New Agers summoned to Security Police.

[LivinginLuxor]

From the Canadian Press - via my Google Alerts...

New Age ideas face tough sell in security-conscious Egypt
3 hours ago

CAIRO, Egypt - Two days before the opening of Egypt's first ever New Age festival, organizer Suzanne Mitchell-Egan was summoned by state security, the nation's dreaded plainclothes police force, to explain what she was up to.

For three hours, deep in the bowels of a building where many an Islamist detainee has disappeared, she described morphogenetics, reiki, star mapping, hemi-sync sound therapy and other techniques - and, more important, why they did not represent a threat to the country.

"The guy went through every single person coming to the festival. He wanted to know everything," recalled Mitchell-Egan, an international lecturer who has organized a number of such festivals around the world. "I had to be so careful what I said. I've never had to use my brain like I did then."

Holistic and alternative medicine have been gaining popularity around the world - but in Egypt the practices face some deep-seated suspicion.

It took one more midnight visit to state security, but Mitchell-Egan eventually received the permissions she needed. Several hundred people attended Egypt's first-ever "Mind Body and Spirit Festival of Giving" at a Cairo hotel on Sept. 7, a major boost for the country's holistic health practitioners, who have long kept a low profile.

Egypt's powerful security forces are generally wary of foreigners bringing in new political or religious ideas to the mainly Muslim country, fearing they could involve proselytizing or other activities that might disturb the peace.

Egypt has a thriving culture of herbal and traditional medicine of its own, widely practised in lower-income urban areas and in the countryside. To this day for the poor, many common ailments are addressed by a trip to the aromatic offices of the local "attar" or herbalist who have generations-old lists of remedies for everything from kidney stones to rheumatism to a simple cold.

But traditional medicine is uniformly disdained by the country's health-care professionals.

State security was not the only challenge Mitchell-Egan faced in trying to hold her conference. Most hotels refused to rent rooms for the event and the local English language pop station declined to air publicity for it.

"They are afraid of something they don't understand," she said, expressing hope that the successful event will spread awareness about alternative therapies and New Age ideas. "They are fearful of any trouble being caused and they don't like anything political or religious."

Still, the New Age movement is making small gains around the region.

Homeopaths, who see treating disease as a matter of rebalancing life forces, have their own non-governmental organization in Egypt. But they have to describe their activities as counselling or therapy to avoid raising the ire of the Doctors Syndicate, which governs medical practicioners.

"We have a right to talk, to give lectures, to teach, but not to practice, take money or give remedies," said Nazli Mansour, a homeopathy practitioner in Alexandria who attended the festival.

Abdel Hayy Holdijk, founder of the Egyptian Society of Homeopathy, said there is an increasing recognition around the world of the limitations of modern medicine and search for alternative or traditional techniques to healing.

"Alternative medicine in general is increasing in the Arab world, particularly in the Gulf States of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and even in Saudi Arabia," said Holdijk, who is also a professor at the American University in Cairo.

But a major barrier is the taboo against magic. "Some people are worried that these kinds of practices might slip into magical practices which are forbidden in Islam," he said.

The Qur'an, Islam's holy book, sharply condemns sorcery - and Muslim clerics often try to stamp out persistent local traditions of magic, ranging from protective amulets that use scraps of Qur'anic verses to more sinister forms involving animal sacrifice, exorcisms and casting curses. Authorities are often called in to arrest those involved.

In this context, New Age practices like Tarot reading, astrology and even energy-focusing crystals arouse suspicions as well.

"Immediately they think it's magic, it's hocus-pocus," said Dr. Amira Abdelkader, a licensed cosmetologist and massage therapist educated in the United States who has opened a wellness centre in Cairo.

Most of her work concentrates on more affluent Egyptians familiar with the alternative medicine ideas that treat the whole body rather than just a specific ailment.

Ironically, notes Abdelkader, many of these remedies are not too far away from the traditional ones still practised by Egypt's poor.

"Integrative medicine goes back centuries, all the way back to the Pharaohs and the Greeks," she said. "It's always been there by heritage ... the upper class doesn't realize that all integrative medicine goes back to our grandparents."

Mitchell-Egan's state security officer ended up attending the festival, listening to many of the lectures and afterward, she said, he was convinced there was nothing ominous about it all and assured her future events should face less obstacles.

"That's the first time we've had something like that here in Egypt. That's a big hurdle we overcame," said Abdelkader, praising Mitchell-Egan for making it happen. "I know a lot of practitioners here in Egypt that were dying to do something like that but didn't have the guts."

[Miriamkhalifa]

oh yes oh yes. I worry about that, how to be a holist openly in Luxor...