WATANI International
20 November 2011
The religious current is still calling out that “Islam is the answer”; despite the ban on such slogans under election laws, the message is posted on public buildings in Cairo, Alexandria, Fayoum…the list goes on to cover every nook in Egypt.
Voting for Copts or liberals = perjury
The matter does not stop at the motto. Some sheikhs and Islamic scholars are using slogans and fatwas (Islamic edicts) as potent tools to manipulate voters. A recent fatwa has pronounced the voting for a Coptic, liberal, or secular candidate the equivalent of perjury, and the voting for any system that embraces anything but Islamic sharia (Islamic law) apostasy. Predictably, this gave rise to angry criticisms on the part of Copts and liberals, intellectuals and politicians, who consider such fatwas as critical bars to democracy in Egypt.
Adel al-Dawi, a leader of the leftist Tagammu Party, says fatwas like these threaten the future of democratic change in general and the Copts in particular. They aim straight at the raw religious sentiments of ordinary people, he says, purposely playing on heavenly and religious matters.
“Who can determine what is right or wrong except God?” Mr Dawi insists. “The ordinary Egyptian is normally a pious person who knows his God, and can do without fatwa from extremist sheikhs to trifle with his convictions.”
As far as elections go, Mr Dawi reminds, the choice must be according to qualifications. Propagators of such fatwas and religious propaganda should come under legal liability, since the election supervision committee has criminalised discrimination against any sect in Egypt. “These fatwas use religion in the wrong place, where it shouldn’t be used: in politics; and for their part the people should not be deceived,” he says.
The loser: democracy
Writer and researcher Hany Labib agrees. He believes that the state of legal, security, and social chaos which today engulfs Egypt has led extremist sheikhs to dominate the scene.
According to Mr Labib, the Islamic stream normally employs such games when it feels it lacks power, popularity, or both. They start pulling the ordinary people’s strings in the name of religion, and this, Mr Labib stresses, totally contradicts the principles of the revolution and reveals how illusional is the power of the Islamist voice. This will definitely lead to much more sectarian violence as Islamists attempt to turn the elections into religious war. And the loser, Mr Labib says, will be democracy.
“There is obviously a crisis in the official State authority today, because it is not monitoring and activating the law,” says Mahmoud Ali, a researcher at the Society for Developing Democracy. “Egypt is now in the dangerous position of legislating but not activating the law, leaving the State vulnerable to the forces of political Islam. In a true democracy the right to worship freely should not be abused, and there should certainly be no direct or indirect incitement against Copts or liberals.
No marriage to NDP members
“What is currently taking place will inevitably lead to a religious parliament, one that would not speak for people from different denominations,” Mr Ali said.
Nagi William, who holds the nomination for the National Misr Party in the Shubra constituency, condemned the quotes made by one of the Salafi sheikhs, Mahmoud Amer. Sheikh Amer has been contemptuous of non-Muslim, non-Sunni religious denominations, citing allegations that could drag Egypt back into the dark ages. Yet another fatwa decrees that “government without Allah’s teachings is apostasy”.
There is also the case of the fatwa called for by Sheikh Omar Setouhi, secretary-general of the Higher Committee for Islamic Call at al-Azhar, banning a person from marrying a member of the now defunct National Democratic Party. This fatwa angered the leaders at al-Azhar, who described it as a “joke of a political delusion”. Sheikh Setouhi later retracted it, explaining that he meant merely to advise, not to ban.
Mounir Megahed, the coordinator of Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination (MARED), has demanded that the law be applied to all instruments such as religious fatwas, since they represent a serious threat to the future of citizenship and coexistence.
