green is the color: st. patrick's day with the grand mufti

The main event of the day was a visit to the Grand Mufti of Egypt. He's the official authority for Egyptian fatwas. If you didn't know, a fatwa is non-binding religious advice issued by a cleric; you ask the cleric a question about what the right thing to do in a given situation is, and the answer they give you is a fatwa. Sometimes, if an issue seems critical to enough people, important clerics will issue a fatwa very publicly on the subject. There's no official hierarchy, but people follow whomever they respect most. (This system should sound familiar to many of you, if you know your own history...)

Anyway, the Grand Mufti of Egypt is an official at Dar al Iftaa in Al Azhar University. I don't really feel like explaining the various branches of Dar al Iftaa and their roles, so suffice it to say that it's the religious branch of one of the most prominent centers of religious learning in the Sunni world. Needless to say, I was super-excited. The Grand Mufti is so important that we actually spent time researching his positions on things and brainstorming questions beforehand. Again, not going to regurgitate, because you can find it yourself on Google.

In any case, when we got there it turned out that he was running late, and in the meantime his assistant lectured on the history and various branches of the institution as well as the fatwa process. They have an elaborate and tech-savvy apparatus that makes them very accessible to people who want fatwas. It's really super-exciting, I could go on and on. For example, most of the questions are about family issues, and often the in-person requests are made by couples coming together to talk to the cleric about marriage problems, which was likened to counseling. Another interesting thing that came up was that the Grand Mufti wanted more dialogue with the West, and thought the Islamic (Sunni) World needed a spokesperson to better engage with the West--Al Azhar, naturally.

It turned out that the Grand Mufti was late for a conference, and didn't have to speak to us, but he did stop by, which was nice. In spite of this, the visit was so interesting that no one was really disappointed.

After that we went to Al Azhar park, which is not related to the mosque or university. In fact, it's known as a place where couples go on dates. Wait--dates!?! That was something that struck us alot in Egypt--the number of couples. Veiled young women and men walking hand in hand, whispering to each other on park benches, laughing with their heads together. Dating is more furtive in Jordan, and even married couples don't touch each other in public the way they do in Egypt. The park was beautiful and well-landscaped, with fountains and stone paths...I would definitely go on a date there.

But most importantly--it's the Egyptian Mt. Trashmore! Fortunately, there's another child of the coastal South-but-not-Deep-South here who could appreciate it with me; we got super-excited and started yelling "Mt. Trashmore". For those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting Norfolk, Mt. Trashmore is basically a landfill that got landscaped into a big hill. I think it may be the highest point in Tidewater.

Also, it was St. Patrick's Day, a holiday of profound importance to many of my compatriots. As excited as we were to sample the fabled nightlife of Cairo, if there's ever a night to spend with ex-pats, it's St. Patrick's. We ended up going to Cairo Jazz Club, which had fabulous live music that night. (It's not actually a club for jazz music; in fact, it's pronounced "gaz" in Egypt, which just killed those of my friends who spent an hour in the taxi trying to find it.) We found out later that they're one of the hottest Egyptian underground bands. They played Arabic music, obviously, including some Arabizations of Irish music, which was pretty fabulous. We had a pretty great night.