If the Egyptian revolutionaries succeed in forcing President Mohamed Morsi and his Brotherhood-led government out of office or if he resigns to save face, will this mean the end of Islam as the religion of the state and the end of the Sharia as the main source of legislation, a matter that would require the amendment of the constitution? Would it mean the Brotherhood succumbing to defeat, or would we see the group fighting back against the revolutionaries in a bid to regain its influence? In my last article in Al-Ahram Weekly, I concluded that the Egyptian revolution had not achieved its goals in spite of its enacting a new constitution and electing a new president. The change that the revolutionaries demonstrated for has not happened. The young people who led the 25 January Revolution wanted a change from a military-led autocratic regime to true secular democracy that respects human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, and also provides a better economic standard of living and equality for all. However, they found that things did not change after the departure of former president Hosni Mubarak from the political arena and that his rule was replaced by a new state of chaos, economic deterioration and the imposition by the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups of their misguided interpretation of Sharia law, enabling members of the group to take the law into their own hands. This was not the change the revolutionaries aspired to. In my earlier article, I explained that the change did not take place because the revolutionaries did not bring it about themselves by entering the political arena under their own leadership and participating in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The 25 January revolutionaries forgot the lessons of their history teachers, who must have told them how the participants in the 1919 Revolution brought about change themselves and how their leaders succeeded in forcing King Fouad I to promulgate the country's first constitution in 1923, which was probably better than the constitutions that followed it. I also referred to how the Tahrir Square revolutionaries were used by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled after Mubarak, by the Brotherhood, and by the political parties whose self-interest has shadowed the national one. The recent drive by the newly established group Tamarod (rebellion) to collect millions of signatures to force Morsi out of office only demonstrates how the revolution has not been effective in bringing about change. What will happen if Tamarod succeeds in pushing Morsi's government out of office? It is crystal clear that the Brotherhood-led government does not realise that its disastrous management of the country will drive other countries and the United Nations to boycott Egypt, notably because of its bending of the new constitution that was drafted and hastily approved by members of the Islamist groups in the absence of the Christian and liberal members of the committee established for that purpose and its repressive political and religious freedoms policy that has encouraged or acquiesced in the sexual assault and rape of women. As summarised by the New York Times, the US State Department's recent annual report on human rights around the world, especially in countries that succeeded in toppling their autocratic rulers such as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, stated that those countries had adopted restrictive new laws or carried out prosecutions against minority faiths. The report singled out Egypt as a country whose new constitution prohibits “undermining or subjecting all messengers and prophets” of Islam but does not extend “explicit protection to Christianity or Judaism”. The report also said that the defamation of all faiths was prohibited under former president Hosni Mubarak, insinuating that the same thing is not true now. To be accurate, this is not the case — it seems the report's drafter may have been reading the wrong constitution. There is no plurality of messengers and prophets in Islam or in any other of the revealed faiths, whether Christianity or Judaism. The Prophet Mohamed was the only messenger and prophet of Islam. Likewise, Moses was the only messenger and prophet of Judaism, and Jesus was the only messenger and prophet of Christianity. There were prophets before Moses in Judaism, following the teachings of the Prophet Abraham, considered to be the father of all the prophets, his teachings being passed to his two sons, Isaac and Ismail, the forefathers of the Jews and the Arabs. Moreover, the new Egyptian constitution provides in its Article 43 that “freedom of religion is protected,” going on to say that “the state guarantees the freedom to practice religious rituals and build houses of worship for the divine religions, according to what the law prescribes.” Article 44 of the constitution provides that “it is prohibited to subject all the messengers and prophets to defamation or blasphemy.” It is true, as the State Department report says, that defamation against all faiths was prohibited during the rule of Mubarak by statute and the criminal law. But this prohibition is still in effect under the Brotherhood-led government of President Morsi. However, there have been incidents of the reported destruction of Christian churches and attacks on Christian individuals by members of some of the Islamist groups with no effective action taken as a result by the Brotherhood-led government. Muslims themselves have also been suffering from assault by members of ultra-Islamist groups. The freedom of expression and of the press has been violated, and some Muslim journalists have been put on trial on charges of insulting the president and Islam. Many Muslim women have been subjected to sexual assault. People no longer feel secure being outdoors at night in the absence of police in the streets, and incidents of car and cell-phone theft and the kidnapping of children for ransom have been growing. Life is becoming harder for the middle class, which is gradually disappearing. However, contrary to the US state department report, the fact is that the Egyptian constitution and Islamic Sharia law provide full respect for all faiths and protection for all believers of those religions. Tamarod has been trying to collect the signatures of millions of Egyptians in order to by-pass the small majority of people who came to the polls in the presidential elections and voted for President