the police beating of Nation of Islam member Johnson Hinton. Spike Lee captures X’s power during this period beautifully, when he has Denzel Washington (who plays X in the film) command the gathering angry crowds outside the police station where Hinton was being held with just a finger.

Commenting on the scene afterwards, one police officer remarked ‘No one man should have that much power.’39

In 1959, the Nation of Islam crashed into living rooms of New York with the broadcast of The Hate That Hate Produced, part-documentary, part-exposé of the growing black supremacist movement.

As Manning Marable comments: It was probably fortunate that Malcolm was out of the country when the programs appeared, because they sparked a firestorm. Civil rights leaders, sensing a public disaster, could not move quickly

enough to distance themselves [from the Nation]. Arnold Foster, head of the AntiDefamation League’s civil rights division charged that [director, Mike] Wallace had exaggerated the size of the NOI and given it an “importance that was not warranted.”40 As Malcolm X describes it, the documentary was ‘edited tightly into a kaleidoscope of “shocker” images’: Mr Muhammad, me, and others speaking… strong-looking, set-faced black men, our Fruit of Islam…white-scarved, white gowned Muslim sisters of all ages. […] As the producers intended, I think people sat just about limp when the program went off.41

The documentary thrust the Nation, uncomfortably, into the public eye – and the eye, for the most part, looked back at the Nation with fear and suspicion. Malcolm was especially singled out in the press – becoming a ‘hobgoblin of the white media’, as Rickford puts it.42 Malcolm X continued to win support from the disenfranchised blacks

Biography

of America, those unconvinced by the integrationist politics preached by Martin Luther King (in one of his speeches, X proclaimed ‘We don’t want to integrate with that ole pale thing!’43). For many, Malcolm X was the Nation of Islam – Elijah Muhammad’s near-constant health problems often keeping him away from the podium. By 1963, Temple secretary Ronald Stokes had been beaten to death by the police and Black Left icon Patrice Lumumba had been assassinated. NAACP secretary Medgar Evers had been shot dead just outside his home, with an armful of sweaters ‘inscribed with the slogan “Jim Crow Must Go.”’44 Malcolm was still the Nation’s face and voice but was privately shaken in his allegiance upon discovering that Elijah Muhammad kept ‘a succession of personal secretaries’ as his mistresses.45 X also discovered that Muhammad had described him as ‘dangerous’, predicting (quite rightly) that X ‘someday […] leave him, turn against him.’46 Following the assassination of JFK, Malcolm X set in motion his split from the Nation when he

described the event as ‘chickens coming home to roost.’47 ‘America’s climate of hate’, X muses in his Autobiography ‘had been responsible for the President’s death.’48 Muhammad was angered by X’s outspokenness and “silenced” him for the next 90 days, effectively withdrawing X from all of his public duties. In the same moment, X realised that he was a marked man within the Nation.

Betty and Malcolm went to Miami, on

Malcolm’s beliefs began, slowly, to shift. Whilst he was not preaching an integrationist politics, he did concede ‘the heterogeneity, if not humanity, of white men

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their first ever holiday, during which time they befriended Cassius Clay, who would soon join the Nation. When they returned, Malcolm discovered that he had been barred from all Nation meetings. Louis X (Louis Farrakhan) had slipped into Malcolm’s place at Elijah Muhammad’s right hand.

On March 8, 1964 X announced his split from the Nation and his intention to form a new movement. Rickford suggests that Betty was ambivalent about the split – whilst she ‘knew her husband must escape Black Islam to make his full contribution to the race’, she was ‘unable to fully share his fervor’, worried about how the family would cope without the Nation’s financial assistance and more anxious still about the obvious threat to Malcolm’s life, following his defection.49 With his new Muslim Mosque, Inc. Malcolm’s beliefs began, slowly, to shift. Whilst he was not preaching an integrationist politics, he did concede ‘the heterogeneity, if not humanity, of white men.’50 Meanwhile, the Nation ramped up their attacks on Malcolm; his brother

Philbert denounced him at a rally as ‘a turncoat who had betrayed Muhammad’ and the Nation’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks ‘ran a cartoon depicting Malcolm’s severed head sprouting horns and jabbering.’51 The Nation informed Malcolm and Betty that their home was ‘the legal property of Black Islam’ and that they would have to leave it immediately.52

It was only when Malcolm made the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca) that his attitude towards whites explicitly changed.

