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ENCOMPASSING JUDAISM: ELMESSIRI AND THE “ISLAMIC HUMANIST” SELF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2018

Robbert A.F.L. Woltering
Robbert A.F.L. Woltering*
Affiliation:
Robbert A.F.L. Woltering is an Associate Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Despite the weight of his work and his prominence in Arabic public debate, the Egyptian public intellectual ʿAbd al-Wahhab Elmessiri (1938–2008) has not been the subject of much serious study. In this article, I show that Elmessiri's oeuvre offers a rich and creative perspective on both Judaism and Zionism. Studying Elmessiri from the perspective of identity/alterity studies, I argue that his representation of Judaism qualifies as what Gerd Baumann and André Gingrich call “encompassment by hierarchical subsumption.” The article offers an analysis of the discursive logic behind this image of Judaism and its connection to Elmessiri's anti-Zionist agenda, rejection of anti-Semitism, and critique of Western modernity.

Keywords

alterity/identityElmessiriencompassmentintellectual historyZionism
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 233 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 Stein, Ewan, Representing Israel in Modern Egypt: Ideas, Intellectuals and Foreign Policy from Nasser to Mubarak (London: I.B.Tauris, 2012), 150Google Scholar; Nordbruch, Götz, “Rationalizing the Hidden Hand: ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Missiri's Theory of a ‘Judaisation’ of Society,” in The Global Impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Century Old Myth, ed. Webman, Esther (New York: Routledge, 2011), 229–38Google Scholar; Abu-Rabiʿ, Ibrahim M., Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 54Google Scholar. Hirschkind, Charles sees Elmessiri as a leading intellectual in more general terms; Hirschkind, “Beyond Secular and Religious: An Intellectual Genealogy of Tahrir Square,” American Ethnologist 39 (2012): 49–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 al-Masiri, ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Mawsuʿat al-Mafahim wa-l-Mustalahat al-Sahyuniyya: Ruʾya Naqdiyya (Cairo: Markaz al-Dirasat al-Siyasiyya wa l-Istratijiyya bi-l-Ahram, 1975)Google Scholar.

3 Elmessiri's Facebook page, accessed 30 November 2017, www.facebook.com/ElMesseiry/; Elmessiri's website, accessed 30 November 2017, www.elElmessiri.com.

4 Nordbruch, “Rationalising the Hidden Hand”; Schmolke, O., “Eine Antword auf Abdelwahab el-Massiri,” Die Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte 43 (1996): 422–25Google Scholar; Fähndrich, Hartmut, “Moderne mit Transzendenz: zur Gedankenwelt des Ägypters Abdalwahhâb Messîri,” SGMOIK/SSMOCI Bulletin 6 (1998): 15–16Google Scholar.

5 Ali, Haggag, Mapping the Secular Mind: Modernity's Quest for a Godless Utopia (London: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2013)Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 159. Corresponding with Ali, Elmessiri eventually wrote: “I believe now that you know my ideas more than I.”

7 Helen E. Mesard, “Abdelwahab Elmessiri's Critique of Western Modernity and the Development of an Islamic Humanism” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2013). The dissertation can be accessed through the university's dissertation repository. A commercial edition is due to be published in 2019 by Routledge under the title Islamic Humanism and Abdelwahab Elmessiri: Critique, Ethics, Activism. I have benefited enormously from e-mail correspondence with Mesard, from whom I have taken the translation of the term ḥulūliya as “immanentism.”

8 Lewis, Bernard, Semites & Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1986)Google Scholar; El-Aswad, El-Sayed, review of Islamic Attitudes to Israel, ed. Efraim Karsch and P.R. Kumaraswamy, Digest of Middle Eastern Studies 18 (2009): 107–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ajouaou, Mohamed, “Islamitisch antisemitisme onzuiver belicht,” ZemZem 2 (2006): 133–35Google Scholar; Taji-Farouki, Suha, “Thinking on the Jews,” in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Taji-Farouki, Suha and Nafi, Basheer M. (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004): 338–39Google Scholar.

9 Litvak, Meir and Webman, Esther, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London: Hurst, 2009), 227–36Google Scholar.

10 Baumann, Gerd and Gingrich, André, Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach (Oxford: Berghahn, 2004)Google Scholar.

11 Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003)Google Scholar.

