From my recent article in Arab West Report, about warnings that Salafis, despite only having one member in the Committee of Fifty to amend the 2012 Constitution, were nonetheless exerting undue influence against a liberalizing majority. Some argued they were being placated on several issues so as to keep them involved in support of the overall roadmap:
Arab West Report does not here differ with Coptic Solidarity about the potential implications of furthering the role of sharī‘ah law in the Egyptian Constitution. Their concerns are valid and worthy for discussion. Their statement, however, allows an opportunity to provide context for this struggle.
The mobilization of Tamarrud against President Mursī culminated on June 30 in vast protests calling for early presidential elections. A significant percentage of protestors were motivated by sectarian tendencies reflected in his policies and the predominance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the administration of government. But many protestors also called for his removal due to the ineffectiveness of his government in terms of the economy, security, and general standard of living of the ordinary citizen. Finally, the decision to oust Mursī, taken on July 3, was supported also by the Nour Party, Egypt’s largest political representation of Salafīs.
It is not possible to gauge the level of ordinary Salafī support for the removal of Mursī. It is clear that many sided with the president through their participation in the sit-in protests dispersed violently on August 14. But many Salafīs also voiced consistent opposition to Mursī, though for reasons at times very different from those of their liberal and leftist allies of convenience.
Therefore, Arab West Report wishes to nuance the sentiment of Coptic Solidarity when it speaks of the “dreams of most Egyptians”. The Egyptians who bravely fought against Mursī were diverse.
Yes, diverse, though the Salafi presence was one of the less numerous participants. But their strength in the committee came from another source:
By including the Nour Party among the Azhar and Coptic Orthodox Church, the military was able to portray its action as one of national unity, to remove Mursī who had transgressed the popular will. Early overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood also contributed to this rhetoric, though whether offered sincerely or otherwise, failed to bring Mursī’s parent organization on board. But without the key role played by Nour, the military risked allowing an opposite rhetorical stratagem, that of portraying Mursī’s removal not only as a coup against democracy, but as a war against Islam. With the largest Salafī political party in cooperation, this latter accusation was severely muffled.
By acting either from brave conviction or political acumen, the Nour Party risked alienation from its key constituency that still hoped Mursī might provide the rule of sharī‘ah. As the crackdown ensued on the Muslim Brotherhood in general, non-Islamists might say that Nour’s survival as a political entity is reward enough for their participation. But as article after article is debated, Nour holds the threat of switching sides and mobilizing against a constitution free of sharī‘ah. In an already polarized environment, supporters of the new government are ill at ease risking further agitation against them, let alone igniting a voter base that may rise against the constitution in the upcoming referendum.
This, therefore, is the “intense pressure” to which Coptic Solidarity is worried the committee will succumb. It is an understandable fear. This close to a “window of opportunity” in which they can win every article demanded, will the chance be thrown away simply to placate the Salafīs?
Unfortunately, this idea that Salafi viewpoints should simply be outvoted recycles the logic of the earlier constitutional committee which exhibited Islamist numerical dominance. The failure of consensus was greatly criticized by liberals at the time. Now, it appears, some desire it.
Or, such language was simply a pressure technique of their own. If so, here is the final article excerpt, from the conclusion:
But AWR also recognizes that long term social peace depends on the ability of all Egyptian citizens to come together and decide their national charter. None must yield on principles, and Coptic Solidarity is right to advocate strongly.
As Salafīs advocate in return, it is good to take a step back to see the big picture. They also are part of the June 30 revolution. However much the Committee of Fifty represents the diverse institutions of Egypt and the participants in the overthrow of Mursī, it does not represent fully the diversity of political-religious thought. Fair enough, perhaps, as many Islamists rejected their place at the table. But unless a wide consensus of society is able to approve the final constitutional text, it will take its place in the line of charters drawn by an elite and swallowed by an unengaged people, even if they vote for it.
Salafīs should not be placated, but neither should they be alienated. Their pressure is valid.
Please click here to read the full article at Arab West Report.
This older interview, from August 2012, reflects a very different reality than the one Islamists experience in Egypt today. At the time they were in the ascendency; now, many of them scurry for cover. In preparation for a larger project on Islamist movements in general, however, Arab West Report only now is publishing this interview. Selected excerpts are below.
On his activity with the group in giving public lectures:
J: What is your history with the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah?
S: I joined the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah in 1979. I was at college during that time and thank God I worked with the Group and I used to preach on Fridays and give lessons. I was arrested in 1981. I am a member of the Guidance Council in Cairo, but regardless of my position, I serve as a Friday preacher and as a lecturer in conferences.
J: In a certain mosque?
S: Nowadays, I preach in many mosques. Of course before the revolution, we were totally prevented from preaching. There are two mosques here in al-Ma’ādi and another one in ‘Atabah, and on the fourth Friday of each month, I go to any mosque, for example in Helwan or sometimes outside Cairo, like in Suez or Alexandria, according to the desires of the people who want me to preach.
J: Are these mosques related to the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah? When you were prevented from preaching before the revolution, how could you have such relations with those mosques?
S: We have had relations for a very long time. I was prevented from preaching but not prevented from moving freely in society or from interacting with people. They would come to us to help them with their problems whether family issues or feuds between families and things like that. Instructions can be given to mosques not to let me preach in them, but I have great relations with society.
J: Are these mosques registered at the Endowments Ministry?
S: No, they are not. They are civil associations which house mosques. These associations resemble the Association of Religious Legitimacy [a longstanding Salafī non-governmental organization registered officially in Egypt and active since the early 20th Century].
J: Are they small, neighborhoodmosques?
S: No, they are large, but it depends on the civil association. There are many that have up to four mosques. They have permission from the Ministry of Social Affairs and they run their activities through associated mosques.
J: So they are legal?
S: Yes, but they are not supervised by the Endowments Ministry, which has no authority over them. The association and its administrative board supervises them and their expenses are submitted to the Ministry of Social Affairs.
Now, the government has reestablished (or, is reestablishing) its supervision and tight control of all mosques, allowing only approved speakers to appear. It is unlikely al-Gama’a al-Islamiya is finding official favor, though there is no campaign against them publicly as like with the Muslim Brotherhood.
But should their members wind up in jail, Salamony has been there before:
J: You said that you had been arrested for a while. When was that?
S: I have been arrested more than once. The first time was during Sādāt’s September decisions in 1981. It lasted a year and a half. Then there were other arrest periods that lasted between two months to a year up until 1990. In October 1990, I was arrested and stayed in prison for 15 years until January 2006, during Mubārak’s time.
J: What was the reason for that last long arrest?
S: There were many arrests during that time. I was arrested because I was a suspect in the case of the assassination of Rif’āt al-Mahjūb, the head of the parliament. But the judge gave amnesty to all the suspects and he said about me, “I have found one suspect in this case with no charges at all; that is ‘Izzat al-Salamunī,” and then I was set free.
We left the court to go back to prison with an arrest warrant. During that period my administrative arrest was open, which means that I could go to the court and present a grievance, and then receive amnesty. After that I would have to go to the state security, stay there for a night or two, only to be arrested again with a new arrest warrant.
At the prison in Damanhour there was a fountain in the center of the village, so the prison vehicle used to take the prisoners – who supposedly had be given amnesty – and go around the fountain once or twice, then send them back to prison.
But the main reason for that arrest concerned my preaching. I was preaching freely in mosques and conferences and criticizing the former regime, the tyranny and the injustice that have been unmasked since the January 25 Revolution.
Salamony says the campaigns against al-Gama’a al-Islamiya were all politically motivated, and that he personally was not involved in any illegal activity or assassination attempts. Instead, as above, he equates his group’s efforts to those of the January 25 Revolution, and the efforts of the state to prevent such an outbreak:
J: When it comes to preaching, did you call for the revolution or for any illegal movements?
S: No, I only preached about stopping injustice and corruption, and also about giving Egyptians all their rights so that no one would be enslaved or prevented from having a respectable life.
J: Did you use any means that you regret using, or perhaps you say they was suitable at that time but not nowadays?
S: No, the means I used did not go beyond words and preaching. We also called for demonstrating against any act of injustice, but all of our practices were peaceful. But starting a demonstration during that time worried the former regime, because people were submissive to oppression. If people who had influence went to the streets it was a very dangerous thing for them.
Once when I was arrested and blindfolded, in 1989, I asked one of the policemen, “Why are you doing all of this: torturing, arrests, breaking into mosques, and people get killed, why?”
He answered, “Honestly, if we let you carrying on all your social activities, and your Islamic preaching for one year, you will reach out to people and win them over to your side. Then you will overpower us and will strike us fatally, with no weapons at all. I will not give you the chance. When I arrest some of you, beat you up, and when you go on demonstrations against us, you only scratch us, which we can handle. But we cannot let you strike us.”
This has been their philosophy: to prevent anyone other than them from having influence over people, or to break the barriers of fear and terror that people had within themselves. That is why they thought that the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah was dangerous.
But it was not just political activism that al-Gama’a al-Islamiya was engaged in. It was social and moral activism as well:
J: What is Hisbah?
S: Hisbah, according to Islamic Law, is the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice. The image of this concept has been distorted to many people. Islamic law states that promoting virtue can only happen through virtue, and preventing vice can never be through vice. Although it is a very beautiful image, people try to deform it. If it is applied correctly, its great fruits would be seen clearly in society.
We have to warn people that some of the things they do are wrong and harmful such as smoking and drinking alcohol. I tell them that these things are bad for their health. But some acts require intervention, like if I am walking around and see some guys trying to kidnap a girl. Here, religion tells me to protect her, and that is exactly the prevention of vice.
The Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah practiced that guidance part within the limits of the Islamic law, and of course there were some mistakes as we are all human beings. Sometimes one may lose one’s temper, but we cannot blame our personal mistakes on the religious concepts.
He is keen to explain the ‘mistakes’. Elsewhere in the interview he describes how many occurred when the political leadership was in prison and could neither guide nor contain their youth. Escalation of attacks between the group and the police also contributed, he said.
J: What were your mistakes? You said you are just human beings who make mistakes.
S: Some of the youth misunderstood the concept of Hisbah and exceeded the limits. For example, if I saw someone committing a vice, I would go to that person and ask him politely to stop. But if I yelled at that person, I have committed vice. Religion only allows me to do what it takes to remove that vice.
J: To give an advice, for example.
S: Yes. I may only grab that person’s hand if it will remove the vice, but I am not allowed to slap that person on the face. So there are rules. Some youth would simply hit the person without giving him advice at all, which is religiously wrong. We have always warned our youth in mosques not to do such things. We have to confess these violations as we cannot prevent others from doing vice while we ourselves do it.
J: So now you know those mistakes, but during the 1970s and before your non-violent initiative, was Hisbah applied with few restrictions?
S: As leaders in the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah, we tried to put limits, but we could not following each and every member working here or there. But whenever we knew that a member of the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah did something wrong, we told him that was wrong, from the beginning.
But as I said before they were young, and youth were the majority of our members. With all of their excitement and with their little knowledge about religion, some incidents happened frequently. But as soon as we knew about them, we always acted and stated what was wrong. If a member hit someone, which is religiously wrong, we would go to that person and apologize to him and even give him the right to avenge himself by hitting that person if he wanted to do so.
J: I have read that in public gatherings, some youth used chains to disband meetings of mixed genders. These things really happened, but you see them as violations?
S: Those violations happened indeed, but some of them were done by people who do not belong to the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah, but their mistakes were blamed on us. Others were done by us and we stated that, before the initiative, but we were trying to settle things down. Now, thanks to age, experience, and increased religious knowledge, there are almost no violations among our members.
J: I have also read about attacks on liquor stores owned by Copts.
S: It happened once or twice.
But this was not a policy, nor was it permitted, Salamony said. But note how in his explanation he includes terminology that is very offensive to Copts, yet still has a sense of toleration about it:
J: The author quoted from Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahmān stating that it is permitted to loot the Copt’s money. He issued a fatwa about that. Do you know anything about that?
S: This is totally untrue, and I heard Dr. ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahmān with my own ears once – as I accompanied him in many of his tours and lectures, and been with him around the whole country – saying that Christians’ and Dhimmis’ blood is prohibited to be shed, and that our religious laws state that their money is forbidden to be looted.
Even if I think that someone is infidel, not a Muslim, this does not give me the right to loot his money or shed his blood. Doctrines should be totally separated from practical life. For example, some Christians think of others as non-believers and infidels, like the Orthodox who believe that if someone does not take communion in their church, then he is a non-believer. To them I am a non-believer.
Belief issues have to do with people’s hearts. When it comes to the practical side, in the Qur’ān, God says: “God does not forbid you from those who fight you not for religion nor drove your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them.”
