5. The Path of Clarification

All school culture is necessarily standardized and ritualized…by and for exercises of repetition and reconstitution which must be sufficiently stereotyped to be repeated ad infinitum under the direction of coaches…themselves as little irreplaceable as possible (e.g. manuals, summaries, synopses, religious or political breviaries and catechisms, glosses, commentaries, cribs, encyclopedias, corpuses, selections, past examination papers, model answers, compilations of dictums, apothegms, mnemonic verses, topics, etc.).

The Interpretation of Culture and the Culture of Interpretation

At the height of the Second World War, psychological anthropologist George Devereaux and his colleague Edwin Loeb, members of a generation of American scholars who found their civilization under the threat of an aggressive foreign military machine, wrote an article outlining the strategies a besieged culture might use to resist annihilation. One of these strategies, “antagonistic acculturation,” they described as the process of adopting lower-order practices and institutions from foreign cultures for the purpose of resisting adoption of their higher-order goals; essentially, adopting new cultural tactics to resist the adoption of new values.^[2] The authors criticized the earlier trend of diffusionist scholarship by emphasizing the purposive nature of what they termed “autoplastic culture change,” and in an unusual literary conceit, they quoted from the Qur’an itself as the best possible summary of the human interest in setting boundaries: “And I shall not worship that which ye worship/Nor will ye worship that which I worship/Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion” (sura 109, al-Kafirun, 4–6).

The phrase “antagonistic acculturation” has not aged well, perhaps because of a vague semantic prejudice sparked by the alliterative terms, the latter recalling the stolid scientific neutralism of some colonial acculturation studies, and the former implying perhaps that indigenous resistance to “culture contact” was a matter of the stubborn native's impenetrable rejection of progressive change. But while the phrase has been all but forgotten by anthropologists, who now prefer the concept of resistance, the process it describes is a central feature of cultural flow in the colonial and post- or neocolonial world. As we saw in examining the development of European-style education in Egypt, this was the force behind the calculated military appropriation of schooling in the early nineteenth century. Since that time, the state's strategies for maintaining a Muslim identity while extending ideological influence over an increasingly urbanized and literate populace has included the transformation of Islamic institutions, beliefs, and values through altering the form and the context of their production and their inculcation. That context—the European-style school—works both through new principles of organizing interpersonal authority on a massive and centrally administered scale and through the use of new types of cultural production, particularly the imported form of the school textbook. This chapter addresses the specific mechanisms through which the textbook both furthers and expresses the functionalization of the Islamic tradition.

The process of altering cultural production to match, compete with, and fend off imported models, while simultaneously increasing its political usefulness, is obviously not confined to the Nile Valley. In his important book The Calligraphic State, Brinkley Messick has shown how Ottoman and Yemeni nationalist reformers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries transformed the flexible and multivocal tradition of Islamic legal scholarship, the shari‘a, into a closed, self-contained, and relatively rigid set of “modern” legal codes. Ottoman reformers in the second half of the nineteenth century had likened the shari‘a to “an ocean without shores,” vast, difficult to access because of the specialized training required, and inappropriate for the times.^[3] Criticizing its “lack of order” relative to European-style legal codes, they were concerned with making the law “known,” fixing it in structured form in numbered paragraphs, “making a portion of the shari‘a manageable and perusable,” and issuing works that contained “only the least contested and least controversial opinions and composed in a manner which would be sufficiently clear so that anyone could study it easily and act in conformity with it.” ^[4] At the same time that colonial translations of Muslim legal works were pulling together different versions to create authoritative Arabic texts, local elites as well as the colonial powers themselves endeavored to spread shari‘a consciousness to the hinterlands of Yemen, both because it was considered “ “tidier” and more predictable than custom” and because, according to contemporary sources, it “provides better political propaganda.” ^[5] With more recent reorganizations of Yemeni political life, responsibility for the production of a corpus of “Islamic law” has been removed from the hands of the ‘ulama and given over to public officials and parliaments.

The same sorts of processes have operated in Egypt through the production of both official textbooks and private sector childrens' literature. Textbooks are an offspring of print (as opposed to manuscript) culture, both because printing allows the creation of sufficient numbers of books to allow feasible mass instruction and also because of the uniformity of printed products. “With print,” Walter Ong writes,

for the first time, a teacher could stand before a class and say, “Everybody turn to page 48, fifth line from the top, third word from the left,” and everybody could find the word. In a manuscript culture the students might all have had manuscripts, but you would have had to pronounce the word and wait for them to locate it because it would be in a different position on a different page in virtually every manuscript.^[6]

As we have seen in the classroom itself, the text recycling that springs from practical economic pressures means this is not always so, but the infinite standardization of the textbook does have the universal effect of flattening controversy and rigidifying current understandings of open questions as indisputable fact.

Moreover, and most importantly, by propagating a synoptic vision of Islamic belief and practice, sanctioned either by the state or by groups of “experts” working in the private sector, mass education and its pedagogical materials effectively create a new Islamic tradition derived from, but not identical with, the historical tradition (just as Yemen's “Islamic” legal codes drew on the corpus of shari‘a scholarship, while the latter drew directly on the Qur’an and sunna.) Furthermore, these materials automatically draw new populations into the field of cultural reproduction: not only the new elites of the Ministry of Education and the corporate boardroom, but, importantly, the students themselves, who are supposed to derive from their classroom training the ability to produce “correct” Muslim behavior. This installation of habitus, however, is complicated by the fact that it is an explicit, verbal inculcation that couches Muslim behavior in functionalist terms, terms that actively encourage students to draw connections between the world of life and the world of texts. Once the possibility of this sort of interpretation is opened, the construction of additional, or alternate, readings of Muslim practice is inevitable.

Encountering the Word

As one of their functions, elementary schools introduce students not only to the psychological and physical skills of reading and writing, but to the proper social and political use of official texts, and to the way in which texts are deployed by authorities, whether as books, assignments, examinations, instructions, or forms. Contemporary educators—inspired by the historical insistence that religious education further “moral” and not merely “ritual” ends—transform the sacred texts of the Islamic tradition into systematic, socially and politically useful products for mass socialization. The historical processes of functionalization we viewed earlier—in which personal and institutional relationships and then the social ends of the Islamic tradition itself were altered to underwrite changing understandings of the utility of religion—will be augmented here by a close examination of mass-produced texts themselves. With respect to the school textbook, functionalization is a process of reading and explicating the physiological, social, and political function of Muslim practices in such a way that these practices appear uniquely effective tools for the conduct of modern life.

