Muslim Brotherhood says it won’t force Islamic law on Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood wants a diverse parliament after elections in September and is not seeking to impose Islamic law on Egypt, the head of the group’s newly formed political party said in an interview. The Brotherhood, which has emerged as a powerful force after years of repression under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, has said it does not want a parliamentary majority, although rivals see it as well placed for a dominant position.
“We only use Islam as the basis of our party … which means that our general framework is Islamic sharia … We don’t issue religious rules in individual cases,” said Mohamed Mursi, head of the Brotherhood’s newly formed Justice and Freedom Party, which will contest the vote.
Liberal Egyptians in particular worry that the group could use for its own ends the second article of Egypt’s constitution, which makes sharia, Islamic law, a main source of legislation. Egypt’s military rulers suspended the old constitution and introduced an interim one, but that article was unchanged.
Mursi, speaking in the group’s new five-storey headquarters in Mokattem on the outskirts of Cairo, dismissed such worries. “We want to engage in a dialogue not a monologue,” he said. “The Brotherhood does not seek to control the parliament … We want a strong parliament … with different political forces.”
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Iran postpones blinding man in retribution punishment
Iran has postponed blinding a convicted man in retribution for throwing acid in the face of a woman in 2004, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.
A court sentenced Majid Mohavedi in 2008 to be blinded in both eyes for taking away the sight of Ameneh Bahrami by pouring acid in her face after she spurned his offers of marriage.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, imposed since the 1979 Islamic revolution, qesas (retribution) is permitted in cases where bodily injuries are inflicted.
“The punishment of Majid was scheduled to be carried out on Saturday at a hospital but it has been postponed,” Fars quoted an unnamed official as saying, without giving details.
In 2004, Mohavedi threw acid at Bahrami’s face, blinding the then 24-year-old electronics graduate in both eyes for refusing to marry him, despite several approaches from his family, who are also considered complicit in the attack. Bahrami, whose hands, neck and face were also disfigured in the attack, said she did not want to take revenge, but wanted to “prevent it from happening to someone else.” Mohavedi turned himself to the police and confessed in 2005.
“Regardless of how horrific the crime suffered by Ameneh Bahrami, being blinded with acid is a cruel and inhuman punishment amounting to torture,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.
Are you saying you think that this man should be punished with acid in his eyes, or should not? It may sound horrible to us, or cruel and unusual, but our country is not ran under islamic law. It is ethnocentric to think another countries or religions way of doing something is wrong, just because it is different from our own. He knew what the punishment could be when he committed the act of throwing acid in her eyes since he lives under the islamic laws, and now should be held accountable for his actions. If indeed you are saying this man should not suffer the same fate, some example from his own country would serve best.
Many Egyptian Christians voted ‘no’ on constitution, fearing Islamists
Many Egyptian Christians say they voted to reject proposed constitutional amendments in a referendum on Saturday because they fear hasty elections to follow may open the door for Islamist groups to rise to power. It turned out they were in the minority — 77% of those voting supported the proposed changes.
Parliamentary elections should take place in late September followed by presidential elections in December, giving scant time for new parties to organise, including ones representing the aspirations of Christians. Foremost among these aspirations is the creation of a civil state where religion is not a basis for legislation.
It is widely assumed that quick elections would give an advantage to the well-established Muslim Brotherhood, a group founded in the 1920s which has emerged as the best organised political force since Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power.
“I fear the Islamists because they speak in civil slogans that have a religious context, like when one said he believed in a civil Egypt but at the same time no woman or Copt should run for president,” said Samuel Wahba, a Coptic doctor.
The Islamist group has always sought to reassure Copts, who make up about 10 percent of 80 million citizens, saying they have the same rights as other Egyptians. But they have also historically opposed the idea of a Copt assuming the presidency.
Coptic Christians also want the new constitution to do away with Article 2, which says Islam is the religion of the state and Islamic jurisprudence the main source of legislation — a point of tension with Islamists. “I voted ‘no’, because I don’t want to return to the old constitution or a patchwork of the old constitution and a tyrannical president after such a great revolution,” Wahba said.
Some church leaders advised their congregations to reject the amendments as a patriotic effort to support pro-democracy Egyptians who seek a civil state.
Nigeria’s Muslim north risks growing sense of alienation
Standing on the dancefloor among shards of glass and splintered wood, Tony Baisie rues the day he agreed to help set up a nightclub in one of West Africa’s oldest Islamic cities. For more than 15 years this converted office on an industrial back street in Kano, northern Nigeria, was a thriving business. Customers — Christian and Muslim — would dance among its mirrored walls or shoot pool in the courtyard outside.
