The news of the death of the Egyptian Islamic thinker and scholar Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd struck me as very difficult to believe. Although my luck didn’t have it that I meet him in person, but the news struck me as a personal loss! There are many many things which could be said about him … how he was a moderate thinker who bravely defied the norms in his attempt to understand sacred text … how he became the victim of fundamentalists who called him an unbeliever and filed the famous court case asking for his separation from his wife on the pretext of the impossibility of union between a Moslim woman and a faithless man. It’s hard to remember those years in the history of the intellectual Egyptian debate on whether this is an attempt against moderate Islam or actually against any thinker who dares to open his mouth in the era of an acclaimed dictatorship whose biggest fear is minds!

The results of the case was his exile for the rest of his life, only daring to visit for rare occasions over a terribly rough period of 15 long years! Finally to take his last breath in his home country, Egypt, and be saluted by the hundreds or possibly thousands that showed up for the funeral and the memorial yesterday.

I couldn’t just let the occasion pass without sending deepest regards to the late intellect who combined an honest regard and faith in Islam with a bright, moderate and critical mentality that bravely expressed itself amid the dark years of silence in this country.

Many sources picked up his work, and some of his lectures are still found on YouTube for anyone interested to know more about this great hero of our times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasr_Abu_Zayd

Maybe the one thing that touched me personally about his life was his deep honesty and full practice of what he preached. Never struggling or speaking harshly about anything, he clearly stated his arguments and very quietly stated his case. It’s probably this quiet, kind confidence that raised all the rage of the world against him; had he been a screaming scholar preaching out in the wild and asking people to believe in him, probably it wouldn’t have raised so much worry publicly because the like of those people are never taken very seriously. But the real risk comes from someone that can easily be called “kind” and “honest”, who can be easily believed and sympathized with. That is why exile was the only way out; assassination like what happened with Farag Fouda was going to raise an even greater turmoil this time and bring his work closer to the light … so was imprisonment like with Saad el Din Ibrahim (with all due respect to the differences in personalities and contributions of course) which was going to bring even greater rage upon the failing ruling regime. Exile and banishment from Egyptian public life was the true prison for him … and which he considered to be equivalent to his first death … separated from the country of his birth … but at least united with his wife; the faithful woman who stood beside him at the toughest times.

The memorial held yesterday was another display of this great man’s legacy and which will only stand higher and cross many more borders now that he is safely enjoying another world. Dr. Ibtihal Younis, his faithful wife, stood to receive condolences at the front door of the mosque; standing amid the many men from the family, holding her grounds as this one brave woman who shook men’s hands at the door of a mosque … an unprecedented case for such acclaimed mosque situated in the heart of Cairo and next to the symbol of the Egyptian tyrannical bureaucracy – Mogamaa El Tahrir. The entrance for men and women was unified for the first time according to my memory of Moslim memorials and both mingled in a silent revered space that is terribly missing this brave man. An honorable show of hundreds of intellects and artists and businessmen and activists made the memorial last longer than most normal ones … it was 10.30 when I finally left and some hundreds of people were still there and more coming in … most of them never related and the majority never actually saw him personally while alive. But it hardly mattered to any of us … we were all condoling ourselves in a loss too big to grasp at such sad moment.

Farewell Dr. Abu Zayd … and deepest condolences to Egypt; the unfortunate country who loses its lovers much faster than it loses its enemies.

In: Uncategorized | | #