There, he also became El-Hajj Malik ElShabazz, renouncing the ‘X’ which kept him associated with the Nation. Betty X, in turn, became Betty Shabazz. In a letter back to the Muslim Mosque, Malcolm writes that he had seen for the first time ‘sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color’ and that this display of integration had forced him ‘to re-arrange­ much of my thoughtpatterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous convictions.’53 He trusted that Betty ‘after initial amazement’ at this ideological volte-face, ‘would change

Biography

her thinking to join mine.’54 Whilst Malcolm was away, Betty, pregnant again, had lived with the daily threat of attack by the Nation. Fights broke out all over Harlem between the ‘Malcolmites’ and members of the Nation.

Whilst Malcolm reportedly moved for a détente, the Nation was not about to relent.

On June 8, 1964 Betty got a call at home.

When she asked who was calling, the voice said ‘Just give [Malcolm] this message.

Just tell him that he’s as good as dead.’55

Malcolm didn’t often invite his family to come and see him speak. He surprised Betty (now pregnant with twins) by asked her to bring their daughters along on February 21, 1965 to his lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.

They arrived late and sat near the front.

Meanwhile, Malcolm was reportedly testy backstage, ‘he paced and muttered and scowled, the last wisps of his princely aura melting away.’56 He had planned, that day, to read out a list of all the Nation of Islam members who were planning to kill him (apocryphal retellings of the day

“The police and press were unfair. No one believed what he said. They never took him seriously. Even after the bombing of our home, they said he did it himself.

Now what are they going to do - say that he shot himself?”

(Betty Shabazz) suggest that Betty took this list out of his suit pocket as she crouched over his bulletridden body). Malcolm went on stage after his warm-up act, Benjamin Karim. Barely had he begun to speak then he was shot, first in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun, then by a front row firing squad, all with pistols. ‘His chest’, according to one

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onlooker ‘look[ed] like the moon.’57

After identifying her husband’s body, Betty faced a row of reporters eager to know who had murdered he husband, as Rickford describes: Did her husband fear for his life? “No,” she said, “but he was concerned.” Now darkening, she lashed out. “The police and press were unfair,” she said. “No one believed what he said.

They never took him seriously. Even after the bombing of our home, they said he did it himself. Now what are they going to do – say that he shot himself?”58

There are eerie echoes in this speech of the readings made of Earl Little’s murder – where police said that he had set his own house on fire to claim the insurance money and had lain his own body on the tracks – except this time it was Black Islam rather than white supremacist hate that had killed another member of the Little family. Nation member Talmadge Hayer was arrested at the Ballroom (narrowly escaping being beaten to death by the crowd), Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were arrested on the strength

of witness reports. Despite these arrests, Elijah Muhammad denied that the Nation had any involvement with the assassination although he did not express any regret over X’s death: ‘We didn’t want to kill Malcolm and didn’t try to kill him […] We knew such ignorant, foolish teachings would bring him to his own end.’59

In a further parallel with Earl Little, Malcolm X’s death left his family broke.

Luckily, unlike Louise Little, Betty Shabazz had allies with some economic clout: Juanita Poitier (Sydney Poitier’s wife), actor Ossie David, activist Ruby Dee. Together, they formed the Committee of Concerned Mothers and hosted benefits, organised public donations and generally rallied behind Shabazz and her daughters.

