The next president will not be from the Muslim Brotherhood or any Salafist group, says Islamic thinker Selim al-Awa. He also said that Islamic jurisprudence does not ban Coptic Christians or women from running for the presidency of a republic, unlike the old Caliphate system that prohibited it. “The presidency in modern terms is an institution like all other state institutions,” al-Awa said. “And the president, whether a Copt or a woman, is the person chosen by millions of citizens who put their confidence in them." At a symposium of the Egyptian Association for Culture and Dialogue on Saturday, al-Awa praised the new law prohibiting labor demonstrations. “Those demonstrations hinder production and harm the economy,” he said. “Even student demonstrations should be banned as they slow down the education process,” he said, calling on students to demand changing universities laws rather than changing certain faculty staff. Al-Awa criticized Mohamed Hassanein Yacoub, the prominent Salafist preacher who called the last constitutional amendments referendum “the battle of the ballots.” “It was a referendum and not a war,” he said. Translated from the Arabic Edition
