Tantawi engages with questions of modernity
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. On: blue jeans, headscarves, Coca-Cola, falafel, Umm Kulthoum and (my own favorite) Smashing Pumpkins.
Tantawi engages with questions of modernity
Technology must serve interests of humanity
By Yvonne Seng
Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of interviews with spritual leaders in the Middle East by cultural historian Yvonne Seng. The third interview, with Greek Orthodox Archbishop Damianos , will run next Wednesday.
CAIRO: Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi is a small man: shoulders slight, hands elegantly slim, features softly honed. A gray beard, shaven close for the summer heat, outlines his face. Tired black eyes swear, by God, they’d enjoy a good joke, as soon as they got some sleep. He wears the collarless, black robe of his profession, and the modified turban – a green felt cap swathed in white muslin – but he carries them almost absent-mindedly, as if someone has to remind him each morning to put them on.
Sheikh Tantawi’s grand passion is knowledge and, knowledge, according to a saying of the Prophet Mohammed, is meant to be used. His position as director and grand imam of the 1,000-year old Al-Azhar Madrassa, the world’s oldest continuous university, involves him in knowledge transfer.
The university has changed over the millennium. It now stretches far out into the suburbs of Cairo. Students no longer sleep on reed mats in the open air but in air-conditioned, modern dorms. They access the Koran on CD-ROM, communicate via satellite, internet and e-mail. They study computer technology and tourism (the current careers of choice). Their tastes intermingle East with West: blue jeans with headscarves, Coca-Cola with falafel, Umm Kulthoum with Smashing Pumpkins.
Moreover, as one of Sunni Islam’s foremost ulema, his legal readings impact more than 1 billion Muslims across the globe. I have come to his office to ask for his opinion of globalization and technology. More importantly, how he thinks we are doing as God’s caretakers of the planet, that is, both of the environment and other humans.
Sheikh Tantawi settles himself in the open circle of chairs. The scholar’s desk, the heavy attache case and bank of telephones wait behind him. His black-robed assistants, qualified men of learning themselves, have clustered on either side of him. He indicates there is room on both sides for us to join him and we move closer. He politely waves away the fuss his assistants make around him, and gives us, his petitioners, his full attention.
“From your perspective, what is our relationship with technology, its effect on our lives?” I ask.
He pauses before answering and considers his words. Governments, heads of state, religious and community leaders all have access to Sheikh Tantawi, as does the common petitioner.
“Islam is on the side of progress and development,” he says. “We welcome all machines invented in this age if they are for the progress and service of humanity.”
The grand sheikh then tents his fine hands before tapping them together.
“We should make it clear, however, that technology is to be used for the sake of humanity, not against it.”
I turn to another of the sheikh’s own concerns: the intricate balance of the planet’s resources and population, which continues to warp under stress. In the Koran, Adam is referred to in Arabic as the khalifa, the caretaker, or God’s vice-regent, of the planet.
“How are we doing then as caretakers of our planet?” I ask. “How are we faring in our relationship with the environment and each other?”
“Almighty God has created us from the earth of this planet,” the sheikh begins. “And we shall return to it after death. Therefore we should do every good thing possible for the sake of the earth and to benefit future generations.”
“Our investment in the planet is not purely physical. It is also spiritual.”
He quotes a verse in the Koran: “From the earth We have created you and We shall receive you back again in the Last Day.”
He says that this earth we are polluting and destroying comprises the spiritual and physical raw ingredients for the creation of future generations. To build stronger generations, we must therefore strengthen and replenish the earth. Quite simply, by our abuse or misuse of the planet, we poison the spiritual and physical life-stock, the basic building material, from which our children and future generations are formed. And since we return to the earth upon death, our lives, our selves, enrich or weaken that stock.
This is not an ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust homily. He is saying that our responsibility does not end with death. When it comes down to it, we are spiritual compost.
If we return to the earth as corrupted beings, we corrupt the future. However, if we fill the earth with goodness, both through treatment of it and betterment of our selves, we contribute to a better future. Rumi, the 14th century mystical poet, alluded to this when he spoke of himself as a seed beneath winter’s cold clay, waiting for the life-giving spring of the beloved. Somehow I can’t imagine that the spring Rumi yearned for was polluted with toxic waste.
“On a practical level … ” I begin. The sheikh holds his hand in a simple gesture, fingertips together, palm cupped toward heaven, as if catching rain drops, that says have patience. He’s already going in that direction.
Tantawi moves easily between the spiritual and the pragmatic. He may speak softly of spiritual legacy, but his immediate advice is down-to-Earth. Saving lives is as important as saving souls. Clean water is as important as the spirit.
“Yes, we should plant beneficial plants and trees,” he says, referring to the universal “we” of the much hyped “global village.” “We should see there is water in the wells by preserving the rivers. We should try to preserve every good thing for the sake of the future generations and for the people living now. We should construct houses for the poor and build factories to give a hand in the progress and prosperity of humanity.”
These are equally global and local responsibilities. The sheikh encourages international collaboration, the exchange of commerce and ideas that benefit and advance humanity.
He returns to our theme of Earth as a garden. The paradise given by God to be enriched by man has become a jungle, overgrown from neglect and man’s injustice to man.
“We cannot deny,” he says, “that all nations in this age, at the end of this century, are living in a type of a jungle. The strong try to eat the weak who live with them. In this jungle there is no mercy and no justice.”
The Prophet Mohammed said that three things undermine a society: poverty, ignorance and oppression. In his trusted position, the sheikh must wrestle with them all.
Add to knowledge, responsibility, commitment and hard work the sheikh’s belief that the moral imperative of the strong is to practice justice and protect the weak. Planting trees and providing clean water is not enough.
“From your perspective,” I ask, referring back to our earlier discussion of spiritual compost, “the planet both benefits and suffers from the generations that go before. How, then, would you describe the present state of the human spirit?”
“Spiritual life in today’s world – East or West, North or South – has become distracted,” he says, and the translator searches for another word: “Illegitimate.”
He is talking about the loss of a core characteristic of humanity: the state of virtue – or the belief in it.
The grand sheikh characterizes virtue as “mercy, kindness, the sincere love and respect for one another.” He calls for a return to virtue, but believes that this will only come with a return to the spiritual side of life. One of the keys, he says, is that we must rid ourselves of selfishness.
“In this way,” he says, “we will prevent man from being reduced to an animal.”
The images he offers are sobering. The garden as an overgrown jungle. Man, God’s vice-regent, reduced to an animal.
“If the world remains as it is today,” he continues, “it will weaken in the next century. But if we increase the number of reasonable people – people who think and are educated, people who are involved in their culture, good moral people – virtue will increase.”
Then, he says, the world will be characterized by peace and fulfillment.
The sheikh also argues for quality, not quantity. He argues for balance and tolerance.
“We can learn from each other,” the sheikh says, quietly, “from our differences, as well as what we have in common.”
Yvonne Seng, author of “Men in Black Dresses: Quest for the Future Among Wisdom Makers of the Middle East,” is a cultural historian specializing in the Middle East and Turkey.