From that we get that belief is one thing and how to treat people is something else. The money or blood of any human being living in the same country with me, or anywhere else in the world, is prohibited to looted or shed, as long as that person did not attack me or my religion.
in the late 1990s and early 2000s, al-Gama’a al-Islamiya began a non-violent initiative and published their change in policy along theological lines in The Revisions. This allowed many, but not all leaders to leave prison. Since then they have not called for violence, though some return to their social activism has been evidenced. But having assassinated President Sadat in 1981, and with several attempts on President Mubarak, the absolute nature of the rejection of violence is not clear:
J: I understand what you say and I sympathize with that explanation, but a couple of days ago I read that Tāriq al-Zumur commented on Sādāt’s assassin and said that he is a martyr. But how can he be a martyr, especially after your peaceful initiative and declaring that assassination is unacceptable?
S: Here, we have more than one side of the story. As I told you, to judge an issue, I have to consider its surrounding circumstances. Sādāt arrested people and criticized religious leaders like Hāfiz Salāmah that he was Suez’s lunatic. Sādāt said politics and religion should not be combined. The treaty of Camp David was also signed at that time. The general evaluation of the situation was that Sādāt was an enemy of religion and of Egypt.
That atmosphere pushed people like Khālid al-Islāmbulī and his followers to take an action. When I regard that issue now, it is not like when I regarded it at the time it happened. They were motivated by patriotism and religion with good intuition.
So when Tāriq al-Zumur said he was a martyr, he judged them according to their circumstances, which are different from ours. All the circumstances at that time showed that Sādāt was an enemy of religion. In order not to falsely accuse al-Islāmbulī, I must evaluate his situation according to the circumstances which led him to do so.
J: Why do you not just praise him and explain what he did without calling him a martyr as if it is a kind of justification?
S: In Islam, no one has the right to call someone a martyr or not, because only God knows who is a martyr and who is not. What we say is that we consider him to be a martyr, or pray for him to be one of the martyrs, according to his good intention. We pray for our brothers who have been murdered so that God would accept them as martyrs. But we cannot insure that a certain person is a martyr, because God is the only one who decides that.
Interesting to recall is that al-Gama’a al-Islamiya did not initially favor Mohamed Morsi for the presidency. After describing similarities and differences among the Islamist groups, he explained why:
J: I understand that there is a unity among you and that there is no competition among you as you have the same purpose. But the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah supported Abu al-Futuh during the presidential elections instead of supporting al-Shater and Muhammad Mursī, especially Mursī. Why was this?
S: It was the result of a certain view of reality. The leadership of the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah at that time formed a general assembly to gather our 300 members, and over the course of the day we listened to the programs of Dr. Mursī, Dr. Al Awa, and Dr. ‘Abd al-Mun’im Abū al-Futūh. The discussion lasted for nearly 15 hours and the majority supported Dr. Abū al-Futūh’s program in the first round in a democratic way, though some supported others.
J: What were the most important points that made the majority choose Abū al-Futūh rather than Mursī?
S: The majority chose Abū al-Futūh because he was independent and was a part of the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah in the past. He was thought to be friends with the liberals, unlike the Brotherhood as some people dislike them. We though he could gather the people around him better than any other candidate. The main point was to have unity within society. But in the second round, the Jamā’ah al-Islāmīyah chose Muhammad Mursī because at that time, the people categorized the candidates as representing the previous regime or the revolution. So the whole group chose Dr. Muhammad Mursī and their choice was based on a realistic study of the current situation at that time.
Even at the time of Islamist success, Salamony expressed doubts about the democratic outcome. But he was certain the people would not rise against them. Looking backwards his comments are poignant:
J: As a Muslim, you will do your best to deepen the roots of Islamic law in Egypt, but my question is what if the society is against you, you will continue your struggle against the people’s will?
S: That controversial assumption has no place in Egypt because the society has a religious nature, whether Muslim or Christian. If someone wants to change the identity or the nature of that society, we will face that change in a democratic way. Unfortunately, the Islamists are being judged in an unfair way.
They are accused of not accepting the other, which is not true. We accept the other but there is a difference between accepting the other and the other forcing himself upon us and that we must follow him or totally agree with him. I accept you when you stick to your opinion and I stick to mine. We can argue together and express our opinions to society. But what happens with Islamists is that they are being prevented from expressing themselves and even from speaking.
Now, when they have recently gained control, restrictions that are not forced upon anyone else are being forced upon them. So in that case, the democracy is not complete. They are talking about democracy but when it comes to us, it is being prohibited.
Please click here to read the full interview at Arab West Report.
Coptic Christians have reason to celebrate… alone. While they and many others rejoice at the removal of the overall Islamist tinge of the 2012 constitution, this largely liberal-produced draft leaves other religious minorities out in the cold.
“One of the main concerns we have is that freedom of religion is limited to the heavenly religions,” said Chris Chapman, noting the non-recognition of Egyptian Baha’is in particular. “Freedom of religion is absolute and there should be no exclusion.”
The current draft of the constitution, slated for referendum on January 14, makes absolute the freedom of belief. Practicing religious rites and building houses of worship, however, is limited to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
But the article is not an analysis of the constitution but a description of why the largely liberal drafting committee did not secure greater rights for all, and what might be necessary for Egypt to fall in line with the international agreements it has signed. The interview is with Chris Chapman of Minority Rights Group, who recently presented his findings in Cairo.
Chris Chapman
From the conclusion:
If this constitution, however, does not fully satisfy liberal activists, a long term focus is necessary to transform a repressive environment to one respectful of human rights. “It happens gradually,” Chapman assured, “as a process of consultation and negotiation. I see Egypt as moving in the right direction, but it hasn’t got there 100 percent yet.”
Until it does, Chapman has the advantage of calling from the outside for both the rule of law and proper legislation. He urges activists and citizens alike to lobby for the rights of Copts, Baha’is, Shia, and others, but the ultimate onus falls on the government.
“This is international human rights law,” Chapman said. “If Egypt is going to live up to its obligations it must respect freedom of religion and belief.”
Please click here to read the full article at Egypt Source.
From my recent article in Christianity Today, published December 10, 2013:
Egyptian Christians will soon have a law to regulate church building. But this is only one achievement celebrated by Copts in the revised national charter scrubbed of most of its Islamist tinge.
“Christians have freedom of belief and practice,” said Safwat al-Baiady, president of the Protestant Churches of Egypt and a member of the constitutional committee. “And for the first time in the history of Egypt’s constitutions, building churches becomes a right.”
Article 235 of the new draft constitution addressed this longstanding complaint, where permission to build or repair required presidential and security authorization.
Egypt’s constitution of 2012, written by an Islamist majority under the now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi, also provided for many personal and religious freedoms. But that text included clauses of limitation “according to shari’ah law.”
Please click here to read how limitations on freedom were removed – or not – from the constitution, at Christianity Today.
Muhammad Hijāzī, born in Port Said in 1982, converted to Christianity in 1998 at the age of 16. Now 31, he was arrested on December 4, 2013 in the governorate of Minya on charges of espionage, inciting sectarian tension through evangelism, and unlicensed photography and journalism.
In 2007 Hijāzī became the first Egyptian convert to Christianity to petition the state to change the religion field on his ID card, and has changed his name to Bishoy Armia Boulos. According to his former lawyer, Mamdūh Nakhlah, had anyone else but Hijāzī been working in Minya, no charges would have been filed.
Nakhlah agreed to represent Hijāzī in his 2007 lawsuit, but later withdrew due to pressure from the church. His information now comes from overall familiarity with the current case, as well as contact with those in the area where he was arrested. Nakhlah believes the main charge of espionage is fabricated, but that there are enough convenient details surrounding the case to give the prosecutor a pretext to arrest Hijāzī.
Please click here to read the full article, speaking of these pretexts – including a media relationship with one of the figures involved in the production of the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film that sparked protests throughout the region. The article also goes through the history of his efforts to register his religious change, which are still pending on appeal.
Salafyo Costa were once the darlings of the media. Featured both in Egyptian outlets and foreign publications such as CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post, the groundbreaking youth movement founded in April 2011 brought together ultraconservative Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, political liberals and leftists, and Coptic Christians. Together they forged a common identity promoting both the goals of the January 25 revolution and the necessity of unity in an increasingly polarized society.
They implemented this vision through fun. Salafyo Costa organized a soccer match pitting Salafis against Copts, they produced films satirizing political and religious divisions, and they went on field trips to Upper Egypt for charity campaigns. And they lived the life of street demonstrations against military rule. Throughout it all, the 120 members raised suspicions in their original communities, accustomed as these communities generally were to non-interaction with the religious or political “other.”
Salafyo Costa continued on relatively seamlessly until the Tamarod campaign against Mohamed Morsi. During the campaign, the group made the controversial decision to support the call for early elections. The liberal media heralded their courage, while Islamists hurled criticism, finding confirmation of earlier suspicions about the group. Following Morsi’s July 3 ouster, the media forgot them. And then they began to break rank.
The article continues by explaining how they came back together. From the conclusion:
“We revolted on January 25 to create our own manual, to write the rules of the game,” says Tolba. “But since February 11, every regime has imposed its own manual.”
Yet Salafyo Costa has stayed true to their ideals. Despite difficulties, growing pains, and losses, they continue the struggle to break down the barriers separating diverse groups. Maintaining a common commitment is obviously easier among dozens of members than millions of citizens, but in Salafyo Costa, Egypt is not without an example of inclusivity.
Please click here to read the rest of the article at the Middle East Institute.
From a recent article on Arab West Report, to which I contributed a section reporting from a conference held by Egyptian liberals on the ideal constitution. Somewhat surprisingly, there was a good deal of sentiment against the military council:
Essam al-Din Hassan next spoke about the principle of freedom and the encroachments against it in negotiations over the new constitution. One feature of these negotiations is the efforts of the Ministry of Defense and al-Azhar to entrench their independence from the rest of the state. In terms of the military, standing apart from the rest of the executive authority – essentially two heads of state – would be terrible for the civil state and allow Egypt to again become a military, police state.
It is not unreasonable to think, he stated, that the military might trade this status with religious forces that are also looking for gains in the constitution, especially the Salafīs. They are arguing to keep Article 219 somewhere in the text, providing a conservative, Sunni-specific interpretation to the clause in Article 2 saying sharia is the primary source of legislation. But even Article 2, he argued, designating a religion for the state, has no place in a civil state. Article 3, similarly, guaranteeing special religious rights for the Copts, only reinforces the idea of a religious state. To curb such sectarian advances, firm consensus must be gathered in the committee of fifty which is rewriting the Constitution, so that civil state principles are protected, even from the tools of democracy which might undo them.
Ahmad Raghib spoke less about the necessary constitutional provisions for human dignity than the danger of their constant undermining. He noted that previous Egyptian constitutions, such as the 1971 version which governed up until the January 25 Revolution, provided guarantees for human dignity. This did not, however, stop the state from ignoring them, or even trampling upon them as was visible in the police torture cases against Khalid Saeed and Ahmad Bilal.
Raghib expanded Hassan’s warning about the military saying most institutions of state are seeking to enshrine their independence in the Constitution. This is expressly against the will of the people, however, who should have their elected officials administratively responsible for all these institutions. Unfortunately, in the previous Constitution, the Muslim Brotherhood collaborated with these institutions to preserve Mubarak’s state and keep it and the military council immune from their crimes. He closed with the expectation that a third wave of the Revolution might be necessary to put things right and secure a true modern civil constitution.
Please click here to read the full article at Arab West Report, which contains further reporting from the conference as well as observations from an interview with Rev. Safwat al-Baiady, president of the Protestant churches of Egypt and a member in the constitutional committee.
Maryam Milad disappeared in 2012. Last seen in the church of St. Anthony in Shubra, her father believes his now eighteen year old daughter has been kidnapped and perhaps married off to a Salafi Muslim somewhere. Police, he says, have been uncooperative.
“I plead with all the authorities in Egypt,” he said at a prayer meeting highlighting more than a dozen similar cases. “Put yourselves in the place of us parents.”
According to Ebram Louis, founder of the Association for the Victims of Abductions and Enforced Disappearances (AVAED), this is just the tip of the iceberg. He has documented 500 such cases since the revolution.
The article describes his process of documentation, and reveals interesting statistics from AVAED’s findings:
But according to AVAED chief field researcher George Nushi, up to 60 percent of all cases are [stemming from initial love relations]. Most of these, he said, involve Muslims of bad intention. The girl becomes infatuated, but then she is told she cannot go home again.
There are violent cases, but they are limited in number. Even so, AVAED sees religious extremism involved prominently:
“We do not say ‘kidnapping’ in the beginning,” he said, “We say ‘disappearance.’” Nushi says only 5 percent of girls suffered violent kidnappings in the traditional sense.
How does he then have such certainty that malevolent, organized Salafi groups are involved? Of their 500 cases, ten have escaped to tell their story. These stories reveal patterns which indicate similar activity, locations, and even phone numbers.
This issue requires deep research and understanding of the Egyptian social and cultural settings, far deeper than the scope of this article. But please click here to read the rest at Egypt Source.
