Martyrdom: a Drama of Foundation and Transition.
By Christian Szyska

The playwright and writer Ali Ahmad Bakathir,33 who was among the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and a prolific writer in its newspapers and magazines, also introduced the martyrdom topic into his work. In the context of discussing martyrdom as a part of a social drama it is particularly interesting to consider Bakathir’s discussion of the existence of an autochthonous theatrical tradition in Arab and Islamic culture. Bakathir states that the beginnings of the theatre were indeed existent in Islamic culture, and that “the rites of pilgrimage for example can be seen as a kind of drama which enacts the memory about Ibrahim al-Khalil, the fate of his wife Hajar and his son Isma'il. The Arabs have performed these rites ever since and later Islam affirmed them as the rites of pilgrimage to the Haram, the house of God.”34

Bakathir compares the religious foundations of the theatre in different cultures and concludes that forms of performative expressions exist in the religion of each culture. However, regarding Arabic culture, he sees “a difference between these rites and the performative religious ceremonies of other peoples, since all individuals in the community of the Arabs participate in these rites. That is to say, it is not that a group from the community performs these memories while the others observe their actions, as in the case of other peoples. Furthermore, the different roles (of the rite) are not divided among the individuals of the particular group, so that each one of them figures in a certain part, rather the community as a whole performs the rite and each individual in the community performs all its parts.”35 It is rather noteworthy that Bakathir considers the rites of pilgrimage as being a kind of memorial activity in which all members of the Muslim community participate. Although Bakathir does not further develop his thought and refrains from scrutinizing the dynamics of the collective performance, his idea comes close to one of Turner’s assumptions, namely that a social drama is a cultural means by which identity is maintained. Against the background of such an approach to theatre, Bakathir’s various attempts to put historical topics on stage appear only reasonable. Even though in his plays performance remains restricted to the members of the troupe, theatre is not just a means of education and entertainment but one of the memorial practices in culture, contributing to the maintaining, renewal and developing of identity. Bakathir’s approach to theatre and performativity is to a certain degree reflected in the theatrical activities of the Muslim Brotherhood. Theatre played a major role in its cultural activities, which led to the emergence of a considerable corpus of plays and some troupes touring Egypt. Moreover, the movement encouraged writers to compose religious plays.36

Bakathir wrote many plays and novels set in early and medieval Islamic history. Among the posthumously published plays of Bakathir, his “The Noble Prisoner ‘Khubaib bin Adi’” explicitly restages the early martyr’s fate in contemporary theatre.37 Up until now there is no further information available about the whereabouts of the play, however, according to what we know about the theatre activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, the play fits into its theatrical agenda, which set out that in the course of one show a historical play enlightening events from the Islamic past and a contemporary play were to be staged.38

In Bakathir’s dramatisation of the story most of the motifs the historical narratives provide occur. He introduces, however, some essential modifications concerning the presence and the roles of the characters. Apart from Khubaib, Mawiya, the woman in whose house Khubaib is kept as a prisoner, appears as a central figure. Bakathir names her Jalila and also embellishes the part of her son, who appears in the play as Amir. In the historical reports the boy either remained nameless or was mentioned as Abu Husain. The purpose of Bakathir’s focus on the two becomes clear as the events of the play unfold: the little boy befriends Khubaib in his prison and finally converts to Islam after recognising that the values and virtues to which the “noble” prisoner subscribes belong to the core values making up the new religion. Jalila is the second figure in the play who embraces Islam in face of Khubaib’s fate. Their conversion almost outweighs Khubaib’s story. It is their witnessing of the events and their development into true Muslims on which the play focuses at the end. Even though the play performs the liminal experience of Khubaib and exposes its paradoxicality, the figure remains a rather lifeless catalyst for the others’ transformation. Another focus that Bakathir introduces into the play is the issue of torture. JalÐla and the members of her tribe try to force Khubaib to renounce Islam by maltreating him. The martyr endures the torture uttering “al-Hamdu li-llah” (Thanks to God), which contributes to the conversion of the boy and his mother, who in the beginning even took part in the whipping. Of course Khubaib’s contact to the divine is expressed by the food miracle, which frequently occurs in the course of the play.