Morsi. The intention is to push the president out of office by the will of the people. One of Morsi's aides has reportedly attacked the move as an illegal way to remove a president who was elected by the majority of Egyptians. However, this is not the case, as Morsi won by a very small majority of those people who cast their votes, which was less than one third of the people eligible to vote. There is nothing in the new constitution that provides a way of getting rid of an elected president short of trying him for the crime of treason. This means that if the president commits other crimes, there is no way to put him on trial as there is in other countries' constitutions. In the United States, for instance, the constitution provides for a procedure to force the president out of office if he commits the crime of treason or other crimes by way of a resolution of the House of Representatives to refer him or her to the Senate for impeachment. If the president is found guilty, he is removed from office before being put on trial in the regular way. Former US president Richard Nixon was about to be impeached as a result of the Watergate Scandal in the 1970s, for example, but he saved himself by resigning first. Former president Bill Clinton was subject to investigation by a judicial panel when he was accused of lying about his sexual relationships in the 1990s. On this occasion, the House of Representative failed to get the votes necessary to impeach Clinton. Assuming that the required number of signatures was collected in Egypt, but Morsi refused to resign, the result would undoubtedly be to drive the Brotherhood, which has reportedly built up a stockpile of weapons, to fight the revolutionaries, bringing about the kind of civil war that we see today in Syria. This could also lead to foreign intervention in Egypt. The worst could be that Egypt could be divided into several independent regions, secularist and Islamist, after thousands of years of the unification of the northern and the southern regions of the country by the Pharaoh Mena. This unification has lasted until now because the people have wanted it and worked for it under a multi-religious system. A comparable situation was experienced by the American people, this being when the south attempted to secede from the union in the Civil War. On 27 May, the people of the United States celebrated memorial day holiday in which they honoured citizens who died in the Civil War and in other wars. The practice of decorating the graves of the dead across the country, in the north and the south and in Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, which spreads a feeling of common loss, has helped to reconcile two regions that got involved in a bloody war to liberate the black people enslaved by the south. The reconciliation that followed the war was the result of the feeling that “we are all Americans”, this in turn being followed by the southern states rejoining the northern ones that defeated them in the Civil War. The Americans were reunited after their separation, but the Egyptians are now thinking of being divided after their unification. The American population consists of people of various religious faiths, most of them Christian. The US constitution establishes a system of the separation of church and state, thus prohibiting the federal government from adopting a single religion as the United States religion or helping one religion over others. Americans have continued to practise their religions, but they have not allowed that to interfere with making them one of the most advanced nations in the world and the only superpower. In Egypt, the situation is more complicated. All the constitutions enacted since former president Gamal Abdel-Naser took over the government by a coup d'état in 1952 have provided that “Islam is the religion of the state.” They have also declared that “the freedom of religion is protected.” However, the governments that were in power before the election of Morsi were secular ones. How can the respect for other religions be realised if every law and every regulation and decision by the president is according to Islamic Sharia? Surely this must result in discrimination against other faiths? Moreover, how can the state have a religious faith? It is a fictitious person: it does not eat or drink; it does not perform daily prayers; and it does not go on pilgrimage or fast. It was Morsi who became the first president who was also the leader of a religion-based party, one that was an offshoot of the Brotherhood group that planned to Islamise, or to be more accurate, Ikhwanise the country. The present cabinet ministers are mostly members of this group, outlawed since the time of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and other jobs in the executive branch and the judiciary are on the way to being filled by members of the Brotherhood. The country's banking system is also liable to change with the test balloon of issuing Islamic sukuk bonds which try to attract Muslims hesitant to deal with a banking system that is based on the levying of interest, which the Islamist groups consider to be reba (usury) that is prohibited in Islam. However, as I demonstrated in a previous article in the Weekly, interest is not the same thing as reba. I supported my conclusion by texts from the Quran and detailed opinions from the late grand imam Mohamed Tantawi taken from his book Muamalat Al-Bonouk wa-hokamoha Al-Sharia (Banking Transactions and Sharia Law). If the Brotherhood followed its strict interpretation of the Sharia, the result would be the destruction of the banking system. Daily life would be disrupted, and women would be confined to the home, succumbing to their husbands' desire to produce more children and thus adding to the country's population explosion. Does the Brotherhood realise it is leading the country to disaster? Are the revolutionaries ready to make the changes necessary to rid themselves of the Brotherhood and the other Islamist groups that are pushing the country to the brink by showing them how the country can be prosperous under a secular government that prizes law and order? God instructed us in the Quran that He created humans and genies only to worship Him, not to torture or humiliate their fellows. A believer cannot worship God unless he or she is free and well-fed. Can the Islamist groups tell us why they are so persistent in disobeying God's will by not doing their utmost to keep the people free and well-fed?