When The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published later that year, writer and editor Alex Haley signed over half of all the royalties to Shabazz (later signing over all royalties following the success of Roots in the 70s). In March 1965, following her husband’s footsteps, she made the Hajj, later crediting this experience with helping

Biography

her to face and overcome her husband’s death.60

Shabazz initially (and understandably) struggled with her new role as a public figure. She was expected to represent Malcolm, to somehow carry his legacy, whilst also raising six daughters. In an interview with Ebony magazine in 1969, although she speaks for Malcolm’s legacy, Shabazz also expresses weariness at its weight: ‘At this point, I would like for the

brothers and sisters to treat me like a person rather than some kind of institution.’61 That said, throughout the late 1960s, she began accepting her new public role – first socialising more frequently with ‘the more established figures in Malcolm’s progressive circles [such as] James Baldwin’62, then accepting invitations to speak at various Malcolm memorial events at universities, churches and colleges. She also came to recognise her potential to

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promote Malcolm in other ways, selling the film rights to the Autobiography in the late 60s (although the film would not be made until Spike Lee’s epic in 1992).

Whilst Shabazz’s speeches during this period often promoted her husband’s work and gave an insight into their lives together, she was still very much interested in issues of public health and education. To this end, in 1969 she enrolled in Jersey City State College to complete the education degree that she had abandoned for nursing, then going on (a year later!) to complete an MSc in health administration. By 1975, she was Dr. Betty Shabazz – an extraordinary achievement, as Rickford identifies: Thus “Sister Betty,” whom an unwed mother had turned over to a kindly older couple, who had married a revolutionary and witnessed her own gruesome transition to widowhood, who was unbeaten as single mother and survivor, between 1965 and 1975 rose from desperation to doctor.

The children were there for graduation, hollering and carrying on. The widow beamed, confident that she would no

longer be a captive of the past.63

Clearly, Rickford employs some artistic license here when imagining the scene of Shabazz’s graduation. Yet there is much that is compelling about this narrative of transformation and survival, although we must attend to its simplicity. Unfortunately, Shabazz’s freedom from the past, if it could even be described thus, was not long-lived.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Shabazz rivalled her husband in her civic duties – joining community projects, UN delegations and advisory committees, speaking often on issues as diverse as South African apartheid to public health. Whilst she had ‘assumed first-lady status among her husband’s spiritual heirs after the assassination’64, she also assumed a status in her own right, according to Dick Gregory: ‘”She ceased to be Malcolm’s wife. You were too busy thinking about her as Betty Shabazz.”’65 However, despite her success, she still lived with a constant wariness regarding her family’s safety, founded in the pre-assassination days of strange cars outside the house and telephone calls in

Biography

the night.

By the 1990s, still an outspoken and popular public figure, Betty’s family life was increasingly troubled. Her second oldest daughter, Quibilah, was an especial worry – unable to hold down a job, with a young son Malcolm, and a drinking problem. Qubilah had grown up in ear-shot of her mother’s hatred towards the Nation of Islam, in particular Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan – the latter whom, she believed, was directly instrumental in her husband’s death. In 1994, Betty Shabazz told the The New York Times that Farrakhan’s involvement in the assassination was explicitly acknowledged at the time: ‘Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honour [in the Nation]. Everybody talked about it, yes.’ When called to respond to this allegation, Farrakhan replied: I never had anything to do with Malcolm’s death.

But I can’t lie to you that I was his friend when he died. I was his enemy because I felt him to be the enemy of black people.”

He acknowledged that he was among those who “created an atmosphere that

allowed Malcolm to be assassinated.”66 Meanwhile, Qubilah Shabazz ‘began obsessing about Farrakhan, a figure whose name in the Shabazz household had been as rank and unspoken as a family secret.’

According to Rickford, Qubilah later told the FBI that during a conversation with a former classmate, she ‘”asked [Michael] Fitzpatrick if he would kill Louis Farrakhan.

I suggested it…because I knew he was capable of doing it.”’67 What Qubilah didn’t know at that point was that Fitzpatrick was an FBI informant. Whilst she was busy gradually falling in love with him, he was feeding their frequent conversations about Farrakhan back to the FBI. Qubilah’s son, Malcolm also began to foster hopes that his mum would marry Fitzpatrick, providing him with the solid family life he had, thus far, been craving.