However, Bakathir refrains from fully performing the erotic elements in Khubaib’s story. Although Jalila shows a considerable admiration for the prisoner, which does not lack a romantic undertone, a certain sense of prudishness prevails. When for example the little boy hands the blade over to the prisoner, Khubaib uses the tool for trimming his beard and not shaving his pubic hair. The play also tackles the issue of treason and vengeance, as evident in Muslim historiography.

Bakathir’s main achievement in dramatising Khubaib’s story lies, apart from enabling its performance on stage, in his emphasis on Amir and JalÐla, who witness the events and even share Khubaib’s liminal experience. Although to a certain degree they partake of his martyrdom, they survive. The liminal experience elevates them to another ontological level, closer to the divine, which transforms them into religious activists. Likewise, they fulfil the task of transmitting these experiences to the audience.

It is obvious that Bakathir’s drama on Khubaib bears the imprint of the persecution suffered by the Muslim Brothers in Egypt during the first two decades after the 1952 revolution. Persecution became an overwhelming topic in the writing of Egyptian Islamic activists. In particular autobiographical writings pick out the experiences of detention as a central theme. The most famous example of a Muslim activist’s autobiographical literature is the prison memoirs of Zainab al-Ghazali, “Days of My Life.”39 In her discussion of the memoirs Miriam Cooke suggests that al-Ghazali chose the motif of martyrdom and the imagery of the martyr as one element in forming the protagonist; however, when discussing the martyrdom paradigm, Cooke does not refer to the particulars of this paradigm as it appears in the Muslim foundation texts. Cooke even claims that the fate of al-Ghazali resembles the paradigm of Christian saints.40 As we will see though, the elements of the martyrdom paradigm are instrumental in structuring the text. Just as Bakathir used the martyrdom of Khubaib to create a liminal condition elevating the protagonists to a new ontological level, it will become clear from the analysis of the prison memoirs that al-Ghazali exploits the martyrdom paradigm to cast herself as an outstanding Muslim activist. If we scrutinise the arrangement of al-Ghazali’s text, we see that the basic structure recalls the structure of Khubaib’s story in many respects. We find the elements of treason, incarceration and execution. The text opens with a car accident in which the protagonist is injured. Later the reader learns that the Egyptian secret service plotted against al-Ghazali and staged the accident.41 After the accident has opened up the narrative space, the first chapter presents al-Ghazali’s religious-political vita. Already at this stage the author shows a clear inclination towards martyrdom, many of the persons she ranks among her acquaintances and fellows were sentenced to death or subsequently killed, and she uses the epithet “martyr” when mentioning them.42 Furthermore, the first chapter alludes to the ideological differences between the nationalist government and the Islamic movement, reducing them to a conflict of Manichean dimensions, and equates the contemporary situation with the conflict between the early Muslim believers and the pagan population of Mecca. Another similarity to the Khubaibian subtext is her educative mission, since she considers teaching Islamic belief as her main task in society.

The core of the narrative centres on the narrator’s incarceration and her enduring the tyranny of the authorities. The depiction of the heroine’s experiences during incarceration creates a liminal condition quite similar to the texts already discussed. Among the elements employed to create this condition, torture plays a prominent role. As the heroine endures all kinds of unbearable torture, her body, just like Bakathir’s Khubaib, becomes the touchstone of the truth of her belief. Likewise, these scenes create the paradoxicality that is instrumental in the genesis of the martyr symbol.

Another scene is reminiscent of the food miracle. After having been exhaustively interrogated and tortured she fell asleep, and saw herself among beautiful people, wearing black silk dresses embroidered with pearls, bringing plates made from gold and silver with delicious food on it, meat and fruits she had never seen before. She enjoyed eating the food, and, after waking up from her nap, she felt satisfied and no longer hungry.43