Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

ALI BONAPARTE129Muslims who drank wine would be permitted to convert, but that if they continuedto drink after the conversion, they would go to hell. The commander inchief pronounced himself delighted that the first difficulty had been removedbut expressed some consternation about the second point, which would hardlybe an incentive to conversion. Sheikh al-Mahdi suggested that the first part ofthe fatwa be released, in any case, which he thought would have a good effect onthe country. He maintained that the al-Azhar clerics went back to their discussionson the second matter, also corresponding with their peers in Mecca. In theend, they agreed that the new converts might drink, but would have to pay apenance for it. Bonaparte’s story is suspect. Although the second fatwa is intendedto be its denouement, he drops the subject at that point. Clearly, henever found a way of convincing the al-Azhar clerics to allow a pro forma declarationof French “conversion” to Islam.Although Bonaparte and his defender, Bourrienne, prefaced this account bysaying that Bonaparte never converted, never went to mosque, and never prayedin the Muslim way, all of that is immaterial. It is quite clear that he was attemptingto find a way for French deists to be declared Muslims for purposes of statecraft.This strategy is of a piece with the one used in his initial Arabicproclamation, in which he maintained that the French army, being without anyparticular religion and rejecting Trinitarianism, was already “muslim” with asmall “m.” Islam was less important to him, of course, than legitimacy. Withoutlegitimacy, the French could not hope to hold Egypt in the long run, and beingdeclared some sort of strange Muslim was the shortcut that appealed to Bonaparte.It foundered on the orthodoxy of the al-Azhar clergy, however.Bonaparte’s admiration for the Prophet Muhammad, in contrast, was genuine.He wrote in his memoirs that “Arabia was idolatrous when Muhammad,seven centuries after Jesus Christ, introduced to it the religion of the God ofAbraham, Ishmael, Moses, and Jesus Christ.” The Corsican decried the sanguinarydoctrinal wars of early Christianity, with squabbles over the nature ofthe Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and said admiringly, “Muhammad declaredthat there was only one God, who had neither father nor son and that theTrinity imported an idea from paganism.” He explained the sensual depictionsof paradise in the Qur’an by the poverty and ignorance of the Arabians of thattime, who did not have the luxury of a life of contemplation such as the Athenianscould pursue. Muhammad had to promise his acolytes, with their hardscrabblelives, Bonaparte explained, “sweet-smelling groves where they would reposein perpetual shade, in the arms of divine houris with white skin and black eyes.”Bonaparte coded the early Muslims as Bedouin who, impassioned at such a