Fitzpatrick suddenly disappeared and Malcolm Jnr began to act out at school. The FBI arrested Qubilah, charging her with attempting to facilitate an assassination.

Several Shabazz family allies, including Dick Gregory, believed Qubilah had been

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framed.68 In a further bizarre twist, Louis Farrakhan spoke in support of Qubilah, supporting the theory of a set-up: ‘[Qubilah Shabazz] is a child […] who grieves over the loss of her father. […] It is easy to send a trained set-up artist to manipulate her emotions and make her a tool in a diabolical scheme […] to divide black people.’69 Betty Shabazz stood by her daughter throughout. The charges were dropped in exchange for Qubilah undergoing treatment for her now-various addictions, alongside psychiatric treatment.

Meanwhile, Farrakhan requested a meeting with Betty, in a further act of apparent conciliation. Farrakhan wanted to offer the Nation’s help with paying for Qubilah’s court bills. At a fundraiser for Qubilah, Betty Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan appeared together on stage.

Farrakhan went for a hug but ended up with ‘a limp, awkward handshake’70 from Shabazz.

Two years later, Betty Shabazz was dead. Malcolm Jnr, who was sent to live with her whilst Qubilah Shabazz was undergoing

rehabilitation, set fire deliberately to his grandmother’s apartment. Incurring thirddegree burns over almost the whole of her body, Shabazz hung on for three weeks, supported by the pints of blood donated by the ‘hundreds of volunteers’71 who queued up at the hospital’s blood drive. Her grandson was diagnosed as schizophrenic and sent to a juvenile detention centre.

To this day, the Shabazz family remains troubled – most recently, Malikah Shabazz (the youngest daughter) was arrested for identity theft in 2011.

Shabazz commented in 1969 that she did not want to be treated ‘like some kind of institution.’ Yet following her death, many institutions have been built in her name. There is the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center in New York, the Betty Shabazz Cultural Center in Mount Holyoke, the Dr. Betty Shabazz Health Center in Brooklyn. There is the Women in Islam’s annual Dr. Betty Shabazz memorial lecture and award and the Dr. Betty Shabazz Delta Academy in Maryland; designed to ‘spark interest […] in

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careers where minority women are scarcely represented.’72 Shabazz’s name now stands for (and on) new community centres, health programmes, writing awards, and colleges. It represents new thinking about race, the role of women and education and, perhaps also that tired word (but not tired idea) ‘survival.’ Coming out of the shadow of the X, Dr. Betty Shabazz made her own name.

Endnotes 1 Russell J. Rickford, Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X: A Journey of Strength from Wife to Widow to Heroine. Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc, 2003, xi.

2 Ibid, xiv.

3 Surviving, 9.

4 Betty Shabazz, ‘From the Detroit Riot to the Malcolm Summit’ in Ebony Magazine, November 1995, 62.

5 Rickford, 11.

6 Dr. Betty Shabazz, ‘Loving and Losing Malcolm.’

Audrey Edwards and Susan L. Taylor, Essence, February 1992, 52.

7 Surviving, 26.

8 Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Ed. Alex Haley. London: Penguin Books, 1965, 88.

9 Ibid, 89.

10 Ibid, 98.

11 Ibid, 102.

12 Ibid, 118.

13 Ibid, 135.

14 Ibid, 196.

15 Ibid, 242-5.

16 Ibid, 246.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid, 252.

19 Ibid, 255.

20 Ibid, 299.

21 Betty Shabazz quoted in Betty Shabazz: Surviving Malcolm X, 39.

22 Autobiography, 327.

23 Ibid.

24 Surviving Malcolm X, 41.

25 Betty Shabazz in conversation with Carroll Blue for Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection, October 12, 1988.

