They are all the same, all these different people...

Lately I've been asked by friends in both Egypt and the Netherlands what I think about what's happening in the Islamic world. And I am commenting a lot on the same topic when I see postings on the Internet about excesses in the Islamic world.

First of all, all these different people are all the same and I probably are one of them. What I mean is that they are all generalizing 'other people'. I think I do the same, but I make it an effort not to do so.

Recently there is a lot to do about Islamism again. And what I feel is that this is primarily to do with that in Islamic countries some weird shit is happening. US embassies being attacked, 10 year old girls shot in the head because they want an education and stuff like that. The point is that these excesses are all happening in Islamic countries and by whack-jobs that are easily mistaken for human beings. Well actually in many cases they are referred to as Muslim extremists and the media play a big part in this.

I've blogged before about the media and that I'm not really impressed by their fact-checking. But more importantly they're very much only concentrating on the shit that's happening and love to refrain from anything that's positive about what the general public considers bad. In western countries the baddies are Muslims, here in the region, the baddies are westernes. Americans are the worst. Really.

The interesting part is that more and more you see that especially the media treat whole groups as one person. Generalizing the whole group to the extent that what one members says or does is said or done by every member. Preferably the bad stuff, because bad stuff sells commercials, gets the laughs when you sarcastically criticizes it.

Sometime it really pisses me off that this happens. Why? Because often this results in more intolerance, misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Nowadays I have to say that my friends here in Egypt are more tolerant towards other ideas and beliefs than my friends in the Netherlands. Which I think has everything to do with the massive amount of information we're used to get in the Netherlands and the idea that it is impartial, to an extent and fairly accurate. Although there is the option to get yourself well informed, you have to do it yourself in Holland. And we don't have time to do so it seems.
Here in Egypt, it's different all together. Information is limited and definitely not impartial at all, but this is known and most of my friends here are really taking an effort in getting their information from different sources, making it more impartial than we in the west do, nowadays.

Let's move on to an example; you must have heard about this Pakistani girl Malala who was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan just a few days ago. This girl is about 10 years old and a symbol of anti-Taliban in her country and the rest of the world. She was shot in the head because she is fighting for the right of girls in Pakistan to receive proper education. I'm sorry to say but I consider the person or persons involved to be total whack-jobs. This is just something you don't do. You don't shoot girls in the head, for any reason.

What I'm saying is not, I repeat: NOT, that this person's motives are whack, I'm saying he was a whack-job.

But that's besides the point of this post. The point of this post is that every time something excessive happens in an Islamic country, there are everywhere in the media stories about it that fuel the public paranoia against Muslims, or that further numb the public's ability to make up it's own mind. A friend of mine made me aware of a text on a website that he quoted which literally translates into; Shooting a 10 year old in the head is fine, but offending a certain religion is the worst. Of course this is referring to the recent events of the shooting and the anti-Islam movie posted on YouTube.
The sad part in this is that the Mullahs in Pakistan publicly opposed the actions of the Taliban and stated that girls have as much the right for education as boys.
The issue here is that media are positioning the Taliban as a religious bunch of people first and terrorists second. I would argue that a large amount of members of the Taliban are not the religious fanatics media would like us to believe, but are merely survivalists that have no alternative. But they are still terrorists.


Another example is about a previous post I did.



But back to Egypt, as this is my blog about living in Egypt and not about my frustrations with media.
So what about Egypt in all of this? How does Egypt fit into all of this. Well that is twofold.

Firstly, as my friends outside of Egypt are wondering how I'm still alive in this revolutionary country, my friends in Egypt are asking me how the people in Holland are looking at the developments in Egypt. Of course they only know what they see on tv and read on the Internet. And they're seeing that vast amounts of tourists are no longer flying into Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. Their view on westerners are also based on what the media are saying and showing. Feeling that tourists are staying away because of the increasing power of the Muslim Brotherhood by means of the new president. Some of my friends and colleagues here feel that the western world is terrified of everything that's Islamic.
It's perfectly human to generalize, it makes the world easier to understand.