During the lead-up to the June 30 protests demanding early elections through the violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins, several Brotherhood members spoke in vague terms of their ‘mistakes.’ It was a conciliatory gesture of sorts, admitting Morsi’s less than stellar performance but arguing this was not enough to undo his democratic legitimacy.
It is a fair enough logic, but it was never accompanied by any details concerning these mistakes. The closest to an admission came from Salah Sultan, who apologized for the Brotherhood’s negotiating with Omar Suleiman, opening channels with the military, not being honest enough about the efforts of corrupt regime figures to sabotage the revolution, and failing to absorb youth and women in their project. His statement was posted on the webpage of the Freedom and Justice Party, but later removed and described as only a ‘personal’ viewpoint.
This has been one of my frustrations in listening to the Brotherhood post-Morsi. They speak of mistakes, but are rarely specific. I understand the political logic, but wish for greater transparency. So I was thankful for an opportunity to press the issue directly:
But Darrag, instead, is put off by the question. “I don’t actually agree on the prescription that there are mistakes that the Brotherhood has to acknowledge and apologize for,” he said. “Of course there are mistakes, I am not saying that we don’t make mistakes. But this has to come through a process that all political forces, if they want to learn from past experiences, acknowledge their mistakes.”
Rather, he anticipates this process eventually coming from those who sided with the removal of Morsi:
“It doesn’t make sense to ask one side to keep apologizing and apologizing and apologizing. I mean, this is not helping.”
Perhaps it is not helping the Brotherhood, but if they tried apologizing even once, it might help the original revolutionary cause. But consistent with his position, Darrag anticipates the reflection coming from the other side. “People think and reconsider,” he said. “I am sure that one day the majority will join us in the same way that happened on January 25th.
“But when, I don’t know.”
Please click here to read the full article on Egypt Source.
From my new article at Christianity Today, published October 23, 2013, on why protesting a drive-by shooting is complicated for Egypt’s Christians:
The wedding party stood outside the church, eagerly awaiting the ceremonious arrival of the bride. Instead, drive-by shooters killed four, including two children and the groom’s mother, and injured 18.
Beyond its poignancy, the attack in Cairo’s industrial neighborhood of Warraq was significant for being one of the first to target Egypt’s Christians specifically, versus the now-common attacks on their church buildings.
“Since the revolution, this is the first instance Coptic people were targeted randomly in a church, with weapons,” said Mina Magdy, general coordinator for the Maspero Youth Union, a mostly Coptic revolutionary group formed in response to church burnings in 2011 after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.
Please click here to read the rest of the article at Christianity Today, which describes the pulling back of protests so as not to be associated with anti-‘coup’ sentiment. There is also a video of the second wedding, held in a burnt-out church in Upper Egypt, which you can watch here (4:14 mark).
In order to reverse a coup d’état, Egypt needs a coup d’état. This, in brief, is the solution to Egypt’s crisis offered by Hani Fawzi, general secretary of the Cairo-based Salafi Asala Party. It must be prompted, however, by massive protests. No longer simply the domain of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis, the anti-coup movement is attracting both professionals and Christians – or so he believes.
Rather, this is what he prays for. A few days prior to the violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-in at Raba’a al-Adaweya, Fawzi suffered a massive heart attack while sleeping in the near-by offices of the Asala Party in Nasr City. Found and hospitalized the next morning, unlike some of his colleagues he avoided the violence and mass arrests, but in his recovery has been reduced mostly to seeking divine intercession.
This, according to Fawzi, can come only through the army, as they are the only ones with the power to bring down Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Minister of Defense, and Mohamed Ibrahim, the Minister of the Interior. There have been indications, he hears, that not all generals have been pleased with Sisi’s leadership. The rumor mill has churned with such stories; a bearded taxi driver told me the other day that Sisi had three opposing generals killed.
Fawzi doesn’t want to put stock in rumors, but does notice that several generals have been very quiet. Should one of them undo the coup, it should set in motion what Morsi should have done upon his election. On this he admittedly draws on the rhetoric of Salafi firebrand Hazem Abu Ismail, who argued for a radical cleansing of the state apparatus. Fawzi finds him too divisive a figure, but Morsi could have made it work.
The rest of the article explains how, explains why he discounts Morsi’s opposition, and exculpates Islamists from the attacks on churches. Please click here to continue reading at Egypt Source.
This article was originally published at Christianity Today on October 9, 2013.
I never met Mina Daniel, but today many in Egypt consider him a hero and a martyr. Recently, I met his sister.
Two years ago this week, the 20-year-old Daniel was gunned down during a peaceful Coptic protest outside the Maspero state TV headquarters in downtown Cairo on October 9, 2011. More than 25 others died and scores were injured by military vehicles swerving through the crowded demonstration, or by local thugs who attacked the scattering remnants.
To this date, only a few low-level officers have been handed sentences, ranging from two to three years in prison.
Commemorating the massacre, Copts gathered in the Cave Church of Muqattam in the mountains outside Cairo, a scene of many interdenominational prayer services. Last year, on the first anniversary, thousands of Muslims and Christians marched together to Maspero from Shubra, a northern Cairo district with a high percentage of Coptic residents.
The religious unity of both events was just as Daniel would have wanted it.
“Mina didn’t care if you were a Mina [a typical Coptic name] or a Muhammad,” his sister Marry told me. “He dealt with everyone as created in the image of God.”
Please click here to read the rest of the article at Christianity Today.
The following is from the newsletter of Arab West Report. Unfortunately, it is not available at its website due to its recent hacking.
————————
On May 31, 2012, Jayson Casper wrote about the controversial preacher Dr. Safwat Hegazy (Safwāt Hijāzī) for Arab-West Report (AWR) on the basis of what he had found in media reporting and on the internet. Please click here to read this report.
Hegazy is controversial for statements through which he has been accused of inciting violence. On August 21 he was arrested in Siwa Oasis. He is demanded by the prosecution. The Cairo Appellate Court has scheduled a session on the 7th of September to start his trial. He has been recorded on the stage at Rāba’ah protests on July 28 saying, “if a person throws on Morsi water (figuratively: if someone approaches Morsi), we shall throw on him blood (figuratively: kill him).”
We met with Dr. Safwat Hegazy on Thursday, July 25, one day before the military initiated efforts to end the Rāba’ah protests. He made a very pleasant appearance and seemed secure.
Dr. Safwat Hegazy explained when, in his view, violence can be used: anyone can kill President Bashar al-Assad (Bashār al-Asad) because of his crimes against humanity. Also Israeli soldiers can be targeted since they are at war with Palestinians. By the same token, one can imagine what he could have said after the army used force to end the sit-ins—we are attacked and thus have the right to defend ourselves by force. He did not say this in this interview, but we have heard people expressing the opinion that violence is allowed to be used if attacked.
Several of his statements were different from what we had expected from the reporting about him. “Anyone has the right to insult Islam, oppose it or criticize it,” he says, but not the Prophet Muhammad. Safwat Hegazy has no problems with Coptic Christians in leading positions. He would not object to a Coptic governor or a Coptic president. He also stated that he helped to find an end of tensions in areas where churches had been attacked. But he also stated publicly that he believed that 60% of those who demonstrated against Mursi are Christians: “and this is the truth that we know and the Churches were calling for people to march and participate in these demonstrations, and the Churches and the priests and the chaplains, announced in many videos that they are against an Islamic president and against an Islamic parliament and that they refuse this system and that this system must change.” That sentiment explains, but does NOT justify, the massive violence we have witnessed against churches and Christian institutions on August 15 and 16.
Dr. Safwat Hegazy also explained the Islamist point of view on what they call the coup d’état on July 3. He agreed with us that there should have been parliamentary elections, but blames the Egyptian judiciary and liberals for creating obstacles to holding elections. He demanded President Muhammad Morsi’s (Mursī) return—a view that we have also heard from many others we have met at Rābaʽah al-‘Adawīyyah. One notices from Safwat Hegazy and many others a strong feeling that they were wronged.
Dr. Safwat Hegazy did not object to any question being asked. As a basis for our questions we used Jayson Casper’s previous article that was based on a media research since at that time he was not accessible for an interview.
There are noted differences between what we knew from Safwat Hegazy through media reporting and this interview with him. He is a conservative Muslim scholar, a man with strong beliefs and ideals who appears not to have been very strong in documenting his own work (references to videos, but texts are much weaker. He gave one statement to the military but did not keep a copy).
Safwat Hegazy was presented as the firebrand who wanted the Coptic governor of Qena to be removed, but from Hegazy’s story one learns that he was asked by the SCAF to go to Qena and quell the unrest by telling the people that the governor would be removed.
On the church burning in Sūl (2011), he said he was opposed to the burning and asked for rebuilding the church. Church building “should be solved by law and that the law should be enforced on who is wrong and who is right, and investigate the issue and judge the guilty. If a Muslim is wrong he should be judged according to the law, and if a Christian is wrong he should be judged according to the law. That was our recommendation to the Prime Minister and to the Military Council and they didn’t take it into consideration.”
From Safwat Hegazy story one can ask about the relations between Islamists, security, and the military. It appears that the security and military have been using Hegazy to end unrest in the streets, but neglected several of his recommendations that, from hearing his side of the story, do not seem to be unreasonable.
Dr. Wafaa Hefny, granddaughter of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, was also at the Rāba’ah al-‘Adawīyyah and told us after the interview (that she did not attend) that Safwat Hegazy is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hegazy also did not claim this. He is an independent Islamist with sympathies for both Salafīs and Muslim Brothers.
Dr. Safwat Hegazy was arrested on August 21 for his fiery preaching against the sacking of Morsi and it seems he will not be accessible for some time to come for interviews. It is sad that obvious political differences could not be addressed in dialogue.
The interview took place in Arabic. Questions were asked by Cornelis Hulsman. It was recorded and later, in our office, translated by Daniela De Maria and Ahmed Deiab.
Cornelis Hulsman: I would like to know about your background. You are a member of the Association of Sunnah Scholars. What organization is this?
Safwat Hegazy (Safwāt Hijāzī): The members of this association are only ulamāʾ(scholars), and must be Sunnī ulamāʾ, from the Four Schools of Islamic Jurisprudence: Hanafite, Malikite, Shafi’ite, and Hanbalite. This is what the association is in brief.
CH: You are the Secretary-General of the Revolution’s Board of Trustees. What organization is this? You said that you are focused on preaching but this is politics.
SH: No, it’s revolutionary. I have no relation with politics. I am not a member of any party or any group, but I was elected as a member of the Revolution’s Board of Trustees because I participated in the January 25, 2011 Revolution as one of the leaders and main figures. The Revolution’s Board of Trustees in Mīdān al-Tahrīr (Tahrir Square) was responsible for organization at the square; responsible for its safety, food, night-camping, cleaning, and for everything that is related to Mīdān al-Tahrīr and it’s made of a big group of revolutionaries and they chose me to be their general secretary. It is not a political entity, but a revolutionary entity to protect…
CH: But isn’t revolution politics?
SH: Maybe.
CH: A revolution is a part of politics.
SH: A revolution is a political action, but [the board] only deals with the revolutionary operations and actions, so the Revolution’s Board of Trustees was the one that organized most of the actions going on in Mīdān al- Tahrīr before the 2012 parliamentary elections. The Revolution’s Board of Trustees was the one to make counter-propaganda to the members of the old regime’s National Democratic Party in the parliamentary elections or any election. The Revolution’s Board of Trustees is the one is the first revolutionary entities to announce its support to the candidacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi [for the presidential elections] and it was the first revolutionary entity to reject the current coup d’état and to call for this sit-in and to participate to it.
CH: You were the first to reject the July 3 coup [explanation: Hulsman was not at all intending to go in a debate here on whether this was coup d’état or revolution. For Safwat Hegazy there was no question about this, this was a coup d’état.
SH: Yes.
CH: Ok. So, what about the Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation that you are a member off?
SH: It is an Egyptian association, legitimate, also made by ulamāʾ[Muslim religious scholars], but it is only Egyptian, and it is local, inside Egypt. There is an Association of Sunnah Scholars, but the Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation is only in Egypt. It is made of ulamāʾ and established during the Egyptian Revolution. In the January 25 Egyptian Revolution there were ulamāʾ who refused the Revolution and refused to take part in it and ulamāʾ who supported the Revolution and took part in it. This association is made by the ulamāʾ who supported the Revolution and took part in it. The association cares about the Islamic [sharī’ah] side and the scientific side of political rights and rights in general. And I am a founding member of it.
CH: About your membership of the last association, well-known in the West… you are a member of the National Council for Human Rights.
SH: The National Council for Human Rights is a council present in Egypt and founded by Hosni Mubarak (Husnī Mubārak), who set its rules and system, and at the time of Hosni Mubarak it had a basic task which was to make Hosni Mubarak regime look better in front of the world in the context of human rights. And its members were selected, and the rules and regulations were set for this purpose.