But three weeks ago, members of Hisbah — a uniformed Islamic squad set up by Kano’s state governor in 2003 to enforce sharia (Islamic law) — raided the club, smashing tables and chairs, and seizing its drinks stocks and sound systems. “They took me away and detained me overnight,” Baisie said. “Before they released me they made me sign an undertaking I would not sell alcohol or play music ever again in Kano.”
Africa’s most populous nation — roughly divided into a Muslim north and Christian south, but with sizeable minorities living in both regions — is full of paradox. It is home to more Muslims than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa but is also the world’s second biggest consumer of Guinness beer.
A secular government sits in Abuja in the centre of a fervently religious nation. Megachurches in Lagos to the south attract weekly congregations numbering tens of thousands of Christians, while the north traces its Islamic heritage back centuries to the trans-Saharan trading routes linking it to north Africa.
Around a dozen northern states have introduced sharia over the past decade, but it is practised to varying degrees and only four of them have enforcement squads like Kano’s Hisbah, a force of around 9,000 men in green and black uniforms.
Sa’idu Ahmad Dukawa, their director-general, makes no apologies for what he says is a mission to purify the city.
Saudi clerics condemn protests as un-Islamic
Saudi Arabia’s council of senior clerics has issued a statement forbidding as un-Islamic the public protests, which the rulers of the U.S. ally and key oil exporter fear could spread following demonstrations by minority Shi’ites. The kingdom has escaped major protests like those which toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, but the wave of unrest has reached its neighbours Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Oman.
“The Council of Senior Clerics affirms that demonstrations are forbidden in this country. The correct way in sharia (Islamic law) of realising common interest is by advising, which is what the Prophet Mohammad established,” said the statement by the body headed by the Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh.
“Reform and advice should not be via demonstrations and ways that provoke strife and division, this is what the religious scholars of this country in the past and now have forbidden and warned against,” said the statement, carried by state media on Sunday.
More than 17,000 people backed a call on Facebook to hold two demonstrations in Saudi Arabia this month, the first on Friday. The interior ministry said on Saturday that protests violate Islamic law and the kingdom’s traditions. Security forces have detained at least 22 Shi’ites who took part in protests in the kingdom’s oil-rich east, activists said. Neighbouring Bahrain has seen protests by majority Shi’ites against their Sunni rulers.
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Islamist rebels take aim at Russia ahead of election year
A suicide attack on Russia’s busiest airport shows Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov is serious about inflicting “blood and tears” on the Russian heartland ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Umarov, a 46-year-old rebel leader who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus, claimed responsibility for the January 24 attack that killed 36 and said he had dozens of suicide bombers ready to unleash on Russian cities.
Russia is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency along its southern flank nearly 12 years after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rose to popularity by leading Russia into a second war against Chechen separatists.
In his 16-minute video, posted on several Islamist websites, Umarov vowed more attacks “on the territory of Russia. They will be carried out, God willing, there is no doubt about it.”
Chechen-born Umarov wants to create a separate state with Sharia Islamic law across the patchwork of Muslim republics along Russia’s south that he considers to be “occupied” territory.
“There will be hundreds of brothers who will be ready to sacrifice themselves for the establishment of the word of God,” Umarov, clad in camouflage and sporting a long black beard, said. On Friday he said that five or six dozen men were presently ready for “martyrdom.”
International investors fear anti-market regime in Egypt
International investors fear protests against Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak could spill over to other Arab countries, leading to regimes more hostile to western investment practices in the region and the introduction of more Islamic economic rules. They also express concern about the future role of businesses run by Coptic Christians in Egypt.
“Egypt has long been one of the most tolerant countries toward multiple faiths (in the Muslim world),” said Donald Elefson, co-lead portfolio manager at Harding Loevner Funds, with $210 million under management. “The Coptic Christians are still very powerful, though they are a minority, and there are many large-scale businesses that are owned by Coptic families. The only risk for the business environment would be if Egypt becomes a sharia state.”
Investors and world politicians worry that an immediate resignation by Mubarak will allow opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood to take power and promote an Islamic political and social system, not to mention a reversal in Egypt’s stable relationship with Israel. An economy based on sharia-law would interfere with many Western business practices by restricting leverage, as Islamic law bans interest, and stipulates that deals must be based on tangible assets.