26 Surviving Malcolm X, 42.

27 Betty Shabazz, quoted in Surviving Malcolm X, 43.

28 Autobiography, 328.

29 Ibid, 326.

30 Surviving Malcolm, 51.

31 Betty Shabazz, ‘From the Detroit Riot to the Malcolm Summit’ in Ebony Magazine, November 1995, 64.

32 Autobiography, 332.

33 Surviving Malcolm X, 64.

34 Betty Shabazz, ‘The Legacy of My Husband, Malcolm X’ in Ebony Magazine, June 1969, 183.

35 Autobiography, 334.

36 Rickford, 79.

37 84.

38 ‘Legacy’, 183.

39 Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Allan Lane: London, 2011, 128.

40 Ibid, 161.

41 Autobiography, 339.

42 Surviving, 121.

43 Ibid, 128.

44 Ibid, 136.

45 Autobiography, 404.

46 Ibid, 406.

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47 Ibid, 411.

48 Ibid.

49 Surviving, 170-1.

50 Ibid, 174.

51 Ibid, 175.

52 Ibid, 176.

53 Autobiography, 454.

54 Ibid, 453.

55 Survivor, 200.

56 Rickford, 228.

57 Ibid, 230.

58 Ibid, 240.

59 Quoted in Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992, 301.

60 ‘Loving and Losing Malcolm’, 110.

61 ‘Legacy’, 183.

62 Rickford, 312.

63 Ibid, 365.

64 Rickford, 393.

65 Ibid, 387.

66 ‘Widow of Malcolm X Suspects Farrakhan Had Role in Killing.’ The New York Times, March 13, 1994.

67 Rickford, 499.

68 Rickford, 507.

69 Louis Farrakhan, quoted in Rickford, 508.

70 Ibid, 518.

71 Ibid, 541.

72 http://www.pgcacdst.org/programs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruth Charnock has a DPhil in English Literature from the University of Sussex and teaches there as a Tutorial Fellow in 19th and 20th century English literature.

Her thesis is entitled ‘Touching Stories: performances of intimacy in the diary of Anaïs Nin’ and her research interests included histories of feminism, psychoanalysis, lifewriting, intimacy and modernism.

Currently, she is preparing work for publication on graphomania, modernist affect and Anaïs Nin and second-wave feminism. She lives in Brighton, U.K.

ARTICLE ONE BOOK AND AUTHOR

Behind the Backlash Muslim Americans After 9/11- Lori Peek

By: Elke Weesjes

Book and Author

T

he eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks passed last month. Once again, Americans gathered and commemorated that fateful day. Ceremonies around the country honored the 2,977 men and women who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks. That day, which began like any other, will be forever ingrained in history. The world has been a different place since and as a result we are now living in a society characterized by aggressive foreign policies, multiple wars and division, diminishing freedoms and intolerance.

The impact of the attacks on the lives of people in the United States was monumental. But whereas most people were drawn together in shared grief and pride, supporting each other through difficult times, there was also a large number of American citizens who were equally affected by the attacks, but who didn’t feel they were allowed to grieve in public. Muslim Americans weren’t considered victims, on the contrary; these people, who also lost friends and family members in the brutal attacks,

found and still find themselves increasingly isolated and blamed. Laws and policies, implemented in the name of national security, contributed to the exclusion of Muslim Americans on a social and political level. In Behind the Backlash, Muslim Americans after 9/11, Lori Peek examines this exclusion. Based on the oral testimonies of 140 American Muslims, she analyses and deconstructs the backlash Muslim Americans have experiencedsince 9/11.

In her examination of the character and breadth of discrimination that Muslim Americans endured both before and especially after the attacks, Peek draws on both official statistics as well as indepth interviews. She argues that Muslim Americans experienced stereotyping and harassment prior to 9/11, but notes a dramatic increase in the frequency and intensity of this harassment after the events.

In detail and through the voices of those who were forced to deal with it, Behind the Backlash documents the verbal harassment and physical assault of Muslims. It reports on the religious profiling,

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Masjid At-Taqwa Mosque on Fulton Street Brooklyn NYC the discrimination in employment, in education and in housing. Peek explores the personal and social impacts of the backlash. Her respondents’ testimonies make it painfully clear how personal and collective

trauma can arise when religious minorities are victimized and ostracized. The stories told are harrowing and eye-opening.