The practices of memorization and recitation, question and response are taught from the very beginning of the school career, even before children have mastered the art of writing. As we have seen, children spend much class time reading their textbooks aloud, in unison or individually, as the teacher corrects mistakes of pronunciation and then breaks to expound on obscure points or to quiz students on past material. The task of reading aloud and memorization for repetition is a central feature of everyday student activity, motivated by the structure of official examinations and the desire of students and their families to obtain scores high enough to continue to higher grades and perhaps, eventually, to gain admission to the most prestigious faculties in university.

This is not to say that all pedagogical practices aim always at a single, consistent goal, or that these goals necessarily change predictably in response to political and social needs, independent of the structural constraints of educational institutions themselves.^[7] The latter always exert pressures on curriculum design and teaching technique in order to satisfy internal aims as well as external ones. As an example, when Anwar Sadat called in 1977 for “teaching religion in a new style by which we can protect our forthcoming generations and face up to the problems of today,” his intent was rhetorical, for a new style had already overtaken religious studies in Egyptian schools. Inculcating proper social behavior has been a prime pedagogical goal long before the mid-1970s. If anything, some textbooks have become less vivid and more traditional than they were. For example, in the sixth grade religious readers for both 1976 and 1981 we find sura 58, 6, from the Qur’an:

Hast thou not seen that God knows whatsoever is in the heavens, and whatsoever is in the earth? Three men conspire not secretly together, but He is the fourth of them, neither five men, but He is the sixth of them, neither fewer than that, neither more, but He is with them, wherever they may be; then He shall tell them what they have done, on the Day of Resurrection. Surely God has knowledge of everything.^[8]

But while the 1976 edition stresses this verse in isolation and asks the student to memorize it as a reminder of “God's Surveillance of what is Secret and what is Open,” the 1981 edition includes the verse in the context of the rest of its sura. The earlier edition not only defines difficult vocabulary items but includes three and a half pages of tafsir, or “explanation,” followed by a full page of review questions. In 1981 the sura is presented without tafsir at all, accompanying the text merely with lists of difficult vocabulary items and their definitions. The more recent book requires the student to memorize the entire sura, and is closer in spirit to older practices than is the earlier version, which picks a single verse and emphasizes the moral lesson to be drawn from it.

Similarly, both editions contain the following hadith, a saying of the Prophet Muhammad:

A person walks in the same path as his friend; so [a Muslim] pays attention whom he befriends.

The 1976 book placed the hadith within the context of a short story about the proper choice of friends and the relationships between parents, children, and the school:

Sa‘id's father was delighted. He saw his son Sa‘id advancing in his studies, and in his manners, and in his character, and in his behavior towards his playmates and teachers at school and his siblings at home. So his father said, “I am pleased with you, Sa‘id, for you've gotten much better than you used to be.”

Sa‘id said, “Yes, my father.”

“I notice that you changed your friends.”

“Yes, I left As‘ad and ‘Uthman and Ibrahim, because they didn't think about anything except playing, and weren't interested in their studies and didn't do their homework, and in thing after thing I became like them, and it seemed to me that I was lost, so I turned away from them and chose Ishraf and Hasan and Isma‘il, and I've learned from their earnestness and good manners and good taste.”

“Excellent choice.”

“Yes, and the school gets the credit for it.”

“How's that?”

“Father, I learned from it many things about friendship and friends. I learned that for each one of us there is treasure in friendship, because a friend talks to me and I to him, and I walk with him, and if I need anything I ask him for it, and if something hurt me, I complain to him about it. And He and I are like one person. I ask him things, and he asks me. I buy things for him, and he for me, and I know him by heart, and benefit from his knowledge and wisdom, and he benefits from me. And I learned that the person is changed by his friend. He is changed in his etiquette, and his behavior, and he takes on many of his characteristics; and I put this to the test myself, father. And I learned that one must proceed slowly in the choice of one's friends, and that their choice must be based on knowledge of their manners and habits, and not to take friends without checking them out.”

Sa‘id's father rejoiced, and his joy grew when he knew that [Sa‘id] applied the lessons of religion to [his] life, and that he memorized the following saying [of the Prophet] about the choosing of friends: “He said, may God bless and save him, “A person walks in the same path as his friend, so [a Muslim] pays attention whom he befriends.” ” ^[9]

The 1981 edition, on the other hand, merely cites the hadith, defines the difficult vocabulary, and summarizes its meaning thus:

From this hadith you learn:

• That one is influenced by his friends, and copies their dispositions and character and perception, and follows in their paths.

• That it is a Muslim's duty to go slowly and think and check a person out before making him a friend.

• Among Islam's guidelines for choosing a friend: that he be well-mannered and clean-tongued, and careful of his appointments and his work and his religion, sincere in his friendship both in private and in public, and supportive in whatever way possible.^[10]

Aside from eliminating the saccharin story format, the real change in the second version is the creation of an easy-to-memorize list of rules that can be repeated verbatim on an examination. In this case, logistical factors won out in the contest between embedding moral guidelines in a contemporary narrative that pictures their self-conscious application, or presenting them as objects of test-driven analysis and memorization. The same sorts of tensions continue to operate today.

Form and Content

The goals of contemporary religious education at the primary level are set out in the introduction to the first grade religion textbook, which reminds teachers that “religious education [al-tarbiya al-diniyya] is not material restricted to classrooms, but rather is a complete life curriculum, including the classroom milieu with all its activities and information and knowledge. It also includes the home environment, and society as a whole.” ^[11]

The classroom portion of this curriculum has several distinct goals: the planting (ghars) of Islamic morals and values in the psyche of the child, along with a grasp of the five pillars of Islam; the development of faith in God; acquainting the child with the biography of the Prophet; memorization of some verses and suras of the Qur’an; and knowledge and practice of the process of ablution and prayer. The authors explain that religion is related to other school subjects “like the Arabic language or science,” and that their selection of Qur’anic extracts “benefit[s] from the fact that the Qur’an can be understood at many levels.” They highlight a variety of instructional methods like the use of pictures and drawings, which help impart the meaning of abstract concepts and make the process of learning more enjoyable and attractive, “increasing [the pupil's] desire to learn.” ^[12] And finally, they draw attention to two developmental and social issues:

The importance of satisfying the needs of the pupil in this grade level for freedom in expressing his abilities and his reliance on what he touches and sees and hears at this stage of his life, and [his] proper response to life situations at home and in school and in society. [And] the importance of the social environment in which the pupil lives, in such a way that religious education has a role in the advancement and development of this milieu [tarqiyya tilka al-bi’a wa tanmiyyatiha].^[13]

