You are quite right. There can have been few if any worshipers of the old gods left when Mohammed was born. Pity. An underground survival of Egyptian paganism would be so cool.
I must admit, I got my general impression from Michener’s The Source, the scene where Muslim Arabs conquer Galilee. They ride into town, gather all the people together, and invite them all to convert to Islam. They let resistant Jews and Christians – “Peoples of the Book” – off with a head-tax, but any pagan (defined as, any fourth thing) who won’t convert is immediately killed. An African who won’t abandon his tribal gods and a Zoroastrian who won’t renounce “the fire-gods of Persia” are beheaded. Don’t know how well Michener researched that. I do recall that Karen Armstrong wrote in Islam: A Short History that in the early years of conquering beyond Arabia, the Muslims did not encourage non-Arabs to convert; and Arabs in non-Arab country kept themselves apart from the local population, living in military camps, to avoid cultural contamination.
Also from Armstrong: In the early years, Muslims including Mohammed thought of Islam as a racial thing, like Judaism. Both Jews and Arabs were descendants of Abraham (Jews by Isaac, Arabs by Ishmael) and heirs of his covenant with God. Judaism was the right form of worship for Jews, Islam was the right form of worship for Arabs – not the One True Faith to which all the world must be converted, the way St. Paul thought of Christianity. Later, of course, Islam became exactly that.
Christians don’t fit into this scheme. Mohammed only learned late in life, and rather to his surprise, that Christians did not consider themselves a sect of Jews. He does not seem to have understood what Christianity was about.
Pity?
Why? That’s just idiocy. Not that this has anything the fuck to do with modern Egypt and it utterly escapes me why you think modern paganism is something relevant to this.
I’d have to say since the Zoroastrians were inducted into the Peoples of the Book according to some Wiki reading I did, and that they still exist to this day, that whomever you’re reading knew fuck all about the subject.
Might be my old world Uni education, but I normally consider works of fiction just that.
It’s not relevant, it’s just something vaguely associated with Egypt, that we can talk about during lulls in the revolution. Why? Because it would be so cool. That’s enough. Do tolerate a bit of whimsy amid all this high historical drama we’re watching.
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution!”
– Emma Goldman
Just before 5AM in Cairo and MSNBC is broadcasting a live feed from Tahrir Square. Brian Williams is reporting and apparently there is sporadic heavy gunfire in the square. It seems these are warning shots. It looks like things are turning very ugly and violent very quickly.
I’m watching this right now. Richard Engel was attacked today by pro-Mabarak “protesters” which seem to have been paid to create violence.
We have that same book, and I remember that part. Could be something that was specific to that exact time and place though. Michener was usually pretty good with his research, but he was not perfect. Being as familiar with Hawaii as I am, I spotted three flagrant errors in his Hawaii, one of them so egregious that I can’t believe he didn’t make it on purpose for the sake of a small joke.
Apparently the US Embassy has told Americans wanting to leave to report to the airport immediately. I don’t think you would have to tell me twice.
The State Department is reporting that U.S. government flights out of Egypt will be “unlikely” after Thursday.
I’m really, really surprised that the army hasn’t intervened yet. Once they do, how they intervene will probably indicate which side they’re joining.
So was Anderson Cooper and a fair number of lesser lights of the media. I don’t know if Mubarak thinks that he can blame attacks on foreign correspondents on the anti-government protesters or what, but it’s kind of like whacking a hornet’s nest. It seems to have inspired the mainstream media to actually act like journalists again…I understand that Robert Gibbs had a fairly uncomfortable press briefing this afternoon.
Yea, a number of journalists, both U.S. and not, have reported being attacked. I think he honestly thinks that he can intimidate the journalists into leaving, so he can seize control of the story.
The Egyptian army is sporadically firing warning shots for “crowd control.”
Thirty years of repression and an inconceivable flash mob revolution, sure, but now they have gone and thumped Anderson Cooper in the head, it’s on!
Nothing REALLY happens until it happens to the Talent!
There’s a large amount of truth to that. The Quran is extremely clear that polytheists are evil and are to be exterminated. In fact it’s made very clear in Islamic tradition that Shirk(the partnering of others with God or praying to others in place of God) is quite literally the worst thing that someone can do and is the only thing God will not forgive.
Muhammad really, really hated pagans and the Quran is pretty clear that they are to be exterminated and the Hadith are even worse.