Her last chapter discusses the ways in which Muslim Americans have coped with their exclusion and how they have responded to the prejudice they are still faced with.

Peek compares these experiences with those of other non-Muslim victims. She ends with the important and sad observation that Muslim Americans, besides being discriminated and persecuted on many other levels, found themselves outside the bounded territory that separated the “legitimate sufferers” from others after 9/11.

Whereas other victims could collectively grieve and share their deepest feelings with total strangers, Muslim Americans experienced grief that was unshared, unacknowledged outside their faith community and sometimes even contested by outsiders. She calls on communities to extend their boundaries to include the most marginalized in society. If this doesn’t happen “those on the outside will be condemned to experience a second disaster, one that

Book and Author

springs from the exclusionary practices of human beings”.

AUTHOR Q & A Coming from a non-Muslim family and being raised in a tiny town in the Midwest where most people identified as Christian, you are very different from your respondents. What were the places where it helped being an outsider and where did it hinder the work?

While doing research, I grappled with questions associated with me being a non-Muslim and wondered how it would affect my work. I came to the conclusion that there are pros and cons to being an outsider. On the one hand, some of the positive aspects of being an outsider were that I would sometimes get access to ‘taken-for-granted’ knowledge that people wanted to share with me because they knew I wasn’t Muslim. Sometimes young Muslim men and women wanted to share their story with me because I was an outsider coming in. They would see me as a person who was inter-

ested and perhaps more credible or less biased because I wasn’t a Muslim American.

On the other hand, at certain times I did have to go to greater lengths to establish trust with this community. That was one of the reasons that, early on in the study, I decided I wanted to make sure and interview these men and women at multiple times so they would see my commitment to understanding their stories and to knowing what their experiences were after 9/11. Recognizing that there are drawbacks to being an outsider to a faith community that I tried to study, I tried to compensate for those disadvantages by making this into a long term study.

Unlike other pioneering studies which discuss Arab Muslims, you studied a much wider range of people; besides Arab Muslims, you studied African-American and Asian Muslims but also Muslims who had converted to the faith. What was the reason that you widened those criteria and how did it affect the outcome

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Afternoon prayers in New York City of your research?

My first research proposal actually said I was going to study Muslim and Arab Americans in recognition that there are Arabs who are, for example, Coptic Christian or Muslim, then there are Muslims that come from many different ethnic backgrounds.

So it is interesting that you wondered what made me decide to broaden my selection criteria; I actually narrowed it. I said to myself: ‘I can’t define this study as about Muslims of any ethnicity and Arab Americans of any religion, because it just would have been too unwieldy to focus on many

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African-American Muslim with her daughter shopping on Fulton Street Brooklyn New York

different ethnicities and many different faiths’. After that realization, I decided to narrow my selection criteria to practicing Muslims. I wanted to interview individuals who saw their religious identity as something really important and I wanted to know how this identity was affected after 9/11. I decided to focus on relatively young people, ranging in age from 18 to 35 years, and almost all were pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees or had recently graduated. I chose this population, in part, because while I may be an outsider to the faith, I was of a common age and I share the same language with my respondents. In addition, I also sought out ethnically diverse Muslims because I really wanted to try to understand and represent the diversity of

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this community. That is one of the number one misconceptions about Muslim Americans; that they are all Arab.

How about gender?

Besides striving for ethnic diversity among the study participants, I also wanted to speak to men and women to represent different gendered perspectives. My being female was helpful, since Muslim women were more comfortable with me and could invite me into their private spaces and take their headscarf off. Men too were able to feel comfortable around me, I believe, although I would often conduct interviews with men in small groups so we were not alone together. The remarkable thing, when we think about gender and 9/11, is that 19 men carried out the attacks; men were responsible for planning, coordinating and funding the 9/11 attacks. And who were the people who were victimized most? Women! At least in terms of street harassment, women suffered more, for the simple reason that women are more ‘visibly’ Muslim. Men on the other hand were

much more victimized in terms of the immigration round ups and sweeping police actions. All and all there are some very interesting gender dynamics associated with anti-Muslim discrimination that require more in-depth research.

