1/16/11

Today in Arabic class, we translated sentences with the demonstrative pronouns. I’m glad we had this extra practice because I now understand the demonstrative pronouns. After that, we learned about the interrogative words. At first it was a bit confusing that the interrogative word comes at the end of the sentence, but I eventually got used to it. We also have a test tomorrow on everything we learned so far, so tonight, I know I’m going to be up late studying for this exam.
   
After Arabic class, we had our final dardasha with Nevenka. We went over the interrogative words we learned today in class and also the numbers, which I’d been wanting to learn since the beginning, since it would’ve been helpful to know the costs of items when I went shopping.
   
Late in the afternoon, we attended a lecture by Dr. Denis Sullivan on Islamism. He defined Islamism as the political manipulation of Islam. He explained that Islamism doesn’t have to be disparaged. There are many well-intended people who use Islamism for the benefit of people, so Islamists are not always extremists. In order to explain Islamism, he talked about the Muslim Brotherhood. He mentioned that five years ago the Muslim Brothers had 88 seats (20%) in Parliament, but this past election, they were shut out of Parliament. So why did this happen? Why did no one vote for them? The Muslim Brothers are banned, but tolerated, so they weren’t recognized as an actual political group. The phenomenon is that the single most popular group is the Islamist group.
   
The way they began was that in the late 19th century, people would come across seas to spread their influence of Islamism through the guy who found the Muslim Brothers, Hasaan al Banna. In the 1920’s he got caught up in post-WWI nationalist endeavors, so he founded the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the independence of Egypt to give people what the monarchy wasn’t providing. So many people joined him that the Muslim Brotherhood became a party. They wanted to use Islamic teachings to help the poor and create Islamism.
   
The rest of what we learned about the Muslim Brotherhood was a repeat of what we learned about them during the lecture on Egyptian politics. We’d learned that when someone attempted to shoot Nasser during a public speaking, he thought the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for it and he threw them in jail. Nasser even tortured and hung them. When Sadat became President in 1970, he didn’t have the support of the Nasserists, so he released the Muslim Brothers that were in jail and encouraged Islamism, but had them promise they wouldn’t use violence. During Sadat’s 11 years in office, a new Constitution was created saying that sharee’a was the principle source.