WATANI International
19 April 2009
The Egyptians against Religious Discrimination (MARED) group will be holding its second conference next Friday. This year##s conference, a two-day event, focuses on “Education and citizenship rights” and seeks to discuss Egyptian education, especially regarding the challenges posed by the infiltration of religion into school curricula. Watani approached Mounir Megahed, the group##s spokesman and chairman of the conference, who explained that, while last year’s conference broached religious discrimination in general, MARED chose education to be this year’s topic. “We believe that this area is pivotal when it comes to sowing the seeds of sectarianism and fanaticism in Egypt.”
Fight fanaticism
Some bitter memories remain of MARED’s conference last year. Seeking to hold its first conference at a place that supposedly promotes freedom of thinking and expression, MARED had planned to hold it at the premises of the Journalists’ Syndicate and had obtained the syndicate board approval for the event. The Islamic current at the Syndicate, however, staged a sit-in there and, using methods that bordered on violence and thuggery, banned the conference from taking place. MARED contacted the leftist Tagammu party which promptly accepted to host the conference and the event was held on time albeit at another place. This year, Dr Megahed says, “We again chose to approach the Journalists’ Syndicate with a request to hold our conference there, but the syndicate board rejected our request. No explanation was given. It is obvious the enlightenment current at the syndicate is no match for the fanatic current there.” The conference will again be held at the premises of Tagammu, he said.
Watani asked Dr Megahed about the widespread rumours that conferences organised by MARED are mainly concerned with Baha’is, to which he replied that the purpose of such claims was—given the derogatory campaign Islamists are zealously launching against Baha’is—to isolate MARED from the masses. “MARED conferences have nothing to do with any faith,” he stresses. “The objective of the group is to defend freedom of belief and stand up against all kinds of discrimination due to religious identity.”
“The very name of our group ‘Egyptians against Religious Discrimination’”, Dr Megahed points out, implies that there are Egyptians who are for religious discrimination. It is no easy battle to fight fanaticism; it will take time and effort to alter a culture that has been spreading like wildfire in the Egyptian society for decades but,” he stresses, “We have to fight.”
Dealing on terms of religion
Dr Megahed hopes the Education Ministry will be well represented at the conference. MARED, he says, already enjoys good relations with the ministry which has willingly responded to complaints against fanatic practices in schools. In several cases it interfered against schools forcing female students to don the veil.
He is not at all happy with the current situation in Egyptian schools, though, and in this he is joined by all non-fanatics. “Revisionist tendencies have become so entrenched in Egyptian schooling,” he says, “that discrimination has become a daily routine that involves the curricula and the Muslim teachers## attitudes. I do not remember that, as pupils, we used to ask our colleagues about their religion. Now it is different. A seven-year-old daughter of a friend of mine was so depressed when the children in the school bus refused that she sits besides them because she is Christian. This is a real danger because children are steadily taught to think and act in odious fanaticism as though it were the most natural thing in the world.”
“We call for confining religious texts to religious curricula,” Dr Megahed says. For instance, texts from Qur’an or Hadith should not be inserted in lessons of Arabic—or any other topic—because the student body is not exclusively Muslim.
The conference, Dr Megahed says, will focus on the effects of the current education system in education on deepening discrimination, and the role education ought to play in promoting citizenship concepts. Arabic curricula will be thoroughly investigated since they are the main vehicle through which religious bias is carried. Among the important themes are teachers## attitudes and their impact on students## perceptions and manners.
Exclusively for Muslims
Islamic schools that only accept Muslim students come particularly under Dr Megahed’s ire. “These schools teach students that religious affiliation precedes commitment to the homeland. Christians are perceived as second-class citizens. This deals a severe blow to citizenship rights and principles and heralds a future of division and instability.”
Dr Megahed is also strongly opposed to the fact that the venerable al-Azhar Islamic university has been, since the 1960s, a civil university that teaches the traditional theological routines in addition to non-theological ones such as medicine and engineering, albeit in the same ‘Islamic’ environment. “The problem with al-Azhar,” he explains, “is that the student spends all his undergraduate years without dealing with Copts or women. He is not exposed to the culture of the other, and thus emerges narrow-minded and unable to deal with those who are different from him.” To make matters worse, al-Azhar is financed through public funds paid out of taxpayer money that comes from all Egyptians, Copts as well as Muslims. “Al-Azhar should go back to being an Islamic seminary,” he says.
Independent
The conference will be graced with Egyptian expatriates, including Ismail Hosny from UAE, Essam Abdullah from the UK, and Adel Guindy and William Wissa from France. But they shoulder the cost of the trip.
Finally, Watani asked Dr Megahed where the group##s finances came from, to which he replied that MARED does not receive funds from any organisations, whether foreign or domestic. “We accept donations from Egyptian individuals, with a maximum of EGP2000, so as not to allow anybody whomsoever to control the group or undermine its independent character.”