Analysts say it is impossible to judge the real popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals — engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and teachers — and a core membership that is middle-class or lower middle-class.
The 166 funds worldwide that invest in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, represent approximately $13.4 billion of equity and bond assets under management in mutual funds and exchange traded funds. That is a tiny fraction of the $23.7 trillion invested in mutual fund assets worldwide by the end of the third quarter, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington.
Concern about Islamists masks wide differences among them
Part of the problem trying to figure out what Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood or Tunisia’s Ennahda party would do if they got into any future power structure in their countries is knowing what kind of Islamists they are. The label “Islamist” pops up frequently these days, in comments and warnings and (yes) news reports, but the term is so broad that it even covers groups that oppose each other. Just as the Muslim world is not a bloc, the Islamist world is not a bloc.
I sketched out a rough spectrum of Islamists in an analysis today entitled Concern about Islamists masks wide differences. This topic is vast and our story length limits keep the analysis down to the bare bones. But the overall point should be clear that any analysis of what these specific parties might do that ignores their diversity starts off on the wrong foot and risks ending up with the wrong conclusions.
While reading and talking to experts about Islamism these days, I either had the television on (zapping between BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera English) or listened to radio stations like BBC and NPR. When the Muslim Brotherhood came up, there were often suggestions — explicit or implicit — that it would seize power in a Leninist-style coup or whip up the masses to install a theocracy in a replay of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Experienced generals sometimes end up fighting the last war. Clever analysts can reach for the wrong historical parallel to the situation they’re tying to explain. Could it be that reflexes like these are clouding our view of what the Brotherhood and Ennahda actually are?
Our reporting from Egypt and Tunisia, often highlighted on this blog, has said both look poised to play an important role in the emerging political system. What also comes through is the feeling in the region, among many people who have seen these Islamists at work despite the restrictions on them, that the Khomeini pattern is not the one to impose. The example of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, which gave up hopes for an Islamic state in the 1990s in favour of winning broad support by democratic means, seems more likely to be the path to follow.
The experts I interviewed added several insights that couldn’t fit into the analysis. For example, Mustafa Akyol, the Hürriyet Daily News columnist in Istanbul, said AKP members generally thought of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — which clearly has a more traditionalist view of Islam and society — as being where they were ideologically about a decade or so ago. Ennahda’s more liberal Rachid Ghannouchi, by contrast, was ahead of the Turkish Islamists in the 1990s and several of his books were translated into Turkish and became popular among AKP intellectuals back then.
In washington, Professor Akbar Ahmed said Americans tended to be extremely wary of any role in politics for Islam. “Anyone with the slightest sympathy for Islam is seen suspiciously,” he said. “That creates a mental trap,” he said, leading to the conclusion that Washington must support the “modernists” who oppose these “fanatics” (Mubarak, Ben Ali, etc) “at any cost.” But the problem in the Muslim world is that these “modernists” have clung to power and failed to deliver for the people for so long that many Muslims feel they have no option but to support what Ahmed calls the “literalists.”
Noah Feldman, the Harvard law professor who has specialised among other things in Islamic law, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood would not have to fight for amendments to write sharia into the Egyptian constitution because it’s already there. “The Egyptian constitution as written is perfectly considtent with the Brotherhood’s ideals. It states that Islam is the source of law and that laws cannot contradict the sharia. It is an Islamist constitution — it’s just not applied in a very Islamist way,” he said. The new Iraqi and Afghan constitutions, both drawn up while U.S. troops were fighting armed Islamists there after invading in the last decade, are also both Islamic constitutions in that way.
