Sheikh Tantawi’s Handshake
Friday, January 13, 2006
I have a flaw in my character and it gets me into serious trouble. It is something that has dogged me all of my life and causes no amount of consternation in some circles. Some people would say I am simply bad mannered or ill bred while others mightsay I'm too honest for my own good. Quite simply, if I don't like someone I cannot hide it. I can't mask my feelings, smile and be nice. I cannot hug my enemy, blow air kisses, bow, dip or curtsy. And if I really detest someone then I can barely remain under the same roof, certainly not at the same dinner table and I would rather stick rusty pins in my eyes than break bread with these individuals. Of course there are occasions when we are suddenly confronted with these loathsome people and protocol makes it impossible to run in the other direction. It happened to that great journalist Robert Fisk when he met the ruthless military commander Ariel Sharon, a war criminal who will forever be stained with the blood of Palestinians. Fisk recalls the decades-old encounter in his book The Great War For Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. He wrote: "I shook hands with him once, a brisk, no-nonsense soldier's grip from Sharon as he finished a review of the vicious Phalangist militiamen who stood in the barracks square at Karantina in Beirut. "Who would have thought, I asked myself then, that this same bunch of murderers - the men who butchered their way through the Palestinian Sabra and Chatila refugee camps only a few weeks earlier - had their origins in the Nazi Olympics of 1936. That's when old Pierre Gemayel - still alive and standing stiffly to attention for Sharon - watched the "order" of Nazi Germany and proposed to bring some of this "order" to Lebanon. That's what Gemayel told me himself. Did Sharon not understand this? Of course, he must have done." Sharon obviously had no problem dealing with life's flotsam in order to gain a political advantage, but the very fact that Fisk remembers the handshake so vividly suggests he felt otherwise. So imagine my delight when I was contemplating becoming a Muslim to discover that I didn't have to shake another man's hand ever again, yippee! In fact, I was told it is Haram for a man to touch another woman unless she is a relative. That meant no more embarrassing moments, or faltering movements as outstretched hands from awful people hovered in front of me. From the day I embraced Islam, I simply smiled sweetly and lifted my right hand towards my left shoulder as a gesture to anyone who I was introduced. Of course there were moments when this failed miserably like the time I met the late Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound. As I was introduced to him I hesitated, wondering if he would be insulted by my gesture or not. The Palestinian President was oblivious and simply picked up my rising hand and kissed it gently. Hmm, not exactly Islamic and it was captured by a photographer as well. A similar thing happened a few months later when the then Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, offered his right hand to me during an interview. Didn't the right-wing media just love that photograph, accusing me of being a traitor by shaking the right hand of Saddam's right hand man! So, OK, there have been a few bumpy starts but on the whole I've managed to get this far without too much hassle. Admittedly, one of my secular journalist friends now thinks I'm a raving, extremist because I will no longer shake his hand, or that of any other man actually. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. For instance I was recently at an event where the so-called great and the good were gathered. I would rather have munched through a bag of pork scratchings while limbo dancing on burning coals than given any one of them a handshake. However, as I was introduced to them - there were peers, knights, cops, politicians, community leaders - I was able to turn around and lift my right hand towards my left shoulder with a knowing smile. As a result there were no embarrassing moments. I had exercised my right as a Muslim woman, the audience were aware of that right and the motley crew just stood there and had to accept the gesture. Wonderful! Now that would have been the end of my hand-shaking stories and observations but I have another one to tell you and the whole reason behind the subject of today's column. Please don't groan 'cos this next bit is really worth it, so stay with me for a few paragraphs more, please. I saw in 2006 in Egypt and spent part of New Year's Day in a private meeting with Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, head of Cairo's Al-Azhar University and one of the highest authorities in the Sunni Muslim world. Imagine my anticipation and excitement at meeting one of the most learned scholars in the Muslim world, even if he did support the French government in its decision to rip the Hijabs off the head of French schoolgirls. We had a productive meeting and then as we all got up to leave his private office, the Sheikh began shaking hands with my host. He then turned to me and extended his hand. I smiled warmly and raised my right hand. Well you know the script by now. What happened next totally flummoxed me and will remain as one of 'those' unforgettable moments. His facial muscles tightened, his eyes narrowed slightly and his mouth became firm. He extended his right hand in front of me in an exaggerated, deliberate fashion. I shook my head and explained in English that I did not shake the hands of men. My host translated this but the Sheikh was determined to shake! It became obvious to me that this situation was going to escalate unless one of us backed down. Well since in Islamic terms I am still but a mere child, I relented. After all may be I had been given the wrong information and this brother, who sat on one of the most respected seats of learning in the Muslim world, was bound to have a superior knowledge to mine. I had also been told that on occasions like these it is permissible to go for the least line of resistance rather than embarrass others, and so I reluctantly extended my hand thus allowing Sheikh Tantawi his handshake. He then said in Arabic to my host: "Who is teaching her? She can shake my hand, why she is like my daughter. This is the problem with Muslims in Europe today, they listen to extreme voices." To tell you the truth, I was shocked but a little unsure. May be I had gotten my facts wrong. May be it was permissible for Muslim women to shake hands with Muslims men. Or may be there was a get out clause for the Sheikh of Al-Azhar. Well since that day I have consulted all sorts of Islamic authorities and they unanimously tell me that the Sheikh of Al-Azhar was wrong. No two ways about it. And if he was wrong about that he could also have been wrong about his support for the French government for its ban on the wearing of Hijabs in state schools. If I ever meet Sheikh Tantawi again I will not be extending my hand, unless it’s clutching a frying pan.
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