Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 2 | Page 12

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

making them into a folkloristic phenomenon. The image of Mulids transforms into a kind of cultural icon in the popular heritage where it has
become turned into folkloric art, and is represented in a way that the middle class can appreciate the aesthetic aspects without facing the complex
nature of Mulids. However, as Schielke notes, this is not only the case in folklore, but is also found in reformist Sufism, where an attempt can be
observed to legitimize Mulids as genuine devotion, against more ecstatic rituals, again reflecting the contestation among religious interpretative
stands. The government also initiated a large-scale restructuring of festivals where the government public-planning policies and control of visitors
of festivals, made the festive expressions and experiences fragmented. Moreover, even though retaining their character, Mulids move more to the
margins. The number of participants seems to decrease, while the number of Mulids seems to be stable. Schielke believes that Mulids will continue,
but in a different more marginalized way. In some neighborhoods in Cairo, Sufi celebrations with a more explicitly mystical and ecstatic nature,
separated from the amusement and trade prevalent in Mulids, are noticeable. Moreover, the Mulid character as a community festival may attract
people who are not there for religious reasons, which Schielke sees as a kind of secularization of Mulids. This leads to a further fragmentation of
Mulids and of the festive experience. Schielke notes that such pluralism has been characteristic of Mulids and it remains to be seen if Mulids will
make way for new festive traditions or if it will remain one distinct tradition.
The concluding chapter attempts to develop a more general vision of the Mulids as festivals of the extraordinary and the modernist project. Schielke
relates a discussion with a friend in Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolution, where the friend said “Isn’t this just like a Mulid?” Schielke claims
that a Mulid is not a revolutionary event, but that there is a shared tone of extraordinary freedom. The revolutionary space of Tahrir Square can be
compared to a Mulid. “Like a Mulid, it was, in itself, freedom” and it is described as a “lived utopian moment of revolutionary freedom” (p. 200). A
revolution is exceptional and singular in nature, but something out of the ordinary that makes us see the world differently, like Mulids. From this
observation, Schielke goes on to consider festivities in general as inseparable from the social world surrounding them. A Mulid gains its
significance based on the relationship it has to participants’ general life experiences, their place in society and views of the world. However, they
cannot be reduced to the social world outside. And, argues Schielke, here lays the potential for controversy, simultaneously with its attraction and
dynamics.
The book is certainly well worth a read. It is informative about Mulids in general in Egypt and anyone interested in religious festivities will enjoy
the book. The analysis which attempts to avoid merely putting Mulids in the dichotomous view of “orthodoxy” versus “folk Islam” is a contribution
to the analytical perspective and understanding of the situation in Egypt, and elsewhere, where modernist attitudes and liberal politics influence
many segments of society. Some religious practices are targeted from such a perspective as being backward, contrary to the more “enlightened” or
“rational” forms of Islam promoted by the middle class in Egypt. Schielke manages to discuss this situation without producing yet another account
of the meeting between “tradition” and “the modern” as the simple answer to the contestations. In contemporary post-revolutionary Egypt, the
religious landscape has changed even more and the Islamist Muslim brotherhood and Salafi groups have gained more influence; one can only hope
that Schielke will probe more into the contested nature of Islam and the relation to “the modern” in Egypt in this new historical setting.

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