These themes are carried through in texts for the higher grades, which provide pupils with “Islamic religious information appropriate to their ages, springing forth from the glorious Qur’an and the noble traditions of the Prophet.” ^[14] These later books emphasize proper public recitation (tilawa) of Qur’anic extracts and urge teachers to have students memorize and explain designated passages, “extracti[ng]…the values and principles to which they point.” ^[15] Finally, they direct that children be taught diligence in their work, compassion for others and good manners in public places, for adab is part of “an integrated view of Islamic education that presents the meaning of Qur’anic verses and Prophetic traditions…through life situations” familiar to the child.^[16]

By the end of the fifth grade, the industrious Egyptian schoolchild will have read hundreds of pages about Islam in her textbooks, memorizing most of them for repetition on year-end examinations. Teachers and principals place a great deal of confidence in their students' ability to memorize, a fact I learned firsthand, with a great deal of embarrassment, at the Nasr School, when I asked if they had spare copies of the textbooks. Pulling all but the fifth grade book out of a storage cabinet, Mme. Hala told me they didn't seem to have an extra there, but she knew where to get one. Leaving the room, she returned with the book two minutes later. Unlike the others, this one was well-worn and covered inside with penciled notes. She had simply gone to the fifth grade room and asked who had finished memorizing their book already, choosing one student among the three that raised their hand. Horrified, I insisted that she return the book to the student, who would certainly need it to study. “No,” she replied, pointing at her head, “she's already knows the whole thing.” She refused to let me return it.

The religion textbooks contain five broad categories of content: Qur’an and hadith; qawa‘id al-islam (the pillars of Islam); usul al-din (theology); sira (biographies of the prophets and famous Muslims); and adab (rules for behavior in public and private). These are crosscut by different media of presentation. Texts make use of direct quotations from the Qur’an and hadith; tafsir (consisting of definitions, explanations and clarifications of Qur’anic or traditional material in the voice of the text's authors); durus (sing. dars; or lessons, narrative presentations of material in the voice of the text's authors); anashid (sing. nashid; poems, songs, or recitations to be repeated aloud in unison); munaqashat (questions or topics for discussion); tadribat (activities such as matching exercises); tamthilat (short plays or dialogues for students to read or act out); and finally, pictures and drawings.

Most lessons use more than one format, combining pictures with narratives, discussion questions and anashid, for example. Pictures are meant to stimulate discussion or to be used as part of an exercise, but occasionally serve merely an illustrative function. Qur’an and hadith are both subject matter and media because each book contains, in addition to verses cited to illustrate the point of a lesson or ground it in scripture, a section of Qur’an to be memorized by the student for its own sake.

Table 3 shows the proportion of space devoted to each of the five subject categories in the primary-level religion textbooks used during the 1988–89 school year.^[17] While the space allotted to basic theology and Prophetic biography rises and falls unpredictably throughout the years, the remaining categories show more definite trends. That devoted to Qur’an, hadith, and adab increases fourfold between the first and the fifth grades, while the volume taken up by the pillars of Islam declines by more than 60 percent. Including longer passages from the Qur’an is a function of the child's growing capacity for recitation and memory work, while moving from basic elements of faith and worship to the application of Muslim values to life reflects the growing importance of explicit moral training as children enter their second seven years of life and begin facing responsibility for proper behavior and the performance of religious duties.

The Transformation of Texts

Since political elites and professional educators alike see religious education as an important applied subject, textbook authors strive in various ways to emphasize Islam's place in the child's daily life. Even sacred history is made immediate by linking events of long ago and far away to the child's own familiar world. One of the earliest lessons in the Ministry of Education's first grade religion textbook is the story of the Prophet Muhammad's early life, and the names and kinship ties of the relatives who raised and cared for him. Introducing children to the Islamic tradition with the simple, accessible vocabulary of kinship terms, the text draws pupils into an immediate relationship with the Prophet, while drawing the family itself into the universe of discourse of the school. Before dealing in some detail with the way textbooks treat family and school as sources of moral authority, let us first examine how functionalization—which we have already examined with respect to institutional transformations—operates on a textual level.

In examining the form of Egyptian religious studies textbooks, functionalization appears as one of four textual processes, along with consolidation, grading, and reinterpretation, which help transform the larger written corpus of Islamic tradition (and local custom) into socially and politically useful forms for use in the public school.^[18] Consolidation, like grading, is an editorial process stemming from the need to systematize and simplify the Islamic heritage for mass consumption. One of the more mundane differences between sacred revelation and classroom instruction is that the Qur’an is notoriously repetitive and meandering by contemporary pedagogical standards. Verses concerning a single subject, even a single person, are scattered throughout the twenty-two years of the Prophet's recorded mission, sometimes repeating information, sometimes adding new insights or taking different points of view. For example, in the Qur’an, the twenty-eight-verse chapter called Nuh (Noah) does not contain the most comprehensive account of the title character's life and works. The richer account is given in twenty-four verses in sura 11, Hud (25–49), although there is supplementary information scattered throughout thirteen other chapters as well, in blocks of between one and seventeen verses. The synoptic tale of Noah that the fourth-grader reads is an amalgamation and paraphrase of the Qur’anic revelation illustrated with pictures and a simplified vocabulary.

As important as textual organization is the temporal allocation of knowledge, the very essence of school hierarchy. Grading doles out age- appropriate wisdom at the same time that it reinforces lessons learned in earlier years and builds a foundation for the future. As an example, Egyptian first-graders greet Ramadan officially with a simple nashid:

Come on, brothers, let's come on,
Let's rejoice in Ramadan
Month of fasting and of alms,
In you, goodness and Qur’an
Yours the honor, Ramadan^[19]

Next, they find a list of Ramadan activities: the scheduling of meals, listening to the Qur’an, helping the poor and unfortunate. They are reminded that “you learn the fast with your father and your mother,” and boys learn that “you go to the mosque with your father.” An exercise and a color drawing of a neighborhood mosque round out the youngest student's lesson.^[20] The following year, Ramadan becomes the subject of a dialogue between a father and his two children, Fatima and Ali, who have all gone to the market on the night of the first day of the sacred month. The children ask how and why Muslims fast, and learn that one must refrain from eating, but also from quarrelling, and they must increase the frequency of prayers. Their father (anonymous, like all textbook parents) explains that “God directed us to fast during Ramadan because it cleanses our minds and accustoms us to patience and compassion for the poor and unfortunate when we feel hunger like them. And so we may all be saved from God's punishment when we enter heaven.” ^[21] He ends his lesson by quoting from the Qur’an, sura 2, al- Baqara,185: “Ramadan is the month/In which was sent down/the Qur’an, as a guide/To mankind, also clear (signs)/For guidance and judgement (Between right and wrong)./So every one of you who is present during the month should spend it fasting.” In the third grade, Ramadan takes the form of a series of descriptive phrases. Again citing verse 185, the book tells pupils that fasting “benefits the body and makes it strong,” and teaches them the customs and prescriptions that validate or invalidate the ritual. The lesson is completed, as always, by a block of exercises:

• How does the fast benefit Muslims?