That said, Islam has always been an extremely practical religion and adapts to the environment it’s in and ignores the traditions that don’t really fit. For that reason the Muslims in South Asia never tried to exterminate the Hindus and the Muslims in African countries with large numbers of animists haven’t necessarily tried to exterminate them.
Also, I don’t think they ever tried to exterminate the Zoroastrians. They were classified almost from the start as “people of the book” which makes very little sense and can only be accomplished through a large amount of willful blindness.
To understand Islam’s concept of “people of the book” you must first understand certain Islamic concepts.
One major error many people make is the idea that “Allah” is simply the Muslim name for “God”. In fact “Allah” is simply a combination of two Arabic words “Al” meaning “the” and “Lah” meaning “God”. In short it means “the God” or what some like to translate as “the one true God”. I personally think the best way to think of it is as “The God of Abraham”.
In fact from the Islamic perspective Adam was the world’s first Muslim and Moses(Musa) and Jesus(Issa) were Muslims as well. From the Islamic point of view Muslims are people who submit themselves to the God of Abraham and follow all of his revelations that were apparent during their lifetime.
That is also why they view Jesus and Moses as Muslims but not modern day Jews and Christians as Muslims. From the Islamic point of view Jews and Christians are followers of Allah, but they haven’t recognized that their religion has been abrogated. However, because of their history, they are entitled to a certain amount of respect and protection.
Now classifying Zoroastrians, who don’t believe in the God of Abraham as “people of the book” eligible for Dhimmi status and protection is logically and theologically absurd, but that’s how the Muslims in Persia have always treated them and that’s true of even the most radical members of the current Iranian regime.
The best explanation for this is both the necessity of doing so because slaughtering the Zoroastrians and later the Hindus would have been impractical, but because they, along with the Mandaens, the Druze and others all predated Islam and therefore they were essentially given honorary “people of the Book” status.
Now the corollary to this is that those who belonged to religions that came about after the advent of Islam, such as the Ahmadis and the Bahai were not entitled to any protection or tolerance and viewed as followers of false religions to be crushed. That applied even to those who viewed themselves as Muslims(which the Ahmadis did and still do).
Personally, I think a good corollary for this can be the way Christians have traditionally viewed Muslims as opposed to Jews. Jews, having come before Christianity are thought to be accorded some respect(though until extremely recently Muslims were far more tolerant of Jews) while Muslim were thought to be followers of a false religion and historically Muslims have always been driven at sword point from Christian lands.
Now, it should be remembered that Christian and Jewish tradition are also extremely intolerant of polytheists and Christianity has always been quite clear that those who don’t believe in God will go to hell. Judaism is not so clear because, unlike Christianity and Islam, Jews don’t claim to have a universal message for all of mankind. From their point of view, they don’t know what God intends for the gentiles, it’s merely important for Jews to do the things that God wants them to do.
Now, all this being said, I suspect that Arabs, since they don’t typically encounter Hindus or Animists are not going to be prone to concern for polytheists and as far as the Salafists(called Wahhabis in the West) are concerned, polytheists are just about the worst possible thing one can be.
I think he’s just part of an ongoing effort to intimidate enough protesters off the street and create enough chaos so that people buy into the ‘I’ll go in Sept’ line. Notably the army stepped aside to let Mubarak’s thugs attack.
Then the next few months will be spent cracking down hard and making sure the herd don’t get out of control again. I doubt Mubarak intends to go and if he does Plan B is ‘business as usual’ under a new Boss.
The upper echelons of the army no more want change than any of the rest of the kleptocratic elite they are part of and are gambling their pseudo-concessions allied with the deliberate creation of a warning chaos will buy them the time they need to regroup.
If people want democracy they are going to have to really fight for it tomorrow and attack the Presidential Palace.
And that will be a gamble on whether the junior officers and troops on the street side with the revolution when the protesters start getting shot down by the security forces.
Minor nitpick in an otherwise-very informative post: from my understanding, the Druze do not predate Islam. They are instead essentially a sorta-gnostic offshoot from Ismailism. Though being very secretive, it isn’t totally clear exactly what the inner core of religious initiates believe.
Correction: the Druze don’t predate Islam; they’re an offshoot. I suspect they’re semi-tolerated mainly because they are tough sons of bitches who live up in the mountains and generally give better than they get when it comes down to shooting.
ETA: dammit. Oh well, I added value.