12 Baumann and Gingrich, Grammars, 19–21.

13 Ibid., x.

14 Ibid., x–xi.

15 Ibid., 25.

16 al-Masiri, ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Rihlati al-Fikriyya: Fi al-Budhur wa-l-Judhur wa-l-Thamar: Sira Ghayra Dhatiyya Ghayra Mawduʿiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2006)Google Scholar; al-Masiri, Mawsuʿat al-Yahud wa-l-Yahudiya wa-l-Sahyuniya: al-Mawsuʿa al-Mujaza fi Juzʾayn (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2003).

17 Ibid., 11.

18 Ibid., 24.

19 Ibid., 130.

20 Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri, “Critical Writings of Wordsworth and Whitman: A Study of the Historical and Anti-Historical Imaginations” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1969).

21 Masiri, Rihlati, 24–25.

22 Ibid., 142.

23 Ibid., 212.

24 Ibid., 218.

25 Ibid., 227.

26 Ibid., 226.

27 Ibid., 281.

28 Ibid., 283.

29 Ibid., 284.

30 Ibid., 305.

31 Because Elmessiri hardly published in English, Bauman was not aware of Elmessiri's work until he was alerted to it by Ali. See Ali, Mapping, 150.

32 These two concepts were coined by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (d. 1936) and developed into ideal types by Max Weber (d. 1920).

33 Al-Masiri, Rihlati, 130. Of course, this description is anachronous; it would be some time before Elmessiri would think in terms of this binarism.

34 Ibid., 29–32, 56–57. Incidentally, Damanhur is famous for containing the burial place of the 19th-century rabbi Abu Hasira, whose mulid attracts many Jewish devotees.

35 Ibid., 35. This accusation is repeated on p. 165.

36 See especially Amin, Jalal, Khurafat al-Taqaddum wa-l-Takhalluf: al-ʿArab wa-l-Hadara al-Gharbiyya fi Mustahall al-Qarn al-Wahid wa-l-ʿAshrin (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2005)Google Scholar.

37 Hassan, Fayza, “Abdelwahab Elmessiri: A Scholar and Three Wolves,” Al-Ahram Weekly 415 (1999)Google Scholar, accessed 27 August 2016, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/1999/415/people.htm.

38 Al-Masiri, Mawsuʿa, 1:41–42.

39 Ibid., 43.

40 al-Masiri, ʿAbd al-Wahab M., “al-Haqiqa wa-l-Wahm . . fi Qissat Brutukulat Hukamaʾ Sahyun,” al-Manar al-Jadid 21 (2003): 20–38Google Scholar; al-Amir, Bahaʾ, “Brutukulat Hukamaʾ Sahyun . . . al-Raʾi al-Akhar,” al-Manar al-Jadid 22 (2004): 120–36Google Scholar. See also al-Masiri, ʿAbd al-Wahab M., al-Brutukulat wa-l-Yahudiyya wa-l-Sahyuniyya (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2003)Google Scholar. Already in 1977 Elmessiri engaged in a discussion over The Protocols and the need to reject them as a forgery, in a polemic with Bernard Lewis who had stated that no Arab writer had ever called into question the authenticity of The Protocols. See Lewis, Bernard and Elmessiri, Abdelwahab M. “Arab Views on ‘the Protocols,’” Foreign Affairs 55 (April 1977): 641–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Al-Masiri, Rihlati, 627.

42 Stein, Representing Israel, 84–85, 95–96, 194.

43 Achcar, Gilbert, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab–Israeli War of Narratives (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 40Google Scholar, 47.

44 Al-Masiri, Mawsuʿa, 2:21–22.

45 Ibid., 1:343–44.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 2:124.

49 Here Elmessiri seems to confuse Maimonides with Maimonides's son, Abraham Maimonides. See Fenton, Paul B. “The Jewish Pietist Movement,” in Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Meri, Josef W. (London: Routledge, 2005), 546–48Google Scholar.

50 Al-Masiri, Mawsuʿa, 2:124.

51 Ibid., 2:271.

52 Ibid., 2:273.

53 Ibid., 1:211–12.

54 See Levi, Primo, If This Is a Man (London: Folio Society, 2000), 103Google Scholar; and Reshef, Yehuda and Berenbaum, Michael, “Muselmann,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Berenbaum, Michael and Skolnik, Fred, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 14Google Scholar:623. Litvak and Webman also discuss this fragment, though they draw on Elmessiri's al-Sahyuniya wa-l-Naziya wa-Nihayat al-Tarikh (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1997), which offers an identical text on pp. 22–228. However, they fail to point out Elmessiri's misunderstanding of the context. See Litvak and Webman, Empathy to Denial, 232.

55 Baumann and Gingrich, Grammars, 25.