• Recite the verse that indicates the fast is incumbent upon Muslims.

• Put the following words into appropriate sentences:

  Fasting Ramadan suhur

• Complete: Among the traditions of the fast is the acceleration of the ______ and the delay of the ______, by which the faster ______ his fast.^[22]

The fourth grade text places Ramadan in the context of the Muslim ritual year, explaining in detail the conduct of the two Muslim feast days, ‘Id al-Fitr, commemorating the close of Ramadan, and ‘Id al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice during the month of Pilgrimage. The fifth grade book summarizes previous lessons and tells children who is required to fast. Reprising the theme of restraint, “because the fast is not simply a cessation of food and drink, but is indeed an act of worship that refines the character and brings the person to his lord through good works,” the book reminds students to eat the suhur meal (in effect, being moderate even in the fast itself), and to increase almsgiving, prayer, and study of the Qur’an. Then the primary school's treatment of Ramadan ends as it began, with a nashid—this one longer and far more complex—celebrating the growth of faith through contemplating the natural and celestial signs of God's existence and participating in the Ramadan fast.

In the early grades, the meaning and significance of Ramadan is expressed with the formal joy of classroom song and through the ritual fast's place in the life of the family. With time, students begin to learn more about the ritual details of the fast, personal restrictions that are balanced immediately by their beneficial effects on self and others. Next, fast and feast find their place in the yearly ritual cycle of Islam, their importance matched only by the celebration of sacrifice during the season of pilgrimage. And finally, as the child reaches the age of personal participation, learning about Ramadan becomes learning about individual and social responsibilities.

In contrast to the editorial processes of consolidation and grading, reinterpretation and functionalization are authorial processes, shaping the meaning of Islamic history and practice by interpreting them in fresh ways. Although the Qur’an contains its own explicit messages about God's intentions, the social and political use of the Qur’an can require that it bear additional semantic loads. In textbooks, the derivation of additional moral or political lessons from the Qur’an or sunna is accomplished in part through the transformation of sacred text into durus, or “lessons.” Retelling stories from the Qur’an in a straightforward narrative form allows textbook authors to make claims about reality in a way that insulates their own commentary from the sacred text itself. Their interpretations of the story are not tafsir in a strict sense, explanations that seek to illuminate the meaning of the Qur’anic verse in its context, but rather paraphrases and commentaries on the events and personalities that the verses describe.

Take, for example, the story of the prophet Joseph. The story of Joseph in the fifth grade textbook is a ten-page paraphrase of the 111-verse sura 12, Yusuf, in the Qur’an. Aside from shuttling introductory and concluding exhortations off into another section, the schoolbook version is a straightforward paraphrase of the Qur’anic story, with a simplified grammar and vocabulary. Because of his power as an interpreter of dreams and the favor he found with Pharaoh, Joseph was made minister of Egypt and saved the country from famine; even after being reunited with his father (Jacob/Israel) and brothers, he retained his mighty position in the country and instead of returning to Canaan invited his family to settle with him in Memphis. But at the end of the life story of Joseph in the Egyptian fifth grade book, the authors of the text have appended a short patriotic paragraph:

And thus Egypt has always been, and still is, a refuge for the prophets and the illustrious and outstanding people from the Arab nation and the Islamic world, who have been delighted to experience it, always sure of its welcome, and living within its family as beloved brothers.^[23]

While Joseph was not an Arab, he was a Muslim, both as a prophet of God in his own right and as the great-grandson of Abraham, builder of the ka‘ba in Mecca (sura 12,101). With this brief paragraph the text's authors have effectively Islamized Egypt twenty-three centuries before Muhammad.^[24]

While this reinterpretation constructs readings of history that legitimate the authority of policymakers, functionalization as a specific textual process harnesses divine intention to public policy itself, helping to bring religious instruction into the conscious service of independent social and political ends. To illustrate this process, we can look at the textbooks' use of science, technology, and medicine. On one level, the interdependence of Islam and science is stressed in order to avoid the pitfall of implying that secular knowledge is inseparable from secularism. On another level, though, the linkage is made to bless elements from the religious sphere with the elevated status of science's secular mystique. This interdependence of science and religion is a constant refrain in both public and private sector Islamic literature for all age levels, an important part of a technocratic approach to economic and social policy. It is handled in different ways for different purposes, depending on the nature of the audience, the medium, and the rhetorical goal of the author. But in general, there are three relatively well-defined techniques.

First, new technologies or techniques are used to help maintain the religious reference system. Using loudspeakers for the call to prayer, cassette tapes to record famous Qur’an reciters, or observatories to determine scientifically the exact times of dawn and dusk prayers are all pragmatic applications of science and technology to aid worship, education and da‘wa (Islamic outreach activities). Second, new technologies are legitimized by Islamic principles. This practice supports new medical technologies such as in vitro fertilization, plastic surgery, and birth control programs, which potentially threaten the integrity or function of God's creation. When properly bounded within certain limits, such practices can protect or further divine interests by correcting accidental errors or by satisfying other legitimate goals of the individual, the family, or the community.^[25]

Finally, Islamic concepts and practices are corroborated by modern science. Scientific research, particularly from foreign countries or international agencies, is cited to show that secularists are finally discovering those truths that Muslims have known all along. This process is not limited to government-issued textbooks, but is a general feature of the production of contemporary genres of Islamic literature. Some of the best examples of the use of medical knowledge to further faith, in fact, are from the private sector, as in the following report in the July 1989 issue of Zamzam, the children's supplement to al-Mukhtar al-Islami (The Islamic Digest), a monthly magazine associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Presenting a picture of an EKG chart, the article begins,

If you look carefully at this picture, you will see that it repeatedly draws a specific word; scrutinizing the letters of every word, you will see that every word is made of the letters A L L H, written in the Arabic language in raq‘a script; indeed, it is the term of Majesty.…And this picture that you see was not drawn by a human hand, but by a machine, a medical instrument made by a man who didn't know Arabic. The machine was not intended to write this word or any other, but is used to show the beating of the heart (that is, its pulsations) and to turn it into a picture on paper.…Scientists didn't know at first that this drawing resembled a word in Arabic, but finally the great discovery was made that every beat says, in this drawing that an EKG makes of every human heart, every beat says in the testimony of this electrical device, “Allah, Allah, Allah.” ^[26]