Once you decided on your selection criteria, was it hard to find respondents?

It wasn’t so difficult to find respondents.

It was interesting that even though Muslim Americans were frightened after 9/11, there was also an overwhelming desire to share their thoughts and opinions. They wanted to represent their side of the story and wanted to separate themselves as individuals, but also their entire religion, from the terrible acts that had occurred.

Because they felt so misrepresented and so vilified, they were really looking for an appropriate space/place to tell their story. I found that the people I interviewed were highly receptive to the request for the interview. In many cases, these young people had stretched themselves to the max,

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they were getting all sorts of requests from media outlets and researchers and others in the community. People wanted to hear a Muslim perspective on the events. So it wasn’t as difficult as I anticipated it would be.

Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn has a close knit Islamic community

When you wrote the book based on your research, did you have an audience in mind?

Yes I did. I wrote my book mostly for undergraduates. I had students between 18 and 25 years old in mind, including those who still remember 9/11 as a big part of their lives as well as those future generations of students who will not remember it as vividly but have been shaped by the events nonetheless. I wanted this book to help them think about this horrible event in our nation’s history and what it meant for one particularly vulnerable community. So basically I had my own students in mind, and wondered what kind of things [would] resonate with them. I was also thinking about a more general audience. As academics, we sometimes obscure the importance of people’s personal experiences. In my book, I wanted to foreground people’s lives and people’s stories, hoping that somewhere, someone - an undergrad or someone from the general public- would pick up the book and read it and think about Muslims in a different way.

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How did you integrate people’s personal experiences?

In the acknowledgements, I thank my respondents and I say that the most important words in my book are theirs, and I truly meant that. I felt that if non-Muslims could hear these stories, and could understand the impact of 9/11 on Muslim Americans, if they could really hear and read what the attacks meant to this population, that somehow this might change some peo-

My respondents, who I spent so much time with and who told me some of their most personal and intimate stories, changed my life..

ple’s minds and hearts in terms of thinking about this group that has been so mistreated after 9/11. In order to do that, in order to foreground their voices, I needed to temper my voice and my perspective.

My most important mentor taught me that respondents’ words are so powerful that the author of a book doesn’t need to restate them. Sometimes scholars say, after quoting a respondent, ‘what this person meant to say, is...’. This practice undermines the respondent’s words and makes them redundant. Because why would we read the actual quote if we can also just read the scholars interpretation? The original quote is often more powerful anyway.

When reading your book it becomes clear that you are incredibly committed to your respondents and their wider community. How did this research project, in particular your relationship with your subjects, affect your life?

My respondents, who I spent so much time with and who told me some of their most

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personal and intimate stories, changed my life. They changed my world-view and taught me far more than I can ever teach them. Their individual stories enabled me to write mine. I felt and still feel very committed. People would express to me that they agreed to collaborate because they trusted me and felt comfortable sharing their stories with me. With that kind of trust comes a particular sense of responsibility and a sense of duty to accurately convey what was shared with you.

Do you feel you got too close at certain times?

One of my female respondents got assaulted on the street. I had interviewed her two

days before and I was still in New York.

She called me and left a frantic voicemail.

She said: “I just got off the bus and somebody pulled my headscarf off and yelled at me�. She was really upset, and I was just in the middle of interviewing another Muslim woman who was telling me a very similar story. The subject matter of my research

Islamic and Middle Eastern Store on Atlantic Ave Brooklyn New York.