“THE AGE OF TAHRIR AND A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT”
PART II
6th Feb 2011
Islam and Democracy in Egypt-
Egypt is not the real Islamic state that it wants to be since the fall of the monarchy in 1952,
despite having the oldest University(Jami’ah al-Azhar’) in the history of Islam
or the greatest Sphinx or Pyramids,etc,
Hosni Mubarak acendency to the presidency was not achieved via democratic means,
there was no real general election to say the least,
all past Presidents came from the military top brass,
from Naguib, Gamal,Anwar to Hosni M. himself,
to exemplify his outstanding ‘achievements’ in his sunrise moment,
Hosni shut down the Internet to blind the people of the world,
Hosni pleaded with the ‘Council of Wise Men’ to stay on,
Hosni manipulated his National Democratic Party to appease the hungry souls,
the fact is glaringly vindicative : Hosni continue to make more blunders,
which confirms the fact that there has been no real democracy in the land of the Pharoahs(Fir’aun’)
and Egypt is certaintly no Islamic state(‘Daulat Islamiyyah’) since Constantinople;
Egypt’s Domestic and Foreign Affairs-
Egypt made headlines when it initiated the Arab-Israel Wars to the joy of the Arab world,
it led the Arab bloc to demand justice to the Palestinian cause,
Israel could have lost the war if not for US support;
but the 1979 Peace Treaty with Israel did not bring any peace to Egypt
nor to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere;
the US$1.3 billion annual aid to the Egyptian military is not for free,
Egypt must fulfil all US wishes to control the Mid-East
contrary to the wishes of the people of Egypt and the Arab bloc/OIC;
the new President of Egypt must take serious notice of this satanic anomaly
and the subtle underpinning of Israeli’s tentacles into Egyptian affairs;
Egypt must re-assess it’s role within the Arab world matrix either as a leader of the Arab world/Islamic voice,
or a tool of US intelligence and ‘sandiwara’;
US as Ally or Enemy within Egypt & the Mid-East Matrix-
President-elect B.Obama must seriously review past US foreign affairs/policies and
cleaned up the mess created by the the two former Presidents(George Bush & Co.),
He must not repeat the laughable blunders of Geaorge Bush & Co. to the detriment of US interest
and the interest of the Arab/muslim world at large,
Israel must be reined in to comply with international law and norms of good neighbourhood;
POst Hosni and the Beginning of ‘Tahrir’ in Egypt-
As thousands of Egyptians gathered at Tahrir Square in Cairo,
demanding a need to right the wrongs of 30 years of Hosni’s famed mis-administration,
the new leadership of Egypt must be one who represent the spirit of Egypt,
one who is able to act without fear and favour,
one who can follow the footstep of the Prophet Muhammad, M. Ghandi, Mother Teresa,etc
and not the footsteps of the mummified Pharoahs.
………………………..
Jeong Chun phuoc
Lecturer-in-Law
and an advocate in Strategic Environmentand and Taxation Intelligence(SETI)
He can be reached at Jeongphu@yahoo.com
*The comment expressed above by the writer is in his personal capacity and
they do not neccessarily represent the view of his Institution, Research Centre or any NGOs etc despite his
official attachment to the same*
(See “THE MU-ALLAQAT OF HOSNI MUBARAKA AND THE DAWN OF’TAHRIR’ IN EGYPT”-
PART I, 3rd Feb 2011)
Battle for alcohol in Muslim Russia is deadly business
A masked guard clad in camouflage pokes his AK-47 rifle into the shoulder of a vodka-guzzling client in a hotel bar in Russia’s Muslim Ingushetia region, and orders him to leave immediately. The state-employed security guard then leads the man and his coterie of quiet revelers out of the dimly lit bar.
“We heard reports rebels are on the prowl again and we want to prevent any damage,” said the guard, who wished to remain anonymous.
At least a dozen places selling alcohol in the North Caucasus were attacked with grenades, bombs and gunfire over the last year as armed Islamists bent on installing sharia law have stepped up their battle against those who fancy a tipple. Last week saw the latest fatal attack in the town of Khasavyurt in Dagestan, near the border with Chechnya, where a bomb ripped through an alcohol-serving cafe, killing four.
Islamist rebels later said in a statement that “the owners were repeatedly warned but they were arrogant”.
“It is only a matter of time before places involved in the filth of alcohol… will meet their destruction,” they said on the insurgency-affiliated website jamaatshariat.com.
An Islamist insurgency fueled by two post-Soviet separatist wars in Chechnya is gaining strength in Russia’s southern flank where rebels stage near-daily attacks. While policemen and law enforcement officers bear the brunt of the rebel attacks in the North Caucasus, alcohol-sellers and buyers are also being increasingly targeted. Attacks last year were almost double of those in 2009, officials say.
Will Pew Muslim birth rate study finally silence the “Eurabia” claim?
One of the most wrong-headed arguments in the debate about Muslims in Europe is the shrill “Eurabia” claim that high birth rates and immigration will make Muslims the majority on the continent within a few decades. Based on sleight-of-hand statistics, this scaremongering (as The Economist called it back in 2006) paints a picture of a triumphant Islam dominating a Europe that has lost its Christian roots and is blind to its looming cultural demise.
The Egyptian-born British writer Bat Ye’or popularised the term with her 2005 book “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” and this argument has become the background music to much exaggerated talk about Muslims in Europe. Some examples from recent weeks can be found here, here and here.