After the election of President Muhammad Morsi, there was a reforming of this council, and I was elected as a member. In this phase it had a main objective, which was changing the old laws of the old National Council for Human Rights and to make the council an effective entity that controls and monitors human rights in Egypt. And indeed it became effective, but then this coup came and everything stopped.
CH: What is exactly your role in the National Council for Human Rights?
SH: I did mainly three things. The first one is participating in creating the new law and the new organization for the council. Secondly, I presented to the council a project for an Egyptian Charter for Human Rights. The council has the project in which I mainly addressed the laws for Egyptian human rights. The third point is developing of the project for an Egyptian Court for Human Rights. The laws for its organization are complete, but the decision was being studied, until then came the coup. These are the three main things that I did. There was a fourth thing for which I was responsible, which is the Council for the Rights of Palestinian Refugees. Thank God we were able to do many things for the rights of the Palestinian Refugees in Egypt.
CH: Thank you. Are all your activities documented and would you be willing to share this with us?
SH: Yes, of course, everything is documented, but I don’t have it with me right now.
CH: No, I don’t mean now, but I am looking for documentation because we make a lot of studies.
SH: Yes, the laws of the council are documented, and hopefully we will be able to e-mail them to you. The project for the Egyptian charter is documented, as well as the project for the Egyptian Court for Human Rights.
CH: So maybe can you send them to me?
SH: Yes, I will.
CH: Thank you.
About Syria: Western journalists wrote about the fatwá that you pronounced on President Bashar al-Assad (Bashār al-Asad), saying that anybody can kill him. What do you mean exactly by this? Because people keep on mentioning this about you.
SH: Yes, I pronounced this fatwá. Bashar al-Assad, according to human rights laws, is a war criminal. According to the Hague Court…
CH: In the Netherlands.
SH: Yes. According to their classification, Bashar is a war criminal. In Islam war criminals must be executed.
CH: But who decides he can be executed?
SH: It is not Safwat Hegazy who says that. I’m not the only person to make this fatwá, many Islamic associations made it.
CH: Who?
SH: Like the International Union for Muslim Scholars, the Association of Sunnī Scholars, Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation, the Syrian Association of Sunnī Scholars… many.
CH: Did they make the same fatwá or this is only from you?
SH: The same fatwá.
CH: In the news was also written that any Muslim could kill any Israeli walking in the street.
SH: No, this is not true. This dates back to 2007… they refer to the war of 2007, the war between Hezbollah (Hizb’allah) and Israel…
CH: Yes, in Gaza.
SH: Yes, Operation Cast Lead. And it was after the war of Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. And I said it about the Israeli army.
CH: The army. So, not civilians?
SH: Not any Jews (civilians), I said “the Israeli army”, because they are militants and kill our brothers and our sons and they have no right to take our land.
CH: But, we all know that most Israelis served in their army, so what about civilians who are in the reserve?
SH: As long as he is still a soldier in the Israeli army and can carry weapons at any moment and kill an Arab civilian, he is an enemy. And it’s the same in Israel: Meir Kahane, and other Rabbis in Israel, they made a religious decree saying that any Arab should be killed.
CH: And anyone who talks against Islam should be killed? The American film against Islam, “Innocence of Muslims”. There were protests in front of the American embassy in Cairo last year because of this movie. Your idea is that anyone involved in producing such a film should be killed?
SH: No, no, no. Anyone has the right to insult Islam, oppose it or criticize it. I can never say that he should be killed for it, never. It is anyone’s right: your right, this girl’s right [pointing to one of our interns], to say that Islam is bad, that it is terrorism, that it is an extremist religion, that you don’t like Islam, it is your right. I will not judge you, or punish you, or beat you, or kill you—it is not my right.
CH: Because this was in the news and also a Coptic youth in Asyūt was sentenced for blasphemy, he wrote something on Facebook and it attracted a lot of media attention.
SH: No, no, no, I refuse these talks about killing a Copt or a Christian because he wrote something about Islam that I don’t like. No way, I refuse this. But there is a very crucial point and it is if a person says that [Prophet] Muhammad (peace be upon him) is crazy.
You have to respect me and my belief. This is the problem. But one who doesn’t like Islam, I could never kill him and if a Muslim kills a Copt because he doesn’t like Islam, he should be prosecuted.
CH: The thing is that the Copts in Egypt are scared.
SH: I’m not talking about the Copts in Egypt only, I’m talking about anybody in the world. Let alone the Copts in Egypt. They live with us and we live with them, they work with us and we work with them. Me, in my company, I have Coptic workers.
CH: You have Copts? Where?
SH: At work, I have Copts.
CH: Who?
SH: There is Jirjis Fawzi, who is the carpenter. We have a big contracting company, and the head of carpenters is Jirjis Fawzi. And he is an expert in carpentry, and he is the one who built my house, my villa, he is the one who made it. I have… the engineer (who made the aluminum windows)—he is Christian and his name is Tamir, Tamir Mikhael in my company, and he’s Christian. So there is no problem between the Copts and us, at all, not even daily life troubles. But as there are extremist Muslims, in the same way there are extremist Copts.
CH: But also about the Copts, you said that 60% of the….
SH: That 60% of the protesters in Ittihādīya were Copts.
Yes, I said that. And I say that 60% of those who joined the demonstrations on the 30th of June were Copts. Why do I say this? Because the Egyptian Church took this way. The Egyptian Church participated in the coup with the presence of Pope Tawadros, as well as al-Azhar took part in it with the presence of the Shaykh of al-Azhar. I object to the position of the al-Azhar Shaykh and Pope Tawadros in supporting the coup, and I request that the Shaykh and Pope Tawadros are dismissed. There is no difference for me between Muslims or Christians who took part in this coup. I said that 60% of who took part in the Ittihādīya demonstrations and the July 3 coup are Christians, and this is the truth that we know and the Churches were calling for people to march and participate in these demonstrations, and the Churches and the priests and the chaplains, announced in many videos that they are against an Islamic president and against an Islamic parliament and that they refuse this system and that this system must change.
CH: But do you understand why Copts are against an Islamic president and an Islamic parliament? Because they are scared. The problem is here in Egypt. I’ve been in this country for 35 years, but for the fear, there must be a dialogue. We must cooperate with each other. There is a great fear here, and fear is not good for anybody.
SH: What can we do to remove this fear? Shall we decide that Egypt will not have an Islamic president? Or shall we sit and talk and discuss and understand who has fear and what they have a fear of? Did we experience an Islamic president who oppressed the Copts? It did not happen. Did Muhammad Morsi, during the year of his ruling, oppress the Copts? Did he attack the rights of the Copts? Absolutely not. I am one of the people who suggested that we put in the Egyptian Constitution an article that says that when non-Muslims have a controversy it will be judged according to their religious law, in their beliefs and practices and in the individual personal status matters. I am the one who asked for it, I am the one who insisted for the presence of this article to guarantee the right for Copts in Egypt to worship according to their religion and deal with the civil matters, such as marriage and heritage, according to what their religion says.
CH: Is there a dialogue between you and any important Coptic figure, such as Bishop Moussa, for example? He has dialogues with many Muslims; he is very well known for it. I also know people who don’t want such dialogue, but he has a lot of dialogues with the Muslims. Do you know Bishop Moussa personally?
SH: Yes, I know him.
CH: What’s your opinion on Bishop Moussa and people like him?
SH: I absolutely have no problem in dialoguing or cooperating or living with the Copts. I strongly believe that we will solve any problem with the Copts from its bases, if there is any problem. However, we do have two or three main problems. The first problem is the media, the Egyptian media.
CH: Yes, I know [I know of several examples where Egyptian media have not given a fair picture of Islamists or Islamist views]
SH: The second problem is the old cultural heritage of the West. They act according to this heritage. The third problem is the fear, the fear from others, from any other person that is different. And it is human nature to walk away from things that scare me. I don’t see any problem. But there is a fourth problem, which is the Coptic emigrants, who want to create a big problem in Egypt. This is a very important problem.
CH: This is important but it comes from media. They don’t live here in Egypt, so it’s because they are influenced by the information on Egypt that comes from the media.
SH: Yes exactly, it’s the media.
CH: But Jirjis, who works with you, he knows you, so there is no problem.
SH: Yes Jirjis… After the Revolution, for a whole year the company didn’t have work, but the employees still receive their salaries. Jirjis, he got another job offer with a higher salary, so he came to me and said, “I received a job offer for a higher salary but I would like to stay with you, so paying for me a salary without me working, will it cause a problem?” I said, “No there is no problem”. He said, “Would you like me to stay here?” I said, “Yes, I want you to stay here”. So he refused the other job and continued with me. After one month he refused to take more than half of his salary and has been working with me for 8 years, and we’re getting along.
CH: Jayson mentioned in his article Shaykh Umar ‘Abd al-Kāfī. Who is he exactly and what is the relationship between the two of you?
SH: Umar ‘Abd al-Kāfī is one of the ulamāʾ who was living in Egypt in the eighties, and was giving weekly lectures in a mosque called Asad Ibn al-Furāt mosque. He had a huge audience, thousands of people, which caused a problem with the police. They accused him of incitement against Christians. I was a young boy and he was one of my teachers among the other Shaykhs, that’s it, that’s all the relationship between me and Umar ‘Abd al-Kāfī. After that he moved to the Emirates, where he lives until now.
CH: Until now?
SH: Until now.
CH: But he doesn’t talk about Egypt or the Revolution?
SH: No, absolutely. He has nothing to do with the Revolution or with the Christians in Egypt, nor with the leadership of Egypt, at all. He lives in the Emirates, in Dubai, and he is very close to the governors of the Emirates and to Muhammad Bin Rashīd, ruler of Dubai.
CH: I was befriended with Shaykh ‘Abd al-Mūatī al-Bayūmī. Do you know him?
SH: Yes.
CH: He was a great thinker.
[no response]
CH: Anyway, about Qena. In Qena there was a Christian governor, but it has been written that you opposed the presence of a Christian governor in Qena.
SH: It is absolutely not true.
CH: What exactly happened with the last Christian governor in Qena?
SH: In Qena, after the Revolution, Prime Minister ‘Issām Sharaf appointed a Christian governor. The people of Qena refused this decision and revolted against it in Qena, so the Military Council, which was governing the country at that time, represented by Colonel Hassan al-Rūīnī, called me and asked me to go to Qena to dismiss the revolt and solve the problem, because of my good relationship with Christians and Muslims, as there had been a previous problem between Muslims and Christian in a Church in ‘Atfīh, in the village of Sūl, and I was the one who solved it.
CH: I know the issue of Sūl. Let’s continue first on Qena and then we can talk about Sūl.
SH: So Hassan al-Rūīnī asked me and Shaykh Muhammad Hassan to go to Qena to solve the problem. So we went there and met the Muslims and we persuaded them that revolting and using violence is not a solution to the problem. Dr. ‘Issām Sharaf and Hassan al-Rūīnī called us and said that we could change the governor, but the people had to go back to their houses. So I told the people that we could change the governor on the bases of what the Prime Minister and the Military Council said. So people left and went back home and the governor was changed. That’s my whole story regarding Qena. But I never refuse that a Christian governor takes charge of any governorate in Egypt. That’s the story about Qena. I didn’t support the people’s revolt; I didn’t refuse the Christian governor, that didn’t happen. But it was according to the words of the Prime Minister and the Military Council.
Concerning the village of Sūl, what happened—without going into details—is that a church was destroyed and the Muslims revolted and clashed. I was also asked by the Prime Minister and the Military Council to go to Sūl, me and Shaykh Muhammad Hassan, to solve the problem. We convinced the people to dismiss and to rebuild the church and the army will rebuild the church. It’s not the right of Muslims to destroy a church owned by Christians. The youths listened to us, and left and the church was rebuilt. If Sawfat Hegazy opposed, hated or didn’t want the Copts in Egypt, would he have solved these problems?
CH: But on Sūl… I wrote about Sūl, I know people from Sūl—a Christian lawyer who is from Sūl, but lives in Cairo. There were mistakes there—that there was Christian man [in a relationship] with a Muslim girl that initiated tensions with Muslims
SH: That was our recommendation that we presented to the Military Council. The first problem was to get people [Christians] back to their houses and to leave the matter to the law, and this is the main point: that we got people back to their houses and that the church was rebuilt. And we wrote to the Prime Minister and to the Military Council that the problem should be solved by law and that the law should be enforced on who is wrong and who is right, and investigate the issue and judge the guilty. If a Muslim is wrong he should be judged according to the law, and if a Christian is wrong he should be judged according to the law. That was our recommendation to the Prime Minister and to the Military Council and they didn’t take it into consideration.
CH: Is that documented?
SH: Yes, it is documented, they have it.