God has literally written His name upon the hearts of His creation, an act revealed by the use of technology. This natural theology attempts systematically to read God's presence and characteristics from those of the natural world which He created, using the hidden rhythms of the body itself as a measurable record of His existence.^[27]

The use of science or natural phenomena to reinforce faith finds its way into the official religious studies curriculum as it did in the science curriculum, by binding science and religion to national progress. In the fifth grade class discussed in the last chapter, the class reading that was interrupted by the noon call to prayer had come from the section of the text on “cleanliness:”

Cleanliness is next to Godliness [al-nidhafa min al-iman], and…distinguishes a Muslim person, because our Islamic religion…impels the Muslim to it, even making cleanliness of the body and clothing one of the basic rules of prayer. Cleanliness includes that of the body and the clothing, and of food and drink, and cleanliness of the home and school, and mosque, and street, and so on. And on top of that Islam makes us desirous of personal adornment and sweet fragrances and the choice of good clean clothes. God (may He be exalted) says in verse 31 of Sura al-A‘raf, “Oh Children of Adam! Wear your adornment at every place of worship.” And the Messenger, may God bless and save him, used to wear white scented garments on Fridays and the two feast days, and he loved sweet-smelling things. Cleanliness… is a token of advancement and civilization, strongly bound to the progress of peoples, for advanced peoples are cleaner in their attire than others, and in their food and drink, and their streets. Islam had preceded all advanced nations by ages—in its call for cleanliness—and it made “cleanliness next to Godliness” when the Messenger, may God bless and save him, says “God is pleasant [tayyib] and loves pleasant things.” Perhaps the wudu’[ritual ablution before prayer] clarifies best the scope of Islam's interest in cleanliness, since it is part of prayer…and—there's no doubt—it cleans man's body, and the modern physician has established that the wudu’ a number of times a day brings health and keeps away skin diseases, just as he has proved that the istinshaq [the inhalation of water through the nostrils during the wudu’] protects people from the various respiratory diseases, and just as in rinsing there is a cleaning of the teeth guaranteed to freshen the breath; this had been mentioned in the noble Hadith: “Not to burden my people, I ordered them to use the siwak [a short stick for cleaning the teeth] at every prayer.” And that because in the use of the siwak or the toothbrush there are clear effects in the cleaning of the teeth and their whiteness, and in killing the germs that cling to them due to the food that is found between the teeth if they are not cleaned well, which has caused teeth to fall out, creating horrible breath. And among the manifestations of Islam's concern with cleanliness: that it calls on us to bathe for prayer on Fridays and on the two feast days.… And the modern physician agrees with Islam in this, for doctors call on us to bathe at least once a week, guarding the body's cleanliness and freeing it from diseases.…The conclusion is that whoever wants to maintain the teachings of his religion looks after cleanliness. And whoever wants people to love and respect him is neat and clean, for Islam is a religion of cleanliness, and therefore it's a religion of advancement and civilization.^[28]

The passage is striking in its equation of the ritual purity of the wudu’ with the physical purity of a secular bath, a hygienic practice within the domain of the physician rather than the theologian. The sacred requirement of ablution has been functionalized, implying that the reason for the prescription is its presumed effect on health and well-being, rather than to mark a separation between sacred and profane.^[29] The passage then forges further linkages between cleanliness (e.g., of streets) and civilization, creating a hierarchy of peoples in which the Islamic community is historically the first, and placing the sunna of the Prophet in the domain of the urban planner and the public health official.^[30]

The treatment of the wudu’ throughout primary school texts consistently stresses its hygienic aspects. A note to the teacher in the first grade text, for example, advises her to demonstrate the ablutions to her pupils and watch them perform it, explaining “the benefits of the wudu’ and the importance of its repetition to the maintenance of cleanliness, that this cleanliness induces health and vitality in the pupil, just as it produces pleasure in social intercourse with people, and not estrangement from them.” ^[31] In the second grade, pupils learn that “the wudu’ is cleanliness”; that it “protects you from illnesses” and “invigorates the body and protects it from diseases.” ^[32] In the fourth grade pupils are introduced to the istinja’, the cleansing of the excretory regions of the body: “Islam… calls on us always to bathe twice, or at least once a week.…The person must purify himself of remaining traces of urine or feces, and clean their outlets, until there isn't an unpleasant smell, and one doesn't run the risk of diseases.” ^[33] Praising soap and water, the lesson ends with a set of exercises including these two items:

• 7.

  Write the following statement in beautiful script: “The clean person washes his hands with soap and water when he emerges from the bathroom.”

• 8.

  Your little brother exits the bathroom and hasn't washed his hands—what do you say to him?^[34]

Presenting moral lessons in the context of activities or hypothetical situations is intended to raise them above the level of mere memorization, phrasing rules in terms that the child can not only remember, but remember to apply in everyday situations. Significantly, this specific equation of moral and hygienic behavior is of long standing in Egypt; both are considered applied subjects in which the real test is the conduct of life rather than performance on written examinations.^[35]

Logically, if not psychologically, this functionalization is a two-step process. First, social functions (increased health, cleanliness, order) are attributed to Islamic practices. Then these functions are interpreted not only as effects, but as the primary intent of given practices, and therefore divinely sanctioned themselves. Moreover, as in the case of ablutions, additional terms can be added to the formula. In stressing cleanliness both as a contributor to individual health and a token of social progress (‘unwan al-ruqiy wa al-hadara), the text closes the causal circle. Since advanced civilizations are noted for attention to cleanliness and the Islamic community is the first among peoples, then physical cleanliness must be the primary function of the ablution.

If reinterpretation is an anachronistic reading of historical events, functionalization is in part a recontextualized rendering of divine intention. These two methods help shape the content of classroom texts, while consolidation and grading affect their format. There is, finally, a fifth process at work in the composition and use of these texts. That is the process of ritualization, which does not figure in the transformation of scripture into lesson, but in the resacralization of the lesson itself. Structured recitation and memorization of the textbook in anticipation of examinations, periodic in-class quizzing, the regular appearance of activities and exercises for which determined responses are often expected, and the implied double audience (text for students, footnoted instructions for the instructor) build around the textbook a congregation engaged several times a week in its ritual appreciation. The textbook provides the liturgy for ritual dramatizations of the moral authority of the state.

