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

34 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTHaving described the French in this hostile way, he turned to the values assertedin the pamphlet, which he rejected. He brought into sharp questionBonaparte’s declaration that he respected the Prophet Muhammad and honoredthe Qur’an, since, he insisted, true respect and honor could only be demonstratedby accepting their truth and converting to Islam. He pointed out that thewriter of the pamphlet, when alleging that the French were a kind of muslim,put the word “muslims,” in the wrong noun case in Arabic, and he punned thatthe allegation itself made a faulty case. He also denied the pamphlet’s claim that“all the people are equal before God.” He thundered, “This is a lie, and ignorance,and stupidity. How could it be, when God has chosen some above others,and all the people of the heaven and earth have borne witness to it?”The republican French posed a puzzle to the Muslim scholar. Theologically,they were Unitarians, like Muslims; but in their social customs they resembledother Christians, and they rejected any theory of divinely inspiredprophecy or the revelation of religious law, which for al-Jabarti was the coreof religion. Bonaparte made the typically Western error of thinking aboutIslam primarily as a doctrine, whereas for a Middle Easterner such as al-Jabarti it was a way of life. For Muslims such as the Egyptian cleric, Islam layin the five pillars of recognizing the uniqueness of God and the prophethoodof Muhammad, praying five times a day, fasting the month of Ramadan, givingalms to the poor, and going on pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.Bonaparte had nothing to say about any of these pillars except for halfof the first one (monotheism). From al-Jabarti’s perspective, the concordanceof mere doctrine said little about how alike two religious systems might be(otherwise Judaism and Islam could easily be conflated). All this is not to saythat the proclamation had no effect. Literate peasants read it differently thanthe Cairene patrician, apparently, for he reported that in the countrysideBonaparte’s claim to be acting on behalf of the Ottoman sultan was believedby some.Al-Jabarti also drew back the curtain on the stir produced by the French occupationof Alexandria in Cairo, some 140 miles to the south. 17 Fear spreadthrough the populace, and many thought about taking flight. One leader,Ibrahim Bey, rode to Qasr al-’Ayni, and was joined there by Murad Bey fromGiza and then the rest of the commanders, as well as by the chief Muslim judgeand the leading clergy. They launched into a discussion of what had to be doneabout this setback to the Muslims. They decided to send a courier to the Ottomansultan to ask for assistance, and it fell to the figurehead Ottoman viceroyof Egypt, Ebu Bekir Pasha, to write the letter. The Ottomans occasionally sent