A good example is the video “Muslim Demographics,” an anonymous diatribe on YouTube that has racked up 12,680,220 views since being posted in March 2009. Among its many dramatic but unsupported claims are that France would become an “Islamic republic” by 2048 since the average French woman had 1.8 children while French Muslim women had 8.1 children — a wildly exaggerated number that it made no serious effort to document. It also predicted that Germany would turn into a “Muslim state” by 2050 and that “in only 15 years” the Dutch population would be half Muslim. “Some studies show that, at Islam’s current rate of growth, in five to seven years, it will be the dominant religion of the world,” the video declares as it urges viewers to “share the Gospel message in a changing world.”
The BBC produced its own video entitled “Welcome to Eurabia?” that gave a point-by-point rebuttal of the video’s claims. Watching “Muslim Demographics” and “Welcome to Eurabia?” back-to-back provides a useful lesson in the dark art of twisting statistics. The image at left, shows a fictional flag of “Eurabia” created by Oren Neu Dag.
Articles defending the “Eurabia” claim have often been so shrill that they essentially discredited themselves as serious arguments. But it could be difficult to find a solid statistics that gave an overall view of what was actually happening. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has stepped up with an impressive study entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population” (here’s the press release, report and graphics here). As we summarised it in our report Muslim birth rate falls, slower population growth:
Falling birth rates will slow the world’s Muslim population growth over the next two decades, reducing it on average from 2.2 percent a year in 1990-2010 to 1.5 percent a year from now until 2030, a new study says.
Muslims will number 2.2 billion by 2030 compared to 1.6 billion in 2010, making up 26.4 percent of the world population compared to 23.4 percent now, according to estimates by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life…
“The declining growth rate is due primarily to falling fertility rates in many Muslim-majority countries,” it said, noting the birth rate is falling as more Muslim women are educated, living standards rise and rural people move to cities.
The proven demographic fact that birth rates have been falling among Muslim women, both in Muslim majority countries and western countries where Muslims have migrated, is not new. Nor are articles debunking the idea that Muslims will become the majority in Europe (see here and here and here). But my own experience in discussing this with non-Muslims in Europe and the United States says this message does not seem to be getting through. The fact that Muslim birth rates, while still higher than those for non-Muslims, are actually falling seems to surprise people who do not follow these issues closely.
revel224: “to show the dastardly Europeans who colonized, plundered, looted, and murdered countless souls and treasures of 3rd world many of them Muslims, what happens when a shoe is on the other foot.”
Revel- you discredit your own statement here when you lump all of “Europe” together, when in fact it was a mere handful of European nations that were largely responsible for what you’re talking about. The British in particular, and the Dutch, French and Belgians to a far lesser extent, did indeed colonise large swathes of the Muslim world. But the vast majority of Europe did not. The Scandinavians, Poles, Czechs, Greeks, Germans, Finns, Hungarians among others had absolutely nothing to do with colonisation of Muslim countries. Quite the opposite, as many of them were victims of corrupt Muslim colonisation thru e.g. the Ottoman Turks, who thrice failed to conquer Vienna and other vast regions.
In fact, the bulk of Europe largely avoided colonisation alltogether and weren’t involved in the dishonour of the slave trade. This is one reason that the Scandinavians and Germans have the most successful economies today- they have a culture that’s never relied on slave labour and thus has become adapted to doing its own manual labour and doing it well, hence their manufacturing prowess.
Ironically, this historical fact also seems to have a correspondence in the levels of Muslim settlement in the European countries that were colonisers. It’s very low in Scandinavia and Germany, which has only about 2 million Muslims (the vast majority of immigrants to Germany are east Europeans, Russians and ethnic Germans from North America, *not* Turks as often believed), somewhat higher in France and the Netherlands (not nearly as high as often claimed), but growing significantly only in Britain, which was indeed the major coloniser in the Muslim world. About 2.5-3 million Muslims reside in the UK, but that number is indeed growing quite quickly due to heavy immigration under both Labour and Tories to provide cheap Labour for businesses, and unlike Continent European countries, Britain has sharia law and courts in many districts as well as Islamic customs predominating there. See Tower Hamlets or Manchester for examples.
So the United Kingdom and England in particular are indeed taking on an increasingly Islamic character, along with a corrupt government whichever major party is leading it with a slavish devotion to the wishes of rich campaign donors (one reason why I and so many other Britons have left). But that’s not true of the rest of Europe. Don’t lump them together so.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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