EGYPT: Egypt, long a crucible for the Muslim world, has been undergoing a significant religious revival, writes Mary Fitzgerald, in the second part of her series
Mohammed remembers his early twenties with a sheepish grin.
"I was far away from Islam," he admits. "I wasn't praying. I was drinking and chasing after girls."
The awakening came after one of Mohammed's friends invited him along to a sermon given by a young Muslim preacher in one of Cairo's wealthier suburbs. "I realised I was losing a lot of things in my life. Now I feel I'm living in the right way and moving in the right direction closer to my God."
Mohammed's story is a familiar one in Egypt today. As is the 29-year-old mobile phone sales manager's insistence that his religious awakening is not incompatible with everyday life.
Koranic recitations share space on his iPod with James Blunt and Lebanese pop. Instead of saying goodbye when ending a call with family members, he signs off with "La illah illa Allah" - "There is no God but God".
His banker sister is veiled, as are some of his women friends. At weekends he swaps his suit for jeans and trainers, stays out late on a Thursday night but always makes Friday prayers at the mosque.
"My modern life and my Muslim life are parallel with each other and there is no reason why they shouldn't be," he explains.
Egypt has long been an ideological and political crucible for the Muslim world. Some of Islam's most prominent and influential thinkers, from traditional to reformist and radical, have been Egyptian. Its teeming capital is home to the venerable al-Azhar, Islam's oldest centre of learning, dating back to the 10th century.
Egypt has also played a crucial role in the development of Islamism, giving birth to political Islam with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, and producing home-grown militant Islamist groups such as Gemaa Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad.
Two of Osama bin Laden's deputies, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef, fine-tuned radical ideologies in their homeland of Egypt, as did Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the September 11th attacks.
Both strains of Islamism have made their presence felt in the last year. The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood won an unprecedented number of seats in recent elections by standing as independents, their long-standing slogan "Islam, howa al hal" - "Islam is the solution" - dominating the campaign.
Militant Islamism has returned in the form of a series of bomb attacks in the beach resorts of the Sinai region, mostly blamed on alleged al-Qaeda infiltration of the local Bedouin population.
But to focus solely on the headline-grabbing Islamists, both political and militant, is to ignore the quiet transformation of Egyptian society and culture over the last three decades, the result of a grassroots religious revival that cuts across all ages and social ranks, sweeping up young professionals like Mohammed along with middle-class housewives and the poor of Egypt's hardscrabble towns.
Many of these are people who would never consider voting for the Muslim Brotherhood. Most abhor the violent Islamism that convulsed Egypt in the 1990s. But they all agree something has changed.
"People in this area were always religious because most of them came from small towns in Upper Egypt," says Hares, a café owner in Imbaba, one of Cairo's most impoverished districts and once synonymous with Islamist militancy.
"But things have become more conservative," he says. "Look at women around here, they once wore the veil but now they wear the niqab [the all-black garment that obscures everything but the eyes]. My wife and five daughters started wearing niqab five years ago. It was their choice. They believe it is more Islamic."
The outward signs of increased piety are everywhere. The hijab is no longer the symbol of protest it was the 1970s. All but colonised by fashion, it has now entered the mainstream. Newspapers regularly run stories about famous actresses, bellydancers and TV personalities donning the veil. Three-storey shops catering solely for the "Islamic" clothing market carry a dizzying array of stock from full-body swimwear to polka dot and neon-coloured headscarves.
Men cultivate zabibas - a permanent bruise on the forehead caused by vigorously pressing the forehead to the floor during prayer - as a sign of devotion. Others eschew gold wedding rings because the Prophet Muhammad deemed gold improper on men.
Many trace the beginning of this religious revival to Israel's humiliating defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 war, a crisis interpreted by some as divine punishment for Egypt's straying from Islam under Nasser's avowedly secular regime.
Disenchantment and frustration due to decades of rampant corruption, economic stagnation and lack of meaningful political participation have nudged many back to religion.
