CAIRO: Hashish used to be a part of the rituals the ‘Hashashin' would undergo before a mission. The Hashashin were the Middle Eastern cloak-and-dagger equivalent of the assassin, and that same term is derived from their name and their habitual hash smoking, or so the myth goes. In reality, marihuana is one of the oldest narcotics used by man. Throughout the ages there have been many people who are rumored to have taken inspiration from drug use, such as Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland, and Mary Shelley, responsible for the Fankestein novel. In Egypt, it is illegal to use recreational drugs. In fact, Egypt has the oldest established drug agency in the world, the Anti-Narcotic General Administration, founded in 1929. Officially, Egypt takes a very strong stance against drug trafficking and recreational drug use, with official sources citing the cost to Egypt's economy at $800 million in 2003. The stance taken in Islam is not universal. Many claim that passages within the Quran which tackle the issue of narcotics does not explicitly tie in marihuana. Among the more fundamentalist sections of Islam, drug us in general is seen as ‘haram' (unlawful), subverting the work ethic of the masses. Sufi Islam is one such sect which regards the consumption of certain narcotics as a part of their culture, according to essayist Peter Lamborn Wilson. In the early days of Sufi Islam, the Sufi were known for their ingestion of coffee, wine and marihuana and are usually credited with the invention of drinking coffee for its caffeine, his book ‘essays in Islamic heresy' reveals. The use of hashish and ‘bango' (the local equivalent of marihuana) is so widespread amongst the lower strata in society, it is hard to avoid on a day to day basis. “Smoking (hashish) helps me work,” an Egyptian stable master and hash dealer told Bikyamasr.com. “The long hours at night are so boring. Smoking helps me deal with time.” According to the stable master, the hash culture has been around longer than Islam, and is so engrained in the culture that “it would be impossible to stop. Police don't care, politicians, army, they all smoke too.” “Hashish helps focus, it makes my long hours tolerable,” Ibrahim, a 27-year-old microbus driver told Bikyamasr.com. “Mubarak knew if he ever tried to stop us from smoking, he would have been removed. I just hope the new government will realize this too.” According to Ahmed, a 23-year-old activist, the old regime under Mubarak controlled the drug trade by tackling the drug dealers that became too big. According to him, the government would dismantle the major operations, but would allow the local drug mules to continue. The reason for this, he says, is because “allowing the people to continue smoking has less of a negative impact on stability than if they were to crackdown on drug users.” “Too many people in this country smoke hash,” Ahmed continued. “If they took a very proactive stance against drugs, it would just add to the social tensions already present.” He argued drug dealers that become too rich pose a problem to the government, because these men become armed and dangerous. According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published in 2005, the Sinai region is where much of Egypt's marihuana and opium is grown, and with the potential of expansion in remote areas the number of illicit fields has risen over the past decade. Corruption is a major issue in Egypt which hampers any official attempt at policing the trade. As one Egyptian taxi driver eloquently said, “If police stop me it's okay, maybe I pay maybe I don't. If I pay, I pay maybe 50, 100, 150 pounds,” the taxi driver said while lighting a joint and cracking a grin. On the bottom of the chain of command are the police officers, who carry out the duties assigned to them by their superiors. Corruption in this case is spurned by the exceptionally low wage of law enforcement units. To supplement their incomes, the easiest route to take is to accept bribes and turn a blind eye to offenders. Every country has a drug culture and every person has a different view on the matter. Egypt falls in a double-standard scenario, where strong religious, cultural and lawful stances meld into a system, which neither discards nor embraces the use of marihuana. The result is a system which neither effectively combats drugs, nor does it educate the people through proper means of conversation. Egypt has been a country where the issues of sex and narcotics are avoided because of the religious, cultural and lawful systems put in place. It is a system of blind eyes and deaf ears which has halted any progress which could be made in educating the people and mitigating the negative effects of such practices. BM
