ON BEACHES, INTOLERANCE WEARS A VEIL
By Daniel Williams

New York Times
August 11, 2009

Letter from Egypt

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT – Along the miles of crowded beachfront in Egypt’s
second city, women in bathing suits are nowhere in sight.

On Alexandria’s breeze-blown shores, they all wear long-sleeve shirts
and ankle-length black caftans topped by head scarves. Awkwardly afloat
in the rough seas, the bathers look like wads of kelp loosened from
the sandy bottom.

The scene would be unremarkable in Saudi Arabia or Iran, where
a strict interpretation of Islam mandates hiding the feminine
body. In Alexandria – a storied town of sensuality and openness –
the veiled beachgoers, coupled with sectarian conflicts, underscore
to some residents the loss of a valued sense of diversity in favor
of religious uniformity.

"Here is the front line of a battle between secularists and Islamic
fundamentalism," said Mohamed Awad, director of the Alexandria and
Mediterranean Research Center, part of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,
itself an evocation of the ancient library whose reputation for
scholarship helped give the city its pluralistic credentials.

If the issue were only bathing attire – or the gradual disappearance
of alcohol from open-air seaside cafes to avoid insults from passing
pedestrians – the phenomenon might be just a curiosity. But there are
sharper signs of intolerance: increasing Christian-Muslim clashes,
unfamiliar to old Alexandrine eyes.

On April 4, a Muslim man was allegedly stabbed by his Coptic Christian
landlords in a dispute over garbage collection, according to a July 30
report by the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a
human rights watchdog. When the man died the next day, Muslims praying
at a mosque in the city’s Karmouz district chanted "they will die"
and then trashed Christian-owned stores, the report said.

There have been similar events over the past three years, including
one incident in which Muslims stormed homes they said were Coptic
churches functioning without government permits. Copts, who make up
about 10 percent of Egypt’s population, are an indigenous denomination
founded in Alexandria around A.D. 61.

The violence is particularly striking in a city whose skyline is
dotted by minarets and church steeples and where, at least in the
memory of the Alexandrian novelist Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, religion
has not always triggered public disputes. He has written two novels
of Alexandria’s 20th-century past that reflect a longing for a kind
of golden age of diversity.

Another author, Haggag Oddoul, said in an interview: "I wish we could
go back to being the city of Cleopatra."

The Alexandria of lore emerged as a major 19th-century transshipment
port with Europe, celebrated by Arab, Egyptian and Western writers
as a cosmopolitan paradise where sailors mingled at cafes with exiles
from Syria and Greece, businessmen from Italy and, eventually, women
in sun dresses.

In 1956, Great Britain and France, with the help of Israel, invaded
Egypt to recover control of the recently nationalized Suez Canal,
through which nearly a 10th of world trade now passes. The attempt
failed, and communities of Greeks, Armenians, Italians, French and
Jews fled as the definition of Egypt narrowed to an Arab nation in
a homogenous Arab world.

Since then, Alexandria has become home to oil refineries that have
helped swell its population to more than five million. The new
arrivals, many from Egypt’s overcrowded countryside, submerged the
scene in a tidal wave of poverty and ideology.

Now, Arab nationalism and Alexandria’s cosmopolitanism have a new
rival: the push for an Islamic Egypt. Mr. Abdel Meguid attributes
this to influence from conservative Gulf nations – in particular,
Saudi Arabia.

"We are no longer a universal city of song, dance, culture and art,"
he said.

Mr. Awad’s center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina strives to reverse
that trend, spreading "internationalism" and promoting "a healthy
spirit of diversity, pluralism and interaction among civilizations,"
according to its Web site. And yet "the library is an island," he said.

The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition
force, has a major base of support in the city, according to
national press accounts. There, as in other Egyptian urban centers,
the Brotherhood provides health care, subsidized food and social
services for the poor.

The group is the prototype for Islamic political parties across the
Middle East – and nostalgia for a legendary multicultural past is
not part of its agenda. "At the end of the day, that’s all history,"
said Sobhi Saleh, a Brotherhood member of Parliament.

A leaflet advising women on proper Islamic coverings is posted in
the lobby leading to Mr. Saleh’s office. A caftan and long head scarf
are correct. A skimpy head scarf accompanied by jeans is wrong.

He said Christian-Muslim tensions were not a symptom of intolerance
but of "insults" to Islam by Copts.

Alexandria needs "stable" community values, he insisted. Sensuality,
if it means sexuality, is not part of the social equation. Even the
library – with its museum that includes pharaonic, Greek, Roman,
Coptic and Islamic relics – is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.

"There, Islam is just one topic among many. We don’t like those naked
Greek statues. Anyway, that’s over. Islam should have a special status
at the library," he said. "This is a Muslim city in a Muslim country;
that is our identity."

Daniel Williams writes for Bloomberg News.