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project was intense and consequently I had an intense relationship with my respondents. It was hard to establish boundaries or to create a certain distance when I was doing my research. There is almost a contradiction within ethnography, because it encourages you to get as close as you possibly can to people and to develop relationships so participants share their story with you. But then, maintaining an analytical distance is also required. But it is incredibly hard to maintain analytical distance, to walk away from people when they have just shared their most private experiences with you. So it is a difficult balancing act, always. Fortunately, I had a number of very good professors in graduate school and later colleagues at my university who helped me to think through these issues and to try to find balance in the work.

ferred the focus groups or the individual interviews. And it was interesting; because they said that in some ways they liked the focus groups because they could hear what their peers had to say. And they felt it was very supportive; they realised; “I am not alone, I am not crazy”. “I am not the only one who feels scared to go outside”. So the focus groups offered a social support function, but in the end, most of the respondents preferred the individual interviews because that is where they felt they could really go into their own story and explain what happened in their own life. In a focus group people whose experiences conflict with those of the majority, often don’t speak out. So I am really glad I did both as I got to see that group dynamic in the focus groups but then go into much greater depth in the individual interviews.

Your research is based on focus group meetings and individual interviews. Which method was more successful?

I actually asked the respondents if they pre-

Islamophobia is tearing apart America’s social fabric. In your book you point out that attitudes toward Islam and Muslims are shaped in part by people’s lack of knowledge about the

Top left: Memorial Plaque at Ground Zero Middle right: Freedom Tower Bottom left: National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. The nearly 3000 names of the victims of the 9/11 and 1993 attacks are inscribed in bronze around the perimeters of the two pools.

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faith and its followers. Would improving religious education in American schools change the situation for the better?

First of all, as an educator and professor, I do believe that education is part of the answer to all of this and I think introducing varying perspectives and ideas in schools is a positive thing. But in some cases, initiatives have caused controversy in the post 9/11 period. In 2002, for example, the University of North Carolina selected a book on Islam to be read by first year and transfer students as part of their orientation. The choice backfired. A lot of people were outraged, so much so that a committee of the state legislature voted to terminate funding for the course. In elementary and primary schools attempts have been made to implement a more multicultural religious education. The problem is that there is no set curriculum - it varies between schools. The movement No Child Left Behind, which focuses on the improvement of individual outcomes in education has left less space for the implementation

of courses that educate about disaster, climate change and cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. But are there pockets of hope, absolutely! There are teachers that I met who informed me that they were “bringing 9/11 into the curriculum� and asked me what materials I would use.

We should keep in mind that Islamophobia is a complex social problem. Any form of racism and inequality are very complicated social phenomena; hence they require complicated responses and this is one of the problems, because people like to say: educate the three year olds! Do I think that is part of the answer? Yes, but it is never the whole answer. In history, whenever we have made a leap forward in society, those leaps - for example on the social movement and educational front - were relatively slow and involved successes and defeats. Besides education, we need multicultural alliances across social movements dedicated to education and social change.

It is also important to see leadership, from the grassroots all the way to the highest levels of government, speaking out against

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Islamophobia and any other form of inequality that marks our society.

So you are hopeful?

Muslims have been isolated and isolation causes harm. Some Muslims abandoned their religion, others became more religious after 9/11. But many young second generation Muslims are now standing up and saying: we have the tools and the power. They stand firmly in both their parents’ culture and their culture in the U.S., and if there is going to be any progress, it will start with them. That’s a place of hope. I saw the most hope in these young Muslim Americans, who said “yes, the backlash after 9/11 happened to us, yes we experienced all this, but we will figure out a way to move forward.”

So yes, there is plenty to be hopeful about, but there is also still much work to be done.

Behind the Backlash Muslim Americans after 9/11, by: Lori Peek (2011) Temple University Press ISBN 978-1-59213-982-8 All pictures: © Elke Weesjes

LORI PEEK: is Assistant Professor and Co-director of the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at Colorado State University. She has published widely on vulnerable populations in disaster and is co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora. In 2012, Behind the Backlash was selected as the recipient of the Distinguished Book Award from the Midwest Sociological Society. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005. She is currently on sabbatical in New York and is working as a Visiting Research Scientist at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.

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