Secondly, I said Egypt's fit into this post is twofold, of course is that Egypt is not only a predominantly Islamic country, but there is also a vast amount of Coptic Christians in Egypt and their neighbor is Israel, which is predominantly Jewish. They're all living side by side with almost no quarrels between them. Yes there are incidents, most of the, rather bloody I must say. Lets forget about the incidents in the Sinai. These are not religious in nature, I'm sure. Lets focus on the issues between Muslims and Christians. The massacres in churches. Again, these are beyond my comprehension, but because they happen doesn't mean that entering a church in Cairo will get you killed. In fact, a friend of a friend of mine is a Muslim and he's an expert in Cairo's religious history. He organizes for those who're interested guided tours through Cairo focussing on mosques or churches. And his audience is a mixture of Muslims, Christians and other religions. And I have witnessed with my own eyes that a group of Muslims entered a Coptic church without starting to shoot the people inside, they didn't even had C4 in a belt around their body. A complete lack of violence. I was amazed... Not really.

One of the things that I noticed here in Cairo is that every time an incident of religious nature happened in Egypt, the religious authorities publicly condemned the incident, stating that the wackos are not at all acting on religious grounds are mislead by the idea that they would enter paradise. And this usually wasn't a marketing act towards other countries and media, but a real manner to 'teaching' the public in Egypt that these actions are plain wrong. This I hardly ever see in the Netherlands for example.

Hmmm, while reading this post again, I feel that it has become more of a rant than a cohesive story. Probably because I felt more like ranting about people's ignorance than I felt about posting about some weird stuff I experienced in Cairo. That I'll leave for my next post.

Iwan

Pretty sure the Koran doesn' say...

...That you should violently kill everybody who says something about the Prophet you don't like hearing.

Okay, if you don't know what I'm referring to; it's nice to see you crawled from under your rock. Let me give you a little rundown. Recently some people from the US made this really low quality movie about the prophet Mohamed. Portraying him as a killer, rapist, child mollester and every other kind of villain you can think of. I have to admit, I haven't seen the movie myself, but on the news they showed some clips. And boy, is this one badly made movie. It was published on YouTube.
There's been a lot of commotion about the movie, nobody knew who made it, no motive for as why it was made. And I am wondering why these actors would actually want to be in such an extremely badly produced piece of (f)art.
There were all kinds of rumors ranging from the conspirational "Muslim extremists made it to evoke violent actions in the US" to "Some kids wanted to make some prank and get as many hits on YouTube to make a lot of ad-words money". As it seems to turn out, some nutcase who was denied any internet activity in the past made the movie and his motives are still unclear, as far as I know.
Needles to say that all over the world there were violent uprisings of Muslims, roaming the streets killing everybody who even remotely looked American. Or so CNN and the likes would like you to believe.

Okay, first of all I am completely convinced that there has been a significant amount of Muslims who felt offended by the way their religious icon was portrayed. Pretty much the same way Christians were offended by the Hollywood blockbuster "The Last Temptation of Christ" and recently there is a controversy about Paul Verhoeven's initiative to turn his biography on Jesus Christ into a biopic. I think you agree with me that it makes perfect sense that people find it offending when their religion and religious icons are ridiculed.
There's always freedom of speach and freedom of press as well. And when you're opinion is that some icon is a whack-job, you have the freedom to express this opinion. When you state something as a fact, you should be able to substantiate this as well, IMHO.

Where was I going? Oh yes, Muslims killing all Americans because an American made a movie about the prophet Mohamed being a villain. First thing that springs to mind is what about Americans that are Muslim? You see, there is a very distinct group of Muslims that you can depict as Muslim by just looking at them. And this group was not on display in the clips on the news about people violently attacking US embassies all over the world. There were also no interviews with members of these mobs to ask them if they were devoted Muslims. So no way in telling these violent people were Muslim at all. Thank you international press to check your facts.

