Religion, Politics and The Metaphor of North-Africa in Tewfiq Al-Hakim’s The Sultan’s Dilemma and Fate of A Cockroach

Abstract

This paper examines the complexity of the mix of religion and politics in AfroArabian drama and how it impacts the revolution in North Africa sub-region. The paper brings out the existential problems that confront the Afro-Arabian mind which stealthily stimulated “Arab  Spring” and the demands for change, self-determination and freedom from constituted potentates either by way of popular protests or  by revolution. The two plays of Tewfiq Al-Hakim mentioned above fed the needs of this paper and captures, to a large degree, issues  concerning the mass protests in the Afro-Arabian world which the dramatist addresses in his two plays. One of the nucleuses of drama is  to conscientize and this paper observes that Tewfiq al-Hakim’s theatre offers a way out of the dilemmas of the Arabian world by  addressing key subjects such as religion, race, politics, gender, power imbalances, revolution; time and place. Apart from the Africanness  or Arabness, and, or, context of which the paper perceives these issues, The Sultan’s Dilemma and Fate of a Cockroach address these  complexities as universal questions using the interpretative theory of understanding.