Naguib Mahfouz Quotes
If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.
Mahfouz, Naguib. "Naguib Mahfouz, The Art of Fiction No. 129." Interview by Charlotte El Shabrawy. The Paris Review, vol. 34, no. 129, Summer 1992.
Here we have an example of a government that tried to go into the Religion business. They wanted Christian religion but not the Catholic Church which at the time was the only Christian church. Many of the most extreme French revolutionists had a problem with religion. They were personally believers and recognized that most French people were. But the organized Roman Catholic Church was a major ally and supporter of the hated monarchy, and at the time was extremely corrupt at the expense of the people. The nobility were also the highest officials of the church in France. One solution they tried was to have the “people’s government” establish days and methods of worship, an effort that in retrospect appears ludicrous to us today.
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films.