Ah, you see, I'm in Cairo and on TV there were riots in front of American buildings and I live close to a large compound with only Americans I have let to believe. So of course I was fearing for my life. I could be violently killed any moment. To prevent this, I started speaking English with a thick Dutch accent. Pro-actively taking away any idea that I am American. My survival instinct kicked in and I started mimicking the way Egyptians walk and behave in the streets. Say 'jani' every other word,
gesturing with my hands all the time and act like a jerk while in a car and extremely friendly and considered while not in a car. Then I realized, Cairo is a city of 20 million population, on the news there where maybe 200 riotters. Take any Dutch footbal (soccer) match and you'll have about
10,000 fans out of which 500 will start riotting and attacking the fans of the other team when one of them says something bad about the opposing team's star player. Just to put stuff in perspective. And these people are clearly football fans as they are wearing team colors.

But just to be sure, I went onto the streets wearing orange clothes, the Dutch flag as a cape and using my Dutch accent big time when speaking and I asked my Muslim friends whether or not they were going on a killing spree in the night when they were not praying or smoking shisha because that is
what Muslims do when you offend the Prophet because it's what the Koran says you have to do as a devoted Muslim. Guess what, it's not in the Koran. Yup, I was as surprised as you are right now. So I asked these same friends of mine, with less of a Dutch accept, dropping my cape, why these mobs were on the streets of Cairo killing every Westerner crossing their paths. Their answer; these are most likely ignorant under privileged men and women that are considering the West as the reason for their misery and now have a reason to express their grudge. They have no clue as to who to address in the first place but now they can with the excuse of that YouTube movie go on a violent parade through Cairo.
Huh? You didn't mention Muslim or Islam at all? I asked. Nope, that most likely has nothing to do with it. Maybe they're all Muslim, but about 85% of the Egyptians is Muslim.
Aha, just like football hooligans are mainly Christians, their violent acts during the matches have nothing to do with all the cursing that comes with the match. Interesting.

You see, the point is that it's so easy to just generalize and the media help us in this. Not all Americans are Islamofobes or think that Mohamed is a villain, I would dare to say that the majority doesn't and is quite the opposite. Not all Muslims are violent rioters that go and kill everybody as soon as you say something bad about their religious icons. Actually again I would dare to say that the majority is quite the opposite.
And because somebody belongs to a specific group, their actions are defined by this group. Typically most people belong to different groups, demographics. In many cases media are not taking their responsibility to inform the public correctly, they're always biased and violence, just like sex, sells. A public that is in fear wants to stay informed and the media will have a larger public. The biggest downside to this is that we, as the public, are not enticed to learn and understand more about 'the others', instead we fear them, want to stay away from them. Want to make them stay away from us. And in a day and age where information has no boundaries anymore and is there in abundance, it is even more important that we want to learn and understand more about each other, only then we can live side by side in relative harmony. After all we are all humans, predators and killers by nature. We only started collecting later in time.

I hope you agree with me that we should try to love one another, it is so easy to hate each other. Let's challenge ourselves, shall we.

Iwan

What strikes me still

Hi,

What still strikes me as out of this world is how culture, tradition, religion and the western world come together here in Egypt.

Just now I was passing the Starbucks in Maadi and while waiting for traffic, a lady in a BURKA, completely covered, walks out of the Starbucks zipping her Cafe Latte, Cappuccino or whatever she ordered. Elegantly lifting her face covering veil.

Egypt is fairly liberal when it comes to religion and the Islam in particular. Compared to the rest of the region that is. So you don't see women in BURKA that often. Althpugh you still see them regularly.

Women with their heads covered by a veil are very common though, and it is always funny to see them use that very same veil to hold their mobile phone, sort of a Blue Toothless handsfree set. Granted, I've seen this in the Netherlands as well, but it stays funny.