Family and School as Sources of Moral Authority

This authority is clear in the textbook treatment of the family and the school as sources of moral knowledge.^[36] The image of the family in the contemporary textbook is ambiguous, for although parents, siblings, and other relatives are portrayed as central foci of the child's own moral duties, they are hardly ever portrayed as sources of moral enlightenment. That place has been usurped by the public functionaries of the school itself. As we saw at the end of the last chapter, this symbolic confiscation of moral authority feeds back into the constant media representation of the ideal family, making the family the target of moral development rather than the source. For the textbook to be used as an authoritative source of knowledge, it must help to define its institutional context as authoritative. We have already seen that lessons have sometimes been altered in newer textbooks to move away from stories and plays, but this has not been the case universally. It is still an important pedagogical strategy not to set out moral precepts in isolation, but to nest them within an image of idealized life, whether within the family, on the streets, or elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, such images often include the school as one of the primary characters, as we saw in the story of Sa‘id and his father earlier in this chapter. In these images the school is not only one of the arenas of the child's day-to-day life, it is portrayed as the source of the child's most elementary articulable moral knowledge, a knowledge that the child proudly carries back to his or her grateful family. In primary school textbooks it is also the sole representative of the state. The very first lesson on adab in the second grade book provides a fine illustration of this technique. In the story, ‘Abir returns from school to find that her mother is preparing food for her father and some of his friends, whom he is bringing home after work. ‘Abir volunteers her help with food preparation and cleaning the reception room, and volunteers her brother Muhammad to go to the store and pick up some things. When the evening is over, their father sits with them and commends their behavior, thanking them for cleaning, preparing, and for serving the guests.

‘Abir said, “This is my duty towards my mother and my father, and we learned in school today a great lesson about loving one's parents and cooperating with them, and we memorized [part of] the glorious Qur’an and a noble tradition [of the Prophet], and I want you to hear them, father, and you, mother. [God] said, may he be exalted, “Serve God, and join not any partners with Him; and do good to parents” [sura 2, 36]. “A man came to the Prophet, may God bless and save him, and said, O Messenger of God: what person is most deserving of perfect friendship? [The Prophet] said, Your mother. [The man] asked, Then who? [The Prophet] said, Your mother. [The man] asked, Then who? [The Prophet] said, Your mother. [The man] asked, Then who? [The Prophet] said, Your father.” ” ^[37]

The story is followed by a drawing of ‘Abir and Muhammad helping their parents with the guests, and a short nashid about loving one's parents: “What pleases God except what pleases [your] parents/What is the beauty of life but the affection of [your] parents/Love your parents to live in happiness/And [if you] offer [your] spirit as a sacrifice to them, you will find good reward.” ^[38]

Given the importance invested in the child's duties toward the family, it might seem surprising that parents are only rarely depicted as founts of religious or moral counsel. Children are advised always to help and obey their parents even if they have differences of opinion with them, “because [your parents] both love you and wish only the best for you always, and never think of anything but your happiness.” ^[39] But children are sometimes portrayed as the wiser parties in moral quandaries. A story in the third grade book tells of how ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab, the companion of the Prophet and second caliph of the Muslim community, was wandering the streets of Medina before dawn one day when he heard a conversation between a mother and daughter. The mother instructs the daughter to water down the milk the girl has just brought, so they can sell it for a greater profit. The girl reminds her mother that Islam has prohibited such a practice, and what would the Commander of the Faithful say? The woman replies that neither the Commander of the Faithful nor anyone else can see what they are doing, but the girl counters that God can see them, and that they must please him both in secret and in public.

Mother:

Do what I tell you, sweetheart.

Daughter:

Should I obey you and disobey God, dear mother? Certainly not.

Mother:

If you don't mix the milk with water, we won't make any profit.

Daughter:

If we please God, he will bless us with profit and expand our subsistence.

Mother:

God bless you, daughter. You are better than I, and have just taught me a great lesson.^[40]

‘Umar is so pleased with the young girl that when he goes home to tell his sons the story, he asks which of them will marry her. His son ‘Asim volunteers, noting that ``such a girl will make a virtuous wife.'' The reward for virtuous behavior is material and immediate, as in the example below of telling the truth about a low mark at school.

Aside from the story about Ramadan discussed above, the only sustained example in this series of books of parents serving as a source of moral instruction occurs in the fourth grade. The story is an interesting one in that it combines several of the themes we have been discussing, and reminds us of the real-life story at the end of the last chapter, of the young girl's electronically mediated knowledge of the Qur’an. This story deals with Ahmad and his father.

Ahmad was used to turning on the [radio] broadcast of the Glorious Qur’an every morning upon waking up. For he loved always to begin his day by listening to some verses of the book of God (may He be exalted), and his father encouraged him in this good habit. A lot of times, Ahmad asked his parents, when the family gathered together over breakfast, about the meaning of some Qur’anic words and verses he had heard.^[41]

This particular morning, Ahmad asks his father about verse 185 of the sura ’Al ‘Imran, “Every soul shall have a taste of death, and only on the Day of Judgment shall you be paid your full recompense.” When will the Day of Judgment come, he asks, and what will happen then? His father explains what the Day of Judgment is, but says that only God knows when it will be. Ahmad, assiduously thanking his father for each answer, still doesn't understand the meaning of one of the terms his father has used, “yawm al-ba‘th,” the Day of Resurrection, but his father doesn't have time to explain it before school, so promises Ahmad he will give him a book about it later that day.

After school Ahmad flips eagerly through the book and realizes that it contains all the information he needs about the resurrection and judgment. He agrees to his father's suggestion that he divide the book into sections, reading just one part each day for a week, so as not to interfere with his schoolwork. At the end of the week, he delightedly gathers excerpts to share with his classmates at school by publishing them in the class newsletter “so they would benefit from the good religious information he had.” ^[42] This story brings together the father, the Qur’an, radio broadcasts, religious publications, and the school newsletter as sources of religious instruction. The lesson ends by quoting Ahmad's excerpts on death, resurrection, and judgment, but its didactic purpose is not defined merely by their presentation. Like the newspaper story about the virtuous village family memorizing the Qur’an in the last chapter, this fable provides an idealized model of the Muslim family in which parents and children cooperate to strengthen family piety with the help of social institutions responsible for publishing books and broadcasting the Qur’an. This strength and motivation is then transferred to the public domain of the school, just as in the example of ‘Abir and her brother, moral lessons from school were transferred to the home.^[43]

In the fourth grade book the school reappears in the very next lesson about a schoolteacher teaching his students about proper Muslim forms of greeting after having them practice their ablutions in the school mosque,^[44] and then again where a section on the names and occupations of the angels is framed by a story about the teacher leading his pupils together in the noon prayer:

And the teacher had been used, from time to time, after doing the prayer, to give each one of them a book from the library of the prayer area, to read for a little while, then he directed a little talk and discussion about the topics they wanted to investigate and understand, and to answer their questions, and point them to those things that were right and beneficial in this world and the next.^[45]

