The news that the homes of Baha’is in the Upper Egyptian village of Shouraniya were torched by the Muslim villagers on Thursday 2 April sent shock waves down our spines. For their own safety, the Baha’is had to be hastily escorted off the island by the police. They ran for their lives, leaving all their possessions behind, some in the gowns they wear at home.
Watani tried to visit Shouraniya to get a first hand sense of the crisis. The island, which can only be reached during daytime by ferry, was cordoned off by the police and out of bounds to all reporters except for those of State-owned papers. Watani, however, was able to get in touch with some of the Shouraniya villagers, but all talked on condition of anonymity, for fear of being themselves “accused of being Baha’i”.
Their only crime
Shouraniya is a sleepy Upper Egyptian island of 25,000 inhabitants, 28 mosques, three churches, three NGO’s and a helpless police station. Most of the island’s inhabitants are uneducated farmers whereas most of their children are university graduates or secondary school graduates. All, however, are governed by the village’s customs and traditions.
Back in 2001, Shouraniya gained notoriety when several of its villagers took their Baha’i neighbours to court, alleging they disdained religion, and practised incest and obscene deeds. The court acquitted the Baha’is.
Generally, however, as one of the villagers put it, “The Baha’is in the village led a peaceful, though secluded, life after the 2001 incidents.
“Last week’s horrendous events came in the wake of the airing of the talk show al-Haqiqa (The Truth), broadcast on the satellite channel Dream II. The show hosted Ahmed Abul-Ela who lives in Shouraniya, and showed him and his brother taking part in the celebrations of Nairouz, the Persian New Year Day, in one of the popular gardens in Cairo. Abul-Ela said that many Shouraniya inhabitants are Baha’is. This infuriated the village youth, since their peers from neighbouring villages kept calling them names by describing them as ‘obscene Baha’is’. Enraged, the Muslims of Shouraniya attacked the Baha’i homes and set them on fire to wipe away the disgrace. The attackers shouted slogans of ‘There is no god but Allah; Baha’is are enemies of Allah’. When the police arrived at the scene they calmed matters down by asking the Baha’is to leave the village. They evacuated Shouraniya of the Baha’is under the pretext of ‘preserving national security’ without any consideration to these people’s human or citizenship rights, their only crime being that they dared embrace a religion other than Islam.”
“Weird people”
Once the Baha’is’ had left, another villager said, the village people met with the local politicians and security officials. They decided to ‘forget about what happened’ and asked their MP Safwat al-Qadi to present a communique to Parliament to explain the incidents. They ordered Shouraniya’s mosque imams not to mention Baha’is in their sermons and to focus on religious tolerance and rejection of violence.
Some people were very happy to see the Baha’is leave. One of the locals told Watani the Baha’i were “weird people with weird beliefs”. No one can make heads or tails of their faith or principles. “They’re not Muslim, Christian, or even Jewish,” he said, “and the village is better off without them.” Another man perfectly agreed, adding that: “now that the Baha’is are out, no one will tarnish Shouraniya’s reputation.”
A villager complained to Watani that many of the trouble makers who set the Baha’i homes on fire on the pretext of ‘protecting Islam’ had nothing to do with Islam in the first place. “They don’t perform any prayers nor do they even know the way to the nearest mosque,” he said. “They don’t work, they just hang around in the coffee shops playing and having fun. But they suddenly got enraged and decided to ‘protect Islam and Muslims’. Does this make any sense?”
“What happened to these people [the Baha’is] is unfair, these people are peaceful and haven’t caused any harm. They lived peacefully with us for ages. They were abused, their houses destroyed and were finally thrown out of the village for no reason at all. But I don’t dare say this in public, lest I be accused of being Baha’i,” said one of the villagers.