Egypt’s War of Ideas

Townhall.com ^ | March 2, 2022 | Cynthia Farahat

[Kaslin]

Egypt is embroiled in a war of ideas as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi resists Islamists in a struggle for the future of Egypt and the Middle East. Currently, there are historic reforms taking place in the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. But the path to ideological and religious reform has been most difficult in Egypt.

President Sisi has achieved numerous political, cultural, and economic reforms. In infrastructure and urban development alone, he has implemented 11 thousand projects. Sisi has transformed his government and become Egypt’s most moderate president. For example, for the first time in Egypt’s history, Sisi appointed a Coptic Christian, Judge Boules Fahmy, to head the Supreme Constitutional Court. Most Egyptian Muslims have supported this extraordinary precedent, but a faction of Islamists in the government has aggressively resisted reformation.

Egypt’s largest Islamic institution, al-Azhar University in Cairo, has engaged Sisi in a cold war. Fundamentalists in the university have retaliated against him by targeting intellectuals and reformers who share his vision. The Islamists’ latest victim is the country’s most popular and influential intellectual and commentator, author Ibrahim Issa, who is “under investigation” for questioning sections of the Koran. For decades, Egypt’s draconian blasphemy law has been al-Azhar’s weapon used to initiate Islamic inquisition tribunals in Egypt’s courts. Since 1981, Egypt has persecuted and prosecuted dissidents and intellectuals for blasphemy, and al-Azhar has targeted them with assassination fatwas.

Officially, the country’s main legislative bodies are the constitutional court and parliament, but al-Azhar has been the nation’s de facto theocratic legislative body due to the second article in the constitution that states, “the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence.”