Posted on 10/11/2007 2:28:52 PM PDT by camerakid400
Former Muslim sues Egypt for right to become Christian.
by Peter Lamprecht
Conservative Islamic lawyers came out in support of the Egyptian government last week at the opening court hearing of a Muslim convert to Christianity.
In a move that has caused national uproar, former Muslim Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy is suing Egypt to change the religion listed on his identification papers to Christianity.
Islamist lawyers associated with radical cleric Youssef al-Badry attended the October 2 hearing in Cairo and legally joined the case on the government’s side, Hegazy told Compass.
Hegazy’s lawyers confirmed that Magdy al-Anany and at least three other fundamentalist Muslim attorneys filed to support the government.
Al-Badry was one of several clerics who called for Hegazy’s death in Egypt ’s national media, following the announcement of the case in early August. The radical Islamist also filed charges of inciting sectarian strife against Hegazy’s original lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhla.
Under public criticism and death threats, Nakhla withdrew from Hegazy’s case days after it became public. Fanatics began harassing Hegazy and his pregnant wife, also a former Muslim, with angry telephone calls, forcing the couple into hiding.
“It’s quite sensitive,” Hegazy’s new lawyer, Rawda Ahmad, told Compass through a translator. “It would be the first time that someone who converted to Chris tianity would be able to change his ID card.”
Though Egyptian law does not forbid conversion from Islam to Christianity, it provides no legal means to make the change. Converts to Christianity usually hide their identity to avoid torture and forced recantation at the hands of family members and security police.
(Excerpt) Read more at spcm.org ...
need more?
Still, I wonder how much Egypt really contains radical Islam in the long run:
State security police soon arrested the young man and tortured him for three days. Despite using a Coptic Orthodox priest to convince Hegazy to recant, the young convert said that police were unable to persuade him to revert to Islam. He eventually returned home, his father under the illusion that he was once again Muslim.
Hegazy said he continued to be active in his faith, writing and publishing some of his own poetry. Police again arrested the convert in 2002 and held him for 10 weeks at a “concentration camp,” where he said he met other converts.
Radical islam - just mainstream Islam returning to its former glory?
“mainstream “
But we pay the government enough to keep them in check for now. That may change, but for now we need a relatively stable country bordering the Suez.
Egypt is the home of the Muslim Brotherhood. Credo: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
Egypt is the home of Sayyid Qutb the leading intellectual of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 60s.
Sayyid Qutb authored “Milestones”:
“If Islam is again to play the role of the leader of man- kind, then it is necessary that the Muslim community be restored to its original form.”
“The Muslim community today is neither capable of nor required to present before mankind great genius in material inventions, which will make the world bow its head before its supremacy and thus re-establish once more its world leadership. Europe’s creative mind is far ahead in this area, and at least for a few centuries to come we cannot expect to compete with Europe and attain supremacy over it in these fields.”
“Hence we must have some other quality, that quality which modern civilization does not possess.”
Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad Qutb were arrested in July 1965 for their alleged co-leadership in a plot to kill leading political and cultural figures in Egypt and overthrow the government. Sayyid Qutb was executed in August 1966. Muhammad Qutb was released from prison in 1972 and fled to Saudi Arabia taking refuge with the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the early 1970’s it was common to find members of the Muslim Brotherhood teaching at Saudi schools and universities.
Osama bin Laden regularly attended weekly public lectures by Muhammad Qutb (Sayyid Qutb’s brother) at King Abdulaziz University and regularly read Sayyid Qutb.
[ Yah, more foreign aid will solve the problem. ]
If you would like to see/read “Milestones” by Sayyid Qutb, visit what is purported, among other things, as an “islamic environmental website” in Canada named “YOUNG MUSLIMS”.
http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/hold/index_2.asp
[ Maybe we should increase aid to Canada? ]
“Those who say that Islamic Jihaad was merely for the defense of the ‘homeland of Islam’ diminish the greatness of the Islamic way of life and consider it less important than their ‘homeland’. This is not the Islamic point of view, and their view is a creation of the modern age and is completely alien to Islamic consciousness. What is acceptable to Islamic consciousness is its belief, the way of life which this belief prescribes, and the society which lives according to this way of life. The soil of the homeland has in itself no value or weight. From the Islamic point of view, the only value which the soil can achieve is because on that soil God’s authority is established and God’s guidance is followed; and thus it becomes a fortress for the belief, a place for its way of life to be entitled the ‘homeland of Islam’, a center for the movement for the total freedom of man.”
“It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which will be a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state.”
-Milestones, Sayyid Qutb
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