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)

Is religious nationalism rising in South East Asia /ASEAN ?

Is religious nationalism increasing in South East Asia? Michael Sainsbury, a Bangkok-based journalist, certainly thinks so. While explaining the Thai junta's decision to repatriate hundreds of Uighurs refugees to China, he argues in his article, Understanding the plight of the Uighurs:

Yet this action is one more example of how politics in Asia is unintelligible without factoring in the significance of religion. The common frequently focus is on military, trade and national rivalries that culminate in decisive and dismaying actions. But increasingly religion tied to national identity is integral to the events....

It’s the latest visible example that religious fault lines and an emerging trend of religious nationalism is now beginning to appear right across the region. It is one that poses a fresh threat to the ambitions of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Nations Community that will come into being on December 31, 2015.

He mentions increasing Buddhist nationalism in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar; Muslim nationalism in Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia; and Hindu nationalism in India.  

However, the decision to repatriate Uighurs, as Sainsbury also acknowledges is more to do with Thai military junta's need for powerful allies than to rise in religious nationalism in Thailand. Moreover, in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world, last year elections results showed that religious nationalism is stagnant, if not in retreat (See Indonesian Elections: A Victory for Pancasila Nationalism)

In Bangladesh too, although it is not in South East Asia, religious nationalism is losing to ethnolinguistic Bengali nationalism (See Bangladesh's secular nationalism asserts itself). Similarly, religious nationalism suffered a defeat when Philippines government agreed to accommodate concerns of Muslims in the Southern islands last year. 

Moreover, like Thailand and Cambodia, Muslim-majority Malaysia also deported fellow Muslim Uighurs to China in 2013 ( See Malaysia Hit for Deporting Uyghurs). More recently, both Malaysia and Indonesia (along with Bangladesh) were reluctant to accept fellow Muslims Rohingyas, who were fleeing worst kind of religious persecution (See Malaysia's Duty to the Rohingyas), making a mockery of Muslim brotherhood and Muslim nationalism. Only after international pressure, some Rohingya refugees were accepted.

So, religious nationalism is South East Asia presents a mixed picture. It is rising in some countries but losing in others.

Does more democracy mean more Islam? A look at Pakistan’s constitutional history

Writing about post-invasion Iraq, Feldman and Martinez (2007) argued, 

as the constitutional process became increasingly participatory and democratic in the period from the fall of Saddam Hussein to ratification, the constitution itself became increasingly Islamic in orientation and detail…To put it simply, more democracy meant more Islam. 

If one reviews the political developments in other Muslim-majority countries (MMCs) during the last few decades, more democracy means more Islam (hereafter Feldman’s aphorism) seems to be true. Democratic advancement has resulted in more Islam in Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Recently, Hamid (2014) also contended that democratic openings in the MMCs might lead to more Islamization and not to a more liberal polity. This blogpost reviews Pakistan’s constitutional history to see whether democratic progression in Pakistan has also led to more Islamization. It concludes that during the first thirty years of Pakistan (1947-77), more democracy did lead to more Islam in the constitutions but since then, Feldman’s aphorism is no longer true.  

Rest of the blog can be read at Calgary Centre of Global Community here

Illiberal Democracies and the Muslim World

For the first time, directly presidential elections were held in Turkey on 10th August, 2014. As expected, Prime Minister Erdogan won the elections and crossed the fifty percent threshold, making a second round of presidential election unnecessary. The idea of Erdogan ruling for five more years is disconcerting for many inside and outside Turkey. Erdogan, after an initial liberal start, has now become a symbol of elected illiberalism or illiberal democracy. Erdogan is not alone. Since the start of 2013, illiberal democrats have won elections in Algeria, Pakistan, India, Hungary, Egypt and Venezuela.  

The idea of illiberal democracy was first popularized by Fareed Zakaria (See The rise of illiberal democracy). He argued that democracy requires only regular competitive elections and can be liberal or illiberal. Liberal democracy, in addition to regular elections, entails individual liberty and constitutionalism. Without the protection of individual rights and limits on the power of democratic governments (usually through constitutions), there is no liberal democracy.

Source: Illiberal Democracy

Zakaria contended that sequencing of liberalism and democracy was different in the early Western European democracies (and East Asian democracies) and most third wave democracies. In the former, liberalism became entrenched before democracy became a reality but in the later, democracy came earlier. This led to illiberal democracy or infringement of individual and minority rights in many countries. According to Zakaria, 

The tension between constitutional liberalism and democracy centers on the scope of governmental authority. Constitutional liberalism is about the limitation of power, democracy about its accumulation and use. For this reason, many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberals saw in democracy a force that could undermine liberty. James Madison explained in The Federalist that "the danger of oppression" in a democracy came from "the majority of the community." Tocqueville warned of the "tyranny of the majority," writing, "The very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority."

Rest of the blog can be read at the Calgary Centre for Global Community website (See Illiberal Democracies) 

Mahathir and Erdogan: Similarities and use of nationalism

A lot has been written about the superb economic stewardship of both leaders and it has certainly been crucial for their popularity and electoral success. However, not many people know of another key ingredient behind their success – their management of ‘nationalism’.

My article published on Express Tribune Blog. A portion is reproduced below, rest can be read at Will Sharif be able to follow Mahathir and Erdogan?

Like Pakistan, the basis of nationalism is still open for debate in both Malaysia and Turkey. There are ethnic nationalists, religious nationalists and a large group of civic nationalists fighting over the raison d’être of their respective countries.

Mahathir and Erdogan both used this disagreement to their advantage and led coalitions of different nationalists at different times in their careers. Both adopted civic, ethnic or religious nationalism as the situation demanded.

Source: Will Sharif be able to follow Mahathir and Erdogan?

Mahathir began his career as an ethnic nationalist but later won popularity and even premiership as a Malay nationalist. He wrote a controversial book, The Malay Dilemma, to promote special policies for the people of Malaysia. However, once he attained power, he moved to the centre and tried to win overall Malaysians. And by the end of his rule, he started propagating a form of ethnoreligious nationalism, highlighting the special role of Malays and Islam in the creation of Malaysia.

On the other hand, Erdogan began his political career as a civic nationalist and despite his Muslim roots, presented himself as a leader for all Turkish people. He disparaged discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, gender or religion. However, in order to curtail the power of the Turkish military, he later became an ethnic nationalist and unashamedly claimed to be the redeemer of the ethnic nationalism of Ataturk and the early Turkish Republic.

His current stance is that of an ethnoreligious nationalist fighting against the world for his country, just like Mahathir near the end of his career.