FaithWorld

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood wants quick constitutional amendments

Reuters Staff

Mar 12, 2011 13:42 EST

Egypt needs to start functioning again and prevent army rule from dragging on too long, the Muslim Brotherhood said, calling for the swift implementation of constitutional amendments to restart political life.

A month after a popular uprising forced President Hosni Mubarak from office, politicians from across the spectrum have begun to debate whether a new constitution is needed to breathe life into political institutions.

The Muslim Brotherhood can rally support quickly and would benefit from a quick election. It says it would take too long to draw up a new constitution that included all parties’ desires, so amending the current one is the only way forward.

“Constitutional amendments are the most suitable, not the most ideal solution for this transitional period that cannot drag for too long,” Brotherhood deputy Khairat Shater told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday. “A new constitution is most ideal but that will take up to a year.”

Presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei has called for a new constitution instead of temporary amendments and suggested that army hands power to a presidential council that would oversee a new constitution and elections.

The Facebook page “We are Khaled Said”, the first to call for the Jan. 25 protests, is lobbying to add a third choice of a “a new constitution” on referendum ballots as a way to galvanise demand for a new constitution and against amendments.

Read the full interview by Marwa Awad here.

IAEA’s ElBaradei bows out with prayer of St. Francis

Tom Heneghan

Nov 28, 2009 09:59 EST

Mohamed ElBaradei, a Muslim from Egypt, has finished his 12-year term as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) quoting one of Christianity’s most popular prayers. In a short meeting at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on Friday, the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize laureate said that “the moment of departure is an opportunity to reflect upon a journey of joy, challenges, pleasure and fulfilment.” At the end of his career at the IAEA, which began in 1984 as a legal adviser, the world was “finally returning to its senses. People are speaking of a world free of nuclear weapons, of one human family and of a world that lifts people out of poverty.”

He ended his final remarks to the Board of Governors by reading out a short version of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord make me an instrument of your peace: Where there is hatred let me sow love Where there is error let me sow truth Where there is discord let me sow unity Where there is despair let me sow hope For it is in giving that we receive.

The Italian saint has clearly been on ElBaradei’s mind in his final days as head of the IAEA. On Nov. 17, he visited Assisi, birthplace and burial place of St. Francis, and called him “a man whose life of self-sacrifice and dedication to serving the poor remains a powerful inspiration for people of all faiths eight centuries after his death” .

Three days later, delivering the 2009 Willy Brandt lecture at Berlin’s Humboldt University, he ended his address by saying: “This week, I was invited to speak at the Sacred Convent of St. Francis of Assisi. I was absolutely gripped by one of St. Francis´s prayers, in which he says: ‘Lord, make me a channel of your peace.’ I pray that every one of us will be a channel for peace.”