CH: How? Our work needs documentation…
SH: That is documented in videos, we said that in videos. When I went to Hassan al-Ruiny, at the Military Council, he told me to write what I wanted to do, so I wrote what I wanted to do and I gave him the paper and this is why I don’t have a copy of it.
CH: Hopefully you will be able to give us the link to the video.
SH: Yes, if you go on YouTube and if you search the Sūl case, you will find my speeches in the village of Sūl.
CH: Now, Imbābah. What do you think about the burning of the church in Imbābah?
SH: On the burning of the Imbābah church—in Egypt they call me “The Firefighter”, who extinguished the fire. In Imbābah there was a problem in the church, we went there as the Revolution’s Board of Trustees because this happened immediately after the Revolution. We had nothing to do with the issue and we found out that the Ministry of Interior was responsible for the problem.
CH: What did the Ministry of Interior do?
SH: The information that I have, I’m not sure if it’s right or wrong. As a habit, if the information that I have is right, I say it, while if the information that I have is not verified, I say I don’t know. The information that we got is that what happened there is that a police officer opened fire on the church and he had a group of thugs with him. They threw Molotovs at the church. So the Muslims and Christians inhabitants stood against this and the problem happened. At that time the Ministry of Interior was causing many of these problems to hinder the Revolution; it was playing the role of what was known as “the third party” [when there is two parts against each other and a third one comes up and pushes both sides to fight], and my role was… Imbābah has many churches, nearly four churches, and what I did is that we took some Muslims youths from the revolutionaries to protect the other churches. They protected the rest of the churches so no one would attack any other church. That’s my entire role in Imbābah. After that, one of the main tasks of the Revolution’s Board of Trustees was to stand in front of the gates of the churches and ceremonies of the Copts, so that they can prevent any extremist Muslim from getting near the church.
CH: In Egypt journalists and TV representatives are talking about civil war in Egypt. There are Islamists and non-Islamists, Muslims and non-Muslims. My opinion is that Egypt is a country for all Egyptians, not the Islamists only, not the Christians only, not the Liberals only; everybody.
SH: Let me tell you something about my political view, which you can find shown in some TV programs. Can a Christian run for the presidency of Egypt? I say “yes”. If the Egyptian people chose a Christian to govern Egypt, that’s it, this is the people’s will. This is my principle. The person who the people want to be the ruler, should rule. If the people chose an Islamist to govern, he should govern. We should all support that president. If the people chose a Liberal, if the people chose a Christian, a Copt, then he governs, that’s it; that’s the people’s will and we should respect it. This…
CH: Yes, that’s right.
SH: This is my opinion. Therefore, when an article was proposed for the Constitution–I had a strong relationship with the Constitutional Committee—that the President of the Republic must be Muslim, I said, “No”. The President of the Republic must be Egyptian. Muslim, Christian, Liberal, Communist…
CH: … Jewish
SH: Jewish, if there were any Jews living in Egypt. In Egypt there are no more than 50 Jews.
All of them older than 70.
CH: I know, I know.
SH: That’s why I didn’t mention the word Jews. But he must be Egyptian. This is my principle and my political view. Can the Prime Minister be Christian? Yes, the Prime Minister can be Christian. In front of the civil law, Christians are exactly like Muslims. This is my opinion. And on this basis, the issue is not about Morsi being an Islamic President…
CH: Is he an Islamic president or an Egyptian president?
SH: No, I’m clarifying this to you. The issue is not about Morsi being an Islamic [president]. Instead, it is about being a president—Egyptian, civilian, elected through fair, free elections. And I said on this stage [of Rāba’a al-‘Adawīyah] that if Hamdīn Sabāhī was the President of the Republic and the army staged a coup against him, I would refuse that coup and take this same position and fill the squares in support of Hamdīn Sabāhī. This is the issue.
CH: Now, the people of the coup are not with the Islamists…
SH: Excuse me, before you continue. The Military Council, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi (’Abd al-Fattāh al-Sīsī), wanted to make the matter a religious matter. The coup and al-Sisi wanted to make Morsi’s matter a religious one. How? He brought Church’s Pope and from the Azhar Shaykh.
CH: I am sorry. That’s wrong.
SH: Isn’t it?
CH: That’s a mistake.
SH: Yes. So he changed the issue from a coup to a religious issue between Muslims and Christians. The Muslims were hurt by the fact that the Church’s Pope took part in deposing an Islamic President. Ahmad al-Tayyīb, Shaykh of al-Azhar, as a person, not as an authority, he is a man from the remnants of the old regime and sits in political committees and was supporting Ahmad Shafiq (Shafīq) in the presidential elections. And the presence of Ahmad al-Tayyīb gave a religious dimension to the issue and related it to the old regime. And this was the first step of al-Sisi leading to a civil war in Egypt. His second step, it’s yesterday’s speech, in which he invited his supporters to demonstrate in the streets. How do you invite your supporters to protest while your opposition is in the street? We are absolutely not considering going to Midān al-Tahrīr. Midān al-Tahrīr is our property from January 25. But we refused to go to Midān al-Tahrīr because there are some mercenaries. Concerning the possibility of a civil war in Egypt, we, as supporters of the President [Morsi], would never use a weapon against an Egyptian. Never.
CH: Yesterday al-Sisi made his statement. What is the situation now in Egypt? President Morsi obtained 51% of votes in the elections, while Shafiq got 49. Egypt now is divided. Some are with Morsi, some are against Morsi, but where is the dialogue in Egypt? For Egypt’s economy this is not good. All the people here… I see here, everyone wants to live, everyone wants to eat, this is the human being—that is the people.
SH: You are from the Netherlands, right?
CH: I have been living in Egypt for several years.
SH: But you are from Holland. And they are from Holland as well? [Referring to the interns.]
CH: No, no, they are from Italy and he’s from England.
SH: In Italy, in England, in Holland, do you accept that the army stages a military coup against democracy and takes over and oust the elected Prime Minister? Does anyone accept that?
CH: No, but in Europe, in England, in Italy, in Holland, there are democratic institutions and if anything happens the Parliament decides if the Prime Minister or the President will continue or not. Here, where is the parliament?
SH: This is what we are asking for and this is what the president, Muhammad Morsi, is asking for. President Muhammad Morsi says that we have been trying to run parliamentary elections and to constitute a parliament for a year now, but the Constitutional Court is hindering these elections, as are the Liberals. We want to continue the democratic experiment in Egypt. We elected a president and he became the elected president. With 51% or 50.5%, anyway what matters is he got the majority of votes and he became an elected president for Egypt. He must continue his term. The parliament is the only faction that can judge the president and depose the president and decide whether there should be early presidential elections or not. We told them to make elections and constitute a parliament and you as opposition to Morsi, since you claim to have 30 million people who went in the streets, you will surely win the elections. Depose Morsi according to the law. Am I wrong? This is what we asked for and what we are asking for. We will not go back again to the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Jamāl ‘Abd al- Nāsser) or Mubarak where the army rules. It’s impossible. You know that there is a temporary president for the country. Is he a real president? Does he do the tasks of the president? Does he have power? Does he get to make decisions? Who is ruling Egypt? Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. He is the one who is ruling. So this is what we are asking for.
We are asking for the following points: first, the return of the elected president to perform his tasks, without conditions or restrictions. Secondly, running parliamentary elections as soon as possible. Thirdly, the parliament gets to decide on the judgment or the deposal of the president. Whatever the parliament does, we will accept it. Fourth, forming a commission to amend the Egyptian Constitution. Fifth, forming a commission for national reconciliation. The return of the Egyptian Constitution; the return of the temporary Shūrá Council—this is what we ask for. Simple as that. We will go back to our houses and run elections and if they have the majority in the streets they will reach the majority in the parliament. If they have the majority in parliament they have the right to govern and to depose the president, and at that time we will support the deposal of the president, if it’s the parliament who deposes the president. But, if we go to the streets and claim to be 30 million or 20 million and we want to depose the president… I also can make the claim that we are 20 million, can you tell if I am honest or lying?
CH: But if there are parliamentary elections…
SH: This is what we are saying, me and the Revolution’s Board of Trustees, it’s what we are asking and this is what all the Islamic parties are saying.
CH: Thank you. About tomorrow: will something happen? [There were fears that on Friday July 26 there could be tensions and fights]
SH: Hopefully tomorrow nothing will happen. We don’t have weapons, we won’t carry weapons. We don’t know how to kill, we don’t kill anyone. This will continue being a peaceful revolution. I suggest that you take a walk in the square at night with Hussein from the Media Center or Walīd Haddād or anyone. You will see with your own eyes that there is no terrorism or weapons. Tomorrow I don’t expect anything to happen. I only think that there will be some thugs and those thugs are moved by the State Security. We are quite sure of this. They can cause some problems, as it happens every day. Some people from us might die and they could go to Tahrīr, the thugs, and kill some people so we are accused of it. If we wanted to take over Midān al-Tahrīr we would have done it long ago, but we don’t want that. And hopefully tomorrow everything will go fine.
CH: Hopefully. Our interns have questions.
Daniela De Maria: I read that you have been banned from entering France. Why?
SH: No, I’m not banned from entering France. In the time of Sarkozy there was an Islamic conference that me and a group of Shaykhs were invited to attend and to give a speech in. But the Ministry of Interior took the decision. The French Ministry of Interior or the French government was heading toward elections, so they wanted to win the votes of Jews and some French extremists in France…
CH: Did this happen during the time a Jewish school in France was attacked and children were killed?
SH: Yes.
So they wanted to prevent the Borjè conference from being held, but they failed because if they had done it they would have lost the votes of the Muslims in France so instead they decided to prevent from entering all the scholars that were supposed to participate in the conference that year, such as Shaykh al-Qaradāwī, Safwat Hegazy, ‘A’īd al-Qarnī, and a huge group, who don’t have any relationship with politics… Shaykhs like A’ed al-Qarnī or Mahmūd al-Masrī have nothing to do with politics, revolution, or anything else, but they were banned anyway for this trip only, but afterwards I went to France.
Rob Bental: What is your opinion on the role of foreign countries in Egypt right now and what do you think their role should be?
SH: In the current crisis?
RB: Yes.
SH: If this military coup was in any other country, would Europe or the European countries accept or recognize this coup or they would reject it? They would reject it, definitely. This is what we want from the European countries. We want the European countries to reject this coup and this government, and get back the elected president. I requested the European Union to come to supervise the next parliamentary elections. Europe must help and protect the Egyptian democratic experiment.
Safwat Hegazi has long been an interest of mine due to his inflammatory rhetoric in favor of Islamism. This article was written for Arab West Report before the removal of President Morsi from his office, in preparation for a hopeful interview. Cornelis Hulsman was able to secure this interview during the sit-in protest, and this will be published here in a subsequent post. Since then, Hegazi has been arrested for inciting violence. Unfortunately, the database of AWR remains inaccessible due to hacking.
………….
The Islamist landscape in Egypt is often seen through the lens of two dominant groupings: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis, the latter of which have splintered into several smaller political parties. But Sunni Islam, lacking an organizational hierarchy, facilitates the emergence of independent scholars on the basis of their knowledge and charisma. Though the Brotherhood and Salafi Nour Party are rightly understood as the prime movers in Islamist politics, the influence of individual actors must not be discounted. Among the most prominent is Safwat Hegazi.
Despite his general independence, Hegazi is often identified – rightly or wrongly – as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Regardless, his strident pro-revolutionary and pro-Islamist positions frequently place him in support of President Muhammad Morsi in general, and in support of an even larger Islamist project in particular, as will be seen. These positions are not just his own, but reflect his position as the secretary-general of the Revolution’s Board of Trustees, one of many revolutionary groupings, and from membership in two Islamist/Salafi organizations, the Legitimate Association for Rights and Reform, and the Association of Sunnah Scholars, which he heads.
Most controversial, however, is Hegazi’s membership in the National Council for Human Rights. This semi-governmental watchdog was reconstituted by Morsi to replace the Mubarak and NDP dominated council with twenty-five new members. Liberals and leftists received a share of the seats, but critics complained of Islamist domination and the appointment of figures with no experience or demonstrated commitment to international human rights norms. Hegazi was singled out as an example.
Among the complaints is Hegazi’s willingness to shed blood.
He issued a fatwa not only licensing the assassination of Syrian President Bashār al-Asad, but also declaring ‘a sinner’ anyone who did not do so. ‘Killing Asad is a duty of the Islamic nation,’ he declared, taking legitimacy from other organizations who issued similar statements.
While Syria can be considered a domain of war, Hegazi’s pronouncement of death extends further. lAnother fatwa urges Muslims to kill any Israeli found walking in the streets, saying the day will come when Muslims rule the world. He also announced he would personally kill someone who insults Islam or the Prophet Muhammad, though he was careful to emphasize he was not asking the public to assume this responsibility.
