WATANI International 10 January 2010 The rising tide of religious fundamentalism—and the inevitable curbing of freedom which usually follows—came under fire recently at the Journalists’ Syndicate in Cairo. A meeting organised by the Syndicate’s Freedoms Committee was held there to condemn the recent denial of entry into Kuwait to Egyptian intellectual Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid. Abu-Zeid is currently resident in the Netherlands after having left Egypt in 1992 when he came under threat from Egypt’s Islamist tide for his liberal interpretations of Islamic thought. Strangely, the syndicate closed its conference hall in the face of the meeting, and the organisers resorted to holding it in the syndicate lobby while the doors to the syndicate’s conference hall remained tightly shut. Caving in to salafi pressure Mohamed Abdel-Qodous, head of the Freedoms Committee, expressed his deep regret over the refusal of the syndicate’s officials to hold the meeting at the hall. “I totally support Dr Abu-Zeid,” he said, “notwithstanding my disagreement with some of his thoughts. This meeting aims to show that we totally support Abu-Zeid. It is really odd that Kuwait, a beacon of liberalism in the Arabian Peninsula and one that has a progressive parliament, has denied him entry,” he said. Dr Abu-Zeid spoke about his Kuwait experience. He was invited last month, he said, to give two lectures on “Religious reform in constitutional states” and “Women between Qur’anic and Islamist thought”. “When I arrived at the airport, the officials there treated me decently…perhaps too decently. A young man offered to help me; we had a short conversation before he told me he was sorry but he was assigned to send me back to Cairo. He explained that he was just carrying out a decision that others had taken. I was told that the Kuwaiti government had caved in to pressure from the Salafi current in the Kuwait parliament and denied me access to the country. “I said the decision was under my shoes [i.e. contemptible]. I did not intend to offend Kuwaiti officials; I just wished to show how much I despised the decision. I trust people rather than institutions, since these, in the Arab World, are in a pitiable state of decay, but there are respectful people everywhere.” Dr Abu-Zeid compared Kuwait’s move with that of the US State Department’s denial of access to Tareq Ramadan. The US decision was straightforward enough to give the reasons behind the move, he said. Dr Abu-Zeid harshly criticised those politicians who exploit religion to their own ends, saying that this finally leads to extremism. Extremists everywhere Gaber Asfour, who heads the National Council for Translation, said that the incident indicated that democracy in the Arab world was fiction rather than fact. “Extremists are everywhere,” he said, “and we should stand up to them. Intellectuals are facing the challenge of those who try to monopolise religion to achieve their own goals.” “When we support Abu-Zeid we defend the dignity of an Egyptian citizen,” says journalist and writer Saad Hagras. “The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained tight-lipped; it did not bother to issue a statement condemning the humiliation suffered by one of its nationals in a foreign country.” For his part, the prominent journalist and editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Fagr (Dawn) , Adel Hamouda, condemned the refusal of the syndicate officials to hold the conference at its conference hall. “This is a dire warning that extremism has spread everywhere,” he said, “In fact it has become so dominant that some hotels were afraid to hold Christmas parties, even for children, and cancelled previously-scheduled events. We should all team up to fight such dark thoughts.”