But the textbooks portray school not just as a place to discover ancient moral truths. School is, in proper Deweyan fashion, a miniature moral universe where looking after one's classroom and one's books, and remembering one's lessons, is one way in which the child serves God.^[46] School is like life, with the year-end test differentiating justly between the diligent and negligent students just as God's just accounting on the Day of Judgment will differentiate between people who do good and those who do evil.^[47] A section on telling the truth uses a school example to show the child that lying only hurts the liar, and that the rewards for good behavior are immediate and material as well as deferred and spiritual:

For example, if you got a low score on one of your subjects, you have to tell your parents, without exaggerating or minimizing; and you know that truth will benefit you in this case, because when your father learns that your score is low in a subject, he'll help you until you're strong in it, and you will excel among your classmates; truth makes you a winner, and lying a loser.^[48]

This passage reveals an interesting idealization of parental behavior keyed to the middle-class home (where, to be sure, the parents are just as likely to hire the pupil's teacher to give after-school lessons, as to help the child themselves). Going to school is the child's job, just as the peasant, the truck driver, and the parent all have their employment, without which society, imagined as an organism very much like the human body in the differentiation and interdependence of its parts, could not function.^[49] Islam is the charter for the function of modern society and requires attentiveness to work and mutual cooperation. Even the Prophet, one story shows, worked hard to accomplish group tasks, and refused to eschew manual labor or to be marked with special privilege.^[50]

Supplements to Public Sector Instructional Media

There are a number of public and private sector publishing companies in Egypt that develop and market religious material for children. Stories about the lives of the prophets are particularly popular, as are manuals for adults on Islamic upbringing. During my stay in Cairo bookstalls carried, in addition to numerous general works on Islamic childrearing, at least four different manuals on prayer. One of these was for adults newly interested in fulfilling their Islamic obligations, one was for older children who could already read, and two were illustrated guides for parents and families on how to teach children to pray properly. Some companies are moving into a more upscale market as well, selling their products to private schools and through selected bookstores. The Safir Publishing Company was established in 1982 to do advertising and publicity (they placed advertising for, among other periodicals, the Muslim Brotherhood's monthly al-I‘tisam). In 1986 they opened a new operation, the design and publication of Islamic instructional material for younger children.

These materials are designed by the Children's Culture Unit (Wahda Thaqafa al-Tifl) in the company's main office in Muhandisin, a modern and prestigious area in Giza that has been the beneficiary of much of the new wealth of Sadat's post-1974 Open Door policy, which substantially liberalized regulation of foreign investment in Egypt. The company has a well-planned and aggressive sales policy, with representatives in each Egyptian governorate marketing their material to local bookstores and private schools. They also sell their products in other countries, both Islamic and non-Islamic (in Britain and the United States, for example), taking advantage of national, regional, and international book fairs.

Karim Shafik, whom we met briefly in the last chapter, had helped found the Children's Culture Unit at Safir before moving on to another publisher. He explained to me that the company had perceived a need for books concentrating on the preschool level, because all of the available ones were too simple. The basic idea behind Safir products was to provide a supplement (idafa) or an aid (masa‘da) for parents and for teachers in private schools, to give children a strong foundation in basic skills. The other goal of the company was to “Islamize the curricula,” since the basis of all knowledge is religion (haqiqat il-‘ilm id-din).

The company felt, he said, that books specifically about Islam should operate through “bab al-idah,” the path of clarification, attending to the child's nature and relying on “tabsit mafahim al-islam,” the simplification of Islamic concepts, by involving children in activities, like games. “I saw children playing some of the games of the kind you have had in America,” Karim said, “and how they concentrated on them and learned from playing them. That was the beginning of games like Battles of the Prophet,” one of the board games the company produced. When the government produces religious books, one member of Safir's staff complained, all they care about is al-hukm (authority, governmental control) and cost; and although Safir tries to produce economical materials, “it's not a charitable institution.” ^[51]

The company's pedagogical strategy, according to Karim, was rooted in the idea that

the child's capacity for memorization is much greater than his capacity for understanding. The memorization of the Qur’an can do a lot of things. It can improve pronunciation and diction, it can provide a basis for adab. But one thing that the memorization of the Qur’an cannot do, is to change your behavior or your comportment by itself. Because even if it's memorized, it's not understood, and the explanation of the meaning of the Qur’an requires a lot of work, and what modern methods do is to explain the context of the Qur’an in simple terms by breaking it down into principles and dwelling on those. So by the use both of memorization—and I myself have never memorized the Qur’an—and modern methods, we can fulfil all the aims we seek.

For example, we see that in the United States there are all kinds of social problems stemming from sexual excess and perversions, which lead to things like the AIDS epidemic, and we want to avoid that kind of thing here, but how do you explain such things to a child? The answer is that you start out by building a strong foundation based on clear, basic principles. Tarbiya has to do with the sound upbringing of the child (tanshi’a wa salihat it-tifl), to make an individual who is useful to society. You can think of da‘wa as the delivery of information (tawsil al-mafahim), whereas tarbiya is the formation of the human personality.^[52]

Aside from acquiring specifically moral skills, the company expects children to benefit in other ways from using such products. In the introduction to one of their coloring book series, the editors explain that, since childhood is the time when the basic features of the human personality are set in place and the faculties of the child develop quickly, it is important to pay close attention to these processes. The use of these coloring books will “improve the capabilities of the child” through helping him develop nervous and muscular coordination, an appreciation of beauty, “a sense for the harmony of spaces and sizes and colors,” and artistic ability. Furthermore, it “plants divine doctrine in the child's emotional life by tying together the whole universe with its Creator, who has command over everything he created.” The job of the teacher or parent is to demonstrate to the child “God's abilities and his wisdom in the creation of the various creatures presented in [the] book.” And finally, by coloring the pictures himself, the child learns self-confidence, and the importance of caring for his own property.^[53]

These goals are pursued skillfully in a number of series of books and other materials. Unlike cheap public sector religious textbooks, Safir's materials are of the highest quality, using well-printed colored pictures on slick paper stock, clear line drawings, and calligraphy. In addition to board games, of which the company produces at least three, there are several series of coloring books, flash cards, paper models of Islamic monuments, illustrated stories, books on adab and on the principles of Islam, capsule summaries of famous Islamic books, and workbooks for different subjects, from religion to arithmetic and English. Safir also sells Islamic jigsaw puzzles and produces posters with Islamic themes, all printed in color on heavy card stock, and a line of Islamic greeting cards. Various outside consultants, including educators, psychologists, and religious scholars cooperate in the conception, design, and writing of the books and other materials.