Finally, in the context of demonstrations at the presidential palace over Morsi’s controversial constitutional declaration placing his decisions beyond judicial oversight, Hegazi warned demonstrating Copts. Repeating Islamist claims that over sixty percent of protesters were Christians, he saw a conspiracy to overthrow the president. Copts share this country with us, he admitted, but declared there were red lines. ‘Whoever threatens it [presidential legitimacy] with water,’ he said, ‘we will threaten him with blood.’
An anti-Christian sentiment can be detected as well in earlier incidents. Upon return of the fiery and polemical Islamist preacher ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Kāfī to Egypt after thirteen years in exile, Hegazi was there to meet him at the airport. But it was his conduct in Qena which speaks more fully to the issue.
After the revolution the ruling military council replaced Mubarak-era governors and appointed new ones in their stead. Qena, with a large Christian minority, had been the one governorate with a Coptic head, and his replacement with another Copt sparked huge protests and cutting of the railway line. Some rejected him for his role in suppressing protests as a member of the police force during the revolution, but much of the protest centered on his religious identity.
Hegazi was part of a team dispatched by the military council to help calm the situation, but instead took the side of the demonstrators. ‘Your demands are our responsibility,’ he declared. ‘No one can impose on us something we do not want.’ In a later, unrelated incident, Hegazi also condemned Shia Muslims, declaring their faith to be blasphemy.
In the accessed media, the motivation for Hegazi’s stances is unclear, but there is space to see it primarily as revolutionary, rather than as sectarian. His is an Islamist activism, but it is revolutionary all the same. Sometimes, these come into conflict.
This was apparent during a summer demonstration in Tahrir Square in 2011 against military rule. Hegazi had earlier withdrawn from a national consensus conference due to the presence of old regime figures, and in this his action was similar to liberal response. But in the square it was non-Islamists who felt the need to withdraw as Salafi protestors used the occasion to chant decidedly Islamist slogans. Hegazi rejected claims there was an agreement among all revolutionaries to use only consensus slogans and demands. Other Islamists admitted there was, however, though they interpreted it differently. In any case, Hegazi became a part of the deteriorating unity of the revolution and the decent into political polarization.
In an earlier example, following the burning of a church in Imbaba in May 2011, representing the first major sectarian attack after the revolution, Hegazi appeared at a massive joint Brotherhood-Salafi rally. He interpreted the attack as part of the counter-revolution, saying it was carried out by thugs, rather than by Islamists. He also took the opportunity to declare the soon coming of the United Islamic States, with one caliph to rule all Muslims.
This theme appeared again during the presidential election campaign, which Hegazi declined to participate in – possibly on behalf of al-Jamā’ah al-Islāmiyyah – due to the large number of worthy candidates, mentioning specifically the liberal Ayman Nūr along with other Islamist candidates. But eventually he threw his support behind Muhammad Morsi, declaring him the only candidate who promised to implement sharī‘ah law.
But Hegazi’s rhetoric went much further. He declared Morsi to be a new Salāh al-Dīn who would unite the Muslims and liberate Jerusalem. A few days later at a huge rally in the Delta, in front of Morsi and Brotherhood leadership Hegazi called for ‘millions of martyrs’ to go to Jerusalem, establishing it as the capital of a new caliphate. The green flag bearing the Islamic shahādah, he defended, belongs to Islam and not to Saudi Arabia.
Part of Hegazi’s motivation is revolutionary. Prior to the first round of elections he called for people to reject the former regime candidates, labeling especially ‘Umar Sulimān, Ahmad Shafīq, and ‘Amr Mūsa. But it is also fully Islamist; a few weeks later he said it was ‘against religion’ to elect a candidate with a vision for liberal, secular, communist, or socialist state. As for the Salafi political parties which endorsed ‘Abd al-Mun’im Abū al-Futūh for president, Hegazi called their leaders agents of state security.
Hegazi’s support for Morsi has continued after his election. He defended the sacking of military council leadership, saying it was not to monopolize power but to secure the demands of the revolution. He supported the constitutional declaration, as described above, and has even approved the practice of kissing the hands of religious leaders, placing Morsi among their number. His partisan positions have earned Hegazi a good deal of opposition – and possible maligning – in the press. An admitted NDP thug has accused him and Brotherhood leadership of orchestrating the revolutionary Battle of the Camel. He was also quoted as seeking to turn the political struggle in Egypt into a civil war, as the opposition was against God and his caliph, a statement he subsequently denied.
As a controversial Islamist in Egypt, Hegazi is not alone. Many have made comments even more outrageous, but none have received such official government endorsement. Appointment to the National Council of Human Rights is a major statement of presidential approval, in which President Morsi implicitly signals toleration of Hegazi’s rhetoric, if not appreciation and approval. France, meanwhile, has barred him from entering the country.
More than likely, Hegazi’s appointment is a political reward for necessary support, keeping secure the president’s right flank. Policy makers in the West appear content to allow Morsi to nurture sectarian discourse as long as practical international obligations are kept sacrosanct. These obligations, however, include a measure of respect for human rights; how far Islamists can transform domestic religious realities is yet to be delimited.
But President Morsi is accountable for the views of Hegazi. Having chosen the politically expedient road of endorsing him domestically, he must endure the politically difficult road of explaining him internationally. Egypt is free to create the society it wishes, but the global community is free to criticize accordingly, and determine the level it welcomes and aids Egypt’s ongoing transition.
These matters are not easy, either for the president or the international community. Safwat Hegazi, however, symbolically stands in the nexus. By all appearances he enjoys his position.
It is a simple matter, really. No matter how many people poured into the streets on June 30 to demand early presidential elections, Mohamed Morsi had a mandate to govern for four years. “We cannot accept the loss of legitimacy because this is not our demand to compromise,” said Ahmed Kamal, youth secretary for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Helwan. “It is the will of Egyptians who chose Morsi in the democratic process.”
Fair enough. But in the mind of his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood, he had a mandate for far more. “The people chose us,” he continued. “The Islamic ideology is to apply to the whole of life, and this is the view of our party.” Kamal’s words are punctuated by one of the key issues Morsi’s supporters grasp at: legitimacy. “When Egyptians chose it – and we do not wish to impose it – we cannot accept the idea of jumping over its legitimacy.”
Many commentators over the past year have criticized the Brotherhood for a majoritarian view of democracy. Kamal’s comments appear to bear this out. Morsi’s narrow win in the presidential elections, perhaps coupled with the sizeable Islamist win in parliamentary elections, was enough to confirm and empower the triumph of Islam. In their view, opposing their political project, therefore, is opposing Islam itself.
The interview continues to include Kamal’s views on Christians, martyrdom, and the Brotherhood conception of peaceful protest. Please click here to read the rest of the article at Egypt Source.
What mentality of man will burn a church? In Egypt, what should be known as a house of prayer is now the symbol of civil strife amid conflicting accusations of blame.
‘Attacks on churches are being done by the former regime and their thugs, not pro-Morsi demonstrators,’ said Ahmed Kamal, youth secretary for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Helwan, an industrial district to the south of Cairo.
But this is nonsense to Bishop Thomas, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Qussia, 340 kilometers south of Cairo. His church was attacked by pro-Morsi protestors, but neighborhood Muslims rallied to defend it.
‘We recognize their faces and know who they are,’ said Thomas. ‘The Brotherhood is using us as a scapegoat to blame us for their failures.’
Anti-Christian rhetoric has been prominent among Islamists. Since Pope Tawadros, along with the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar, appeared with General al-Sisi to announce the deposing of President Morsi, many Islamists believe Copts to be part of a grand conspiracy against not just their movement, but Islam itself.
‘We don’t oppose Christians,’ said Kamal, ‘but we are against the pope – as we are against the head of the Azhar – who interferes to direct people to a particular political direction.’
This second half of this message is reinforced by Kamal’s local party representation. The Helwan FJP’s Facebook page notes that ‘burning houses of worship is a crime’, but then all but justifies it in an attack on the church.
After listing a litany of the pope’s offenses, it declares, ‘After all this people ask why they burn the churches.
‘For the Church to declare war against Islam and Muslims is the worst offense. For every action there is a reaction.’
Kamal recognizes this message may have been too general. The Brotherhood sees Islam as both worship and ideology, only the latter of which has been rejected by the church and anti-Morsi protestors.
Incoherence
But for Arne Fjeldstad, CEO of The Media Project to promote religious literacy in journalism, this error reflects the reality on the ground for Islamists.
‘Whatever the Brotherhood says [about nonviolence] is not listened to or communicated on the street,’ he said. ‘So there is a large incoherence among them.’
More than 50 churches were destroyed since Wednesday last week, including two Bible Society bookshops – the first time in Egypt’s recent history. Some news organizations reported churches being marked for attack before the Brotherhood sit-ins were forcibly broken up.
Fjeldstad believes the Brotherhood will have a difficult time making theological sense about why God ‘turned against them’. But in the meanwhile, the sit-ins were filled with chants about martyrdom.
‘They have prepared the ground for future generations of warriors for Islam,’ he said.
Sarah Carr is an independent journalist and founder of mbinenglish.com, a web page which exposes the Arabic-only messages the Muslim Brotherhood, such as the FJP Facebook page above.
But she understands the rage of Islamist protestors, for she was a witness to the military-sponsored dispersal of the sit-in which killed over 600 people, not including 40 police personnel.
‘It was completely disproportional violence,’ she said, describing army vehicles mounted with automatic weapons firing into the crowds. Carr did not see any armed protestors, though she does not deny their presence.
‘The army needs to justify their terrorist narrative and use it to crush the Muslim Brotherhood,’ she said.
But the Brotherhood did resist. Political analyst Abdullah Schleifer notes that the Western tradition of nonviolent protest involves non-resistance to state-sponsored oppression.
‘Non-violence does not mean building barricades to hold off the Egyptian riot police and breaking up pavement stones to throw at them.’
Ahmed Kamal
Kamal freely admits the difference.
‘Gandhi is not necessarily our role model,’ he said. ‘He was good and his people were brave, but we have our peaceful model as well as per our book and principles.
‘We are unarmed in front of their weapons, but we will resist them. To be peaceful is not just to stay silent and wait for bloodshed. We must defend our lives even by throwing stones.’
But Emad Gad, a leading politician with the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, says they went far beyond throwing stones. His party is collecting evidence of protestors’ violent intent.
‘The army did not attack the people,’ he said. ‘They used tear gas and bulldozers and were attacked by armed protestors, and then they responded.’
For political analyst Eric Trager, both narratives make sense. The Brotherhood cannot win a battle against the security forces, but that may not be the point.
‘The Brotherhood seems to believe that if it can draw the military into a fight directly, it can create fissures within the military,’ he told World Affairs Journal.
To protect itself, the military must now push the issue to conclusion.
‘It [the army] entered into a direct conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even an existential one,’ Trager continued.
‘The military believes it not only has to remove Morsi, it has to decapitate the entire organization. Otherwise, the Brotherhood will re-emerge and perhaps kill the generals who removed it from power.’
Incitement
Bishop Mouneer of the Anglican Church in Cairo disagrees.
‘We witnessed bloodshed on our streets, vandalism and the deliberate destruction of churches and government buildings in lawless acts of revenge by the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters,’ he said.
‘I appeal to everyone to avoid rushing to judge the authorities in Egypt.’
In attacking churches, though, Carr finds the Brotherhood playing into the hands of authorities – though society provides fertile ground.
‘We’ve seen for decades how you have one person with an agenda [to spark sectarian attacks] and then others are very happy to jump in,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t take much incitement from the Brotherhood or anyone else.’
Yet the authorities, she finds, are not innocent.
‘It is no good to go to conspiracy theories, but why did you break up the sit-in and not protect churches?’ she asks. ‘What should we conclude?’
The conclusion is a morass of relativity, reflective of a polarized society overlooking travesties on all sides.
‘The number of police killed is almost insignificant,’ said Kamal, ‘compared to the two thousand killed and ten thousand injured on our side.
‘This confirms our peacefulness.’
This article was originally published on Lapido Media.
Despite the deaths of more than 500 Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the resulting retaliation against Christian targets nationwide, Egypt’s Christian community stands with yesterday’s decision by the military-backed transitional government to break-up the pro-Morsi sit-ins.
“If a peaceful sit-in took place in Times Square and locked down the city, how long would it take American authorities to disperse it?” said Ramez Atallah, head of the Egyptian Bible Society. “The government spent six weeks trying to solve this crisis, and finally used force. What were the alternatives?”
Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of Coptic newspaper Watani, explained why one alternative—to simply allow the protests to continue indefinitely—was not a better choice.
“If it had been a peaceful protest, we should leave it there. Have the army encircle it to prevent more weapons from entering, and wait for their morale to falter,” he said. “But the sit-in surrounded 20 to 30 high-rise apartment buildings, and the people had to submit to daily checks by the Muslim Brotherhood simply to go in and out of their neighborhood.
“They were terrorists, holding hostage thousands of residents.”
Please click here to read the full article at Christianity Today.