Some time ago I was on a tour in one of the older parts in Cairo, visiting a few of the Coptic churches. A very worthwhile experience. While stroling around I saw this Coptic priest, all in black, long beard. Talking into his iPhone 4.

The interesting part of all this is that in the western world, typically, in my experience we're no longer that traditional. We're moving with the waves of fashion, technology and change accordingly. We don't adopt new things that much while holding on to what we value from the past, instead we evolve into the new, whereas here in Egypt, I see this strong hold of the past on the population. The new is meshed with the old, but the old prevails in many if not most cases. Which one is the better I can't say, whatever makes people happy I'd say. But it does make for an interesting experience and of course another blog post.

Iwan

Ramadan Chronicles, final part in a series

First of all my apologies for not publishing this in a while, this post has been sitting in my drafts since I wrote it and forgot to hit the publish button.

This is the final part of a series on the topic of Ramadan, the time of fasting and contemplating in Islam. Actually this is about the period after Ramadan, the first week or so to be accurate.
Once Ramadan is over, after 30 days, when the moon has completed its cycle, the fasting is over and Eid is upon everybody. This is a time of celebrating and eating, party all the time.
I can't say too much about Eid from experience as this coincided with a vacation to my family in the Netherlands, but I did experience some of it. And I was surprised too find out that it seemed as if Ramadan was taken more seriously than Eid. What I mean is that it seemed to me that most of my colleagues around me where more affected by Ramadan, its consequences and what it meant for them than about Eid, although all the tweets and Facebook status updates where about celebrating Eid and not about Ramadan. Which makes kind of sense as well.

Interestingly enough, some Muslims are not really participating in the celebrations of Eid as their fellow Muslims do. They keep on fasting for a few more days, 7 if I am not mistaken. I am not really sure as to why they would do this, although I had some discussions about it. But prolonging the fasting for a few more days accounts for fasting for a whole year.
I would say that continuing the fasting for a longer while whereas all your family, friends and colleagues around you are not would seem to be harder to keep up than when everybody is fasting and whole society is changing pace and rhythm.

Now that Ramadan and Eid are all over and life in Cairo is back to normal, Cairo is also a better and nicer place to be. It has regained its buzz and vividness. I didn't like Ramadan at all. At work productivity came almost to a full stop and the cheery faces of my colleagues where mostly gone. Everybody was tired and cranky. Now everything is back to business as usual, and I like it that way.

Until next post about my experiences in Egypt.

Iwan

Ramadan Chronicles, part three in a series

First of all my apologies for not posting this sooner. This post has been sitting and waiting in draft since forever. Guess I forgot to hit that 'Publish' button when it was due. But here's the post nevertheless.

Ramadan is an interesting period in the Muslim year. First of all it is a period in which people only eat or drink something between sunset and sunrise. These two moments are very carefully determined and actually do coincide with sunset and sunrise, instead of being some symbolical times like between 8 PM and 6 AM the next day. This means that when Ramadan is happening during summer, it is a lot harder than when it is in winter. And Muslims in northern Sweden have a for more difficult time than those living around the Equator.
Btw, the month of Ramadan is 'moving' throughout the year, every year it is a bit earlier in the year than the year before. This because the Islamic months are determined by the moon phases.

Another interesting fact of Ramadan, something you might not know when you're not Muslim is that during Ramadan the whole of the Koran is read during the first prayer after sunset. In reality this means that this prayer is a long prayer compared to the other prayers during Ramadan. So this means that during the 30 days of Ramadan, during one particular prayer the whole of the Koran is read.
I guess one can say it is fortunate that this prayer is after breakfast instead of before.

Until next post...
Iwan

PS: One little trivia, the first meal after sunset is called 'breakfast' as it is breaking the fasting.

Ramadan chronicles, part two in a series

Hi,

As blogged last time, I'll be blogging about Ramadan in Egypt, mainly because it is a very interesting time, but also because at least here in Egypt and Cairo in particular, there are some interesting facts to know.

