Blasphemy convictions in Egypt increasing

Blasphemy trials and convictions are increasing under President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. This was not what many, who protested against Egypt's first and only fairly elected President (Morsi) in June 2013, expected. President Morsi was a member of Muslim Brotherhood and was accused to forcing religion on the Egyptian society. General Sisi, who led the coup against President Morsi, was supposed to be liberal and progressive. However, like all past military strong-men/dictators of Egypt, Sisi soon adopted authoritarian ways and decided to treat any opposition to his rule brutally. Human rights and liberalism were ignored and anyone talking about political freedoms was arrested or silenced in other ways. Accusitions of terrorism was used to silence religious opposition while liberal opposition to Sisi was condemned because it defamed Egyptian nation, Egyptian institutions and Islam allegedly on the behest of its foreign masters. Blasphemy charges is a very convenient tool as it can even be used against devout and practicing Muslims. Pakistani government and military has also used blasphemy to silence opposition.

Following are some of the articles on blasphemy trails in Egypt

From International Policy Digest:

While a spirit of critical thinking can be detected in the writings of many Egyptian intellectuals about sensitive religion-related topics, these intellectuals have been systematically subjected to hate campaigns and crimes according to Human Rights Watch. Here are two examples.
In the 1990s, the story of professor Farag Foda, an activist in the field of human rights, is a case in point. He was assassinated by Al-Jama’a Al-Islamiyya in 1992 not because of his atheism and infidelity but because of his harsh criticism of the violence of armed Islamic groups. While Foda was a critic of religious intolerance, his murderers, religious zealots, proved him right. Because the killers didn’t like Foda’s writings, they simply killed him.
The Egyptian liberal theologian and university professor, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, also suffered a major religious persecution in the 1990s and had to flee to the Netherlands. The crime of Abu Zayd was his academic work. When certain individuals refused to accept his academic research, they took it to the Egyptian court instead of the Egyptian debate. The court declared him an apostate and based on this sentence, he was not to remain married to his wife Ibtihal Younis, a French Literature professor. The logic behind the forced divorce is that Muslim women are not permitted to marry non-Muslims.
Constitutionally, blasphemy (contempt of monotheistic religions) is based on article 98 of the Egyptian Penal Code, which was added 1982 and then amended in 2006. According to this law, citizens who insult or ridicule heavenly religions, propagate extreme ideas for the purpose of inciting strife or contribute to damaging national unity can be confined for a period of no less than six months and no more than five years. This is, in other words, a legal license for the Egyptian state and its religious institution to persecute its own intellectuals. (read the article Don’t Blaspheme in Egypt)

From Ahram online:

Members of the satirical performance art troupe Atfal El-Shawaree (Street Children) posted a video online that some deemed "blasphemous," calling on authorities to charge them under a law that critics say is often misused to violate the right to freedom of expression. 

"Religion has its sanctity, the video posted by this group undoubtedly defamed Islam," Ahmed Kereima, a scholar of Islamic Sharia, said in a phone interview with TV host Ahmed Moussa on Saturday. "Therefore I immediately call on the top prosecutor to charge them with defaming Islam."

On Sunday, Alexandria prosecutors started looking into a complaint filed by a lawyer in Egypt's second biggest city against the group for "insulting religion." In May, the troupe posted a video mimicking the speech of anchors on the state-owned religious Al-Quran Al-Karim (The Holy Quran) radio station. 

Egypt's anti-blasphemy law – Article 98 (f) of the penal code – has been used recently to target several people in high-profile cases, including four Christian students who were sentenced to five years; renowned writer Fatma Naaout who was sentenced to three years; and TV presenter Islam El-Beheiry who was sentenced to one year.

Article 98 (f) criminalises “whoever exploits religion in order to promote extremist ideologies by word of mouth, in writing or in any other manner, with seditious intent, disparaging or contempt of any divine religion or its adherents, or threatening national unity, shall be punished with imprisonment from six months to five years, or pay a fine of at least 500 Egyptian pounds.”

Naout was sentenced to three years in jail for saying on her Facebook page that the Eid Al-Adha tradition of slaughtering sheep was the "greatest massacre committed by human beings." El-Beheiry is currently serving a one-year sentence in prison after he stirred controversy by questioning the credibility of some sources of the Prophet Muhammad's sayings, a prime source of Islamic jurisprudence. In February, four Christian minors were sentenced to five years in jail after making a video mocking members of the Islamic State group beheading an individual after the militants finished Islamic prayers...