Dutch scholar Johannes Jansen contributed an essay – ‘The Religious Roots of Muslim Violence’ (opens in a Word document) – to a 2011 anthology entitled, ‘Terrorism: Ideology, Law, and Policy’. In it he makes the case that violence and terrorism are part and parcel of the Islamic religion, traceable to its root sources at every level of sharia construction. Jansen’s scouring of the sources is admirable, and he launches several challenges to an irenic understanding of Islam. Unfortunately, he gives short shrift to worthy counterarguments, instead presenting the reader conclusions deemed unassailable, established on the basis of his insight. While his insight is formidable, it is not conclusive. As a scholar he would do well to simply present both sides.
Johannes Jansen
That Jansen does not is unfortunate, since it bathes his text in a bias which obscures a viable link between violence and Islam. Desiring to damn Islam in its entirety, he allows a critic to dismiss his work given its failure to admit other interpretations. Jansen instead takes upon himself the role of mujtahid (one who interprets) and throws down the gauntlet as well as any extremist scholar or caller to jihad. The only difference lies in condemnation versus approval.
This text will first present the legitimate challenges marshaled by Jansen, then demonstrate some of the ways he overstates his case, and close with a selection of examples where his argumentation is simply faulty, and at times, dismissive. A serious scholar of Islam would do well to outright refute many of his judgments; this review will suffice to proceed from a generalist’s knowledge. The reader is encouraged to lend his or her own fruits of study.
Difficult Matters
Moving sequentially through the text of Jansen, the first example of a difficult challenge lies in the verse of 9:30 in the Qur’an. The reference is to the delusion of Jews and Christians in imagining that God could have a son. This idea is met with an anathema – ‘God fight them’. Jansen notes that such a verse would make friendly religious dialogue difficult between Muslims and Christians, knowing that such a curse is leveled in the text of the oft-supposed friendly partner.
Later Jansen accuses Islam of dehumanization of its enemies. In verse 5:60 God is said to have turned some Jews into monkeys and pigs. This accusation is often heard among Muslims when they chant against Israel, for example. Also in 8:55 unbelievers are labeled ‘the worst of all beasts’. Indeed, it is much easier to oppose and kill those who are not given respect for their humanity.
Jansen then moves to consider the life of the prophet, referring to 33:21 in which Muhammad is declared to be an ‘excellent pattern’ for those who hope in God. He then goes on to describe how
Muhammad and his men raided their neighbours, captured these, and sold them into slavery. Mohammed and his men robbed travellers and caravans, and assassinated critics of their behaviour. According to the Muslim sources themselves, Muhammad and his men migrated from Mecca to Medina, but once there they rewarded the inhabitants of Medina by killing a large number of them. These sources themselves report how Muhammad beheaded 700 Medinese Jews, on the flimsiest of excuses.
This text is noted here with a contempt that belies the objectivity of a scholar, and each of these incidents listed is able to receive an explanation from Muslim historians. Yet Jansen’s argument is listed in this section not for its specifics, but its reference to Muhammad as an ‘excellent pattern’. Putting aside Jansen’s bias, there are aspects of Muhammad’s life that offend modern sensibilities and morality. These are a worthy field to consider linkages between Islam and violence.
Throughout his text Jansen brings up many of the oft-cited references in the Qur’an to warfare, fighting, and killing. These will be dealt with conceptually in the next section. Yet it is interesting to note here a commendation given by the prominent Azhar University in Cairo for a definition of jihad found in an English language guide to sharia law, called ‘The Reliance of the Traveler’. Jihad is often defended, correctly, as first an internal struggle against the self. Yet here Jansen notes the reference declares
Jihad means to go to war against non-Muslims (…). The scriptural basis for jihad (…) is such Koranic verses as: (1) ‘Fighting is prescribed for you’ (Koran 2:216); (2) ‘Slay them wherever you find them’ (Koran 4:89); (3) ‘Fight the idolaters utterly’ (Koran 9:36); and such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said ‘I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah’ (…) and the hadith reported by Muslim ‘To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.’
The challenge is not necessarily in giving nuance to these verses, but the fact that as eminent and generally moderate an institution as the Azhar has endorsed this reading of jihad.
Contested Interpretations
It is noteworthy that in twenty pages of text Jansen is only able to bring the above arguments to bear that do not receive immediate pause, at least in the eyes of this reviewer. Far more numerous is the evidence he draws from Islam that does indeed ask fair questions of the religion, but then shields the reader from alternate viewpoints. Again, the summation will proceed sequentially.
Jansen begins his argument by stating the proscribed penalty for apostasy in Islamic sharia law is death. He does not demonstrate this factually, but refers to the aforementioned ‘Reliance of the Traveler’ and quotes from the Egyptian judge Muhammad al-Ghazali who testified the murder of accused apostate Farag Foda was only to be classified as an ‘offense’ under sharia.
Indeed, the standard Muslim judgment against apostasy is death, and the offense against human and religious rights is valid. Yet other scholars condemn this interpretation through a variety of forms. One method is to understand that during the time of the prophet, affiliation with Islam was akin to the modern concept of citizenship in a nation. Apostasy, then, is equated with treason – a crime punishable by death in many modern nations. Given that this relationship no longer applies, apostasy in the contemporary sense does not merit death.
Another path of diffusing the absolutism of apostasy punishments is to recall Muhammad dealt with apostates from Islam during his life, and did not order universally their execution. Listing these two critiques does not infer the validity of textual and historical exegesis; this is a matter for Muslim scholars to decide. Rather, the point is simply to note their existence, even if a minority interpretation. Jansen fails to do so.
Jansen then critiques what he understands to be an undue Western sympathy for Islam, given that many have accepted the idea of religion as an expression of the Golden Rule. This is faulty, he argues, bringing 48:29 as evidence: ‘Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, those with him are violent (ashiddaa’) against unbelievers, compassionate amongst themselves.’ (Richard Bell’s translation)
The issue of translation in Islam is very tricky, and certain Muslim authored ‘interpretations’ of the Qur’an into English cover over issues which might offend Western sensibilities. Here, however, Jansen chooses a translation that makes his point but overstates his case. Ashiddaa’ can also be rendered as severe, strong, harsh, or powerful, though violent is possible. A more direct word for violent – ‘aneef – is not employed.
Even so, the double standard certainly betrays the essence of the Golden Rule, which is Jansen’s overall point. Yet he could have maintained this tension, identifying a source text which Muslim violence can summon, while also quoting from 3:159, ‘By the mercy of God, you dealt with them gently. And had you been severe and harsh-hearted, they would have ran away from about you; so pass over (their faults), and ask (God’s) forgiveness for them.’ This text refers to Muhammad’s dealings with a man who had killed many Muslims. When apprehended, he was treated as a guest, fed, and freed. Such treatment accords also with a hadith in which Muhammad declared, ‘He who is not merciful to others, will not be treated mercifully’ (Muslim 73:42).
Again, these examples do not undo the double standard given by Jansen, but they keep the reader from assuming Islam to be only as he describes. Jansen would have done well to provide them.
Jansen then moves into the controversial Qur’anic verses which either order Muslims to kill (2:191, 4:89, 4:91, 9:5) or to fight (2:10, 2:216, 4:74, 9:119) the unbelievers. He refers to the well known commentary of al-Jalalayn to confirm the violent nature of these verses. Next he heads off a predictable rebuttal by 2:256: ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion’, and 109:5: ‘You have your religion and I have mine’, by bringing in the concept of abrogation. Islam commonly understands that verses revealed later void the application of earlier revelation. He states,
All standard and authoritative Muslim commentaries on the Koran, without exception, hold these two peaceful and reassuring fragments to be repealed and ‘abrogated’ by the later ‘verse of the sword’, Koran 9:5.
Having established the permissibility of fighting and killing unbelievers, Jansen seeks to establish two pernicious modern applications: Assassination and terrorism. Concerning the former he refers to 5:44 in which a leader who does not apply the laws God provided is labelled an unbeliever. Since he is from the community of believers, he is therefore an apostate, and as such, worthy of death. Jansen refers to the ancient commentator Ibn Kathir, the modern ideologue Sayyid Qutb, and contemporary preacher Sheikh Abdel Hamid Kishk of Egypt.
As per terrorism, he references 8:60 in which Muslims are commanded to ‘terrorize’ the enemy. He then returns to the Azhar to refute the idea this was only a concept to be employed during history. The former head of the Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, is quoted in his commentary stating the verses apply ‘first of all [to] the pagans of Mecca’. ‘First of all’, Jansen argues, signifies the beginning of a longstanding and commanded practice.
The seed to nuance these perspectives is provided by Jansen himself. He quotes a 1968 gathering of Cairo scholars to state 8:60 is equivalent to the Roman maxim, ‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war.’ Jansen even says, ‘They may be right.’
Whether they are right or not is worthy for debate, but though Jansen proceeds to provide what he calls ‘the standard Muslim denial and defense’ (to be given in the next section), he does not return to this very basic explanation. Muhammad began his ministry by calling to a religion, but the interpretation is clearly possible that he ended it by establishing a state. Commands to fight and kill, then, can be understood as a civil action akin to modern warfare. Even modern warfare can be condemned, and the including of religion complicates the matter considerably. Nevertheless, these verses can be understood as combat, and not as inquisition.
Furthermore, many Islamic scholars state that warfare is the domain of the state alone, which must abide by numerous regulations, including the duty to keep peace with a non-Muslim who does not oppose you. Therefore, while in war it is common practice to ‘terrorize’ the enemy through ‘shock and awe’, for example, this is legitimate only through proper and regulated channels, not through individual action.
Individual or small group action is also associated with assassination attempts. Muslim scholars need to, and have, refuted the interpretation of 5:44 as a call to kill a less-than-faithful Muslim leader. First of all the clear context of the verse applies to Jewish leaders who failed to apply the Torah. Jansen notes this, but calls again upon Kishk to argue that if true for Jews how much more true for Muslims, who have been given sharia law by which to govern. Yet the bulk of Sunni Muslim history has held that a ruler is to be obeyed and Muslims must not declare each other to be infidels, unless such unbelief is clearly advertised. Such assassination attempts, they warn, threaten to return Islam to its early days when extremist groups tore the community apart. This minority reading has now returned with an equal threat. The legitimacy of interpretation is for Muslims to decide, but Jansen makes no reference to where the burden of proof lies, or even that a burden against his argument exists.
The same critique applies to his statements about abrogation. Where he declares that all commentators agree about verses of the sword abrogating verses of tolerance, it would be well to check his sources. That the verses of the sword are later in timeframe than verses of tolerance is not disputed, but the issue of abrogation is not at all clear. Some scholars find only a handful of verses in the Qur’an to be abrogated, others find large swaths of its content. It is simply not true that a uniform opinion on abrogation exists in Islam, though as a concept it is accepted. Application, however, is disputed, which is a fact Jansen does not simply ignore, he obfuscates.
Last to be considered briefly is the extension of the argument to the individual Muslim. Given that jihad is a duty to be carried out in warfare, and furthermore that since the Islamic caliphate no longer exists, it is now incumbent on smaller associations to further this cause. Jansen describes how this has happened without providing rationale why it is Islamically necessary to happen.
Still, he quotes prominent scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi who states concerning suicide operations: ‘The one who carries out a martyrdom operation does not think of himself. He sells himself to Allah in order to buy Paradise in exchange.’ While this opinion should be studied in context, it appears Qaradawi describes the rationale of the martyrdom-seeker, and does not clearly provide license for his interpretation.
Failures in Argumentation
While sections one and two acknowledge the excellent, if insufficient, study Jansen has given to the Islamic sources, this final section highlights some of the ways in which he betrays his own effort. While only a few examples represent error, there are quite a few statements overvaluing his contribution. These will be followed by an unhealthy number of examples carrying a regrettable dismissive attitude toward opposing views.
Some of the errors are actually misleading use of rhetoric. For example Jansen notes how the fact of death for an apostate acts as a disincentive to advertise one’s disbelief in Islam. While certainly correct, he proceeds to state, ‘All statistics on the number of Muslims in a region or period [are] unreliable.’ With this broad stroke he renders meaningless the work of professional statisticians upon the assumption that Muslims everywhere hold to their faith out of fear of death. Unfortunately, Jansen offers no evidence to buttress this assumption.
Similar is the critique he levels at scholars and politicians for not understanding the essential violent nature of Islam. Were this properly comprehended, they would have prevented Muslims from ‘invading’ their countries. The word invade infers an organized plan, while overlooking the demographic fact that most Muslims in Europe, at least, originally were recruited to serve in low wage service industries to compensate for a relatively low continental population growth. Their increase in population share is a serious issue for European politicians today, but to label their presence an invasion is an ugly, if not deliberate, rhetorical error.