So this time I want to discuss the timing of Ramadan. First of all you should know that the Islamic calendar is based on the moon. In the end this results in a year of 354 days, for me that means the year is missing 11 days. And more interestingly, the months on a Islamic calendar are moving throughout the year relative to the Julian or Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar of the western world. Which as you might know has 365 days, typically.
As I came to understand, Ramadan is actually the name of one of the 12 Islamic months. And because the months are shorter, each year Ramadan starts 11 days earlier compared to the western calendar. Basically the moving Ramadan mystery is nothing more than a matter of simple math.

So what else is there to be said about the timings during Ramadan. Well for one, those that are fasting are not allowed to consume anything during the day, where the day is defined by the time between sunrise and sunset. When I say consume anything, I mean anything. So no food, no drinks, no cigarettes, no marriage, no consuming all together. Or at least this I was told by colleagues at work.
Because we're here in Egypt, this whole sunrise - sunset thing is nothing compared to the Netherlands or for example Norway where the sunrises pretty darn early and sets pretty darn late. And there're no exceptions to this rule.
Then there's another interesting piece of information regarding time in Egypt versus Ramadan: The government has decreed that the during the month of Ramadan, there's no daylight savings. So all of a sudden you find yourself being early at every meeting because none of the automatically clock-changing gadgets we have these days is aware of this. Phones stick with daylight savings, electronic calendering systems stick with daylight savings. But at the start of Ramadan the clock is turned back for an hour. And after Ramadan it is set back to daylight savings, just for the remainder of the period the rest is also enjoying a little bit more of sunlight. This is very confusing, in every respect.
Furthermore, businesses and the government anticipate the fact that their employees won't be very productive in the afternoon, so all of a sudden the workday is from 10 AM to 3 PM, more or less. And in the office, after 4 PM it place is more or less deserted. Only a very few stay until 4.15 PM. Everybody is heading home for breakfast (short for: break fasting?), or Iftar as it is being called (pardon my spelling), which this year starts at 6:30 PM.

So for me, Ramadan has been very interesting this year, more over because I am a nut for watches and the time, and time plays an important role in Egypt during Ramadan.

Iwan

Ramadan chronicles, part one in a series

Hi,

It's been a while since I posted, more than a month and there's no real excuse for this. Really no reason as well. Guess I was busy with other stuff. I know, I've been very busy with one particular level in Halo 3, and I've been on vacation for a week... in Holland.

So Ramadan has started in August and it's a different thing all together when living in a country where religion is a real part of every day life. So I am intending to blog about my experiences during this period; the Ramadan Chronicles.

I came back from vacation 2 weeks ago, Ramadan had just started and the change in Cairo's atmosphere is very noticable.
For one, people are a bit more, how should I put this, they're tense. I was warned about traffic during Ramadan and the biggest change is that there're more accidents and my driver is more cautious. He's keeping more distance between our car and the next, and he seems to be driving more slowly. I'm okay with that, not that I'm scared when zipping thru traffic during rush-hour, he's very capable of handling the traffic, but especially the micro-buses are driven by tense and still awful drivers.
But the whole of Cairo seems to be off. Okay, so I was in overly regulated Holland for a week and got completely used to the fact that there's a rule, law or regulation for pretty much everything and even the exceptions to these are regulated. And although most of the Dutch bend or break the rules, they are following strict rules when doing so. We love the rule as it makes life so much simpler... I guess. And Cairo is pretty much everything but regulated. Yes, there are rules and laws and regulations, but pretty much nobody sticks by them and everybody does so as he or she pleases. And that is fine because there're no rules to this breaking of rules. (I haven't seen any bending of the rules).
So yes, not much of a surprise that I had to adjust to Egyptian life and Caironians doing things differently. But this was also not the Cairo I learned to love and appreciate over the 7 months before. This was a Cairo where life had come to a crawl during the day and at night is different as well.
People in the streets aren't as lively and in general the streets are empty. Empty with bustling, Cairo didn't really turn into a ghost-town, but I have to say that compared to a month ago, it is a shadow of itself.

