CAIRO - Egypt's legendary novelist Naguib Mahfouz must be turning in his grave. Although he died five years ago at the grand old age of 95, he is now being bluntly assailed for producing ‘literature that promotes debauchery and drug addiction'. The vituperative remarks were made by Abdel-Moneim Shahat, a leading Salafist standing for Parliament. Coincidentally, these disparaging comments about Mahfouz have come in December, the month in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 13 years ago. In 1994, Mahfouz, nicknamed the ‘Master of Arab Storytelling', survived an attack near his home in Agouza in Giza by a militant, who thought his famous novel Children of Gabalawi was blasphemous. The would-be killer admitted during questioning that he had not read the novel. "It is enough that my emir [the head of his group] believes that the novel is blasphemous," he was quoted as saying. A staunch proponent of democracy and human rights, Mahfouz, who died in August 2006, must have been longing for the day when his homeland would be free of autocracy and social injustice. So his devotees were shocked on hearing Shahat being so cruel to the Mahfouzian body of literature with its evocative subtleties and lofty values. They heaved a sigh of relief when Mahfouz's detractor failed in his bid to enter Parliament. The embattled Shahat, an engineer by profession, claims that his anti-Mahfouz remarks were taken out of context. "The impolite liberals and corrupt media outlets were behind tarnishing the image of Sheikh Shahat," one of his supporters told a rally. "But this is a blessing in disguise because now Sheikh Shahat will devote himself to propagating the tenets of Islam. After all, a seat in Parliament is not an end in itself," he added. Since the start of the three-round parliamentary elections on November 28, the first since Mubarak's toppling, the Salafists have been causing a stir with their unorthodox views. Their leaders have been obsessed with talking about banning alcohol and the bikini, ‘Islamising' tourism (a key earner for the Egyptian economy) and prohibiting ‘dirty art'. One of them has described having women in Parliament as a sin. Another called democracy infidelity. However, they have failed to come up with a clear formula for revitalising the economy and reducing poverty, gripping at least 40 per cent of the nation's 80 million citizens. Heaping scorn on Mahfouz's writings seems to be the easiest option.