By and large, the books are quite close thematically to the products of the Ministry of Education. Stories illustrate basic rules of faith and behavior: put your trust in God during times of adversity, keep the streets clean, obey your parents. Model social practices are described in stories of model—and not so model—children as well. In one story a young boy learns through a painful experience not to disobey his parents.^[54] In another, a series of annotated cartoon panels shows us “A Day in the Life of a Muslim Child.” Like the government, private sector publishers functionalize Islamic teachings and practices, reading divine intention from the shape of the social and natural worlds. Just as the government books teach that daily prayers “invigorate the body,” and “accustom the Muslim to organization, and respect for appointed times,” ^[55] Safir produces materials like the illustrated story book al-Sufuf al-Munadhdhama (Orderly Lines), which emphasize that “al-nidham min al-iman,” orderliness proceeds from faith. The book's pictures and text compare alternate realities on facing pages. On one page, a clerk at a service window waits on patient men standing in a neat, quiet line, while on the facing page an employee in a different office serves a pushy, unruly, and ill-mannered crowd whose own behavior undermines his ability to attend to their requests. The first line proceeds in an orderly manner, each petitioner's papers being processed quickly and efficiently, while in the second scenario, men butt into the front of the line, fights break out, a wallet is stolen in the confusion of pushing and shouting. Soon the first employee has finished his work and can break for lunch, while no work at all has been completed in the second case.

In the final illustrations, the clerk in the first picture steps out of his office and begins to lecture to the assembly on the facing page. “If only you knew the lesson that we learned from prayer,” he says. “During collective prayer we must straighten the rows, just as in all our lives, we must have order, order…” In the ensuing conversation he informs the crowd that God will not look favorably at prayer rows that are crooked, because Islam is a religion of order and discipline (al-islam din al-nidham wa al-indibat). Order saves time and ensures fairness, and the men of the crowd finally realize that God teaches us through everything, and that the straight rows of prayer teach us that order and discipline will help tranquility and satisfaction to prevail in all human endeavor.^[56]

The proposition that “Islam is a religion of order and discipline,” and that the straight rows of prayer are part of a divine pedagogy, contrasts sharply with the colonial perception of Muslim ritual behavior (whether prayer or the rhythmic rocking during kuttab study) as a primitive feature of a backward faith. It places Islamic rituals on a par with the disciplinary technologies of the school, as described by Foucault and Mitchell, borrowing a modern European conception of self and projecting it backward in time, so that the Muslim umma becomes, once again, the historical antecedent and type specimen of civilized community. One interpretation of this statement might take it seriously in a Bourdieuian sense, and posit that the straight lines of prayer are one manifestation of a pervasive but implicit habitus that causes Egyptians to experience spatial and kinesic regimentation as natural, simply by living it in their everyday lives.^[57] The mental habits and the physical skills of prayer, taught implicitly at home and then explicitly in the religion class, and displayed publicly there in the form of recitation, response, and even on-demand display of proper prayer positions (rehearsed and mastered, at least in pantomime fashion, in the first grade), could be seen as part of the habitus.

But things are not as simple as this. While the practice of prayer might install the habitus of prayer, there is no reason to believe that this habitus becomes a generalized behavioral template, extended indefinitely to other realms of experience. The significant feature of this discourse of order and discipline is, instead, its framing of ritual behavior as a code that should be read rather than merely a habit that should be cultivated. In learning that “Islam is a religion of order and discipline,” through the example of the straight lines of prayer, the child is prompted to interpret aspects of social reality as having meanings beyond those that they proclaim or manifest directly. I would argue that contemporary pedagogy implicitly instills this habit of interpretation, this tafsir of the phenomenal world, in effect democratizing the creation of political ideologies, even if this means merely bringing implicit assumptions into the realm of the spoken.^[58]

Through the school, students learn to derive ideologies from the observation of social practices or natural phenomena. Egyptians do not carry the hexis of orderly prayer into other areas of their lives. It is context-bound, and only the symbolic elaboration that has come with the functionalization of the religious tradition allows the reading of a portable “order and discipline” into it.^[59] In fact, as John Bowen has shown in the case of Indonesia, the Muslim prayer ritual “cannot be “decoded” semantically because it is not designed according to a single symbolic or iconic code. In particular times and places Muslims have construed the salat as conveying iconic or semantic meanings, but as part of particular spiritual, social and political discourses.” ^[60]

In any ritual there are a number of features that can be made to signify. In Bowen's Indonesian example, local communities, governments and Islamic reform movements make specific aspects of prayer (e.g., its formality and periodicity, its communicative functions, its public nature) express ideal models of society, political divisions, theological notions, and community structure. Muslims elsewhere sometimes interpret the straight rows of prayer as battle lines arrayed against the forces of evil.^[61] The ritual is a rich source of alternative meanings that can be foregrounded and mobilized by specific groups. But underlying those specific mobilizations is the explicitness of the interpretive framework encouraged by an educational discourse centered on the abstraction of “principles” from the turath, the Islamic heritage.

Two things should be emphasized here with respect to the Egyptian case. The first is that the preoccupation with function is a general cognitive framework for the interpretation of social objects and events, an intellectual practice that is applied publicly both in strategic educational planning and in the mundane communication of subject matter in the classroom. Again, to take the example of ritual ablutions, educators use the connection between cleanliness and the Islamic tradition to encourage hygienic behavior, advising students that hygiene is the primary intent of the ritual. In learning this lesson, children learn both the explicit message that Islam looks after the individual's health and the implicit message that Islamic practices are to be examined for their latent functions and their social effect. In essence, the intertextual structure of “traditional” Islamic scholarship, which linked primary texts with written commentaries and glosses, has been broken. For in schoolbook discourse, sacred texts are linked with the observable world, both natural and social, as both their referent and their best proof. The ordinary educated Muslim need not master a complex body of legal or philosophical material in order to participate in functionalist discourse; the physician, the engineer, and the bureaucrat are equally well-equipped to bring their experiences of social, mechanical, and natural order into the discussion of God's nature.

Second, this functionalization occurs without the desacralization of the material, so that the process Durkheim described early in this century as one of the goals of the modern educational system is subverted.^[62] Naturalistic and materialistic explanations coexist with supernatural ones, for Muslims perceive the two as noncontradictory. The “real” reasons for religious practices do not strip off their theological cloaks. Since God is concerned with the welfare of the Muslim community, the prescriptions of Islam are not only beneficial, but manifestly rational. What is left is to see how these utilitarian ideologies are consolidated and maintained in public culture after the child leaves the elementary school's moral assembly line.

Notes