There's more to Ramadan in Egypt and in next posts I will blog about them.

Iwan

In the end I tought it best not to convert to Islam just right now...

So as it seems, this is going to be the week of blogging about Cairo. Anyway, here's another post.

This month seems to be the month of vacations at work. It makes sense as schools are out and the weather is excellent. Although, truth must be told, the weather in Cairo is pretty much always excellent. Interestingly enough most people seem to migrate to the north coast, Alexandria and the rest of the Mediterranean region. Probably because they are looking for some coolness instead of the heath, like most people from the Netherlands do.
I don't hear many of my colleagues talk about going to Sharm el Sheikh, Hurghada or Luxos. Way to hot. Actually the only colleagues I know that went down there were not Egyptian.

Another reason why it makes sense that people take a break around this time, is that August this year is Ramadan. And I don't think that Ramadan is the period you should associate with a lot of fun and leisure. Granted, when they told me that pretty much everything moves to a halt around 13:30 - 14:00 during this period I did consider to convert to Islam, but than I realized that there must be a reason. And the reason is that people just don't have the energy or stamina to continue after that time.
During Ramadan you're not allowed to eat, drink or take anything at all, so no smoking as well. And I got to say, a day without eating is not a problem, it happens every now and than that I don't take the time to make me some sandwiches and I'll have to do without. But no drinking is a totally different story. And I don't think it's actually healthy not to drink the whole day.
Now consider a whole population of a country where a pack of cigarettes costs pretty close to nothing is not allowed to eat, drink or smoke. I think it is obvious that many of them will get agitated and irritated because they don't get their nicotine fix. Let me put it this way, colleagues have warned me not to get into the streets around 2 PM since all smokers will be going home and are extremely on edge because they didn't smoke for the whole day. And they're facing a smoke-free period for another couple of hours. Egyptians behind the wheel are very aggressive by their very nature but without a smoke it's extreme, so I've been told.

I was looking forward to a month of working for only half a day, but since I'm not practicing Ramadan I won't be able to join the masses. And I think that's a good thing. For one, I like my life, so there's no need to die in the streets. And secondly I like my coffee during the day and the water and the Coke. In short, I like to get my caffeine fix on time, before I get all agitated and irritated and am prone to make my driver go for those 20 points walking down the streets.

By the way, Ramadan is all about living the way you're supposed to live your life according to scripture and teachings. It's a time during which you focus on being a good person and respect your fellow man. I would say that one should do that whole year around and in turn you get to eat and drink and smoke all year around. I think it's an excellent deal. You're a got person all year and you get to eat and drink all year, instead of being a good person for a month and not drink or eat for the duration of that month.
Granted, you're allowed to eat and drink between sunset and sunrise, but in summertime that's an awful short time. Then again, the sun sets around 8 PM and rises not that early. So I guess if anything, it's better to spend Ramadan in summer during your vacation in Sharm el-Sheikh than in Oslo. But like I said, Ramadan is not about fun and leisure. It's about refocusing on being a good person according to scripture and teachings.

Iwan

No, I'm really not cheating on my wife. Really. Honestly.