This may be true as well for Jansen’s denigration of the Qur’an for labeling Jews as ‘pigs’. A careful look at 5:60 shows God turned some Jews into apes and pigs, yet Jansen goes on to say:
It is clear that an enemy about whom Islam teaches that God himself calls him an ape, a donkey, a swine, a dog or just an animal, has no human rights. It is only proper to terrorize such subhuman unpersons.
This example leads well into a number of instances where Jansen establishes a point through the force of his own insistence. Is it indeed ‘clear’ that ‘it is only proper’ to mistreat the above mentioned groups? Is there no other possible recourse in all of Islam? Does logic dictate the necessity of agreement with Jansen’s pronouncements?
Elsewhere Jansen states, without reference to studies or statistics, that ‘large numbers’ of Muslims believe specific war passages in the Qur’an are meant to be generalized. Furthermore, it is ‘widely understood’ that Islam teaches to kill unbelievers if the cost is not too great for the Muslim community. Of course, ‘Muslims believe that outsiders hate Islam,’ which, ‘can only be understood as echoes of the fear and distrust Muslims themselves harbour against the adherents of other religions.’ The proof? ‘Printed testimonies from within the Muslim world abundantly illustrate that in general Muslims (with individual exceptions, one hopes) distrust and hate the West.
Jansen’s parenthesis in the previous example illustrates more than just his overstatements, it also reveals his dismissive bias. ‘One hopes’ there are Muslims who do not hate the West? With how many has he spoken, that he sees this as such an impossibility?
Further sarcasm is seen when he posits the chance that what is understood as terrorism is actually to be regarded as legitimate resistance. He says:
This needs to be researched seriously and extensively. Such research should definitely not be omitted or be neglected, no matter how enormous the task will be. It would be a huge project indeed, stretching out from Northern Nigeria to Chechnya, from the Darfur to East-Timor and Bali, and from Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and London to New York.
His highlight on ‘extensively’ is made moot through listing the sites of recent terrorist activity. As before, Jansen’s research is far too serious to utilize such mocking claims. He is not finished, however.
After listing the many verses which demonstrate the Qur’an’s instructions to fight and kill, Jansen exasperates, ‘Someone who is not convinced by these verses will not be convinced by more or even much more of the same.’ Furthermore, Muslims who seek to present an alternate interpretation of their faith by emphasizing verses of tolerance ‘forget to explain’ these have been abrogated.
Failing to recognize their effort as legitimate apologetics, Jansen proceeds to give what he calls the ‘standard Muslim denial and defence’ of their religion – in all its flimsiness. The first is to state that only perfect Arabic speakers can interpret the Qur’an, and that it is Western hatred which drives their criticism. The second is to dismiss the statements of clerical leaders, as these do not represent the people. The third and final technique is to ridicule Westerners who rely on the statements of misinformed young men involved in terrorism.
Jansen admits there is merit behind these defenses, but are they the only ones? Written by a non-Muslim, this text has presented numerous challenges to Jansen’s interpretations. Are none of these worthy to be found in the writings of ‘standard’ Muslim apologists? Jansen builds a straw man, and delights in knocking him down.
Conclusion
Much Western opinion of Islam is divided into two camps. One side finds the religion to be peaceful in essence despite misinformed extremists. The other finds the religion to be violent in essence despite the masses of ordinary Muslims who do not sufficiently understand their faith. As with most dichotomies, reality is often found in the middle.
Though Jansen places himself among the scholars of the second grouping, this text does not fault his essential questions. It is clear that there are violent source texts and examples within Islam. Yet it is also clear there is an impetus toward peace and tolerance. It is right and just for both Muslims and non-Muslims to interpret sources to determine what is the core of Islam.
The fault of Jansen lies in his failure to nuance his argument. His was not a short magazine article; it was a twenty page thesis. There was ample room to both display his conviction about a violent norm and present significant Muslim counterarguments.
His failure to do so is odd given his conviction. If Islam is essentially violent, would Jansen not wish to highlight and promote the many Muslims who seek to ground their faith on a foundation of peace? Are all who do so deceivers, wishing to delude the West to their true intentions? Can there not be validity to their wholly Islamic arguments?
This last question is the essential one. The crux of the issue is not the academic exegesis of Islam, however worthy. It is the social and cultural acceptance of interpretation that must speak to the hearts of Muslims the world over. Will violent verses be found anachronistic in the modern age, or will they define a coming renewed civilizational struggle? It is only within Islam, among Muslims, this answer can be found. Alternate viewpoints are rife, and often in competition.
Jansen may be able to demonstrate the weight of evidence – both in historic sharia understanding and in popular consciousness – lies with violent and jihadist Islam. What he will be unable to accomplish is to demonstrate this interpretation is correct. Islam is first and foremost a religion, and religions, while possessing vast storehouses of conserving tradition, are also adept at drawing from these storehouses to adapt according to the realities of the age. It is as wrong to state that Islam will adapt peacefully as it is to assert it will not. That adaptation is possible, however, is a demonstrated historical fact.
Islam, particularly in its Arab context, is before a potentially great adaptation from Morocco to the Gulf, as the masses demonstrate a desire to shed their current leadership. Whether or not the Arab Spring represents conflict or cooperation with the West is an open question. Prominent among the determining factors will be the emerging interpretation of Islam. Jansen is right to ask his questions; the answers are not nearly as fated as he assumes.
This essay was first published in Arab West Report in February 2012.
From my article at Middle East Institute, analyzing Egypt’s Salafi-Jihadis, but from before the recent deposing of President Morsi:
The Egyptian Islamist Mohamed al-Zawahiri is most famous for being the brother of al-Qaeda front man Ayman, but his story is also a gripping one. Zawahiri was arrested in 1999 for his alleged participation in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. He spent 13 years in Cairo’s Tora prison, where he was tortured by the mukhabarat and did a five-year stint in solitary confinement. He was released in March 2012 when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who ruled after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, issued a general pardon for scores of political prisoners.
Just six months later, Zawahiri sent a message of peace when he offered to mediate a truce between the West and Islamists through his connections with al-Qaeda, promising cessation of global terrorist activity in exchange for non-interference in Muslim nations.
But Zawahiri’s doings aren’t limited to such an offer. As a leader of an Islamist organization called the Salafist-Jihadists, he is often in the public eye. Yet it is difficult to determine who he leads and what ideology the group espouses—and whether the United States and others should worry about the organization’s activities in post-uprising Egypt.
The group appears to thrive on such ambiguity. Ahmed Ashoush, a fellow leader, claims that the organization does not, in a sense, exist, as it has neither a leadership structure nor a membership count. “We know how wide our support is on the street,” he says, “but we don’t want to talk about it. We want you to see it, in the coming days, if God wills.”
As of yet, Egypt has not seen it. And as strong as the demonstrations in support of Morsi have been, they are far short of the ‘Islamic Revolution’ some predicted as a response to the Rebel Campaign collection of signatures for early elections.
Even so, this group of Islamists who graft ‘jihad’ onto their name bear watching for Egypt’s future. Please click here to read the rest of the article at Middle East Institute.
For Part One of this conversation, discussing Hani Nour Eddin’s background, please click here. For the full interview on Middle East Institute, please click here. Part Two explores Nour Eddin’s views on violence, and here is an excerpt from the published interview:
Al-Gama`a al-Islamiya is committed to nonviolence and has apologized for its past. In fact, you organized a demonstration recently to condemn political violence.
We saw that others had taken over the streets and were now using them to express their views. People might thinkthat they are the voice of Egypt. We wanted to say that the Egyptian street is not about violence and sexual harassment. Unfortunately, beautiful Tahrir Square has lost its symbolism. So we [demonstrated in] another place to avoid any contact with them. Our demonstration invited all to come and express their opinions, whether for or against the Islamist project, but with a commitment to nonviolence.
I noticed many of the speeches and chants were very Islamic, and quite severe. Instead of “no to violence,” the demonstration became about “yes to political Islam.”
Our demonstrations often take the color of the people who attend. Maybe this is because of our weakness in usingthe media; we use a strident voice to make our point and show we are strong. We are Islamists, and we do not accept separating religion from anything else, and the street welcomes this. And so they chant, “Egypt will remain Islamic!”
The protest also honored Khaled al-Islambouli [Sadat’s assassin].
Islambouli is considered one of the symbols of al-Gama`a al-Islamiya when it was in a period of resistance to the regime. We all saw Sadat as a dictator, especially in his last years when he used oppression and closed mosques. Islambouli has an honored place among us.
Even if you now confess that what he did was wrong.
If we could go back in history and reevaluate, perhaps we would not have chosen the path of violence. But what happened was necessary due to the situation. Unfortunately, the circumstances demanded it.
But this is the test of your principles. If nonviolence is a principle—not a means, not a strategy—you must commit to it.
Yes, this is right. It is a principle.
Unfortunately, for space issues Middle East Institute had to cut the conclusion, which seeks to test their commitment to non-violence through recent domestic and international examples. This part is posted here:
A few weeks earlier than your ‘No to Political Violence’ protest, Mohamed al-Zawahiri demonstrated at the French Embassy in Cairo against their military intervention in Mali. There, Ezzet al-Salamony, a leader in GI, spoke saying, “Why are they fighting us in our lands? It is we who should be fighting them in our lands!”
There are two issues here: One, Islamist support for the rebels in Mali, and two, the statement of Salamony itself. Do these violate your non-violent commitment?
I see what you’re saying. From what I know GI has abandoned violence and we will not return to it. We also agree we will not interfere in the politics of other nations. But as for that statement, he is the one responsible for it, and must justify himself.
Ok, but tell us about Mali, especially before the French intervention. Do you support the rebels from the north?
To a degree, but we do not have complete information about the nature of the Mali jihadists. Their primary slogan is the application of sharia law and building an Islamic state on the basis of it. Their situation is different; to what extent is there democracy or other means of change? We don’t know.
But we support the idea of an Islamic entity if it is true they are committed to Islam. At times some people will raise the banner of Islam but transgress it in how they behave. But yes, if they live as Muslims and seek to apply the sharia, yes, we support them.
But for the real situation between them and the Malian government, we don’t know.
But should you not condemn their jihad, as it is violent? Even if it is true the political system has not opened up the way it has in Egypt?
Again, we can’t evaluate their experience in jihad because we don’t know enough.
But you don’t know? It is clear to the world their rebellion is armed. They were marching on the Malian capital.
In the beginning it was not like this. They were a number of jihadi groups that gathered together and the government confronted them, but they began expanding their territory and announced themselves as a political entity.
But even this, expanding their territory in the north was at the expense of the legitimacy of the government. What gave them the right to seek autonomy or declare independence?
Yes, but their situation is different from that of Egypt.
But this is the point, we’re talking about a principle. In Egypt there is no necessity for violence – you have won by votes. But there the Islamist is in a position of weakness. Perhaps he is even suffering pressure. Is he allowed to resist violently?
(Laughing) I cannot condemn them before I know the circumstances which drove them to violence. Maybe it is violence in response to a greater violence upon them. What if my life or existence is threatened and there is no other way? But rebelling against a leader by forming militias? No, we must expend all peaceful and preaching means first, before resorting to violence.
Before? But your ‘Revisions’ were a complete condemnation.
The issue of jihad in Islam is legitimate, but it is not something to begin with. In our ‘Revisions’ we defined that jihad has stipulations that prevent it from resulting in even greater harm upon the people, the sharia, and the country. The jurisprudence in measuring jihad in Mali is different than the measure in Egypt.
But how can their situation be seen as worse than what you experienced here? There was a tyrant in Egypt, he oppressed you, he put you in prison, he killed you. He distorted the sharia and laughed about it. And even under all this pressure you condemned your own violent confrontation.
Because it did not result in any fruit.
So forgive me if this isn’t the right word, but does this show your condemnation of violence was opportunistic? You made a deduction violence is not working, so you give it up. You still believe in violence as a possible means of change.
No, in the reality in which we live it is not a means of change.
But maybe it is in Mali?
It depends on their circumstances; we cannot judge them.
So your commitment to violence…
We commit ourselves. We cannot compel others to be so committed.
So it is not a general interpretation of Islam. It is just your situation?
Jihad is legitimate in Islam; no one can deny this. The question is if you are engaged in it legitimately according to its stipulations.
So what are the domestic stipulations for jihad? The one in Mali is against the ruler.
Will our scholars permit their action? I don’t know. It depends on the type of ruler; it depends on the struggle between him and the various Islamic groups. I don’t have enough information to say.
Ok. Sudan.
Our party sent a delegation to Sudan shortly after it was created, to establish relations. We consider Sudan to be deeply important to Egypt, economically, socially.
What about the status of President Bashir as an international criminal?
No, there are other factors at play in these accusations. We don’t believe the government is complicated in any criminality.
So in a sentence, how do you understand what is happening in Darfur?
It began as a local tribal conflict, and then the government intervened. After that it became somewhat of a separatist movement. It was necessary for the state to preserve its authority.
As in Mali?
(Laughing) For example.
Please click here to read the whole article at Middle East Institute.
Jayson Casper 