Many in Egypt – a conservative and deeply religious country where the predominant Sunni Muslim majority constitutes 88 percent of the population – consider religion a "red line" that should not be crossed, at least publicly,  not even by state officials. This "red line" was put in place by legislators in 1981 – during the El-Zawya El-Hamra religious strife – when the Egyptian penal code was amended to prohibit the "insulting of religions."

The law was enacted at the time to protect the rights of religious minorities. However, some lawyers and religious researchers believe that the law is now being abused.

Although the Egyptian constitution –passed in 2014 in a majority referendum – protects freedom of thought, belief and expression, many of the country's clerics, officials and religion institutions are against the questioning of established, mainstream religious beliefs.

The penal code has three articles that criminalise acts that can broadly be defined as blasphemous; articles 160, 161 and 98 (f). (read the article Egypt's anti-blasphemy law: Defence of religion or tool for persecution?)

A still image from the satirical performance by Atfal El-Shawaree (Street Children) 

Source: Egypt's anti-blasphemy law: Defence of religion or tool for persecution?

From Al-Monitor:

Hazem, like other activists who had hoped the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime would usher in a new era of greater freedom and more openness, is now deeply disappointed.

“I was optimistic back in 2015 when I heard President [Abdel Fattah al-] Sisi’s promises that religion would never again have a say in politics. I believed he would steer the country toward a more liberal direction. It hasn’t happened,” he said.

The prosecution of a prominent filmmaker over accusations of contempt of religion for a “controversial” scene in his film and an attack on a church in the district of Giza on Dec. 22 by a mob calling for the church’s demolition are just some of the recent developments signaling a trend of growing conservatism and increased intolerance in the society. Film director Amr Salama was summoned for interrogation by prosecutors on Dec. 18 over his film “Sheikh Jackson,” Egypt’s submission for the Oscars. This happened after a lawyer filed a legal complaint against the filmmaker and the film’s cast, accusing them of “defaming Islam.” The lawsuit was prompted by a scene in the film that shows a Michael Jackson lookalike dancing inside a mosque as worshippers pray. The film has since been referred by prosecutors to Al-Azhar for review to determine if it is indeed “blasphemous.”

Salama’s prosecution comes on the heels of several high-profile convictions over contempt of religion charges since the coup against Morsi in 2013. Blasphemy convictions have intensified under Sisi, with more such cases and convictions during his era than during the Morsi era. Despite his pluralistic discourse, Sisi is appeasing the ultraconservative Salafists who supported him in the 2014 presidential election in the conviction that any secularist tendencies on his part would undermine his base in the street, say analysts. (read the article Egypt’s parliament in bid to ban atheism)

Iranian 'Persian-National' Identity

In religious nationalist states, the basis of national identity is usually contested. As religious nationalism is a dominant theme, a large number of groups claim a specific religion or sect as the basis of national identity. However, this view is always contested by others who claim the ethnic, linguistic or simply territorial basis of national identity.

The debate about Iranian identity has always featured two broad groups: the Persian nationalists and the Islamic nationalists. The Persian nationalists claim that Iranian identity has an ethnolinguistic basis. Iranians were Iranians long before Islam came to Iran. In contrast, the Islamic nationalists contend that Islam has become the primary constituent of Iranian identity since Iran was conquered by Arabs in the 7th century. 

However, it would be a mistake to consider both groups as mutually exclusive and some scholars, even partisans, do not completely reject the arguments of their rivals. Except for the opinionated, the difference between the two groups is whether the emphasis is placed on religion or ethnolinguistic characteristics as the primary constituent to the Iranian identity.

For example, many Persian nationalists claim that Islam in its true form is only practiced (i.e. Shia/Twelver sect Islam) in Iran and Islam was saved from Arabs and others only by Iranians. So, they view Islam as part of Iranian identity but do not accept that Islam gave Iranians a new identity. Instead, they claim that it was Iranians, a group at a much higher level of civilization than Arabs, that saved Islam by adopting it, otherwise, Islam's achievements would have been few and it would have been far less successful. 

Similarly, Islamic nationalists accept that Iranian Islam (Twelver sect) is superior and give homage to ethnolinguistic identity perspective by arguing that Iranians have a special affinity with the true religion, Islam, as they are special, seekers of what is true and right. For them, the Aryan/Iranian/Shiite Islam was and is the real Islam while the Semitic/Arab/Sunni Islam is the adulterated false version, despite Prophet Muhammad being an Arab.

Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Afshin Matin-Asgari gives a detailed account of the debate within the Persian nationalist camp in her chapter, 'The Academic Debate on Iranian Identity: Nation and Empire entangled' in Iran Facing Others, edited by Abbas Amanat and Farzin Vejdani (2012). 

Matin-Asgari's chapter gives a comprehensive overview of the different authors and their positions on Persian nationalism, I will try to give a summary here. Matin-Asgari contends that from the late 19th to late 20th century, Persian nationalists -_ the ethnolinguistic camp__ was the dominant thesis in Iranian identity debate. This camp was influenced by Orientalists (such as German Ernst Herzfeld and British Edward Granville Browne) who linked Iranians with Aryans and old Persian empires with the modern state of Iran and claimed a continuity over centuries/millennia. Archaeological discoveries in the 19th century also helped in the strengthening of this thesis. Called the 'Aryan Neo-Achaemenid nationalism', its proponents believed:

1. Iranian identity is ancient, with an archaic core existent for thousands of years. 
2. The Persian language is at the center of Iranian identity. Persian language has been dominant in Iranian territory for centuries and has a major contribution in making non-Iranian inhabitants, immigrants, and conquerors, Iranians. 
3. Since at least Achaemenid times (6th century-4th century BC), Iranian and Persian identities are synonymous. The Persian language has preserved Iranian identity and/or 'the spiritual unity of Iranian history'. 
4. Iranian identity has a racial component based on (Aryan) racial affiliation. 
5. The 'national religion' of Iran was Zoroastrian and Islam is an imposition but Iranian have changed Islam to make it fit their 'Persian Psyche'.

Iranian Flag with Ahura Mazda(God of Zoroastrianism)

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Based on the ethnolinguistic superiority of Iranians and taking pride in ancient 'Persian' empires, this paradigm __ not surprisingly __ takes a dim view of Arabs. Arabs are considered inferior and uncivilized. For example, Abbas Ashtiyani, a 20th century nationalist wrote:

The Iranians spent a hundred years of severe humiliation under the yoke of Arab domination...Yet he did not give up on acquiring knowledge, something that Arab then lacked..

This Persian nationalist thesis, an orthodoxy in the field of Iranian Studies according to Matin-Asgari, has been challenged lately.

1. Mostafa Vaziri rejected the notion of ancient Iranian identity and claimed that pre-modern usage of term 'Iran' referred to a geographic entity only.
2. Austrian scholar Bert Fragner argued that the Persian language is central to Iranian consciousness but Persian was initially a language of the elite and a small portion of people living in today's Iran. It was more a ' Persian linguistic hegemony as crafted and sustained via dominant elite cultures, and not as a "national" heritage shared by a homogeneous Iranian people'. 
3. Italian scholar Gherardo Gnoli argued that 'Iran' as a political concept was an imperial project started by Sassanids( 3rd century -- 7th century).
4. Tavakoli-Targhi contended that Iran was re-imagined in the 19th century in line with the rising consciousness. Various terms like millet, siyaset, and Iran were 're-articulated'. The 'Iranzamin' of ancient texts has quite different boundaries from modern Iran. He also challenged Persian language link with today's Iran.

These challenges forced the at least some of the Persian nationalists to moderate their thesis and they accepted that many dynasties ruling Iran, including the Greeks and Parthians, were not Iranian so there is no seamless continuity from ancient to modern. There is also some acceptance of the argument that 'Iran' in pre-modern times was an imperial, not a national, conception and Persian might not be the language of most people living in Iran in the past. However, most Persian nationalists have not been able to accept the new research and so their thesis continues to suffer from contradictions.

Matin-Asgari suggests the issues in Persian nationalist thesis can be resolved by abandoning the essentialist 'continuity' aspect and accepting that

1. Pre-modern Iran was an imperial concept and imperial Iran was multi-lingual and multi-ethnic, with a shifting heartland.
2. Persian linguistic hegemony did not create ethnic and national homogeneity across history.

An interesting article. Author's position on Iranian nationalism is close to Smith's argument about nationalisms in general i.e. nationalism is neither strictly primordial nor wholly imagined. It appears both Persian nationalist and religious nationalist Iranians are moderating their positions and accepting that the other side is not completely off base. Moderation of Persian nationalist thesis has been discussed above and religious nationalists moderation could be seen in Ahmadinejad's politics in his second term, discussed in this blog on 8th February, 2014.