Coming weekend I'll be going back to Holland again. This time it won't be with my regular flight, KL554, but with an Air France flight, stop over in Paris and than on my way to Schiphol, Amsterdam airport. Arrival will be about the same time, so I'm leaving early. Why am I blogging about this? Because the other day I got an interesting question from my driver:
"Do you always visit Madam Iwan when you go back to Hullanda", which doesn't require a translation. The obvious answer was of course "Yes, of course!", but the question itself was interesting because it should be clear to anyone that when you've been away from your family for about 2 weeks, you'll be visiting them. But as it seems it wasn't that obvious to my driver, which was proven by his follow up question: "Do you have another wife?", which kind of flaborgasted me. Was my driver asking me whether or not I have a lady-friend on the side? It seemed he did. My answer should've been "No, of course not", but I stuck with "No". There had to be a reason for this question.
We continued our drive and he explained that he had another wife, that he visits every now and then. The wife I met months ago was the mother of his children, a son and 2 daughters. His other wife, of which I just learned about, he has no children with. The point was more or less, that he visits her when he's tired of his other wife and wants to have a good time. He was actually very candid about the whole matter and didn't seem to have any weird understanding about it. So I just accepted that my driver was cheating on his wife and told me about it. As if it was the most natural thing to do.
I on the other hand thought that it was not really something you talk about. I consider myself rather liberal and open minded to new stuff and other habits, that's one of the main reasons why I enjoy living and working abroad, but I also feel that you should treat everybody with a decent amount of respect. And when you're cheating on your wife, you shouldn't just blurt it out as if it is normal. You keep the fact that you're disrespectful against your wife and your children's mother to yourself.
Anyway, I'm not cheating on my wife so I could be honest the whole drive.

Now apparently it is quite common in Egypt to have more than one wife. Actually it is by law allowed... and if I understood correctly, only when you're Muslim. This because the Koran says that under circumstances you are allowed to have up to 3 additional wives next to your first wife. But only if you meet the criteria and your first wife approves. So it wasn't that weird a question my driver asked me. It was actually quite a normal question. He knows I don't see my wife most of the time, so if I have more than one wife, I would probably alternate between the two during my visits. Still at the time the question was odd.
One thing I've come to realize in Egypt is that state and religion are very much interwoven. Something that was confirmed by my colleagues during a discussion we had on the topic. And in fact this goes as far as that based on your religion, certain laws apply and others don't. For example, the Orthodox Christian church in Egypt doesn't allow married couples to divorce, where as Muslims are allowed to divorce. In case you're an Orthodox Christian by law you're not allowed to divorce, but if you convert to for example to Muslim, you are allowed to divorce.
In an earlier post I already stated that the Egyptians are actually very liberal and tolerant when it comes to religion. 15% of the population is Christian and many of the Christian holidays are celebrated and considered public holidays. Something many western countries might take as an example of how to live together. But having which laws apply to you depend on your religion is a bit too, well, unorthodox. But this goes as far as that the holy scripture of your religion is prevalent over governmental law.

Without judging I can say that I find this highly interesting. Moreover because I grew up in an environment where since centuries church and state are separated and state dictates law, church takes care of moral issues. I worked in Pakistan, which is a really predominantly Muslim country, which shows in many aspects of everyday life. And I lived and worked in the US, which although they claim that church and religion are separated as well, really isn't. The Christian lobby is extremely strong and in many cases laws are passed because of the religious believes of the legislators. Europe's got it pretty much nailed down in many cases. And Turkey has been transformed by Ata Turk by force, but slowly it seems that church is gaining power within governmental matters again.
But all things aside, here in Egypt it seems to be working. From what I've been told and what I experience, the fundamental pillars of most religions are respected. Things like respect your fellow human, treat people nicely, don't hurt yourself or your fellow man etc. Are very much embedded in this society.

I'm really not a proponent of inter-operability of state and church. I think they should be separated but also, they should be alligned. Religious believes should not result in unlawful behaviors or actions and definitely laws should not consider what religion prescribes. But again, most religions have fundamental pillars that make a lot of sense when applied as the foundation of law.
Here in Egypt it all seems to work. But than again, what do I know? I only have one wife and it never crossed my mind to get a second one.

Iwan

PS: One of the reasons to have additional wives is to help them out. As religion prohibits men and women that are not related nor married spend a lot of time together without any chaperon, you'll need to marry the woman when you want to structurally help her. It is sort of social security for women.

(Disclaimer: I am not an expert when it comes to law or religion. And most definitely I am not an expert when it comes to Egypt law or the Islam. I am merely a witness of everyday life in Cairo, who's interested in how people live their life in Cairo.)