The Saudi factor also comes into play. Millions of Egyptians have sought work in the kingdom since the oil boom years, many returning home with a more conservative, rigid view of Islam that has subsequently percolated to varying degrees through all levels of society.
Still others point to a Muslim quest for identity that is not just confined to Egypt.
"Twenty-five years ago Cairo had 1,000 mosques; now it has 30,000. That is very telling," says Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
"But the factors that are particular to Egypt do not explain the Islamic revival in countries like Indonesia and Morocco. Islamicisation is not just Egyptian now; it's universal. It has become a defence, a way of protecting against moral, cultural and economic invasion."
For Mohammed and his friends, however, the spur was a spiritual restlessness.
"People my age feel something is missing from our lives," he says. "Modern life is difficult. It's fast and busy and there are too many distractions.What we are looking for is peace of mind. Islam gives us that."
Beyond the increase in observance and ritual are those Egyptians who are looking at Islam from new angles, in an attempt to reconcile its values and meanings with the modern needs of its adherents. While still emphasising family values, traditional morals and cultural authenticity, these Muslims address Islam in ways that appear less rigid and ideological than in the past. They include charismatic TV preachers who praise hard work, ambition and wealth in a style that owes much to American televangelists. They also include people like Dr Heba Qutb.
A licensed sex therapist who is more likely to consult the Koran than Kinsey, Qutb is used to raised eyebrows. Her regular appearances on a TV talk show have led to lecture invitations across the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia. She talks frankly about marital sex problems, drawing on the Koran and Sunnah (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad) for inspiration.
Her clinic in Cairo has a two-month waiting list.
"I'm a pioneer," she says, fixing her fashionable cream-and-red headscarf. "Islam understood sexuality long before the rest of the world but many things have been masked by social, cultural and historical factors. For too long Islam was taught and seen as a series of restrictions - this is prohibited and that is prohibited. When you really know Islam, you understand that it is about enjoying life.
"I'm not inventing something that is not there, I'm just making the links using the Koran and Sunnah. Hopefully this will happen in other fields too."
Across the city in the affluent suburb of Heliopolis, Magda Amer is preparing for her weekly lesson at the cavernous Abu Bakr al-Sidqi mosque. A graduate of al-Azhar, she is one of some 50 women trained and approved to teach women's rights, sharia and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) at women-only prayer groups. She is also a biochemist and homoeopath and owns Egypt's only health-food shop.
Her books blend Islamic teaching with references to chakras, auras and alternative medicine. She namechecks popular western self-help guides such as Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus and says her next book is on "how to deal with husbands".
"It's a way of interpreting Islam and applying it to science and modern life. I take the ideas and find the Islamic teaching to match," she explains. "We're saving marriages and we're saving families."
It's a recipe that plays well with the women who attend her sessions at the mosque. Such gatherings are known as halaqat (circles) and have flourished throughout Egypt in recent years. They take place in mosques or private homes, often feature a sheikh or preacher, and sometimes boast a veiled celebrity attendee at exclusive invitation-only gatherings.
Secularists have lamented the continuing religious revival and fear the possibility of its march beyond personal piety. They believe the so-called Islamicisation of Egyptian society has provided a congenial environment for Islamist political parties to gain ground. They point to the Muslim Brotherhood's recent election success against a background of growing political dissent and calls for reform, and wonder about the future of Egypt as a secular state.
Others have cast doubt on the depth of the new-found religiosity among Egypt's middle and upper classes, a trend some traditional Muslim scholars have dubbed "air-conditioned Islam".
"With some people much of it is to do with appearance," Magda Amer admits.
"They are taking a layer of Islam but they're not actually that religious. The application is not good and the behaviour is not quite Islamic. There's an earthly, materialistic emphasis. Corruption and dishonesty are still everywhere you look in Egypt despite this return to religion.
"We need to go further in terms of how we treat each other."
mfitzgerald@irish-times.ie
Mary Fitzgerald is the winner of the first Douglas Gageby fellowship, awarded for her journalistic project "Under the Crescent- the Faces of Islam". Her reports will appear weekly in Friday's Irish Times.